Westerkerk Rimonim (Finials)

The Israel Museum just underwent a $100 million renovation. One of the highlights of the visit i took with my mum was the Tzedek VeShalom Synagogue, built in 1734 in Paramaribo, Suriname. For the woodworkers out there, the ark is made of Cyprus wood and mahogany. Below is a video about the synagogue and some really cool footage of the restoration. Just some brief history of the settlement of Jews in the area. According to our tour guide, in 1630, about 500 Jews came to Suriname to establish sugar plantations. They named them after cities in the land of Israel: Hebron, Tiberias, Jerusalem, Beersheba, to name a few of the plantations that existed in Suriname. The name of the Jewish settlement was actually the Jodensavanne, or the Jewish Savannah. To read more about the Jewish community in Suriname, click here.

In addition to paying homage to their biblical roots, the Jews of Suriname paid tribute to their Spanish-Portugese Dutch roots. Whilst having a peek around the synagogue, we noticed that one of the finials for the Torah scrolls was an unmistakable nod to the Westerkerk in Amsterdam. You know--the one that Anne Frank mentions? Pretty cool, eh? How many synagogues today would commission, let alone tolerate, a Torah adornment in the style of a church? Pretty remarkable...

Revius and Donne: Poets of the Bible

In the past, we have noted the parallel developments in biblical scholarship and politics in the Netherlands and England (link), specifically the Authorised Version and the Statenvertaling. We have also noted the influence of Hugo De Groot (Grotius) on John Milton. Recently, i came across a poem by Jakob Reefsen (Jacobus Revius), a Hebrew scholar who worked on the Statenvertaling and who also composed religious as well as secular poetry. It reminded me of a poem by Donne, and, when taken together, there are some similarities, but overall, Revius' seems like a lesson in how not to write poetry. But i'll let you decide for yourself:

'Hy Droegh Onse Smerten' (1630 in Over-Ysselsche Sangen en Dichten)

T'en sijn de Joden niet, Heer Jesu, die u cruysten,
Noch die verradelijck u togen voort gericht,
Noch die versmadelijck u spogen int gesicht,
Noch die u knevelden, en stieten u vol puysten,

T'en sijn de crijghs-luy niet die met haer felle vuysten
Den rietstock hebben of den hamer opgelicht,
Of het vervloecte hout op Golgotha gesticht,
Of over uwen rock tsaem dobbelden en tuyschten:

Ick bent, ô Heer, ick bent die u dit hebt gedaen,
Ick ben den swaren boom die u had overlaen,
Ick ben de taeye streng daermee ghy ginct gebonden,

De nagel, en de speer, de geessel die u sloech,
De bloet-bedropen croon die uwen schedel droech:
Want dit is al geschiet, eylaes! om mijne sonden.

In English ( i grabbed the translation here):

He carried our sorrows. It is not the Jews
alone, Lord Jesus, that had you crucified;
betraying you, dragging you to the court,
hating your guts, spitting in your face,
binding you, tattooing you with bruises.
Nor only the soldiers
who with their ready fists
raised the reed, lifted the hammer high,
fixed the cursed wood at the place of the skull
and squabbled, dicing for your coat.

It's me, my God, me who did this to you.
I am the heavy tree that bore you down,
the cord that cut you mercilessly. Me.
The nail and spear. The whip they slashed you with.
The crown of blood you wore upon your brow.
Oh, all this happened on account of my own sin.

And here is of course Donne's Holy Sonnet XI (written 1609-1611?):

Spit in my face, you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucify me,
For I have sinn'd, and sinne', and only He,
Who could do no iniquity, hath died.
But by my death can not be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety.
They kill'd once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
O let me then His strange love still admire ;
Kings pardon, but He bore our punishment ;
And Jacob came clothed in vile harsh attire,
But to supplant, and with gainful intent ;
God clothed Himself in vile man's flesh, that so
He might be weak enough to suffer woe.

