Gerardus van der Leeuw (3/18/1890, The Hague–11/18/1950, Utrecht) was a Dutch historian & philosopher of religion. He's best known for his work Religion in Essence & Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology, an application of philosophical phenomenology to religion. It was 1st published in 1933 under the German title Phänomenologie der Religion & translated into English in 1938. From 1945–46 van der Leeuw was minister of Education of the Netherlands for the Labor Party. Before the war he had been a member of the conservative Christian Historical Union.