Jacques Wallage

Jacques Wallage was born in Apeldoorn on 27 September 1946, shortly after the end of the Second World War. He came from a prosperous Jewish shopkeeping family: his father was from Stadskanaal and his mother from Groningen. His parents and his elder brother survived the war in hiding, while his maternal grandparents were murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp. A third son was born after him.

The family lived in Groningen, where as a boy he belonged to a socialist Zionist youth organisation. After secondary school he studied sociology and planning at the University of Groningen, graduating in political sociology. As a student he worked as an assistant to the Labour Party member of parliament Ko Wierenga and sat on the board of the Groningen student council.

In the late 1960s Wallage and his contemporary Max van den Berg were part of a group of young members who took over the local Labour Party in Groningen. After the 1970 municipal elections, at 23, he became leader of the party's group on the city council. From 1972 he served as an alderman, first for education and culture, where he worked to democratise schools and encourage parent participation, and from 1975 for traffic. He was closely involved in the traffic circulation plan introduced in 1977, which divided the city centre into sectors and kept through traffic out. It met fierce resistance at first but later made Groningen an example for other cities.

Wallage entered the House of Representatives in 1981 and became the Labour Party's education spokesman. In November 1989 he was appointed State Secretary for Education and Sciences in the third Lubbers cabinet, where he steered through the basisvorming, a broad common curriculum for the first years of secondary school that was introduced from 1993. In June 1993 he moved to Social Affairs and Employment as state secretary, where he reshaped the bill for a new national assistance act.

After the 1994 election Wim Kok became prime minister of the first purple coalition of Labour, the VVD and D66, and Wallage succeeded him as leader of the Labour group in the House. He was known for brokering compromises within the coalition, and for his debates with the VVD leader Frits Bolkestein about immigration and integration. He helped negotiate the second Kok cabinet in 1998.

That year, rather than take a senior post in The Hague, he chose to become mayor of Groningen. RTV Noord recalled Kok asking him who on earth would want to be mayor of Groningen. He was installed on 1 October 1998 and became known as an accessible mayor who cared about how residents were treated by the city. He stepped down on 25 June 2009, joking that he wanted to leave before people in the city started to mean their mayor when they spoke of the Old Grey, the nickname of the Martini Tower.

From 2009 to 2017 he chaired the Council for Public Administration, and from 2009 he was a professor of integration and public administration at the University of Groningen. In July 2010 he and Uri Rosenthal were informateurs exploring a coalition of the VVD, Labour, D66 and GroenLinks, which did not come about. He also served on several supervisory boards, including PostNL.

Wallage married the biologist Marijke Drees, a granddaughter of the former prime minister Willem Drees. After their divorce he married her sister, Fransien Drees. He had two children from his first marriage.

He had a strong interest in art and culture, collected the work of the painter Els Amman and wrote a short study of the Groningen writer Nico Rost. His books included Thuis en ontheemd (2001), Plaats van bestemming (2009) and his memoir Het land achter de heuvels: Politiek als ambacht 1968-2018 (2018). He was a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.

Jacques Wallage died on Wednesday 12 August 2026 in Groningen, where he lived, at the age of 79. His family informed the municipality of Groningen, which announced his death on 13 August. No cause of death was made public.

Mayor Roelien Kamminga said: "We are deeply moved by the death of Jacques Wallage. He meant a great deal to Groningen." The municipality described him as a passionate and very approachable mayor with a big heart for the city and its residents, valued nationally and regionally for his strength as an administrator. Jesse Klaver remembered him as a gentle and exceptionally intelligent man and a true social democrat.

Wallage left his mark on Groningen twice: as the young alderman behind the traffic circulation plan that gave the city centre back to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport, and as the mayor who restored confidence in the city's government after a troubled period. In 2009 he was entered in the city's Golden Book as an honorary citizen.

Nationally he is remembered as the Labour leader in the House during the first purple coalition, as the architect of the basisvorming reform of secondary education, and in his later years as a thoughtful voice on the relationship between citizens and government.