What went on in Great-grandpa's mind

Professor Hemkes and his juffrow at left and Rev. Schaap and Gertrude Hemkes Schaap, at right. 

My great-grandfather, Prof. Geert Hemkes, the second professor at the educational institution which became known as Calvin College and Seminary, was employed (and taught) there from 1884 to 1908. Along with the French playwrights, a number of other artifacts, ancient books, including some hundred-year-old yearbooks of the CRC, have come my way through the years. Way back then I remember my very first revelation concerning him when I discovered that his name appeared frequently on and in those old yearbooks. He was the editor and he contributed articles as well. 

I discovered those old things--and the French playwrights years and years ago but didn't bother to look for them for some time. When I discovered that my great-grandpa was a writer and editor, I was thrilled,  I had no idea that he was a writer, or editor, or connected in any way to writing profession. My parents had significant educations, but weren't by any stretch of the imagination real readers, certainly not of fiction. For me, just to know that somewhere up there in the family tree there was someone who toyed with imaginative writing felt like a blessing. All of that was before discovering the twin volumes of famous French playwrights.

For the record, my dad was born seventh of ten children of Rev. John C. Schaap and Gertrude Hemkes, the professor's daughter, in 1918, two years before Gertrude's father, my great-grandfather, Professor Hemkes, passed away. I've visited his gravesite in an old cemetery on Eastern Avenue in Grand Rapids, Michigan, shown the way through the huge graveyard by another great-grandchild, who explained to me who was all buried in what appeared to be a family+ plot. I didn't know Grandpa Hemkes had tallied three wives in his life--two were widows who'd earlier lost their clergymen husbands. All of his children had been born to his first wife. 

I hadn't known any of that. My dad never talked about him, with good reason--he never knew his professor grandpa, had no memories of him or even stories about him, except one--how the professor had, in his absentmindedness, once upon a time almost skated out to the North Sea when he was on his way to a church to preach and was lost in some theological world. That story had been repeated at some family reunions, always with a knowing laugh (there were significant others in the family who were familiar with numbing absent-mindedness). 

 But what did I know of this important figure in my family history, in the history of the institution he'd served--Calvin Seminary? Really, nothing. I'd gone by the generalization that anybody so affiliated at the time necessarily had to be some shade of leathery conservative--no movies, no cards, no dancing, and etc. Someone once told me that Professor Hemkes was not a Kuyperian. To me that suggested he was a traditional straight-jacketed pietist. But I didn't know. Those free-wheeling French playwrights made no sense at all. 

So I thought it was time for me to do some research to find out what I could about this old prof, my great-grandson. And now, just beneath my fingertips sat the newly discovered library who could help, right here at Woodbridge, Sioux Center. I thought I'd try AI to investigate, to do what amounted to a couple of weeks of research.

It was my Copilot (AI) who discovered that Grandpa Hemkes had penned his inaugural lecture, “The Practice of the Propaedeutic Sciences by the Future Pastor” (printed in Grand Rapids, 1884). The important word is a toughie--"propaedeutic," which, my Copilot tells me refers to something somewhat akin to "core requirements." 

The speech (in Dutch) is long gone apparently, but the argument appears to be his contribution to what specifically, educationally, must the curriculum required for the pastorate require of students, the kind of question which a brand new seminary would be interested in answering. 

What Professor Hemkes is arguing, I'm told, is a degree that includes significant study in more than just theology. Hemkes, himself trained in the broad  foundational disciplines (languages, logic, history, exegesis) would have argued those "liberal arts" were necessary for serious theological study. In short, he likely argued for the importance of disciplined intellectual formation for pastors, which is to say, the importance of seminarians reading and knowing all kinds of fields of study, including, almost certainly, these two French playwrights.

The institution, the gymnasium at Franeker, had its own story and its own tradition. One of the finest Reformed universities was located there until Napoleon shut it down in 1811. But, I'm told, that institution (a "gymnasium," not a university) held on to some of its uniqueness and would have still argued that the education it offered, as a gymnasium, held to its educational commitments even though the institution as a university ended in 1811. The gymnasium at Franeker was not just any school.

What my Copilot tells me that my g-grandfather's diploma from Franeker suggests he received a top-notch liberal arts education there, and that too is why these scampish French playwrights were in his possession and my possession right now.

More enlightenment coming tomorrow.