On the Waterfront 5

8/7/2019 On the Waterfront 5

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On the Waterfront

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Introduction

e composition of this fth issue is similar to the previous one, but what is noteworthy this time is the rsttrue restitution of the archives from Russia. We also call your attention to the further extension of theresearch projects that have been initiated with the help of the Friends.

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Members of the Friends of the IISH pay annual dues of one or ve hundred euro or join with a lifetime dona-tion of one thousand ve hundred euro or more. Payments can also be made on the instalment system. In return,

members are invited to semi-annual sessions featuring presentations of IISH acquisitions and guest speakers. ese guest speakers deliver lectures on their eld of research, which does not necessarily concern the IISH collection. e

presentation and lecture are followed by a reception. In addition to these semi-annual gatherings, all Friends receive a forty-percent discount on IISH publications. Friends paying dues of ve hundred euro or more are also

entitled to choose Institute publications from a broad selection oered at no charge.e board consults the Friends about allocation of the dues and delivers an annual nancial report in conjunc-

tion with the IISH administration.e IISH was founded by master collector Nicolaas Posthumus (-) in the s. For the past decade, twoof the institutes established by this “history entrepreneur” have operated from the same premises: the NEHA (Neth-

erlands Economic History Archive) since and the International Institute of Social History ( IISH ), whichis now over sixty-ve years old. Both institutes are still collecting, although the “subsidiary” IISH has grown far

larger than the “parent” NEHA .(Detailed information about the IISH

appears in: Maria Hunink De papieren van de revolutie. Het Internation-

aal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis -, Amsterdam , and in: Jan Lucassen Tracing the past. Col-lections and research in social and economic history; e International Institute of Social History, e Nether-

lands Economic History Archive and related institutions, Amsterdam ; in addition, Mies Campfens reviews archives in De Nederlandse archieven van het Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis te Amsterdam,Amsterdam (), and Jaap Haag and Atie van der Horst have compiled the Guide to the International

Archives and Collections at the IISH , Amsterdam, Amsterdam ). For all information concerning the Friends,contact Mieke IJzermans at the IISH ([email protected]).



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ese two new acquisitions aresupplemented by four otherbooks from the collection; thesealso clearly show similar daily use. e rst two have been inthe collection quite a while, butthe other two almanacs have also

been recently acquired. eseconsist of a Zahl-Büchlein fromMunich (), bound andequipped with two copper locksand an entry by what was prob-ably the original owner, “Chris-tian Heilberger Pr[...] Meister”;there is also a calculations book for linen merchants by Joannesde Cock, published in Ghent in, which is bound in a folioformat. e Koopmans Comptoir en Schrijf-Almanak (Merchant Of-

ce and Writing Almanac), pub-lished in Amsterdam in , is

also in folio format, and containsall sorts of agricultural notes fromZeeland. e Dordrecht Almanak from is bound in a somewhat

plainer manner, but it contains ex-tra white pages for notes.

La FeuilleIn their general meeting of December , the Friends de-cided to allocate revenues for theacquisition by the Institute of therenowned French Paper La Feuille (see On the Waterfront , p. and). is important purchase forthe Library can now be shown tothe Friends.

Zo d.’Axa (pseudonym of Al-phonse Gallaud; for additional

As previously, in the rst half of the acquired over onehundred archives: more than half were new ones, while less than half consisted of supplementary collec-tions. Some of the acquisitions arespectacular, especially if we notethe way in which they came to us.

In this regard we point the readerto the section below about the re-turn of the archives from Russia.In addition to the ’s archivalacquisitions, we would also liketo call the reader’s attention tothose of the library and the . Merchant literature In general, each collector wouldlike to own as good an exampleas possible of a book or brochure;and in this way an institute is no

dierent from an individual, al-though this rule is not really truein all cases. In collecting merchantliterature, in some cases it is actu-ally more important to acquiresomething that had clearly beenused in order to be able to see thatit was not an academic publica-tion, but that it had truly beenuseful in practice. e numberof mercantile libraries whoseexistence we know of, or whatthey contained, is very limited.

We nd that most of the booksin the collection whose originscan be traced (and in this way the collection is no dierentfrom other collections elsewherein the world), often come fromthe libraries of wealthy merchants,a cloister, nobleman, or were partof explicit material used to trainmerchants. But we can only guesswhat an “ordinary” merchantwould have used. at is why itis valuable that some acquisitions

were clearly intended for use, andin those cases traces of use are infact desirable!

