June 20, 2009

World War I museum opens in Alkmaar

Filed under: General,History by Branko Collin @ 10:25 am

A museum consisting largely of dioramas of the Great War will open at 2 pm today in the Kruithuis (old munitions house) in Alkmaar, Noord Holland. Named Le Poilu after the nickname unshaven French soldiers acquired in the war, the museum mainly looks at the Battle of Verdun, where 300,000 soldiers died and many more were wounded. The museum was founded by Peter Wories from nearby Heiloo, who has been fascinated by WWI ever since he found out that his grandmother was originally from Antwerp, but fled the city to the Netherlands when the Germans attacked in 1914.

The originally medieval museum building is attached to the old high school in which in 1914 German soldiers were interned. The Netherlands remained neutral during the war, or rather, were allowed to remain neutral, but being so close to the action the country did suffer from the fallout. It harboured many Belgian refugees, and because supply lines across the North Sea had become unsafe, suffered from food scarcity.

Museum website, via RTV-NH (radio). Photo of poilu and sculptor Jean Boucher by an unknown photographer.

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June 14, 2009

Royal palace Amsterdam reopens after extensive renovations

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 8:05 am

As of today, the Royal Palace in Amsterdam will be open to the public again. The former 17th century city hall had been closed for renovations for three years.

Although the general public can visit the building—it used to draw 100,000 visitors a year—it is also still in use as one of the Queen’s palaces. Although she doesn’t live there, she does use the palace for formal receptions. Telegraaf reports (Dutch) that several suites for guests have been added. The renovators have tried to restore the palace to the Empire style—originally introduced by King Louis Bonaparte (the brother of)—meaning lots of light colours and gilded furniture.

Several modern conveniences have also been added, such as lifts, ground floor toilets, and air conditioning. The total cost of the renovation ran up to 80 million euro. The Rijksgebouwendienst (state building service) is now preparing for a controversial clean-up of the outside of the building—something that hasn’t happened since the palace was built 350 years ago, according to Parool (Dutch).

(Photo: Bureau Monumenten & Archeologie.)

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May 25, 2009

Mystery epigraph on church bell solved

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 10:59 am

Sixty years after a poetic text was engraved on the bell of the St. Pancratius church in the town of Haaksbergen near the German border, no one would have imagined the underground author making himself known.

When it came time to replace the church bell after the war, the town called upon the people to come up with a suitable text. The one chosen was from someone under the pen name ‘NNN’, which in Dutch read: “Mijn voorganger, door ‘s vijands nijd geroofd, gesmolten tot kanon, vervang ik thans, in groote dank, omvat mijn roep de vrijheidsklank.” (Roughly and quickly, “My predecessor, hatefully stolen and smelted into a cannon by the enemy, I now replace, with great thanks, as my ringing encompasses the sound of freedom.”

A man from the area, Ronald Floors, just happened to meet Wil Hekhuysen from Apeldoorn who told him his story a few days ago. Originally from Amsterdam, Hekhuysen did not want to be sent to a work camp in Riga during WWII, so he ended up going underground in Haaksbergen. Since he couldn’t really participate in the ‘contest’, he sent in his inspiration under a pen name, which was the favourite. He said to Floors that he was very proud he’d won, but couldn’t tell anyone. For years, he didn’t feel the need to make this known, until now. Ronald Floors looked everything up in the town’s archives after hearing the story and it checked out.

(Link: telegraaf.nl)

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May 4, 2009

Cutter-suction dredger throws paleontologists a (mammoth) bone

Filed under: Animals,History,Science by Branko Collin @ 7:51 am

A special type of dredger used for mining sand in the Groote Wielen area of Den Bosch enabled amateur paleontologists Anton Verhagen and Dick Mol not only to add to their collection of bones, but also to keep track of the corresponding geological eras. The sand harvested by cutter-suction dredger Den Otter was to be used for building a new, nearby neighbourhood, and had to be scraped layer by layer in order to separate high-grade building sand from the rest. This method of dredging is slower, but because it separates out different types of sand early on, it’s apparently still cost-effective.

Besides bringing up sand neatly separated by geological period, the cutter-suction method has the added advantage of leaving smaller bones intact, reports De Telegraaf (Dutch). Since 2005, Verhagen and Mol found over 1,000 bones belonging to 15 separate mammals in this dig. Among them was the thigh bone of a mammoth.

Next Wednesday, Verhagen and Mol will be publishing a book called ‘De Groote Wielen: er was eens…’ (Once upon a time in De Groote Wielen) about their finds. A preview of the richly illustrated book can be found here.

(Photo: Wolfgang Staudt, some rights reserved)

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April 22, 2009

The Dutch Cocaine Factory with filmmaker present

Filed under: Film,History by Orangemaster @ 10:11 pm

(Trailer of ‘The Dutch Cocaine Factory’ by Jeanette Groenendaal, 2007)

Screened at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IFDA) in 2007, ‘The Dutch Cocaine Factory’ by Jeanette Groenendaal is a documentary about the history of cocaine dealing in the Netherlands, claimed to be a fascinating adventure in both theme and form, with a David Lynch-like dream quality to it.

The fact is that for over 50 years, until WWII, the Netherlands was the best and biggest cocaine producing country in the world… and we are not talking about a scheme created by two bit junkies, but an operation created by the Dutch Royal Bank.

The film will be screened in the presence of Jeanette Groenendaal at De Nieuwe Anita in Amsterdam on Monday, April 27, at 8 pm. It’s a small, cozy place and sells out super fast.

