Hendrik Verwoerd - Early Life

Early Life

Verwoerd was born in the Netherlands. He was the second child of Anje Strik and Wilhelmus Johannes Verwoerd: he had an elder brother named Leendert and a younger sister named Lucie. His father was a shopkeeper and a deeply religious man who decided to move his family to South Africa in 1903 because of his sympathy towards the Afrikaner nation after the Second Boer War. In 1913, the family moved to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, where the elder Verwoerd became an assistant evangelist in the Dutch Reformed Church. Hendrik Verwoerd attended Milton High School where he was awarded the Beit Scholarship, but was forced to decline because of his family’s move back to South Africa, Brandfort in the Orange Free State. Due to the worldwide spanish flu epidemic, Hendrik Verwoerd sat for his matriculation exams in February 1919, proving himself to be an able student at the Lutheran School in Wynberg and Wynberg Boys' High School, achieving first position in the Orange Free State and fifth in South Africa.

After his schooling, he proceeded to study theology at the University of Stellenbosch, later changing to psychology and philosophy. He was awarded a masters and a doctorate in psychology, both cum laude, and turned down an Abe Bailey scholarship to Oxford University, England, opting to continue his studies in psychology and theology in Germany. Verwoerd left for Germany in 1925, and stayed there during 1926, studying at the universities of Hamburg, Berlin and Leipzig. His later critics have at times suggested that this coincided with the rise of German National Socialism in the 1930s; however, according to the Dictionary of South African Biography of 1981, his stay predated it by a number of years. It has been speculated that he met with Eugen Fischer during his stay, but at this stage, social Darwinism was not the focus of Verwoerd's research. He published a number of works dating back to that time. Verwoerd's fiancee, Betsie Schoombie, joined him in Germany and they were subsequently married on 7 January 1927 in Hamburg. Later that year, he continued his studies in Britain and then in the United States of America. His lecture notes and memoranda at Stellenbosch stressed that there were no biological differences between the big racial groups, and concluded that "this was not really a factor in the development of a higher social civilisation by the Caucasians."

He published a number of works dating back to his time in Germany:

• "A method for the experimental production of emotions" (1926)
• "'n Bydrae tot die metodiek en probleemstelling vir die psigologiese ondersoek van koerante-advert" ("A contribution on the psychological methodology of newspaper advertisement") (1928)
• "The distribution of 'attention' and its testing" (1928)
• "Effects of fatigue on the distribution of attention" (1928)
• "A contribution to the experimental investigation of testimony" (1929?)
• "Oor die opstel van objektiewe persoonlikheidsbepalingskemas" ("Objective criteria to determine personality types") (1930?)
• "Oor die persoonlikheid van die mens en die beskrywing daarvan" ("On the human personality and the description thereof") (1930?)