John Henry Van Der Meer

John Henry van der Meer (9 February 1920, the Hague, Netherlands — 1 February 2008, Fürth, Germany) was a notable Dutch musicologist, museum curator, and researcher, Corresponding Member Emeritus at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW), and the co-founder of CIMCIM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Instruments and Music) in 1965. Meer grew up in a bilingual family of Dutch and English teachers and began playing piano at six. In 1938, he enrolled in Universiteit Utrecht to study law and musicology. In February 1943, John Henry was incarcerated at the Herzogenbusch concentration camp in Vught, near the 's-Hertogenbosch city. He spent the next two years at various forced labor camps in Strasbourg and Heidelberg. After the Second World War, John Henry Meer earned his Ph.D. in law in April 1946; he soon began working as a music lecturer at Conservatorium Utrecht. In 1949, Meer joined the faculty at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in the Hague. In 1954, John Henry van der Meer became the head curator of the music collection at Haags Gemeentemuseum. Between 1963 and his retirement in December 1983, he worked in the same role at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.