Qualla: Notre Dame des Anges

Notre Dame des Anges: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Industrees, CC0. Sometime in the late 1940s, a chemistry teacher named Marga Klompé stood in front of a classroom of Catholic girls in the woods east of Nijmegen and explained molar mass, or stoichiometry, or whatever the day's lesson required. The students could not have known that the woman writing on their blackboard would, in 1956, become the first woman ever to hold a ministerial post in the Dutch government. Notre Dame des Anges has been quietly producing those kinds of resumes since 1903, tucked into the woodlands of a glacial push moraine, a long way from the Provencal chapel that gave it its name.

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Image: Industrees | CC0

Notre Dame des Anges: French Nuns, Dutch Forest

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Industrees, CC0. The school was founded in 1903 by French nuns who had crossed the border to escape the political climate of the early Third Republic, two years before France's formal law separating church and state. They settled at Ter Meer, a villa on the wooded flank of the Nijmegen-Kleve push...

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Image: Industrees | CC0

Notre Dame des Anges: A Boarding School for Girls

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rasbak assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 1910 and 1926 the institution expanded steadily, gaining classrooms, a gymnasium, a dormitory, a chapel, and a carriage house for the staff who kept the place running. For sixty-five years it functioned as a boarding school for Catholic girls. Generations of teenagers boa...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Rasbak assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Notre Dame des Anges: Teachers Who Made History

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Janwillemvanaalst, CC BY-SA 3.0. Marga Klompé is the most striking name on the staff roster, but she was not alone. The sculptor Bart Welten taught visual arts; Lia Roefs, who would later sit in the House of Representatives for the Labour Party, taught geography. The pattern of distinguished alumni continued in ...

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Image: Janwillemvanaalst | CC BY-SA 3.0

Notre Dame des Anges: Old Building, New Building

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinD, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1973 the school moved into a purpose-built modern facility at the foot of the moraine, and the original Ter Meer complex was sold to a textile manufacturer who renamed it De Refter, the refectory. By around 2010 the 1973 building had aged out of usefulness in turn. It was demo...

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Image: MartinD | CC BY-SA 3.0