Gerrit Paape

Gerrit Paape (Delft, 4 February 1752 – The Hague, 7 December 1803) was a Dutch plateelschilder (painter of earthenware and stoneware), poet, journalist, novelist, judge, columnist and (at the end of his career) ministerial civil servant.

In his account, Gerrit Paape laid emphasis on the opposition being shamed and silenced by the order and peace which characterised these developments.

Herman Willem Daendels appointed Paape his secretary in Saint-Omer, and under the French general Pichegru, both men arrived at 's-Hertogenbosch on 21 September 1794 .

Paape resumed his journalistic work, usually under a pseudonym, with the radical Friesche Courant, with a view to acquainting the citizens with the ideas of the revolution.

Paape wrote numerous books and plays, mostly romanticised accounts of an exile's life in the southern Netherlands and France, based on real events and facts.

Like Voltaire, he wrote a satirical novel, Het leven en sterven van een hedendaagsch Aristocraat ("The Life and Death of a Present-day Aristocrat"), in which he very cynically describes how the old nobility ostensibly embrace the revolution, but only to save their own skin and in the end, even without titles and heraldic shields, become even more impudent and power-hungry than before.

On the first page of his last book, De onverbloemde geschiedenis ("The Plain History") Paape states that he is not sure whether the Patriot movement should make him laugh or cry.