The Character of Holland...According to the English

In a previous post, we have referred to English hatred of the Dutch, and it's no secret that during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the English launched some pretty nasty anti-Dutch propaganda that would have made Goebbels proud. Below is a poem by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), a friend of Milton's in the service of Cromwell. It's pretty rude, but some of it is quite funny! Lest any Dutchies get offended, Marvell also used anti-Semitic stereotypes to berate his opponent, Samuel Parker:

who but such an Hebrew Jew as you, would, after an honest man hade made so full and voluntary Restitution, not yet have been satisfied without so many pounds of his flesh over into the bargain.

This is actually in the context of a debate rooted in Hebraism, so the insults get way more interesting than that (check out Rosenblatt's book on Selden, chapter 5).

Unsurprisingly, in the early modern period, religion was a source of conflict. The English disapproved of the Dutch pluralistic society, which was rooted in Republican sensibilities; this disregard for order and hierarchy was dangerous. The Dutch took the reformist call for personal autonomy in interpreting Scripture too far:

They are generally so bred up to the Bible that almost every Cobbler is a Dutch doctor of divinity...yet fall those inward illuminations so different that sometimes seven religions are found in one family.' (Schama)

And finally, here is the poem. Incidentally, if you're Dutch and Jewish, well, Marvell will offend you in one form or another! ;-)

Eliav Digs Dutch Designers

One day, whilst pretending to work with my friend and esteemed colleague Hoffy (she's the one i tricked into taking me to get the lumber for my Roubo), i stumbled upon this guy Juan's blog post in which he describes his 1/2 scale build of Rietveld's classic Red and Blue Chair for his son Hugo. That was it. Hoffy and i knew we had to make one for either the kid on the way (Oria, a beautiful baby girl, now two months old), or her son Eliav (he's two and gorgeous). It seemed logical that Eliav should be compensated for the traumatic experience awaiting him, (and it will be a while before Oria can sit!) so the chair was scaled to 2/3 size. Despite its appearance, the chair is rumoured to be quite comfortable, but because it tilts back, i did not expect Eliav to want to sit in it for longer than it took to take a photo to appease his mother and myself. But apparently, if Hoffy is to be believed, he loves his little chair! As they might say in their family, der Apfel fellt nicht gerne weit vom Baume.

Below is a CGI animation of the chair:

Gerrit Rietveld chair from Max Philip on Vimeo.

This chair had huge implications for design, and we have discussed the unique Dutch conception of space in the context of football (link).

For Anthony C. Romeo's interesting article on Rietveld's chair and the unification of motion and rest, click here. It's a great, short read. Andries van Onck's site has a very in-depth analysis of Rietveld's chair, including some fascinating sections about the various kabbalistic sephirot; it will blow your mind.

On a personal level, i definitely learnt a lot more about the ideas of De Stijl from building the piece. When all the components were laid out on the floor, it seemed hard to believe that they would eventually constitute a chair (though i must confess, i did have some doubts!). It seemed so...abstract! I wasn't so struck by the design until i started making the piece. Then, and i apologise for the vagueness, i just seemed to fall into the piece; it had some hypnotic effect; the more i looked at it and interacted with it, the more entranced i was. I know that sounds totally fruity, but it's true. I also came away with an appreciation for just how strong the joints are. There--that was a more rational, concrete comment. It was like creating a 3D Mondrian painting. The symmetry of the piece always amazed me; the way the overhang on every intersecting point was the same, and how the piece seemed so mathematically...uniform (I'm easily impressed in maths, since i have little to no understanding of it). Some concepts cannot be conveyed with words, and there is an understanding that you cannot come by through books. Indeed, Rietveld himself regarded his furniture design as experimentation with ideas, as studies. David Pye wrote about this, and for a frequent blog on this topic, Doug Stowe's blog (Wisdom of the Hands) is a must-read. Those interested in the technical execution of the piece can view the building process on this little slideshow:

De Stijl (1917-1931) 'Truth is the Overall Unity of Opposites'

De Stijl has been capturing my imagination for quite some time now. But it wasn't until fairly recently that i have been able to contextualise it. After the first world war, there were two main avant-garde Dutch movements in architecture and decorative arts. There was The Amsterdam School and De Stijl, also known as Neo-Plasticism. Both were related to Art Nouveau, the Arts and Crafts, and German Expressionism. They were into a unified style, and definitely subscribed to Morris's idea that art could change society. But that is about where these two movements go their own ways. As Alan Colquhoun explains it,