A big thanks to Amsterdam-based American film expert Jeffrey Babcock for presenting such marvels and getting me to see good films for a change.

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March 26, 2009

Van Leeuwenhoek microscope to be auctioned

Filed under: Gadgets,History,Nature by Branko Collin @ 6:37 pm

One of only three surviving silver microscopes of the Father of microbiology, Renaissance scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), will be sold on April 8 at an auction at Christie’s in London, writes De Telegraaf (Dutch). The auction house expects to sell the silver device for somewhere between 75,000 and 105,000 euro.

The other two surviving Leeuwenhoek microscopes are at the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden.

Van Leeuwenhoek built his own microscopes, superior to what was available at the time (the first microscope was invented in Middelburg seven years before his birth), but kept the secret to his lenses meticulously hidden, and only in the 1950s did scientists manage to reconstruct them. It turned out that rather than grinding lenses, Van Leeuwenhoek seems to have used a glass fusing method, which allowed him to quickly make a microscope, of which he constructed around 400 during his lifetime.

The Internet Archive has The Select Works of Antony van Leeuwenhoek, translations into English of Van Leeuwenhoek’s many observations, unfortunately without his drawings. Fascinating stuff, almost like being alive in the 21st century.

The silver microscope that will be sold at Christie’s was used by Van Leeuwenhoek to discover sperm cells. The current owner found it during the 1970s among old laboratory equipment.

Portrait of Van Leeuwenhoek by Jan Verkolje (1650-1693).

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March 7, 2009

Grootveld funeral

Filed under: Art,History by Branko Collin @ 5:12 pm

Today Robert Jasper Grootveld was buried in Amsterdam. The day started with a ‘happening’ at Spui square, followed by a service, after which Grootveld, one of the leaders of the 1960s Provo movement, was sailed to the Zorgvlied cemetery on top of a styrofoam raft for burial. 24 Oranges was present at the happening and also took photos of the boat ride to the cemetery.

At the Spui Grootveld was carried around the Lieverdje statue three times while people shouted “hi – ha – happening” and “uche uche uche” (cough cough cough). In the mid-Sixties Grootveld, self-proclaimed ‘anti-smoke magician’, would hold happenings in the square in which he would circle the statue that had been put there by cigarette manufacturer Crescent .

Later today I will upload more photos to our Flickr stream.

Update: photos have been added to Flickr.

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Oldest photo of the Netherlands

Filed under: Dutch first,Gadgets,History,Photography,Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:01 am

johenschede1839

It’s not much to look at, a blotchy photo of a drawing of Johannes Enschedé III, but this is the oldest photo of the country according to De Pers (Dutch). To be precise, it’s the first daguerreotype photo sent to the Netherlands. It was discovered recently in the private museum of Royal Joh. Enschedé, the famous printers from Haarlem (1703) who amongst other things used to print the Dutch bank notes and passports.

The museum’s website reports (Dutch) that the photo was sent from France by Jeanne Enschedé – Dalen, who lived in Paris, to Haarlem where it arrived on October 4, 1839.

In De Pers’ article Andrea Roosen, an employee of the museum, calls the family a bunch of pack rats. When they discovered a note in Johannes Enschedé III’s 1839 diary about the payment for reception of the photo to the courier or mailman, “we knew that that photo still had to be around.” Daguerre had announced the invention of his type of photography only that same year.

The photo will be displayed as part of a larger exhibition of Daguerreotypes of the Enschedé family at photo museum Huis Marseille in Amsterdam from today until May 24.

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March 3, 2009

Guess the political party

Filed under: General,History by Branko Collin @ 8:15 am

Here’s the 1981 party programme of… can you guess? The programme was for the parliamentary elections. I left out #10, because that one’s a bit of a dead give-away, even today. (No peeking at the picture now!)

  1. More democracy through the introduction of referendums
  2. A job for every Dutch person, possibly with additional social security
  3. Away with the atrocious housing shortage
  4. Bi-lateral nuclear disarmament
  5. War on drug trade and crime
  6. The cheap gas stays here
  7. No to reducing social security, yes to combatting tax fraud and abuse of social security.
  8. Against black and red racism and fascism
  9. Dealing efficiently with animal abuse, pollution and destruction of the landscape.
  10. ???

(more…)

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March 1, 2009

Robert Jasper Grootveld, co-founder Provo movement dies

Filed under: Art,General,History by Branko Collin @ 10:54 am

On Saturday evenings their parents were watching the TV with their left eyes, and the cars in front of the houses with their right, seated on refrigerators and washing machines, with mixers in the one hand and copies of De Telegraaf in the other, and the children went to the Spui. […] When the electrical clock on the Lutheran church indicated it was midnight, the high priest appeared from an alley in full regalia, sometimes with painted face, sometimes masked, and started to walk magical circles around the nicotinian demon, his disciples clapping and singing the Cough Cough song all the while.

Thus describes Harry Mulisch in his book Report to the Rat King the happenings of self-proclaimed ‘anti-smoke mage’ Robert Jasper Grootveld who died last week at age 76.

I’ll just say it: Grootveld was instrumental in harnessing the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and helping decide its course, and as a result the course of the Netherlands. BN/De Stem calls him (Dutch): “the man who put Amsterdam on the map,” and Marijuana Library holds the Provo movement responsible for the Netherlands’ current drug laws.

(more…)

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