Dutch is Beautiful

Fifty Years of Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan

Ton Broos, Annemarie Toebosch, and Karla Vandersypen

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, MI

Dutch is Beautiful by Ton Broos, Annemarie Toebosch, and Karla Vandersypen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, California, 94042, USA.

Copyright © 2019 by authors.

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Published in the United States of America by Michigan Publishing

Manufactured in the United States of America

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11461566

ISBN 978-1-60785-517-0 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-60785-518-7 (e-book)

ISBN 978-1-60785-585-9 (open-access)

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Cover photo: from left to right, Ton Broos, Annemarie Toebosch, Kees Snoek

1

For Janet Broos

Contents

- Dedication

- 1. Introduction

- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

- Looking Back to Look Forward

- 2. Wringing Beauty from an Obscure Language

- Keynote address of the 2016 Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies

- 3. History of Dutch at the University of Michigan

- The Teaching of Dutch at the University of Michigan

- What Alumni Say: Five Decades of Dutch at Michigan

- 4. The Netherlands Visiting Professorship at the University of Michigan

- 5. Dutch Literature

- The Dutch Writer-in-Residence Program

- Literary Authors Visiting the University of Michigan

- 6. The University Library Holdings of Dutch-Language Materials

- 7. Events and Conferences

- Lectures in the Fields of Dutch Language and Literature

- Conferences, Mini-Conferences, and Symposia

- Events and Exhibitions Fully or Partially Dedicated to Dutch

- Lectures in History

- Lectures in Public Policy

- Arts, Music, and Film

- 8. Annual De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lectures

- 9. Reflections on Anne Frank in Past and Present

- 10. A Selection of Publications

- 11. A Race and Ethnicity Focus

- Academic Activism

- Outreach

- Public Scholarship

- Dutch Memorial Day: Maintaining Colonial Innocence by Excluding People of Color

1

Introduction

We are extremely proud of our Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan (U-M). Since the early 1970s, it has developed from one person’s interest in a medieval literary work into a beginners’ course in the language, followed by more advanced language courses and various culture courses. Cooperation with other departments, such as Social Work, Music, Art History, Midwifery Science, African Studies, South and South-East Asian Studies, Judaic Studies, Linguistics, Creative Writing, Comparative Literature, and the Michigan Community Scholars Program, have continuously widened the interests of faculty and students as well as the scope of the program.

Putting all our achievements into perspective and looking to the future, we feel that this is the right moment to publish a narrative that gives an account of our endeavors, an explanation of our past attempts to promote Dutch and Flemish culture and language, and a description of how the teaching of Dutch language, culture, and history can be a tool to look at a world of diverse identities.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Annemarie Toebosch

The University of Michigan has a long history of prioritizing diversity that has found new direction under current University President Mark Schlissel’s 2015 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) goals and objectives. This direction aligns with the current vision of the Dutch and Flemish Studies program to bring together language and culture around issues of diversity and inclusion. As a specific goal, the program has set itself the task, in teaching and in scholarship, to examine the non-obvious links between, and the historical foundations of, Dutch progressivism and racism. In this process, and through close connections with academic and activism communities in the Dutch-speaking world, a decolonial program has taken shape that serves as a model at the university and beyond.

The program is also at the forefront of another development in the academy: the move away from academic isolationism and the myth of scientific objectivity toward a culture of public scholarship and academic activism. As the University of Michigan builds public scholarship centers, such as Rackham’s Institute for Social Change, the Dutch program is creating opportunities to address pressing social issues. And we are learning important lessons.

First, there are inherent problems with DEI missions in departments and at institutions that are predominantly white. One such problem is that the careers of white people involved with DEI or anti-racist work indirectly benefit from racism when their work is disseminated or otherwise positively valued. We add this work to our resumes, describe it in our review portfolios, and put it on our websites. While we believe it is important that this work is shared, the benefit we receive from this sharing constitutes a new form of exploitation, and Dutch and Flemish Studies encourages the university to acknowledge this and think through solutions.

