5. Dolende dominee

5. Again on the Binderseind, near the Angel Castle

1789

Wandering pastor 
Since 1782, Pastor Winandus Pannekoek has been the pastor of those few Protestants who can hold out in Gemert. He has to uplift that puny little people, but this pastor of the Dutch Reformed Congregation in our village does not fare well. The horrible curses and abuses with which he treats his wife, the terrible curses with which he intersperses his choice of words, especially when he is drunk, and the famous scene in which he copulates in a public place with, how appropriate is her name, Bets Kets, do some damage to the status and image of the pastor's office. Now he has also come to blows with the sexton and reader of his own Reformed church, Hermanus van Ravesteijn. The latter let his emotions run wild: ‛... Again on the Binderseind, near the Angel Castle 1789 Wandering pastor Since 1782, Pastor Winandus Pannekoek has been the pastor of those few Protestants who can hold out in Gemert. He has to uplift that puny little people, but this pastor of the Dutch Reformed Congregation in our village does not fare well. The horrible curses and abuses with which he treats his wife, the terrible curses with which he intersperses his choice of words, especially when he is drunk, and the famous scene in which he copulates in a public place with, how appropriate is her name, Bets Kets, do some damage to the status and image of the pastor's office. Now he has also come to blows with the sexton and reader of his own Reformed church, Hermanus van Ravesteijn. The latter let his emotions run wild: ‛If I can't get that Pannekoek ready here at the Classis, I'll still chase him out of Gemert with the common.' From this moment on, the Pannekoek case was hard at work. Neighbor Dorothea Scheepers is one of the witnesses: ‛When I wanted to go and get a bottle of oil on December 16, I saw Willem de Fost and Gerrit van Ravensteijn turning away from Pastor Pannekoek in front of the Reformed church. Gerrit shouted that he would prefer to beat the pastor to death in the church and he almost succeeded. Other witnesses subsequently recall all kinds of incidents, in which the said Hermanus and Gerrit were always the aggressors and Pannekoek, whether or not together with his wife, the victim. The occasion, for example, was the breaking open of the tiles in the church to dig a grave for a tramp. The pastor - that pleads for him - thought that vagrants were also entitled to a decent burial, but the sexton thought it was a waste of the tiles. And then the Ravesteijn family went back to attacking the minister with sticks with iron tips and blow pipes. Pannekoek. Servant of the divine Word. Moreover, he also releases a lot of sensational stories. And here in Gemert they go in like the word of God in an elder.