Johannes Goldberg

Goldberg was the Head of the Department of Commerce and Colonies of The Netherlands. In this function, he was responsible for appointing the Dutch Commissioner to the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine (CCNR). wrote an extensive report detailing Dutch policy regarding the CCNR. In it, he showed himself strongly in favour of a uniform Rhine toll system. Fixing the tariffs and establishing new regulations for navigation were, to him, to be the most important tasks of the CCNR. He even approved of the clause on majority voting as long as it did not concern matters on which the prosperity or the decline of the general navigation of the Rhine was dependent: ‘because otherwise it could happen that by the refusal of a certain interested Power the common interest is being obstructed or stopped.’ The Dutch commissioner, he opined, therefore had to prevent Dutch trade and navigation from becoming more encumbered than its German counterparts along the Rhine. Therefore he had to cooperate in establishing the new regulations for navigation. Nonetheless, the head of the department warned, the Central Commission should limit its rule-making for the Dutch Rhine to merely general stipulations. Furthermore, their actual application was exclusively reserved to the King. In order not to make the entire Dutch inland navigation depending on the stipulations of the CCNR other rivers were to be excluded from these regulations as well.