That said, the impact of our DEI work has turned out to be significant, first of all for students who, through examination of a different culture’s diversity struggles, learn to think about their own identities and the role of societal power in their own communities. The pedagogy of Dutch and Flemish Studies engages students in guided dialog of inquiry-based learning that allows them to examine their own cultures and histories through the lens of what appears to many to be an accessible foreign culture. As such, we teach Dutch language and culture as a frame for exploration, a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

In terms of scholarship, the chair of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Dr. Andreas Gailus, recently said about our research and published articles that they “have sharpened the lens through which we view the world and learn from the history of the Netherlands and its culture.”

The second lesson is no less significant. Looking beyond the University of Michigan, the program is learning that the public scholarship it produces is giving marginalized Dutch communities a voice and a platform not directly available to them. Dutch and Flemish Studies has quite literally become a conduit and an ally.

Looking Back to Look Forward

Ton Broos

The direct reason for this publication stems from the eighteenth biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies (ICNS) organized by the American Association for Netherlandic Studies (AANS) that was held in Ann Arbor on June 2–4, 2016. After three days of workshops, enlightening lectures, and exciting excursions to the Bell Tower and Detroit Institute of Arts, we were treated in the Matthaei Botanical Gardens to a keynote speech by Dr. Ton Broos, formerly Director of Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan. In an interesting and somewhat provocative way, the audience was taken back to the earlier days of Dutch teaching in the United States, the ups and downs of the Dutch program in Ann Arbor, and some encouraging words for the teaching of Dutch in the upcoming years. Immediately afterward there were many voices of approval and there were requests of a possible publication for further distribution to stimulate and broaden additional discussion. We hope to achieve that with this publication.

For too many years the less commonly taught languages have been the victim of university officials who were only guided by enrollment figures and subsequently put the (usually low-paid) instructors of these languages in subservient positions. Therefore, the instructor was repeatedly forced to look for support from outside the university while staying positively critical and optimistic.

In the case of the Netherlands and Belgium, the size of both countries might adversely reflect on the feelings of importance and self-confidence within the rest of the world. This, combined with a mercantile attitude to speak the language of the customer, results in minimal financial support worldwide for the teaching of Dutch and Flemish. Nevertheless, we are not disheartened by our limitations and are not retracting into ourselves. We certainly do not turn away from new situations or developments but instead expand our horizons and open doors for interdisciplinary collaboration.

One must be impressed with the increase in enrollment and activities in Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan in recent years. There is a positive trend among students to see the value of one quality teacher who guides and advances with them during their four semesters of language requirement. Students may further enhance their knowledge in one-on-one independent studies or specifically designed courses in topics such as modern Dutch literature as well as Dutch linguistics, art history, socio-political developments, diversity and decolonial thought, etc.

Modern-day language instruction is certainly not limited to word acquisition and grammar as diverse technologies allow for closer connections with world cultures. For many years there has also been a possibility to interest students in broader Dutch culture in our freshman seminars, which offer insights into the history of Dutch colonialism, slavery and oppression, and the complex world of modern Amsterdam.

The most successful course in the history of our program is Anne Frank in Past and Present. The course started in 1993 and became an immediate and remaining success as witnessed by the numerous students who have to be waitlisted every year. One of the reasons for its popularity is that the course changed with the times from a sad story about a girl and her famous diary during the Holocaust to a wider discussion about critical involvement in present-day world problems that all students can relate to. In a special chapter called “Reflections on Anne Frank in Past and Present,” Ton Broos looks back at this development. Special mention here goes to the contributions made to the course each year by Holocaust survivors Dr. Irene Butter and Mr. and Mrs. Bonnewit, whose visits are irreplaceable in making the incomprehensible topic of Holocaust persecution real for students, and by members of the Jewish-Palestinian peace activist group Zeitouna, who embody the hard work required when people refuse to be enemies and forge mutual understanding.

We are full of pride about our annual De Vries – Van der Kooy lecture, which brings scholars from the United States, Netherlands, and Belgium to our community to enlighten us on the entire spectrum of Dutch and Flemish experiences in the past and present. One glance at the speakers’ list reveals the variety of subjects, like the Dutch Supreme Court, WWII experiences, Dutch immigration, Dutch diversity and intolerance, New Netherland, Rembrandt, Dutch art, colonial literature, water management, television news for Dutch children, Dutch sex work, etc. From the number of enthusiastic supporters that show their appreciation every year, we may assume that many more exciting lectures will be presented in the future.