At the end of we were able toacquire at the LiberBerlin exhibittwo books whose workmanshipclearly showed that they had beenintended for daily use. e rstof these is the fth edition of theVade Mecum by John Playford,printed in London in .

e rst printing of this mer-chants handbook appeared in

. From the workmanship itcan clearly be seen that the book was intended to be taken on a trip.It has a protective envelope (vel-lum) and lock. In addition, thisbook clearly bears traces of use. Itis precisely this type of publicationthat is rare, for most of them havebeen discarded after use.

e contents consist of a smallalmanac, interest tables, calcula-tion tables, information about

markets, postal and trade routes,prices of transport tickets forbarge and coach, etc. is fthedition from must have beenused for a long time, because therst page contains the statement,“A John Flatman ow[n]e[d] thisbook .” is owner mustsurely not have been a collector,but a simple user, which is borneout by his disclosure on Novem-ber th :

“If any man my name wouldknow in letters to i will you show the rst is I in all mans rightthe next is F to tell you rightand if you think i spell amissthen look below and there it isJohn Flatham.”

e second is a Taria, publishedin a folio format in Bologna in. is book consists of atable with rates of exchange for

calculating the value of Bolog-nese coins against Italian liras inthe early nineteenth century.

Fifth Friends Day, June

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archive especially established forthis purpose. e existence of this“special archive” was only madeknown in .

About collections from theNetherlands landed in Moscow

(cf. also On the Waterfront , p.). Following many years of discussions, in June , on theoccasion of a visit to Russia by the Dutch Queen, the Russiansdeclared that they were preparedto return collections, althoughthe fate of the remaining wouldremain under discussion. Includedin the collections that still neededto be returned are also a few thathad belonged to the , as wellas a number of collections that in

all likelihood will be kept by the because the original ownersare no longer alive. It was not un-til April that the rst ship-ment, consisting of collectionswith a total dimension of m, ar-rived at the . Everything wasstill packed in the original Rus-sian archive boxes. Although noteverything has been returned yet,on this festive occasion we ask youto turn your attention to the twomost spectacular collections: that

of Bloch (comprised of dossierschock full of correspondence) andthe one of the Sozialistische Ju-gend Internationale (InternationalSocialist Youth).

Joseph Bloch (-) wasthe editor of the Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly)(-). His archive includedabout , letters by individu-als who largely came from reformgroups of the socialist movement

in Germany (Max Adler, FriedrichAdler, Karl Kautsky, Gustav Land-auer and many others). In ithad been sold by Bloch’s widow to the in Paris for . .e previously received thiscollection in on microlmfrom Moscow.

e archive of the Secretariat of the Sozialistische Jugend Inter-nationale () is comprised of dossiers from the Secretariat,

including (among other things)correspondence from Erich Ol-lenhauer, secretary of the . Ol-lenhauer presented this archive tothe Paris oce of the in thelate s. e restitution fromMoscow is a welcome addition tothe ’s existing archive.

Anthoon Johan Koejemans(-)Koejemans (whose friends andacquaintances called him Koej)

had been ocial of the DutchCommunist Party (), princi-pal editor of its daily, De Waar-heid , and author of innumerablepublications.

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information see our web site:http://www.iisg.nl/collections/zodaxa/index.html), a libertarianpublicist, was the editor, whileSteinlen, Luce, Anquetin, Willettand others were responsible forthe illustrations.

e collection came from thegranddaughter of Zo d’Axa, who

still had a set. e price at whichshe oered the collection viathe antiquarian bookseller wasFfrs ,, but for the shelowered the price by Ffrs.Support from the Friends madeit possible to complete our col-lected publications of Zo d’Axa.We already owned his other pe-riodical, L’Endehors , of which issues had appeared between and . is periodical, with itsnotable illustrators, was very im-

portant for our unique collectionof anarchist works.

Restitution of the archivesfrom RussiaDuring the Second World War,the German occupiers also seizeda number of archives in many of the countries they occupied,including the Netherlands. Afterthe end of the war, these archiveswere found by special Red Army groups in the then Soviet zone,

and were transported to Moscow by the Soviet Intelligence service.ey were secretly stored in an

