Clara Meijers

Clara Mimi Meijers (27 August 1885 – 13 October 1964) was a Dutch banker, writer, and feminist. She founded a women's branch of the Robaver Bank in Amsterdam. She has been called a "pioneer of microfinancing." She was also a Holocaust survivor.

Life and work Klara (later changed to Clara) Meijers was born in Amsterdam to the physician, Isidor Meijers and Julie Wolff (1847–1933). She was the fifth child and an only daughter in a Jewish family of doctors.

She began work as a French teacher in The Hague, but disliked it. After working as a secretary at the Amsterdamsche Bank and then, the banking firm Huydecoper & Van Dielen in Utrecht, Meijers became executive secretary at Rotterdamsche Bankvereeniging (called Robaver) in Amsterdam in 1911.

Around 1910, Meijers became active in the women's movement. Her friends Mia Boissevain and Rosa Manus were among the organizers of the 1913 exhibition, De Vrouw 1813-1913 (The Woman) and, Prisoners there were released when the camp was liberated by Canadian troops in May 1945. In August 1945, Meijers moved into an apartment building in Amsterdam for single people on Roelof Hartplein in Amsterdam.

Writer In 1946, Meijers published a biography of feminist Rosa Manus. In 1948 she wrote "the second part of From mother to daughter of Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot with extensive chapters on the National Exhibition of Women's Labor of 1898, the suffrage struggle, the exhibition called The Woman 1813-1913, access to education and social developments."

Personal life In 1959, Meijers moved to Zandvoort, Netherlands, and died on 12 October 1964 in Bentveld, at the age of 79. She never married.

Select publications Meijers, C. M. (1946). Een moderne vrouw van formaat: Leven en werken van Rosa Manus. (A modern woman of stature: Life and works of Rosa Manus) Brill. Meijers, C. M. (1948). Entry into society, 1898-1928, in: WH Posthumus-van der Goot, ed., From mother to daughter. Women's share in a changing world (Leiden) 193–372.