Each inherited a different strand of the earlier movements--the vitalistic, individualistic strand in the case of the Amsterdam School and the rationalist, impersonal strand in the case of De Stijl. Each movement condemned the other, ignoring their shared aims and origins. (Modern Architecture, Oxford History of Art)

Jammer. Hopefully we'll come back to the A'dam School, but just some short background on them: Michel de Klerk (1884-1923) would be the main name to associate with the movement. They were into taking traditional architecture and tweaking it into fantastical, weird design, and they held dear the craftsman relationship to materials. Personally, of the two, the A'dam school's ethos is more to my liking, but i think De Stijl has loads to offer. So let's get back to them!

The main names (or best-known) associated with the movement are:
Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931)
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)--some of my friends had no idea he was Dutch based on his surname. It was originally Mondriaan, but he omitted the second 'a' to make himself sound less Dutch. Mission accomplished, i guess.
Gerrit Rietveld (1888-1964)

In 1924, Van Doesburg published the manifesto of De Stijl in the eponymously named magazine he founded with Mondrian and other artists of the movement in 1917. You can read it here. De Stijl rejected craftsmanship, favouring geometrical anti-naturalism, and, according to some, was a misinterpretation and an extreme form of the abstraction of Cubism. But what was up with all the abstraction? Could they just not paint or draw? What were they getting at? Basically, according to Carsten-Peter Warncke, Mondrian, Vantongerloo, van Doesburg, and Huszar were all trying to get back to the basic principles of art; colours, shapes, planes, and lines. They wished to create a metaphorical language, and create an ideal world counter to reality, transcending language barriers. You can see Neo-Platonism's influence on Mondrian's obsession with the purity of art and spirit, and its aim for the absolute. Style was a manifestation of a particular age's attempt to express the absolute. Therefore, Mondrian felt that the best possible style was one in which 'the individual was most strongly subjected to the universal.'

This was the rational approach to the arts that favoured the machine above the craftsman, the empiricism of maths over the romance of nature (part of the Constructivism movement). Yet, the influences on De Stijl were as disparate as van Gogh for the colour schemes and the geometrising of Baruch Spinoza (whose Ethics had considerable influence on Mondrian and Vantongerloo).

Indeed the contradiction inherent in the movement is summed up by Mondrian himself:

The universal in style must be expressed by the individual, i.e. the way in which style is formed

I like contradiction and paradox. That's why i like Donne. There's something about paradox that makes it seem truthful, if that makes sense. And there is something about mechanics that can sometimes be very spiritual. Whilst perusing Warncke's book on De Stijl (seriously, what is up with Taschen? They normally do every art form. It was so bloody hard to get this book--it's 20 years old!), it became clear to me what i find attractive about this art:

It remains remarkable that Mondrian should have succeeded in combining the disparate parts of the painting in such a harmonious structure. Again, he could only have achieved this through the multifaceted ambiguity that pervades the various elements of the painting. [...] a perfect harmony of opposites [...] Nothing is fixed in this system , except for the basic elements and the aim of balancing the different forces. This presupposes that all our seemingly secure assumptions should be questioned again and again. (Warncke, p.20)

And, in explaining the differences between Mondrian and van Doesburg, we are surely reminded of different poetic schools of thought:

Mondrian's construction of squares and lines is a process that leads to harmony and rest to the extent that we forget everything that might be reminiscent of processes, while van Doesburg's pictures show a completely different approach to dynamics, with colour squares that border on each other harshly and are right next to each other. This dynamic has the rank of an elementary force which can only be tamed with great difficulty and changed in such a way that the well-balanced painting oscillates in its visual impact, paradoxically demonstrating harmony as vibrating restfulness. (Warncke, p.26)

Milton and Donne, anyone?