For many years, the Library at the University of Michigan has been a loyal partner and supporter of Dutch and Flemish Studies. Acquisition of books and music has been ongoing and has benefitted by gifts from Radboud University of Nijmegen, Stichting Donemus, and annual monetary support by De Taalunie and individual donors. Over the years, several exhibitions found enthusiastic support and assistance from librarians and made use of the extensive collection. Worth mentioning were exhibitions on eighteenth-century political pamphlets (with an award-winning catalogue), catchpenny prints, Dutch animation, Dutch versions of Robinson Crusoe (which led to an exchange with the University of Groningen), seventeenth-century political pamphlets from the famous Knuttel collection in the Library, and Dutch novels in English translation.

Relations with the local Netherlands America University League are very close and mutually beneficial. The Dutch lecturers at U-M have all served on the board of the organization, and the two have supported each other in words and deeds since the founding of the organization in 1978.

Cooperation with other universities in the United States continues and is usually put into practice at the biennial interdisciplinary conferences organized by the AANS. We were able to organize the conference at the University of Michigan in 1986, 2002, and 2016, and the U-M lecturer is on the board of the national organization. There is also contact with the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Netherlandic Studies, and the previous lecturer presents papers at their annual conference, which are published in their online publication Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies.

As Dutch and Flemish Studies plans the anniversary of fifty years at the University of Michigan and looks beyond this celebration into the future, we may use words like potential, opportunity, and hope to express our optimism. However, we must emphasize that we wish to count on the help and support of individuals, institutions, and organizations. The Netherlands could make more generous gestures not only in financial support but also in scholarships or funding for study abroad in Dutch-speaking areas or by reinstating the Netherlands Visiting Professorship.

Finally, for those who are willing to have an exceptional Dutch experience, there is a weekly meeting in Dutch every Thursday in the Department of Germanic Languages at the University of Michigan: the so-called Dutch Lunch, a tradition at our university since 1975. Van harte welkom!

The following chapter presents the integral text of the keynote address by Ton Broos as it was delivered on June 4, 2016, concluding the eighteenth biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies. Although this lecture covered the more than thirty years of Broos’s tenure at our university and his vision on several aspects of teaching Dutch and Dutch-American relations, we thought it beneficial to paint a more complete picture in our following chapter, “History of Dutch at the University of Michigan,” and to describe the program’s history of academic programming and initiative (chapters 4–9). Finally, the concluding chapters look back at the Anne Frank course from the initial idea to its developed and still growing status and examine the program’s current direction of academic activism and public scholarship. We are sure that you will be surprised, delighted, and amused.

2

Wringing Beauty from an Obscure Language

Keynote address of the 2016 Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies

Ton Broos

My talk tonight is one of looking backward and forward, of stern admonishing and solemn reflections, but as is always the case, all seriousness becomes a variety of comedy after some time. I leave it up to you to figure out when to take me seriously or feel offended. That is what teaching Dutch in the US does to you: you pontificate in small classes, as part of a larger department that shows little respect. Rowing in your own little pond, you put your oars in straight, always making sure to use both oars to avoid going around in circles. As a Dutchman, you are often viewed as either a person with a Protestant work ethic or a Catholic who can sin but clean up after confession. I do not fit in either category and always felt more Willem de Kooning than Piet Mondriaan. Like them, I have acquired over the years here the gift of being of two countries, warts and all, and I do vote in both of them. We fortunately have here in Ann Arbor a community of Dutch speakers and sympathizers. They help you fighting a loss of self-respect, threats to your uniqueness, or the indifference of others. If you lose the sense of belonging, you may want to start blaming others “who do not understand you,” who are “always against you,” who want to take over your culture, or country, even your past history. You can tell that I wrote part of this during the electoral primaries. Thinking nationally, I hope that “Dutchies” will not let a bubble of self-defeatism limit their thoughts. Go look for support and understanding. Universities are good places to start, even if it is a sobering thought that famous Dutch scientists and philosophers like Huygens, Van Leeuwenhoek, Hugo de Groot, and Spinoza never had academic positions! Still, nowadays the university is the place to be, the integral part of the culture of a country, and let’s face it, without a university there would be no teaching of Dutch in this country. Upon arriving in Ann Arbor in the Department of Germanic Languages in 1982, I came across a description of Dutch history, which might give you reason to pause or understand why it is important that Americans need teachers to have the right imagination of the Low Countries. Listen to this curious description of the Dutch Golden Age.