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When, in , a third illegal lead-ership of the was formed, itappointed Koejemans as principaleditor of De Waarheid . Followingthe liberation in May , he be-came principal editor of the legaland then very popular daily. At the

turbulent July conference in ,Koejemans joined the oppositionagainst Paul De Groot, and thiserror was always held against him,although other excuses were alsoused to malign him. After the war,Koejemans devoted himself prin-cipally to De Waarheid . Within theParty, ‘Koej’ was looked upon as awimp. It was mainly the problemswith Paul de Groot that causedhim to be discharged as princi-pal editor in January : the

accusation was “petty bourgeoisand wavering moods”. He wasalso relieved of other functions,including his membership of theFirst Chamber and the ProvincialStates. Koejemans took a positionwith the communist publishinghouse Pegasus, where, in ,he was also discharged. Luckily,through the eorts of friends hewas able to purchase for a smallsum a run-down library in the Ri-jnstraat in Amsterdam. He called

the library Gorter . As for his con-nections with the , it seemedthey no longer led to anything,and in relations on both sideswere denitively severed – whichwas very painful for him. In Koejemans became a member of the Verenigde Doopsgezinde Ge-meente Amsterdam (AmsterdamUnited Mennonite Congrega-tion). It was there that he found anew circle of friends. In the she wrote his autobiography as well

as a slightly critical biography of David Wijnkoop (for whichhe had gained permission fromWijnkoop’s widow to view the ar-chive before its denitive transferto Moscow; since a couple of yearsthe has the archive on micro-lm). From one of his childrenwe were able to acquire two boxesfull of material from the archivescovering the years -.

Ivo Opstelten, Sr.

e archive of Ivo Opsteltensenior is the same size. Op-stelten was the father of the cur-

rent major of Rotterdam. LikeKoejemans and many others,Opstelten senior was active inthe political renewal movementfollowing the Second World War.People in this movement desiredto change things, and above all,

they wanted to end the “pillariza-tion” that had previously been socharacteristic in the Netherlands.Opstelten was a proponent of the Nederlandse Volksbeweging(Dutch People’s Movement) aswell as a genuine advocate of “breakthroughs” in the socialdemocratic party. Importantwere Opstelten’s functions as sec-retary-editor of the InternationalPersonalist Journal Het Keerpunt (e Turning Point) (whose prin-

cipal editor was the well-knownhistorian Hajo Brugmans) andof Het Gemeenebest (e Com-monwealth). e collectionmainly includes correspondencewith authors (E.H. Carr, G.D.H.Cole, Alfred Mozer, HenrietteRoland Holst, Simon Carmiggeltand many others).

Adam SoepardjanFor the past several years EmileSchwidder had as his main task

the acquisition of Indonesian ma-terials, and has become increas-ingly successful in this regard (seealso: On the Waterfront / , pp. and). Indeed, in the last half year his eorts resulted in our re-ceipt of many materials, includingthe archives of e Siauw Giap,Raden Darsono Notosudirdjo,Adam Soepardjan, and thepublisher Djambatan. We shalldiscuss the last two extensively, aswell as a related collection of Piet

van Staveren.

During his visit to Indonesiain December , Emile ac-cidentally came in contact withAdam Soepardjan, a teacher of English and German in Surabaja.Soepardjan, who was born in, decided to search for hisbrother when he was only fteen.His brother had disappearedduring the Japanese invasionof the Netherlands East Indies.

Although he had intended togo to the Celebes, he landed inNew Guinea. Convinced that the

Japanese would play an importantrole in the struggle for Indonesianindependence, he worked to-gether with them as a very youngsupervisor of the “Romushas”. Forthe rst two months he received asalary for this work, but then thepayments ceased (after the war, heclaimed these from the Japanesegovernment, which paid no at-tention to his claims). Over thirty

years later – during his imprison-ment under Suharto – he wroteabout his memories of this time ina romanticised story called “Men-cari kakak yang hilang” (In searchof a lost brother). e secondpart of the original manuscript,along with many other personaldocuments, he gave to Emile. Tenyears ago Frits van den Bosch,who worked at the Amsterdammunicipal library and publishedon Indonesia, met Soepardjan

and translated his memoirs fromBahasa to Dutch, but was unableto nd a publisher. Two yearsago, after his death, his widow enabled the Institute to acquirea number of manuscripts aboutSoepardjan.

Following the war and the strug-gle for independence in whichAdam took an active part, hebecame involved in communisttrade union work at the paint

factory in Surabaya. is ena-bled him to travel as a delegateof the trade union federation

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Suhadi has ve children”. Armanreplied on a question of one of the activists. As a father of ourchildren, we hope that we shallbe able to send our children toschool and that they shall gradu-ate the university. But without

having enough money, althoughour children are wise enough, tobe able to continue their studies[it] will be a hard struggle. WhenArman ended his speech, he saw that several female activists gottears in their eyes. ey weredeeply touched by the still ter-rible fate of the working-peopleof Indonesia. en one of themnodded to her husband that saton the other side of the table.Similarly they stood up from

their seats and went to the del-egates. e woman unwore [sic]her plastic wristwatch and gaveit to Arman by saying: “is isfor your daughter”. Suhadi got apocket-watch from the husband.From all the souvenirs that they both had received during theirvisit abroad, Arman regarded thisone as the most valuable gift eventhough it was only old watches.’