Mondrian and van Doesburg had a big split (think Simon and Garfunkel) over De Stijl doctrine. And the jury is still out regarding the philosophical underpinnings of the movement. Either way, De Stijl continues to exert its influence over current design (and had an impact on Bauhaus). 2008 saw the introduction of Mondrian Nikes (pictured above), and in April of this year, the Italian jewelry house Fope introduced their Mondrian Collection . Last week, designers looked to Mondrian for decoration inspiration, and within the past few years, designers have created Mondrian lines of handbags and dresses. Jack White was an upholsterer himself (he used to write poetry on the inside of furniture!) and an admirer of Rietveld. His band, the White Stripes released an album named after the movement.

I'm still (enjoying) struggling to understand De Stijl (erm, Hegel, Kant, Plotinus, Blavatsky, Vedas, Pali books--Jutakas?, Paracelsus, Bohme, Kabbalah, Rosicrucians...should i go on?!), which is probably evident by this rambling, rubbish post. For a better source, I would definitely recommend Colquhoun's book; he boils everything down nicely. It will be quite difficult to find a more fascinating piece on the subject than Runette Kruger's MA (linked below).

Additional links:

Jakob van Domselaer was the only musician associated with the movement. Here you can listen to his Proeven van Stijlkunst, inspired by Mondrian's paintings
Dada to Pop--cool essay
Artlex Entry on De Stijl
To read De Stijl magazine, click here
Interesting article (or MA thesis) by Runette Kruger about the integrative tendency of the movement, unparalleled in Modern art, in which the artists of De Stijl equally evoked the technological as well as the transcendent as indicators of humanity's spiritual and cultural progress
James Presley-- Mondrian van Doesburg

Rietveld: Zigzagstoel

Here is a great clip of a guy building Rietveld's famous zig-zag stoel (chair):

Miep Gies 1909-2010

Miep Gies, holding her son Paul, Otto Frank (left), and her husband Jan, A'dam, January 1951, nicked from here

The famous protector of Anne Frank, and my hero whom i had the privilege to meet is remembered here and here. ברוך דיין האמת.

Addendum: Thanksgiving & Flemish and Dutch New York

David Baeckelandt, a generous scholar who writes the fine blog The Flemish American has posted a most interesting article about the Flemish influence on the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which you can read here. In fact, he has several posts on the Flemish-Pilgrim connection.

Another charitable scholar who writes about Dutch America is the Rev'd Dr. Daniel Meeter, minister of the Old First Reformed Church in Breukelen (Brooklyn). His blog can be found here. Enjoy--they're both pretty sweet blogs.

Dutch-American Heritage Day

Since it was Dutch American Heritage day (16 of November), I just wanted to mention a book I read recently and loved. Russell Shorto’s The Island at the Center of the World. Whenever I go to New York, I always like to hunt around for the remains of New Amsterdam. But it's always hard to find. There are a few monuments and plaques, and some passing references here and there, but i always get the feeling that the story of Dutch America has been short-changed. It makes sense, really. The Dutch do not hold dear their language like the French, nor their pomp like the English. Instead--the infamous red-light district aside--it's a culture of modesty. Everything is diminutive. For instance, glass is a glasje (small glass) and a small glass is doubly small--a kleine glasje. Culturally, the Dutch are almost apologetic, even when people (mostly Americans) have no clue where the Netherlands is or the language spoken there ('do they speak Hollish in Holland?'). I hear Dutch people always preempting this with 'it's a very small country', and other explanations. My personal experience has been the same. I remember my Dutch mother giving up and just saying 'I'm from Europe,' (rolling her eyes, sometimes) after a while. My mother was also more than happy to let the language go with us children, so most of what we know has been self-taught later on in life. My grandparents tried to intercede but not necessarily on behalf of the Dutch language--they wanted my mother to speak to us in her strongest language after Dutch--French (also to no avail)!

Russell Shorto's best-seller saves the Dutch culture of America from being let go. Besides the obvious adage that it is the victors who write history, there are other reasons for the English stranglehold on American history. Shorto humorously explains that American historians found an easier story in Puritan New England than the more rough-and-tumble reality of Dutch Manhattan.