It took the Netherlands some eighty years to free themselves from the yoke of Spain, who was Philip II. He didn’t want to live below sea level, preferring to stay in Spain, where he ruled in Absentia, a small town on the coast. Philip sent the Duke of Alva to the Netherlands, where the people drank lots of “jenever” to keep their spirits up because they were a little low. That’s why the land became known as the Low Countries. Fortunately a hero rose in their mist. He was a gentleman with German blood, known as William the silent orange. His rallying cries inspired even the Flemish, a people who speak with a clear throat from drinking gueuze beer, northerners drink water and are called “watergeuzen.” Victory over Philip came when the Dutch and the Flemish, led by a Trappist monk called Lambiek, opened a hole in the Dike and drowned the enemy. They stationed a boy near the Dike who put his finger in the hole when the last Spaniard had left. To hold cities safe, they asked and got a stadholder. The Dutch decided to sail the world with the help of a Blue atlas to confuse the Spanish and British. Admiral Van Trumpet was famous in defeating the British, as well as Michiel de Gruyter and the brothers Piet and Albert Heyn, who later opened grocery stores. The first Dutch multinational was called VOC, short for very old company, trading in spices, norms, and values. In Indonesia, the Dutch stole everything from the natives; they brought home their food called nassi and even their furniture, called rijsttafel. The Dutch also tried to find a North-West passage, so they sent a simpleton called Henry Hudson, who was surprised to find a river with his name on it. This lunatic had a ship called the Half Moon, which was full of beads and other trinkets. They were used for buying Manhattan, which they got secondhand for twenty-four dollars. To keep the old and New Amsterdammers at bay, they hired a man called Peter Stuyvesant. He was the last of the Dutch settlers, actually born in Friesland. He taught the natives how to grow tobacco, so he could put his name on a package of cigarettes. He died of secondhand smoke inhalation when his wooden leg caught fire. Many Dutch immigrants left their native turf to find bogs in Michigan, where you still find places like Holland, Zeeland, and Terschelling. Dutch immigrants insist that Terschelling is actually a corruption of “gezellig.” They introduced the habit of saying that you can’t translate the Dutch word “gezellig,” and they persist in eating thick pea soup, oil balls, and bitter balls on hot summer days.

That last phenomenon is actually true as one can experience at the annual Summerfest in Grand Rapids, Michigan, two hours from here, where people walk around with “you ain’t much, if you ain’t Dutch” on their T-shirt. Equally true is the fact that the university library here in Ann Arbor has a remarkable collection of so-called robinsonades, mostly eighteenth-century stories modeled after Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The collection was put together and donated by a lawyer-geologist called Lucius Hubbard in the 1920s. Among the 1,500 plus volumes you will find Dutch titles like The Hague Robinson, The Walcheren Robinson, The Old and the Young Robinson, The New English Robinson, The French Robinson, etc. In 1992, we made an exhibition and published a book about it. One very curious Dutch example is an imaginary voyage called The Mighty Kingdom of Krinke Kesmes, first published in 1708. That date happens to be eleven years before Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Our collector Hubbard got all excited when he tried to prove that Defoe used this Dutch novel as an inspiration or even plagiarized parts. The book describes the story of a Dutchman who, after fighting the British in 1674, ends up on a voyage to the unknown Southland or Australia, where he discovers a kingdom called Krinke Kesmes, an anagram of the author Henrik Smeeks. He meets a Dutch cabin boy who tells the story of his life which includes a shipwreck and a stay on a desert island. The island has innovative ideas like freedom of religion, women are equal to men, and philosophy is championed over religion. I bring it up today because the Dutch boy happens also to be teaching Dutch to the natives, and you might find modern parallels. I quote:

I am very properly provided for here; my School never consists of more than six young People, whom I instruct in the Dutch language, which I make them understand, speak, read and write. These Southlanders believe, that the happiness of their country, and of its good and very magnificent government, depends entirely on the good education of youth, therefore no slatternly crones are allowed to be Schoolmistresses, nor drunken topers, or ill-mannered men to be Schoolmasters; such people are despised, as are those who lack common sense, as well as laggards and whiners, who are not well-spoken. They believe here, that all, or most failings that seem to be inborn in many people, have been received in their Youth from those who educate and instruct them, and which then stay with them through habit. Therefore Schoolmasters here have to be sensible, observant, prudent, and courteous. I adapted myself to their laws, and ever since have lived as decently as I can; for that reason I have been given this red Coat and red Bonnet, which here is a garb of honor.

