Portraits on banknotes

@teinosuke said
Good reason!

But Dante's profile is very impressive!

I can actually live with writers as well.
Put them on coins:

1 Fl: Shakespeare
50 schillings: Dante
25 schillings: Stephen King (the Shakespeare of our time... live with it... haha)
10 schillings: Tolkien
5 schillings: Tolstoi

But even then, I’d probably go with boiks rather than people.

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Frederick II (with a falcon on his arm).
Marlene Dietrich
Sofie Scholl
Johanes Gutenberg

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I don’t think it would matter.

Got no beef with Anne Frank, but she’s not really banknote worthy. A victim and an icon of industrialised hate, certainly. Worthy of a day of remembrance... a day when people can freely punch right-wing voters without prosecution... absolutely.
Not on a banknote though.

True Dutch heroes would be Hannie Schaft and Freddie Oversteegen.
Put them on the 10 Florin bill!

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My grandparents emigrated to the UK from Germany around the same time (end of 1933 / beginning of 1934); in those days you had to be resident in Britain for five years to qualify for citizenship. My grandfather tried to secure British citizenship once he became eligible in 1939, but was then distracted by the more urgent task of getting his brother, who had initially insisted on staying in Berlin, out of Germany. My great-uncle reached Britain a few weeks before war broke out.

If the Netherlands had similar rules, then Anne Frank and her family would not have become eligible for Dutch citizenship until 1939. Naturalisation can be a slow process, and the window before war broke out might have been too short.

Once the Netherlands was actually at war with Germany, I guess the Dutch government would have considered it too risky to extend naturalisation to German citizens, even if they were Jewish. Certainly, this was what happened to my relatives. My great-uncle was interned on the Isle of Man (he got out of it eventually by volunteering for the British army). My grandfather had been in Britain long enough to be trusted to remain at liberty, but he was required to demonstrate his loyalty by making a contribution to the war effort. So he did duties as an air raid warden throughout the war.

My grandparents finally secured British nationality in 1947.

@teinosuke said
I have my own provisional choices lined up - I wanted to see a few other people's before I gave mine. Have to teach right now; but will be back later!

OK, I think it's time for my own list. I chose to stick with the tradition that my choices should all be British; I wanted to ensure that there was a balance across different fields of work; I decided I wanted everyone I represented to date from beyond living memory; I wanted to try and represent the diversity of Britain despite these restrictions.

£5: Gladstone and Disraeli. Two nineteenth-century Prime Ministers of unarguable stature, one Liberal and Tory, so having them together on the same note avoids endorsing a single political stance. They're also sufficiently long ago that no living person voted for one or the other. I also appreciate the irony of having them together on the same note when they hated each other in life (like Holbein's portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell staring at each other in eternal opposition in the Frick). Finally, Disraeli was our first and so far only Jewish Prime Minister (ethnically, at least; his father prudently had him baptised an Anglican), so this banknote reflects the lasting presence of minorities in British society. I chose to put them on the lowest-value note to remind us that politics, while important, is not the whole of life.

£10: George Eliot (real name Marian Evans). I thought an injustice was done when Jane Austen, an admirable but relatively unambitious author, was placed on our current ten-quid note. George Eliot is a much greater writer; many regard Middlemarch as the finest novel in English, and Virginia Woolf called it "the magnificent book that, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." It is, indeed, one of the few novels that I really think could go some way to teaching us how to live. Eliot was a proto-feminist, who worked as a journalist at a time when few women worked at all outside the home, and who lived in a long-term, faithful relationship with a man who was not her husband. So in various ways she seems peculiarly modern for a woman of a time. She was also one of the wisest people who ever lived.

£20: Edward Jenner, since as the pioneer of vaccination he has probably indirectly saved more lives than any other Briton (indeed, his discovery has been said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human", full stop). For this reason, I put him on the largest note which is commonly seen in circulation.

£50: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Indisputably a great Briton, and since his work as an engineer is, of all my choices, the most directly related to the generation of wealth, I thought it fitting that he should be placed on the highest-denomination note.

Enoch Powell with a river of blood in the background.

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That's a very good point. I suppose that the Dutch government didn't have the power to process applications for naturalisation of any kind after the Occupation started!

I wonder if, between September 1939 and 1940, the Netherlands might have sought either a) to avoid naturalising citizens of belligerent countries, if it wasn't sure what the outcome of the war would be and whether it would be sucked in, or b) more regrettably, to avoid naturalising Jewish refugees for fear of angering the German regime.

However, I've just remembered there's a more likely explanation for the failure of Otto Frank to secure naturalisation for his family. Two or three years ago, various articles reported than as early as 1938 he was planning to emigrate to the United States, only to be stymied by the US government's quota system. The papers attached to a later application were apparently destroyed in the bombing of Rotterdam. In 1941, he wrote that "“I am forced to look out for emigration and as far as I can see USA is the only country we could go to"; but that summer Germany and the US ordered the closure of their corresponding foreign consulates, shutting off that possible escape route.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/08/anne-frank-family-escape-us-visa-thwarted

@teinosuke said
That's a very good point. I suppose that the Dutch government didn't have the power to process applications for naturalisation of any kind after the Occupation started!

I wonder if, between September 1939 and 1940, the Netherlands might have sought either a) to avoid naturalising citizens of belligerent countries, if it wasn't sure what the outcome of the war would be an ...[text shortened]... pe route.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/08/anne-frank-family-escape-us-visa-thwarted

Naturalisation wouldn’t have saved the Frank family.
Dutch Jews were deported in their 10’s of thousands as well (110.000 in total).

The religion of people was registered. And the Dutch resistance didn’t realise it early enough and were too late in bombing the main registry office in Amsterdam.

And I have to deal with activists who want quotas for religious diversion in top functions. Who say the GDPR is restricting diversion and inclusion.
Go figure.

@shavixmir said
Naturalisation wouldn’t have saved the Frank family.
Dutch Jews were deported in their 10’s of thousands as well (110.000 in total).

The religion of people was registered. And the Dutch resistance didn’t realise it early enough and were too late in bombing the main registry office in Amsterdam.

And I have to deal with activists who want quotas for religious diversion in top functions. Who say the GDPR is restricting diversion and inclusion.
Go figure.

I don't think the conversation was about whether naturalisation would have saved them, but simply about the question of why they didn't naturalise.

I've come across the point about the efficient interwar census elsewhere. And yes, I note the irony of the criticisms of the GDPR...

@sh76 said
This reminds me of an interesting thread you once started on the Hall of Fame for your country (as I recall, you set a series of rules which I was the only person who abided by 😉).

As far as US banknotes, I think Washington and Lincoln are fine for the $1 and $5. I'd definitely replace Jackson. Grant and Hamilton could go either way. They're both deserving, but they've had t ...[text shortened]... wight Eisenhower. If you think two SCOTUS justices is pushing it, you can replace Marshall with MLK.

I'd keep Washington, Lincoln and Hamilton.

FDR would have to get one of the spots. MLK is a good pick for another.

Susan B. Anthony would be my other choice.