Accounts like that of a woman who, while her husband dozed on a nearby chair, ‘dishonourably manipulated the male member’ of a certain Irishman while two other men looked on. Excessive rigidity (of the moral kind) was not the sin of New Amsterdam’s residents.’ (p. 85)

{Shorto's wit is another great feature of the book. I think the following is the best sentence i have ever come across in a book about history:

The Reverend Jonas Michaelius might well have won a contest for the moodiest, bitchiest resident of New Amsterdam (p. 64)

Phenomenal!}

The historical revisionism of American history is, bluntly put, a conscious decision of total haters with English ancestry. Think i'm being harsh? Shorto brings evidence that nineteenth-century historians considered the Dutch chapter of American history inconsequential at best. Descriptions of the

petty cheeseparing of the Batavian provinces, with their windmills and barren soil, fit only for fuel

are among the kinder references made to the Dutch in nineteenth century American historical surveys.

Shorto instead brings to life Adriaen van der Donck, a young lawyer sent to New Netherland who pushed for the Republican-style government and freedom that became so central to America's cultural heritage. Shorto draws you into his tale by beginning with the work of Charles Gehring, who has worked for over 30 years (and is still going!) translating over 12,000 folios of Dutch colonial records. This book is sweet. Shorto does not divorce New Netherland history from 17th century Dutch history (if you loved Simon Schama's page-turner on the topic you will totes dig this), enriching both in the process. There's also a lot of cool facts to learn. I had no idea that the first kosher butcher on Manhattan Island was a Polish Jew named Asser Levy who stood up to Stuvesant's anti-Semitic wrangling. Want to know who Downing Street was named after? Read the book.

Despite my enthusiasm for this book, there is a huge problem in its premise. Essentially, Shorto makes the argument that the Dutch colony had its roots in thinkers like Grotius and Spinoza; liberals who advocated civil over religious law, in contrast to the witch burning crazy English colonies. To read Grotius as freeing natural law from theology is a dangerous misreading of Grotius at best, and a gross misrepresentation at worst. What follows is the philosophy that the only tolerant society is one that divorces itself from its religious heritage, which diminishes the monumental achievement of the 'tolerant' society of 17th century New Netherland, which was, indeed rooted in theology. That's where Shorto seems to drop the ball. He has us imagining van der Donck studying law at Leiden with Grotius, (which is awesome, granted), but if anything stands out about 17th century Leiden (besides the fact that it was full of Englishman wearing buckled hats and pimp-shoes), it's that the hottest topic of study gripping the place was Hebraism. That is to say, people like Grotius, and later, Selden in England, were defining international and natural law according to rabbinic sources such as the Talmud and Maimonides. A liberal environment, certainly. A Godless one, definitely not.

'On My Mother's Side, We're Chassidim'

Other Stuff the Schippers Were up to During the War

Testimony of the nephew of my grandmother (Anne Schipper-Broedelet)-who was 13 at the time of the war-that my grandparents sheltered a Jewish woman named Rosette Spetter from Nazi arrest. We call her Tante Rosette, and her husband,ז"ל Oom Levie. He gave my grandparents this chanukia, (i will try and dig up Christmas photos with the Chanikia in all its glory!) which my mother recently sent to me in Jerusalem.

(In case there is confusion with the names on the documents, in Holland, when a woman takes her husband's name, it goes in the middle of the hyphenation: Rosette Spetter becomes Rosette Cohen-Spetter, Celine Schipper became Celine Weiss-Schipper, etc.)

The Examiner III

The Examiner II

The Examiner I

For Joost: The Examiner Articles

There have been numerous requests to post the original articles written by my grandfather during World War II. Well, i have finally found them and my friend Ibel generously let me use her scanner, so here they are. Please excuse the highlighting i did when preparing for previous posts. Also, by clicking the post titles, you will be directed to the downloadable Google Doc.

Joost gave me a lift from his place on the Keizersgracht (where John Adams had a residence a few doors down) to my cousin Kathelijn's in de Pijp, even though it was snowing! He didn't want to disappoint me--what a great cousin! 