It is a remarkable enlightened story of fiction, written in the eighteenth century. You can read it for yourself online at dbnl.com, but only the U-M library here has the 1732 edition. Not imaginary is that the Dutch were the first to reach Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, brought home the early goods from Japan, also tea, ginseng, and the apples from China called sinaasappels or oranges. Spices were stolen from the Moluccas; Holland later traded one spice island and Surinam for New York and had other fights with the English all over the world. As a payback, we got all negative Dutch expressions like Dutch uncle, Dutch courage, Dutch crossing, or a Dutch wife. That last one refers to a pillow, to ridicule the Dutch, and there are at least a thousand of those “Dutch” terms. Instead of reclaiming the epithet, most Dutch people laugh at this. Serious historical research about this phenomenon remains full of gaps. It reminds me of comedian George Carlin who once asked: If people from Poland are called Poles, do we call the people from Holland “holes”?

Nevertheless, I want to seriously focus now on one person in particular, and I have chosen, not surprisingly, from the eighteenth century. James Boswell, most famous for his Life of Dr. Johnson, and known among some Dutch scholars for his correspondence with Belle van Zuylen, went to Utrecht in 1763, at age twenty-three, for his legal education. He studied Scots law, which is largely Roman law, different from English law. It was a tradition that to prepare for the Scottish bar, one completed one’s education in Holland. Boswell’s father and grandfather studied at Leyden, but James needed some improvement in his culture and manners, and Utrecht seemed to be a better place. His father was also worried about his melancholy, what we now call his bouts of depression. We get an idea of his opinions through his father’s admonitions, when the older Boswell writes:

We cannot know everything, so let us attach ourselves to the most useful things. I applaud you for not condemning the Dutch language; our countrymen commonly do. One good reason for it is that they don’t understand it. It is not a polite language. ’tis true, except in the mouth of a handsome woman. I must make this exception, for I remember well when I have heard a pretty lady saying “O hemel!” I thought it musical. But one thing we must own, that the English is a good deal borrowed from it – or, which is the same, from its mother, the High Dutch. If you want to know a little of it speedily so as to divert yourself with Jacob Cats when you come home, you had best take a master to teach you the reading of it. I did this for a month with success.

Boswell decided to write a little Dutch every day, and it is tempting to quote extensively from his Dutch. I selected one passage: on February 24, 1764, he writes:

Zeekerlyk Ik weel doen Hollandsche te leeren. Hoe veel engelsche Gecken hebben heer’ geweest en die hebben not gedogten van het een word te kennen. Is hy niet een Geck die can in een land blyven zondert te minst kennis van zyn taal? Is hy niet als een Beest waneer hy met die hollansche menschen is en can hy lang blyven in het Vaderland zondert te zyn dickwyls met haar Zoonen? Neen, neen, dat can niet worden. Moet hy niet in die Schuyten ryzen? Moet hy niet in hollanschen huyzen en Winkelen worden? En zeekerlyk hy moet in die straaten wandelen. Noe, Mynheer, Ik zal ‘t voorstaan dat hy wie can niet een word van Het land’s taal spreeken, can heel versmaadelyk worden of zyn onweetenheyd ontdekt wierden; en men zoud dinken dat die bewustheyd daarvan zoud hem zyn broek bevuylen maaken. Maar zoo hebben veel van myn landsluyden t Uytreght zyn zelven ten toon gestellen.

In English:

Certainly I am doing well to learn Dutch. How many English fools have been here, and they have never thought of knowing a word. Isn’t he a fool who can stay in a country without the least knowledge of its language? Is he not like a beast whenever he is with Dutch people, and can he stay long in the fatherland (nation) without being with her sons frequently? No, no, that cannot be. Must he not travel in the Schuiten (barges)? Must he not find himself in houses and shops? And surely he must walk in the streets? Now, Sir, I shall maintain that he who cannot speak a word of the country’s language will not count for much, if his ignorance is discovered, and one would think that the consciousness of it would make him dirty his breeches. But thus have many of my countrymen exhibited themselves in Utrecht.

