Clara Gertrude Meijer-Wichmann

Dutch lawyer, philosopher, pacifist, anti-militarist, anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-feminist. As a law student, she co-founded the Nederlandse Bond voor Vrouwenkiesrecht (Dutch League for Women's Suffrage), lecturing and writing articles on the emancipation of women is all areas of society. Appointed in 1914 as a researcher at the Central Department of the Ministry of Justice Statistics in The Hague, she declared: "Criminal law should be banned completely, because I proclaim that it is an act of retaliation and not a way to render justice." In 1919 she founded the anti-prison organsiation Comité van Actie Tegen de Bestaande Opvattingen Omtrent Misdaad en Straf (Action Committee Against the Existing Notions of Crime and Punishment). Clara was also a member of De Dageraad (The Dawn), an association of freethinkers based around the magazine of the same name, motto: 'Magna est veritas et praevalebit' (Mighty is the truth and it will prevail). An active anti-militarist, she married the conscientious objector Jo Meijer in 1921 and they co-founded the War Resistors International that year.

Sadly Clara, aged 36, died giving birth to their daughter the following year on February 15th, 1922. Jo Meijer went on help preserve his wife's intellectual heritage as well as continue their work in the WRI. The Clara Wichmann Institute, a Dutch organisation dealing with the legal status of women, was established in her honour in 1987 but was forced to close in 2004 due to the withdrawal of government funding. Its work is continued via the Stichting Proefprocessenfonds Clara Wichmann (Trial Process Fund Foundation). Since 1988 there has also been a Clara Meijer-Wichmann medal awarded on Human Rights Day (December 10) in her honour, intially by the Dutch League of Human Rights but latterly by the J'Accuse foundation, recognising work in defence of humanity..