שבירה ותיקון

I got another 'commission', recently, and that was to repair some dining room chairs for some friends. This posting is a little photo journal of the process. I thought it was a bit ironic that in order to fix the chairs, i had to break them. Obviously, i was thinking of Donne:

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new

Well, his Holy Sonnet XIV, as well as classic kabbalistic imagery, which, in keeping with our previous discussions about law, oddly seems to be applied by Launcelot Andrewes in his discussion about the fall of man:


from A Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine (1642)
And also, i suppose, i was thinking of Andrewes's friend Richard Hooker who discusses the concept of 'compatible variety' along similar lines:

A more dutifull and religious way for us were to admire the wisedome of God, which shineth in the bewtifull varietie of all things, but most in the manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude of those ways (III.xi.8)

Click here for Rowan Williams's (the current Archbishop of Canterbury) excellent Richard Hooker Lecture (2005) at the Temple Church, in which he manages to explain, and, perhaps more impressively, apply Hooker's philosophy to modern multi-cultural societies.

Anyway, having established the harmonious dissimilitude of the chair pieces, the glue had to be removed from the mortises. See how old and nasty looking the glue is?

I have my cousin Otto and my uncle Kees to thank for the next step. When i was in Amsterdam a few months ago, i saw a dremel for sale near the Cuyp markt. I totally needed a dremel and told Otto of the price and bits, etc, and headed out and bought it. When i brought it home, i proudly showed it to my cousin Kathelijne and my aunt, Saskia.'Isn't it cute?!' I asked them. They agreed it was indeed a cute little thing with a plethora of cute little bits. But they wanted to know why i was making such a strange (albeit, cute) purchase. 'Oh, everyone needs a dremel, really,' was my reply, which was vigorously backed up by both Otto--'Yes, it's a common tool, and everyone has one' (he has the coolest job ever--restoring buildings) and Kees 'Oh, you can do everything with them' (he is a bronze sculptor). 'Well, what do you do with it?', came the question. Crap, i actually have no idea. Maybe i'll know what to do with it when Otto or Kees explains it. 'Well...you...' [hesitation] 'There are many...' And they both looked at each other, laughed, and admitted that they actually can't quite recall the last time they used their dremels! Anyway, the chisel pictured is one from Otto's grandfather (i still need to finish the handle).

I took this photo to show my parents that i do, indeed, wear safety equipment (Tali, don't mock the headlamp!). Plus, i felt like a dentist. Cool-maybe i'll study dentistry. Although, now that i think of it, i'm not so comfortable with someone operating a rotary tool in my mouth...

The reason for the mask is that when i used the dremel, the glue smelled like a rotting dead animal. For real. There's no way it's hide glue, right? Obviously, the tenons were also covered in old glue, so i sliced off chunks of nasty, smelly glue.

One final check

And then the ever-stressful gluing

And finally, clamping:

Hope it holds!

Nationale Bevrijdingsdag 'Liberation Day--Inside Story of Eindhoven Told by Dutch Parents'

They are greeting us with the V-sign or with their thumbs up. We are on the road to victory! And when the column stops for a minute because apparently the narrow streets further on hold up the traffic we shake hands with those men and we are able for the first time in all those years to speak to an Englishman. Have we ever been so thankful towards complete strangers? ‘Thank God you have come at last.’ ‘It is good to be true.’ They are laughing all the time and they tell us that only a few miles from Eindhoven they had to fight hard when we were sleeping peacefully. It is a curious world, indeed! ‘Jerry gave us hell on the Dutch border,’ they say, ‘but here we are, anyway’. They ask us how the Germans treated us and they can't believe what we tell them. They shake their heads and say, ‘Well, that’s all over now. You are free again.’

Free! Think about it, children! That one can say what one wants; that we are going to have decent papers again and all the rest of it. I am sure that we shall only gradually get used to it.

They are very generous, those English troops. They distribute cigarettes among the population. Those first English cigarettes after all those years! We snatch the English papers from their hands. They just laugh at those people who are so happy with all those very simple things. At the cars which are pulled up at the roadside, groups of children are pushing and hustling and begging the soldiers for their autographs. They are quite willing to give them not once but hundreds of times. I asked one of them how many times had he done that. He answered, ‘Numerous times. Yes, it’s being like Gary Cooper.’