Piet van Staveren

At times the struggle betweenthe Dutch and Indonesians forindependence was not entirely black and white. SometimesDutch young men, motivated by idealistic principles joined “theenemy”. ey remembered therecent Dutch struggle for inde-pendence against the Germansstill too vividly. Several years agothe Institute received the archiveof the best known of these youngmen, Poncke Princen (-).

Later, through the intervention of Joop Morriën, we also acquired theletters of Piet van Staveren ().As a communist, he had already protested sending military con-scripts to Indonesia, but as a con-sequence of Minister van Maars-seveen’s promise that these soldierswould not be used for ghting, heended up with this group. In July , when the rst major Dutchmilitary campaign threatened, hejoined the troops of the Indonesian

Republic in Jogyakarta.ere he made himself useful inthe Republican Youth Movement

– his experiences in the pre-warsocialist and the post-warcommunist being yet freshin his mind. He also had contactsin the (see above). Prob-ably the fact that he had close tieswith the Indonesian communists

in Madiun was responsible for hisultimately being taken prisonerby the Hatta regime and thendeported to the Netherlands.ere he was subject to a prisonsentence, which he served inLeeuwarden until . As a resultof this there were protests by In-donesian and Dutch communists(i.a. an article by eun de Vriesin Pravda). In he was inter-viewed in a radio documen-tary by Marion Bloem and Ivan

Wolers. Besides the substantialamount of documentation anda few photos, the primary im-portance of the collection arethe innumerable letters coveringthe - period (these alsoinclude a few original documentsfrom Madiun from ). esenot only show a convinced andoptimistic communist idealist,but also provide direct informa-tion about an important episodein the struggle for Indonesian

independence.

JambatanAlthough nationalist hysteria inthe Netherlands against the strug-gle for Indonesian independencewas substantial, it was not only the communists that resisted thismood. Several critical socialistsalso questioned if the govern-ment, in those years led by socialdemocrats, had indeed chosen thecorrect course. is was especially

true for the editors of Vrij Neder-land , who strongly advocated al-ternatives. us, in the well-known former resistance ghterHenk van Randwijk, togetherwith several colleagues, decidedto found a publishing house thatbore the meaningful name of DeBrug (e Bridge), to which theIndonesian translation Jambatanwould later be added. is grouphad as its goal to strive in thebroadest way towards cultural

development in an internationalcontext; it wanted to contributeto the cultural, social, and political

to Europe in April to July . At this time he visited EastGermany and Czechoslovakia.Books of memoirs have also beenkept of this trip. Not surprisingly,he was imprisoned from to – without any trial. is

imprisonment also had someadvantages, as he spent that timelearning English and German (healready knew Dutch). With thisknowledge, he was able to supporthimself, albeit that as ex-Tapol(political prisoner) he had to takein his sign as a teacher of foreignlanguages in the evenings or risk itbeing removed or damaged.

In addition to the pieces that Emilehimself received (upon his second

visit in April ) as well as thosefrom Mrs Van den Bosch (whichhe had been referred to), he alsorecorded a long interview togetherwith his colleague Ratna Saptari.

In one of the travel books thereis a report about a visit by Arman(he referred to himself in the thirdperson) together with a colleague,Suhadi, to the “mine workers’ pal-ace” in Potsdam. He spoke to theassembled German Comrades as

follows:

‘“I have four children, three sonsand one daughter. And brother

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development of the peoples whohad been freed. Besides journalists,scholars were also interested in thegroup. ese included the Amster-dam professors Wim Wertheimand Jan Romein (see On the Wa-terfront , pp. -). Van Randwijk’s

involvement in Indonesia led to agreat deal of attention being paidto that country, and an oce wasalso opened in Jakarta. A third of-ce was established in Rangoon inBurma. It was no coincidence thatone of the largest publications inJambatan was a -part Burmeseencyclopedia, overseen by DrMaung Mang, who had receivedhis doctorate in Utrecht. e mostsignicant emphasis of the publi-cations policy was on the historical

and cultural works about South-east Asia and the world of Islam.ese were published in Europeanlanguages as well as Asian ones(Bahasa, Burmese, Sinhalese, andArabic). Notable was the impor-tant role that illustrations playedin the Jambatan production. epublisher could make use of anextensive and very good photoarchive that had been opened up(this archive contained roughly , pieces when it closed in

