Whose is the Wilhelmus? This question is central to the book of the same name by researchers Mike Kestemont, Els Stronks, Martine de Bruin and Tim de Winkel. They show that modern computer analyzes take us in a whole new direction in researching the origin of the current Dutch national anthem. The candidate who, according to the computer, has the best papers is Petrus Datheen (1531-1588), who in the eighteenth century was still derisively called 'poet with the dog's ears'.
Anyone who thought that Philip van Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde (1538-1598) was the undisputed author of the Wilhelmus is wrong. Although the Orthodox Reformed have claimed this with great success, several candidates have always been circulating for authorship. And other questions about the Wilhelmus also remained unanswered:not only who wrote the Wilhelmus, but also where, when and why? These are questions that are all related.
The oldest surviving version comes from 1573 and is in German; the oldest surviving Dutch version comes from the Geuzenliedboek of 1576. How do these texts relate to each other? Is the Dutch text perhaps a translation of the German text? All in all, the national anthem has enough questions to keep people busy for centuries.
The computer is objective
The Wilhelmus began as a beggar song that expressed the hostile feelings against the Spaniards during the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). The researchers of this book demonstrate the social significance of the Wilhelmus in the centuries that followed, using computer analyzes of historical newspaper archives. In this way they reflect on the results of the stylometric Wilhelmus research that they present.
Stylometry is a fairly new field of research in which the writing style of authors is analyzed by computer. In order to trace the author of the Wilhelmus, researchers also searched in the past for textual similarities with other texts. For example, they looked at meter, word pattern and style. But to conduct such comparative research objectively, you have to study countless texts. Because this is an impossible task, similarities between texts were often sought on the basis of certain assumptions. The great advantage of computational author verification is that it is objective, because texts and poets are randomly included in the analyses.
Seemingly meaningless
The texts used for the analyzes mainly came from the Digital Library for Dutch Literature (DBNL), which contains the most important texts from Dutch literature. Texts were also taken from the Liederbank of the Meertens Institute. The researchers involved both well-known and lesser-known authors in their analyses, so as not to follow the same path as researchers from before the computer age.
To compare texts, the computer looks at seemingly meaningless words in the text:so-called function words, grammatical words such as articles and prepositions. Research shows that function words are ideal for author recognition precisely because people are almost unaware of them. You can easily read about it. An example is the personal pronouns je and you with which the poet of the Wilhelmus addresses God. They argued against Marnix as an author, since he always addresses God with du in his texts. and dy .
Dog-eared Poet
One clear winner emerges from the various analyses, which are partly visualized in this book. The computer chooses Petrus Datheen over all other author candidates. A remarkable outcome, according to the authors, because Datheen has never before been a candidate for authorship of the Wilhelmus. Although his Psalm rhyming from 1566 was very popular, Datheen was especially the subject of ridicule in prints such as the 'poet with dog ears'. The metrical imperfections in his songs repulsed many a literati.
But what else do we know about Peter Datheen? He was born around 1531 in Kassel in French Flanders, now France. He converted to Protestantism at a young age, forcing him to flee from the Catholic Spaniards. He fled first to England, then to Germany and for years wandered back and forth between Germany and the Netherlands.
Refugee in Germany
At the time the Wilhelmus was being written, Datheen was living as a refugee in Germany. In 1572 he was requested by William of Orange to return to the Netherlands, to support him in the fight against the Spaniards. At that time, however, a conflict arose between the two gentlemen, because Orange chose a reconciliation with the Catholic Spaniards, something that Datheen, as a convinced Reformed, found unacceptable. That is precisely why it does not seem likely at first sight that Datheen would have written a song of praise to William of Orange.
But there are more pieces of evidence for Datheen as the author of the Wilhelmus, the authors say, such as the melody. The melody of the Wilhelmus corresponds to a melody of a French song from 1568:O la folle entreprise du Prince de Condé. And since Datheen took part in the siege of Chartres sung about in this song, it is quite possible that he picked up the melody in that environment. Finally, there is the Christlich Klalied, that bears a strong resemblance to the Wilhelmus, written for the German prince Johann Casimir, for whom Datheen was employed as a court chaplain.
Louis Grijp, the professor of Dutch song culture who passed away last year and researcher at the Meertens Institute, already suspected in 2005 that the Wilhelmus had its origin in Germany. The computational research, as described in this book, reinforces the idea that the Dutch national anthem is 'multicultural' in nature:a song to a French melody, written by a Flemish-French refugee in Germany.