For us this entry has something unreal. Such a mad enthusiasm we had not thought possible. But for the troops, too, this entry must be unforgettable with the radiant evening sun over all those flags and pennants flying from the houses. We have been watching all this together with you, children, and we told you that those men were our friends. At times there were touching moments and one felt a lump rise in one’s throat. Mummy is holding you high, Saskia, and you shake hands with a soldier on top of a huge tank, and very shyly, with a very small voice, you say to him the first words in English you ever spoke, ‘Good luck to you!’ And smiling, the answer comes back, ‘Thanks, kids. We’ll need it.’ Yes, they’ve got to carry on. From the bottom of our hearts we wish them God speed.

When it is quite dark we go home again tired out but happy as never before. With friends we spend the rest of the evening, talking about this gigantic war machine about which we heard so much over the wireless and which at last we were allowed to see with our own eyes.

As published by The Examiner, Saturday, May 12, 1945
* 6 years to the date of this publication, the Schippers had another daughter, Celine--my mum.

Donne and Dodenherdenking--the Art of Rememberance Day

The 4th of May, is known in Holland as Dodenherdenking, or War Dead Remembrance. Similar to Israel's Memorial day followed by Independence day, the Dutch have a similar progression. The official, nationally televised commemoration begins in the evening with a service at De Oude Kerk (the Old Church) in central Amsterdam, after which veterans and victims’ relatives lay wreaths at the National War Memorial on nearby Dam square. Church bells ring for a quarter of an hour till 8 pm, when there is a nationwide two-minute silence. Dignitaries and other victims’ groups then lay more wreaths and a child reads out a self-written poem, selected by a local jury. A ceremonial procession past the National War Memorial marks the end of proceedings. As the saying in Holland goes, 'No celebration without commemoration'. This sentiment reflects gratitude, but it also a value placed on the progression of redemption.

We constantly evoke World War II, and the Holocaust with a pledge to prevent further bloodshed. We're not doing so well. I believe that precisely at this fault-line between the fleeting historical awareness of the event, and our collective memory, these rituals may bridge that gap by offering the opportunity for us to experience the redemptive process on an individual, national, and universal level.

When John Donne preached to his congregants, he chose to appeal to them through what he called 'the gallery of the soul'; memory:

Of our perverseness in both faculties, understanding, and will, God may complain, but as much of our memory: for, for the rectifying of the will, the understanding must be rectified; and that implies great difficulty: But the memory is so familiar, and so present, and so ready a faculty, as will always answer, if we but speak to it, and aske it, what God hath done for us, or for others. The art of salvation, is but the art of memory.

In preparation for liberation day, and in honour of remembrance day, the following are extracts from a memoir which was published in the English paper The Examiner in April of 1945. The diary was written by JHT Schipper (my grandfather) for his two children Saskia and Jan. Schipper translated these extracts for John and Maureen Jones, the children of Alfred Wynn Jones, a member of the Balloon Barrage who was stationed in Eindhoven, as an expression of the friendship that developed between them. Sentences in orange are my own.

On the 18th of September, 1944, the town of Eindhoven was liberated by the second British Army after more than four years and four months of German oppression. That is something you ought to know; that is worth while recording in this book […] When you, in years to come, have to study from your school books the history of this war and you are able to form for yourself a rough idea of these dramatic happenings you will understand something of what we felt as that long-awaited day of liberation, which was anything but a mere phase, at last dawned. It was the day for which we had been longingly looking out for four long years, a day on which we (probably for the first time,) could realise fully what it means to get rid of a more than brutal and inhuman oppressor […]

One doesn't dare to go out in the streets. The Germans steal bicycles all over the city. During the night, you would hear gun-fire in the distance. During day-time the offices are practically empty. One tries to collect as much food as possible and then suddenly without pause we see German troops withdrawing and over the wireless they go on talking about the bitter fighting on the Belgian-Dutch frontier.