I can see you nod in agreement, because the problem for English speakers is the same in Holland and Belgium nowadays. So many native Dutch people speak their English and are surprised when English-speaking foreigners want to practice their Dutch. I know that the landscape is changing of late, with the new refugees, and in that respect I am optimistic for the future. However, I wish Dutch people would stop thinking that Dutch is such a difficult language. Also, please stop asking teachers how many students they have; it is quality over quantity. It only shows how little confidence you have in your own culture and language.

The Dutch are notorious for their false modesty, and they don’t promote their own historical importance abroad very well. “The Dutch are so happy in their own dullness” writes George Dempster to Boswell in 1764, and “Try to dutchify your immortal soul,” whatever that means. In the same letter he advises him to examine the country for its “political views, for their industry, their commerce, the effects of frugality, freedom, and good laws. Inquire with regard to their method of levying taxes, in which they surpass all Europe, since they neither restrain commerce nor oppress the poor. Observe the mixture of the monarchical and republican form of their government.” This was written 252 years ago and has not lost any of its relevance. There might be one person who would not agree to this mixture, however, as he wrote that Holland was “encumbered with a complicated and perplexed constitution.” John Adams, one of the founding fathers of America, had the unenviable task to ask the Dutch for money. He started his report on September 4, 1780, with “I am very pleased with Holland. It is a singular country. It is like no other. It is all the effect of industry, and the work of art.” After a few weeks, he lost some of his enthusiasm, writing that they have but one God, Mammon, i.e., money. His two sons, John Quincy and Charles, thirteen and eleven, went to Latin School in Amsterdam with little success. They were removed at the headmaster’s request and were enrolled at Leiden University for independent instruction. In the meantime Friesland was the first to recognize the United States as an independent nation in February 1782, and, after France, the Netherlands did the same a few months later. Adams got his loan of about two million dollars, and his house became the first American embassy anywhere. He later wrote that Holland’s role had been decisive for the course of the American Revolution. No doubt he especially meant his own role.

Do Dutch people know the role of their own country? In elementary school, I learned a song about John Paul Jones who was “een aardig ventje,” a nice guy, but knew nothing about his capture of the English warship Serapis in 1779, brought to Texel as loot. Not many people know that Alexander Hamilton – his portrait is on the ten-dollar bill – had a Dutch wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, and mother-in-law, [Catherine] Van Rensselaer. Revolutionary anti-English feelings led people in this country to promoting the Low Countries to the position of the cradle of American civilization in the nineteenth century. Annette Stott in her study Holland Mania describes in detail how Americans fell in love with the Netherlands and its art, fashion, or antiques and outlined how they revised their history. Rip van Winkle became an icon of Dutchness, but real Dutch literature in libraries was limited to Vondel’s Lucifer or poems by Jacob Cats or Jacob Steendam, a seventeenth-century Dutch poet who had lived in New Netherland. Who knew? Steendam’s two poems give no inside in the view that the Dutch brought their form of democracy to the island in the center of the world, also known as New Amsterdam. Russel Shorto is more certain about this than I am. Given that the population of New Amsterdam was about 2,400 in 1660 and the actual census of 1730 calculates 8,622 inhabitants, I question the impact. His view is one of wishful outside looking in and has few pieces of evidence, but it swelled every Dutch breast with pride, like an embarrassment of riches. As consolation I might add that the colony of New Netherland encompassed the future states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

We should therefore not neglect the Dutch touch in the US. I only do not believe in a large culture-shocking influence, because I prefer the little telltale details that tweak our interest and show a culture of vegetable soup rather than a melting pot. Sojourner Truth, the famous slave abolitionist and feminist, grew up speaking Dutch. These details could be part of our promoting the Netherlands and Belgium, not forgetting Dutch Surinam. Cultural attachés should not be on the lowest rung of the diplomatic ladder, and the people in the Low Countries should also realize that the US is more than New York or Hollywood.