). What has happened to thisunquestionably valuable archivefrom such a unique internationalrm remains a puzzle, but thephoto archive ended up withProfessor Wertheim’s group at theUniversity of Amsterdam. ereit was administered by his suc-cessors Jan Pluvier and RaymondFeddema. Willem van Schendel,the current holder of this chairand also member of the researchdepartment of the , decided

to bring it to the Institute. ephotos are relevant for Indonesiaand other Asian countries, as wellas for Europe, Africa, and a few even relate to North and SouthAmerica. Because of its system-atic geographical card system, thecollection is easily accessible. Weshow a group of three randomly selected photos, in which thefamily photo of President Su-karno (probably from /)draws immediate attention. Sit-

ting lovingly next to him is thecurrent President Sukarnoputri,then about years old. She still

idealizes her father. As one jour-nalist wrote: “She clearly idolisesher father. ‘He is very handsome’she laughs. She says, giggling, that

sometimes she thinks she is nothis daughter as she keeps fallingin love with him.”

is idyllic picture did not lastlong. In Sukarno took an-other wife, Hartini, in addition tohis third wife Fatmawati (whomhe had wed in and whohad experienced the struggle forindependence with him (he hadpreviously been twice divorced).ereupon, Fatmawati immedi-

ately left him, together with heryoungest son Guntur. e otherchildren remained in the palacewith their father. is move to-wards polygamy had other conse-quences as well: Sukarno’s marriageto Hartini was a major blow tothe anti-polygamist campaign of the nation’s early women’s rightsgroups, including Gerwani (thewomen’s wing of the IndonesianCommunist Party, ).

Karl Fritz Müller (-)Ellen Posthuma, a Dutch woman,lived in East Germany in the

s. While there she becameacquainted with Karl and EdithMüller. He was a judge in Leipzig,and she was judge in the juvenile

court – in eect, they belonged tothe local elite. Karl, who had early become a convinced communist,had been imprisoned by the Na-zis in the s. Mrs Posthuma waslater able to acquire their archives,and was kind enough to presentthem to the , along with othervaluable materials that she owned(including, among other things,phonograph records from EastGermany). Via Huub Sanders andAxel Diederich (who represents

the in Berlin) these papersnally came to Amsterdam. It isinteresting to establish a link be-tween this archive and Supardjan’smemoirs about East Germany (above). Illustrative of the politi-cal culture of East German are themany membership booklets thatwith this archive have come intoour possession.

Peter B.Ph.M. BogaersWhile the history of immigration

is actively pursued in the researchdepartment, colleagues from thecollections department are also

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interested in this area. In thes Erik Jan Zürcher has builtup a unique collection of Turkish

archives and printed matter thati.a. details how the “guest work-ers” from Turkey came to WesternEurope. Zülkar Özdogan is now making further progress with thiswork. In On the Waterfront /(pp. - and ) we called attentionto the immigration archives. Wecan again report special acquisi-tions during the past half year:these include archives from Ital-ian and Moroccan organisationsin the Netherlands.

is time we call special atten-tion to what has until now beena category of immigrants that hashardly been researched: that of themodern refugees. Via Bouwe Hi-jma the Institute recently receiveda large number of dossiers ( m.)in three shipments. ese concernclients of the attorney P.B.Ph.M.Bogaers, esq. from Nieuwegein,who are seeking asylum. In a re-cent letter to the editor of a Dutch

daily he writes that he has spokenwith over , people seekingasylum, and has devoted over

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, hours to this. Based onthis, he concludes that the Dutchgovernment – under socialist

leadership – has begun a witch-hunt against asylum seekers: “Infact, it is a matter of thousandsof betrayals of people whose lifehistory and background to theiright was never properly traced.e current deportations, with

all their fear and terror in theNetherlands, are a consequenceof this”. Up to now, Bogaers hasalready handed over reporteddossiers in the area of immigra-tion law, especially with respectto matters of asylum and medi-

cal workers’ disability. When welook over the dossiers, it appearsthat the estimate of an averageof contact hours per case isnot exaggerated. e dossiers aresuitable for answering two typesof research questions. First, they obviously reect Dutch asylumpolicy. By means of the materialsincluded in the les, it is possibleto examine the judges’ opinions.Second, and this may be moreimportant, they provide a wealth

of background information aboutthe political and trade union ac-tivities of Bogaers’ clients in theircountry of origin. For example,take the dossier shown here of an Iranian who in requestedasylum in the Netherlands. Atthat time he was years old, andhad ed because he feared thatbecause he was eligible for mili-tary service, he would be forcedto ght against Iraq. Moreover,he also ed the repressive climate,

especially in daily life, in whichspecial police units had authority over clothing and religious behav-iour. Although he himself was notpolitically active, friends who hadbelonged to the Mujaheddin hadbeen hung. e dossier includes

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many newspaper clippings, agreat many original letters fromIran following his escape that shedlight on the repression to whichhis environment was subject, anddocuments from Iranian groupsin the Netherlands.

