Guided Tours of The Hague

Photo by Dierk Schaefer under Licence

A plaque on the facade mentions that Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876) and his wife lived and worked here. Therefore, the house was also called House of Green Prince.

 

From 1914 the Queens' Private Office was established here. During World War II the building was used as a casino for the Wehrmacht and later Anton Mussert (Dutch Socialist Party Leader but German sympathiser used it as an office.

 

He was arrested on May 7, 1945 and he was convicted of high treason on 28 November after a two-day trial. The he was sentenced to death on 12 December. He appealed to Queen Wilhelmina for clemency. She refused. On 7 May 1946, exactly one year after his arrest and four days before his 52nd birthday, Mussert was executed by a firing squad on the Waalsdorpervlakte, a site near The Hague, where hundreds of Dutch citizens had been killed by the Nazi regime.

 

After the war, the Office was once again used as the Queens' Office. In January 2013 the name was changed to Kings' Office.