How do we make the Netherlands and Belgium attractive for our students? Do we realize that fewer students are interested in learning one language? They want wide-ranging studies like information, communication, or culture. Unfortunately, most students don’t read books anymore, and I wonder if it would help our enrollment if Cees Noteboom would win the Nobel Prize for literature. Perhaps for two weeks. What if Holland or Belgium won the World Cup? Perhaps two students will come to class with an orange or red devil shirt. Is Johan Cruijff a name with staying power? What is the Dutch cultural impact? I checked the Dictionary of Global Culture and got the names of Rembrandt, Erasmus, Hieronymus Bosch, Father Damien, van Gogh, van Dyck, Spinoza, Sinterklaas, Rubens, and Frans Hals. Very selective, I think, as Vermeer or Anne Frank are missing. The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know does include Anne Frank and Vermeer, next to Rembrandt, Rubens, Mondriaan, van Gogh (a troubled genius who cut off one of his ears), Spinoza, and Erasmus. I realize that sport fame differs from art and literature, that the internet has changed everything, and that so much is now audiovisual. World fame goes to Andre Rieu, Dutch DJs, or music bands, who typically do not use Dutch in music or language. Do we take our art seriously only after fame abroad? Has America replaced the role of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France in making cultural taste fashionable? Do the Dutch still suffer from a lack of cultural self-confidence? Is it enough to put the Rijksmuseum on computer? Perhaps we can learn from business people who have an angle on how to deal with Dutch men and women? Here are some observations and recommendations from a website:

- The Dutch avoid superlatives. Compliments are offered sparingly, and to say that something is “not bad” is to praise it.

- A person who never offers criticism is seen as either being simple-minded or failing to tell the truth. The Dutch will argue but seldom take offense.

- The Dutch speak directly and use a lot of eye contact. To a foreigner, they may appear abrupt, but it is just their manner of communicating.

- Do not discuss money or prices or ask personal questions.

- Dutch humor is either very subtle, or very dry and sarcastic, with little in between.

These observations come from a website for businessmen and diplomats, some of them also on Wikipedia. I read also that American soldiers were instructed not to tell jokes to the Dutch as they would not appreciate it. This should not keep us from reflecting on the future of Dutch in this country. And that future is not only in students’ favorite subjects like business or law. Universities should see the relevance of diversity with specialists who study Dutch art, literature, politics, social studies, and architecture optimistically as part of a Dutch program with minors, etc. Teachers of Dutch should have a broad knowledge of Dutch history, like art historians familiar with the Bible and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. AANS members should collaborate much more with each other and with fellow scholars. They should for instance cooperate with and publish in the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, which is peer reviewed, free, and in open access. Let’s be more creative and put a lot of extra in “extra muros”.

Language journal Onze Taal once wrote that Dutch is number 47 in total of language speakers, but number 6 in language importance, which means quoted on the internet, translated from and into, etc. Boswell treated it with respect, and I do agree with him on the importance of grammar when writing, even if it has lost some of its glamour in the foreign language class. Students of Dutch might learn from Boswell to try and be patient. After all, the speed of travel in Boswell’s time was 3 miles per hour in the efficient Dutch barges, which is probably the same speed as you drive through the center of New York. I am not sure what the ideal “method” of learning Dutch is. Even in my small classes the differences between students with their growing prefrontal cortex were often a stumbling block. A graduate student wants to read seventeenth-century Dutch in one semester, and his freshman classmate freezes when he hears the word “adjective.” We try to teach language rules to make your own sentences or certain phrases useful in Dutch company or shops, etc. I remember making a little make-believe shop in class to put it all into practice, although I myself never learned how to shop in English class. So I didn’t teach the way I was taught. Just do it seems to be the slogan nowadays, but I know there is also a teachable social and cultural side: Hema-worst does not translate as Walmart sausage. How do you communicate the taste of drop or waterzooi, roti, kouseband, or nassibal, or explain Staphorst or IJzerbedevaart? These language “realia,” the characteristics from the Low Countries and Surinam, are the hardest but also the most exciting parts of teaching Dutch. They are definitely the trickiest challenges of a translator’s job, who must often balance art with algorithms.

