Birth of Annie M. G. Schmidt in Kapelle, Netherlands

Annie Maria Geertruida Schmidt was born on 20 May 1911 in the small town of Kapelle in the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands. She was the second daughter of a Dutch Reformed (Calvinist) minister, Ir. Schmidt, and grew up in a strict, religious household with a rather lonely childhood after the early death of her older sister.

Her upbringing in a vicarage, combined with a love of reading and storytelling, shaped the imaginative and rebellious spirit that would later define her writing. Although her family environment was conservative, Annie developed an early fascination with language, rhyme, and theatre, often organizing plays for neighborhood children.

This early life in provincial Zeeland, marked by both the constraints of a religious upbringing and a rich inner fantasy life, became fertile ground for the anti-authoritarian, playful voice that later made her one of the most beloved writers in Dutch history. Her later work consistently championed the perspective of children and the powerless against rigid authority, a theme scholars trace directly back to her own restrictive early years.

Schmidt would go on to become the most important Dutch-language children's author of the twentieth century, and her birth in this modest Zeeland town is commemorated today by literary societies and the Annie M.G. Schmidt-huis and related cultural institutions in the region.