Fritz BehrendtFritz Behrendt () is one of thebest known political illustrators inthe Netherlands. Born in Berlin,he and his parents left Germany in for political reasons. By the end of the Second WorldWar, Behrendt had been held asa political prisoner for a while inthe prison in Amsterdam. Afterthe war he became a memberof the , “a combination of

progressive youth”, according toBehrendt (the above mentionedPiet van Staveren was also amember of this group). Follow-ing the events in Prague in ,Behrendt found that the had become a “Stalinist splinterclub”. After a turbulent period inYugoslavia and later in East Ber-lin, where, in , he began todraw for Das Freie Wort (e FreeWord) the magazine of a Germangroup of anti-fascists, and in the

Netherlands for Arbeid (Labour),a publication of the PvdA. Forquite a while he also workedfor De Echte Waarheid (e RealTruth), a bulletin of the Vrede en Vrijheid (Peace and Freedom)organisation. e goal of thisbulletin, which rst appeared in, was “to defend the truthagainst the lies of communistpropaganda in order to guard thepeace in a world of free people”.Political prints by Behrendt also

appeared in Vrij Nederland andthe Algemeen Handelsblad . From to he still worked forHet Parool . e principal editorat that time, H.W. Sandberg,said about him: “It is good thatin Behrendt we have a man whosepen functions in the service of agood cause, continuing to pleadfor humanity and alerting us toanything that threatens or deni-grates humanity”.

Behrendt’s work has been accord-ed recognition many times. InApril he received the highest

De Groene Amsterdammer isnot only the oldest Dutch

opinion weekly still in existence,its sta also constitute an excitingroster of Dutch culture: almost

everyone from the Tachtigers (a group of poets and novelistsformed in the s) published inthis weekly, as well as Jacob Israelde Haan and his sister Carry vanBruggen, Van Eeden (who for atime was even editor), MatthijsVermeulen, Vestdijk, Ter Braak,Du Perron, Marsman, Slauerho,J.B. Charles, Abel Herzberg, Si-mon Vinkenoog, etc. Passionatedebates ll its columns on sub-jects such as the Atjeh War, the

Boer War, the First World War,the Russian Revolution, Stalin-ism and the rise of Mussoliniand Hitler, the de-colonialisationof Indonesia, the Cold War, andthe never-to-be-forgotten mostimportant developments in therealm of art and culture.

It is little wonder that Hartmansspoke enthusiastically about thehistory of De Groene , which hestarted only a few years ago. First

of all he deals with the meth-odological problems, in whichboth the almost total absence of

Lecture by Rob Hartmans:“A radical tradition!

De Groene Amsterdammer weekly, -”

an editorial board and company archive and, on the other hand,the browsing of , issues,were responsible for the neces-sary problems.

Further, he deals briey with thehistory of De Groene on the basisof a number of sub-periods. In therst thirty years of its existence,it was typically a publication forcomfortable, liberal burgers. Po-litically, it was often radical (e.g.it dealt with the workers’ move-ment, the Atjeh War, etc.) and inthe forefront culturally, having asense for talent, especially withregard to the Tachtigers . On the

eve of the First World War, De Groene became more politically radical, and again devoted morespace to the cultural avant garde,especially the graphic arts (VanDoesburg) and music (Vermeu-len). e period from to Hartmans calls the “Pro-fessors Groene ”, in which many prominent historians played anespecially important role, in-cluding Hajo Brugmans, G.W.Kernkamp, and Jan Romein.

With the German occupation of the Netherlands, the weekly wasdiscontinued in . In it

honour possible in his profession:the Award for International Edi-torial Cartoons, and in September he received the Major Crossof Service from the German presi-dent. He describes himself, by preference, as “a humanist having

the European nationality” and as“someone with independent-pro-gressive convictions without any illusions”. Behrendt is someonewho regards his primary task as

leading a graphic plea for greaterhumanity, and nds creating po-litical drawings “no light-heartedbusiness”.e archive we received throughthe good oces of one of our col-leagues from the Press museum

includes correspondence, proof prints, and innumerable photoscut from political headlines, whichhe collected and were intended asexamples for his political prints.



