Peter came from a family of bankers. He was studying history at Leiden University. At the age of 21 he went to Caux, got so gripped by what he experienced that he dropped his studies. From around 1950 he spent several years in the Ruhr in Germany. In the beginning, it was difficult. He mistrusted the Germans. One of his brothers had been in a concentration camp. While working there, Peter decided he wanted “to wish all Germans well.” He worked with MRA in Pakistan, India and many countries in Latin America. In 1986 he was made Officer in the Order of Oranje-Nassau for his bridge-building work, including the co-organizing of the Caux Round Table, an initiative to improve the trade relations between Japan, Europe and the USA. In 1993 Peter was awarded the Commander in the Order of Merit of the Republic of Colombia, again for his bridge-building work, this time between the Colombian Embassy in The Hague and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands. He has written a considerable number of books, including on the role of Germany in Europe and the importance of the Latin American continent. With his wife Digna he started Sing-Out Nederland in the sixties, and initiated numerous occasions in the MRA centres in Wassenaar and The Hague for people in public life. When he died in 1996, a Dutch national newspaper described him as the leader of MRA in the Netherlands.
