Former Queen Juliana of the Netherlands had a common touch

By Marlise Simons
The New York Times

	Princess Juliana
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The government said she died of pneumonia at the Soestdijk Palace, her longtime home, surrounded by three of her four daughters, including Queen Beatrix. Her fourth daughter, Christina, arrived shortly afterward from New York.

Princess Juliana reigned from 1948 to 1980. Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende praised her sense of duty and personal warmth. "In her own words, she had wanted to be a social worker if she had not been queen," he said.

In one way, she was a social worker. Born to privilege and wealth, Princess Juliana spent much time, both as the queen and after she turned over her throne to her daughter, trying to bring the monarchy closer to the people. She spent her time visiting the sick, the disabled, the aged, and needy children. By many accounts, she helped steer successive governments toward policies promoting social welfare.

Her personal popularity probably helped save the monarchy during several severe crises, when critics agitated for the country to abandon the rituals and symbols of the past and become a modern republic.

Princess Juliana spent her final years in seclusion. For some time she had been unable to recognize her family because of memory loss, said her husband, Prince Bernard.

Balkenende, the prime minister, described her as a mother figure for the nation. "Many of us feel the death of Princess Juliana as a personal loss," he said. "Today our country in a sense has lost its mother."

Born April 30, 1909, in The Hague, she was a princess of the House of Orange-Nassau, the only child of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Hendrik. She was 39 when her mother, who had been queen for 50 years, abdicated in her favor and handed her the throne, on Sept. 4, 1948.

Although Princess Juliana was brought up in one of Europe's richest families, many Dutch found her endearing because, shy and soft-spoken, she exuded warmth and plainness. She said she found curtsying embarrassing and enjoyed being filmed while riding her bicycle in a housewife's flowery dress. She sent her children to state schools.

She would sometimes have her limousine pull up unannounced outside the home of one of her subjects, knock on the door and ask if she could come in for tea.

But her life was far from idyllic.
 
She and her husband, Prince Bernard, a German, and their two eldest daughters, then infants, were forced to flee in a truck, then by ship, to England when the Nazi army invaded the Netherlands in 1940, when her mother was still queen. The family spent much of the war in Canada and returned to a devastated, impoverished country at the end of the war.

Among her first preoccupations as a young queen was not only overseeing reconstruction at home but also dealing with conflicts in the Dutch colony of Indonesia, which became independent in 1949.

In 1947, Christina, her youngest daughter, was born almost blind. Princess Juliana blamed herself because she had contracted German measles just before giving birth.

With doctors saying they could do little, she desperately turned to a faith healer. Her close relationship with Greet Hofmans, the healer — who was a militant pacifist and had a penchant for the occult — became a scandal and nearly led to the breakup of the royal marriage. The prince contended that the healer had a dangerous influence on his wife and, after a political furor, ensured that all contacts between the two women were broken.

Princess Juliana, in turn, stood by her husband during several scandals in which he was involved. Prince Bernard was often reported to have conducted extramarital relationships, which were treated as a public secret within the royal family and in some of the Dutch and European press.

But the greater upset to her reign occurred in 1976, when the government disclosed that Prince Bernard was involved in a bribery scandal and had accepted "dishonorable offers and favors" from Lockheed, which was eager to sell aircraft to the Dutch military.

The prince was spared criminal prosecution because of public sympathy for the queen. The distraught queen privately told the government she would abdicate. Fearing a constitutional crisis and a public outcry, the government merely stripped the prince of his military, charitable and diplomatic tasks.

When she abdicated, in 1980, on her 71st birthday, she declined the title of queen mother and chose to be called princess instead, because she wanted to stress that she was taking a step backward.

Princess Juliana is survived by her husband and four daughters and numerous grandchildren.

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