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Report of the general meeting of members

To start with, On the Water-front has been distributed.

A few improvements have beenadded to the colophon on page. e cover has been modern-ised and now includes a Chineseposter that had been purchasedwith the assistance of the Friends.We plan to choose a dierentcover annually, always based ona purchase made possible by theFriends. Further, the following

matters were discussed:

e board: one of the members(Bram Stemerdink) has resigned.Luckily, two other friends areprepared to join. Both are histori-ans: Bauke Marinus and Maarten

Brinkman. e members haveconrmed their appointment. eboard is also trying to strengthenits ranks with a scal, legal, ornotarial specialist.

e members: one of the Friendshas died. Everyone is gratied thatonce again a will has been receivedin which one of the Friends estab-lished a bequest – this makes thethird such bequest.

Special donations: the two chief researchers have started theirprojects, which have been madepossible by two substantial sup-plementary donations fromtwo individual Friends. First of

reappeared, and what is especially noticeable in the Cold War periodis a strong tendency to put issuesin an objective perspective. epublication does not wish tochoose sides, and, at the sametime, shows much understanding

for the communism of the period.e argument is as follows: radicalsocial reorganisation is necessary because of social wrongs; com-munism is able to realise this; themethods of communism may notbe pleasant, but they are indeed“historically necessary”; andnally: it is easy for the West totalk. One of the consequences isthe departure of some of the sta (Jordaan, Carmiggelt, Herzberg,and Koolhaas). e second major

question is the de-colonialisationof Indonesia, on which subject De Groene is exceptionally critical of the standpoint of the Dutch gov-ernment.

On the anniversary of its centen-nial in , the weekly char-acterises its position as follows:“Ten years ago percent of thepaper still consisted of cultivat-ing middle-class culture. Now the world picture that provides

the material for the writing hasbecome clearly socialist – albeitwith all the gradations that wordcan have. e emphasis on classi-cal culture has disappeared. Whathas now come to replace the pagesof travel stories, aesthetic educa-tion, and episodes from history are pages about the culture of struggle and economic analyses.”Soon this type of thinking slowly began to change, and after anendless succession of all kinds

of action groups and “new socialmovements”, the left has becomeincreasingly tired of these, andmany readers began to desertaround . Under Martin vanAmerongen, the new principaleditor (who has since died), thetendency that in had beenstill seen as an achievement wasreversed. Hartmans observesthat De Groene is actually return-ing “to its old traditions: open,liberal, a great deal of culture,

independent politics. It is indeedmore uncommitted, but thatis also a part of the tradition”.



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all, the research project “Work,Income and the State – Russia

/ Soviet Union / Russia, -” under the direction of DrGijs Kessler. In the meanwhile,Kessler, together with JaapKloosterman and Jan Lucassen,have engaged four postdocs inthe research: Dr Andrei Afontsev,Dr Andrei Markevich, Dr Victo-ria Tyazhelnikova (London), andDr Timur Valetov. is project,which deals with the mutualrelationship between the Rus-sian state and the workers, will

include the period from around, that is, before the Revolu-tion. e state takes numerousmeasures which directly as well asindirectly inuence the life of theworkers. e workers’ families, intheir turn, react to these (“fam-ily living strategies”), which alsoleads to further reactions on thepart of the state. In Septembera request will be submitted tothe (the Dutch NationalEndowment for the Humanities)

to begin comparative research inIndia. In any case, we try to pro-vide a world-wide comparison,

and while there is a great dealof material available for Europe

and North America, there is notyet much on the “ird World”.erefore, in the future we hopeto start a global comparisonamong these four areas.

Second, there is the researchproject “Women’s work in theDutch Republic”, directed by DrAriadne Schmidt. She is ready toengage a second researcher. Inaddition, Dr Lotte van de Pol,who has already come quite far

with her own research into thelabour market in the lowest levelsof Amsterdam society, will roundo her book within the frame-work of “Women’s Work”. We areindeed pleased that an additionalresearcher has been oered for thisproject by the through othersources: Drs Elise van NederveenMeerkerk will do research on spin-sters. In the meanwhile, we havesubmitted a request to the toexpand this project.

e Friends’ board has been re-quested to consider a donation of

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at least , euro to support asocial history archive in Bangla-desh. A very competent collectorthere, with support from the In-stitute (especially from ProfessorWillem van Schendel) will makehis collection available for furtherresearch, both in Bangladesh andin Amsterdam. Unfortunately, tehFriends’ capacity to do this is notsucient and at the same time thesum is too large for the operatingexpenses of the Institute but too

small to interest other sources inthe project. e board welcomessuggestions towards a solution.