After the Germans and Dutch Nazis flee the town, it seems as if the English will arrive shortly

But as it is, we have got to wait still for many days. Even Germans dare to come back again, and the notorious murderers of the Gestapo are to be seen again in the streets. We’ve got to be careful again while listening to the news from London. The set was kept in a secret place and using it was a very serious and dangerous affair indeed [...]

Time goes slowly…Nobody seems to know anything better to do than to dig ditches in the garden and listen to the news from London…

After witnessing numerous air battles, news arrives that paratroopers have landed at Son (a small village north of Eindhoven) and have marched to the centre of Eindhoven.

This situation for us who live in the southern part of the town is then very peculiar. Practically the whole town is in the hands of the American paratroopers but we haven’t seen anything of it at all, and we know the Germans are still all around us. In little groups they (the Germans) pass by our houses, rifles and hand grenades at the ready. Curious idea to find yourself all of a sudden more or less in the front line while we are having our meals and the children, quite unconscious of the dangers around them, are playing in the garden.

People in the town are euphoric and celebrating liberation; it turns out to be premature. The Schippers are warned to take their flags in for the Germans are still quite near.

In these hours of waiting we have put more than a thousand times the question, 'When will the English come in from the south?' Tormenting was the news that they had captured the small town of Valkenswaard, a few miles to the south and were staying there. Why did they not march on? Where are they now?

Brilliant Orange

En Vincent zag het koren and Vincent saw the corn
En Einstein het getal and Einstein the number
En Zeppelin de Zeppelin and Zeppelin the Zeppelin
En Johan zag de bal and Johan the ball

Leuk Koninginnedag! This year, Israel's Independence Day came one day before Koninginnedag. So it's only appropriate that i bore my 3 readers (Hoi, moeder & vaddertje! leuk dat jullie mijn blog lezen!) with a phenomenon that was introduced to the football world by a Dutch football club still called 'The Jews': Total Football. By the way, there's a lot of controversy about that, and even a book devoted to proving that there was never any official Jewish affiliation with Ajax. For an (interesting & bizarre article about it, click here. And just to add a tangent to a tangent, click here for a list of words or Amsterdam slang that is derived from Hebrew).

It's not exactly the normal content of this blog, but i've been reading David Winner's Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football; a fascinating study dealing with conceptions of space, design, architecture, art, and of course, football, in Dutch culture. Winner opens with the following question:

The football pitch is the same size and shape everywhere in the world, yet no one else thought about football this way. So why did the Dutch? The answer may be that the Dutch think innovatively, creatively and abstractly about space in their football because for centuries they have had to think innovatively about space in every other area of their lives (p.47)

In a manner reminiscent of Wright's Prairie style, Winner goes on to draw connections between the impact of nature on architectural design, and expands into the realm of political philosophy:

‘We tend to think we invented the idea of land-use planning. Our problems with water meant we had to take collective political action in order to be able to build dikes. You can’t do that on your own. We always say that the origin of Dutch democracy lies in this co-operative dike-building’—Maarten Hajer (professor of public policy, University of A’dam), 49

Winner also describes the tolerance of Dutch society as evolving from the wide, open landscape. He also discusses the similarities between the terrifyingly controlled and ordered aspect of Dutch society and landscape. The decency in football, the preference for style and form over winning,finds its parallel in Holland's famously clean streets, which has its roots in strict Dutch Calvinism.

To Winner, Cruijff saw the football pitch like Pieter Jansz Saenredam saw churches. The conception, organisation, and execution of Dutch painters has always been a harmonious marriage of creativity, technique, and technical execution (like Vermeer and glazing). Perhaps one of the most distinct elements of Dutch painting is the depiction of space.

To measure distance is a natural inclination, an instinct for the Dutch people. We measure space quietly, very precisely and then order it in detail. That is the Dutch way of seeing, the Dutch approach to space: selective detail. It’s a natural, instinctive thing for us to do. You see it in our paintings, our architecture and our football too. 53-54

Perhaps the most attractive thing about Total Football is that it emphasises teamwork as requisite for transcending the ordinary game of football, and attaining the unity and harmony of the 'other-wordly', almost spiritual art-form that Ajax once introduced to the world.