Hilde BrasZEEUWSE MEIDENDienen in de levensloop van vrouwen,ca. 1850-1950(ISBN 90 5260 036 8, 260 PAGINA’S, GEÏLLUSTREERD, ¤ 27,50)

Dit boek gaat over onze moeders, grootmoeders en overgrootmoeders. Ruimeenderde van hen heeft een deel van haar leven als dienstbode doorgebracht.De oorzaken, invulling en gevolgen van een fase als dienstbode in de levens vandeze grote groep vrouwen, daarover gaat "Zeeuwse meiden". Om de betekenisvan het dienstbodeberoep in een toenmalig vrouwenleven te achterhalen, zijnde levenslopen gereconstrueerd van ruim 700 Zeeuwse vrouwen die tussen 1835en 1927 geboren werden.

Ivo KuijpersIN DE SCHADUW VAN DE GROTE OORLOGDe Nederlandse arbeidersbeweging en de overheid,1914-1920(ISBN 90 5260 190 0, 306 PAGINA’S, GEÏLLUSTREERD, ¤ 27,50)

De historische belangstelling voor de effecten van de Eerste Wereldoorlog opNederland was tot voor enkele jaren gering. Deze originele studie bevat eenanalyse van die effecten op de hoofdstromen van de Nederlandse arbeidersbewe-

ging: katholieken, socialisten, protestants christelijken en syndicalisten. Een vande conclusies is, is dat de fundamenten van de Nederlandse overlegeconomie enverzorgingsstaat van na 1945 tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog werden gelegd.

Frank ZuijdamTUSSEN WENS EN WERKELIJKHEIDHet debat over vrede en veiligheid binnen de PvdAin de periode 1958-1977(ISBN 90 5260 049 X, 468 PAGINA’S, GEÏLLUSTREERD , ¤ 31,30)

Waarom sloegen de standpunten van de PvdA inzake vrede en veiligheid in dejaren zestig en zeventig van de vorige eeuw in zeer korte tijd zo radicaal om?Voor de beantwoording van deze vraag plaatst Frank Zuijdam het debat binnen

de PvdA over vrede en veiligheid tegen de achtergrond van de turbulente ont-wikkelingen in de partij, de internationale verschuivingen en de ontwikkelingenin de roerige jaren zestig.

G.J. Schutte e.a. (red.)BELANGENPOLITIEK Cahier over de geschiedenis van de christelijk-sociale beweging 4(ISBN 90 5260 031 7, 152 PAGINA’S, GEÏLLUSTREERD, ¤ 13,60)

De christelijk-sociale beweging bestaat uit verschillende maatschappelijke organi-saties. Om hun doelen te bereiken onderhandelen ze met hun zogeheten coun-terparts, organisaties die zich op hetzelfde terrein begeven, maar aan de andere

kant van de tafel zitten. Maar dit is lang niet altijd voldoende. Zo onderhandelenvakorganisaties met werkgevers over werktijden, maar ter ondersteuning vanhun onderhandelingspositie is wetgeving noodzakelijk. Een nauwe relatie metde politiek is daarom onontbeerlijk. Dit Cahier gaat in op de relatie tussen vooralhet cnv en de christen-democratische partijen arp en cda.

Marga Altena e.a. (red.)SEKSE EN DE CITY Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis 22(ISBN 90 5260 035 X, 186 PAGINA’S, GEÏLLUSTREERD, ¤ 17,50)

Hoe bewogen vrouwen zich in het verleden in de stad? Bood de stad vrouwenongekende mogelijkheden of betekende de stad groot gevaar? Waar zag menvrouwen, hoe werden vrouwen gezien en hoe zagen zij zichzelf in de stad? Inhoeverre waren sekseverhoudingen ‘in beton gegoten’? In dit Jaarboek voorVrouwengeschiedenis passeren uiteenlopende visies op de relatie tussen vrou-wen en de stad de revue. Zij laten zien op welke wijze vrouwen in de langenegentiende eeuw omgingen met de mogelijkheden die stad hen bood, hoezij manoeuvreerden tussen en over de verschuivende grenzen van privé en pu-

Cruquiusweg 311019 AT Amsterdam

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On the Waterfront 5

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