A few months ago, I saw on television a volunteer teaching Dutch to a Syrian immigrant. To my amazement, I immediately recognized the book they were using: Levend Nederlands. It was the same course that I started with in 1978 in Sheffield! John King arose with Kees Bergsma as a true Rip van Winkle. I wonder if they still let him go to the post office to make a phone call, or to a bank without ATM but with stuivers and guldens. Do they still use cassette tapes with Sinterklaasliedjes, including zwarte Piet? Some people remember student Paolo Sanseverino on VHS European PAL-system. Who remembers writing homework with a fountain pen, smoking in the classroom, or keeping index cards in a shoebox? I recall showing students an original Dutch or Belgian newspaper, singing Boudewijn de Groot songs in class, by the light of an overhead projector, and showing students a pocket dictionary. A Xerox was a novelty after the stencil burner, which was an innovation after carbon copies. Fortunately, technology moves on, and I see a great future for games, virtual reality, and better internet connections. Perhaps we could also rap our way through Dutch history to attract young followers.

These good old days’ memories compel me today to give a few laudatory flowers to colleagues of the past. I remember Johan Snapper, whom I loved to roast when we all met in 2000 at his Janus conference. I especially recall his strong push for Dutch as AANS president and fundraiser. He would act the playboy of the Western world, accompanied by a Calvinist harmonium. His Dutch Protestant background was planted in Michigan, like his colleague Walter Lagerwey, who worked for the United States Foreign Broadcast and Intelligence Service. He once wrote: “For me the sound of the wind which more than anything else stands for home, symbolizes the Dutch identity. It is in the littleness itself that the greatness of Holland is comprised, the wind of freedom, the wind of the spirit.”

Lagerwey was the author of Speak Dutch. Colleagues remember Bill Shetter’s The Netherlands in Perspective and his Dutch Grammar (still in print). I recall also hardworking and idealistic colleagues like Margriet Lacey, Paul Sellin, Bob Kirsner, or Ray Wakefield, to name a few. It would be interesting to research their motives, their religious background, or the family or relational links with the Low Countries.

A colleague recently told me that I am in fact the bridge between the old and new generation of Dutch teachers in this country. That may be right for the instructional part, the part that Janet calls baby Dutch, where “de” and “het” make all the difference and “kofschips” sail the world. However, I would also stress the importance of the lone wolf, the specialist who tackles one aspect of Dutch and sticks with it “just because.” In this respect, I would like to mention one person, one former colleague who taught Dutch as little as he could because he didn’t like it. He didn’t suffer idiots gladly, because it kept him from his own research and writing, which comprised of novels and poetry, many translations from Dutch and scholarly interpretations of international literature. Eric Montague Beekman was one of those rare animals who combined a bearish attitude and posture with an elegant and light dance step, a combination of heavy lifting with feather-light down dwindling. Trying to describe the many facets of Monty’s research and his importance for Dutch literature is like trying to put a pair of pants on an octopus. Those of us who were teaching Dutch literature in the English-speaking world used his interpretations of Paul van Ostaijen or his selection of Multatuli’s aphorisms. Not many people know that he also translated stories from modern Dutch literature, because they were unpublished samples of works by writers-in-residence done for the Translation Foundation. “Translation is such a marvelous nomansland. I feel generous toward the unknown slob who has wrung beauty from an obscure language (…) I fancy myself creative while translating one medium of speech into another; it requires skill, knowledge, and sensitivity” (quotes from his 1971 novel Lame Duck).

Because of his translations and his editorial work in the series Library of the Indies, Monty became world famous. Dutch Indies literature would have stayed hidden in the caves of forgotten Dutch texts, the faded portraits of tempo dulu or times past, if it was not for Monty’s persistence and dedication, so well worded in the title of his study Troubled Pleasures. Fame was not in the stars if you look at his childhood. You don’t know what parental cruelty, childhood abandonment, and mental anguish is until you have read the description that Monty made of Simon Klemman, his alter ego in his autobiographical works Frozen Years and Mastering Silence. Young Simon is left in a boarding school in World War II not unlike Dickens’s Oliver Twist, complete with corporal punishment and porridge for breakfast. He becomes a homeless child, wandering the streets of WWII Holland. His subsequent years in Indonesia are of a similar mental torment, now done by his alcoholic abusive father. It is perplexing that Monty even spent one minute of his time on the country that brought so much cruel memories. But then, as he later writes, one should not remain despondent but turn defiant.

That must have inspired him also in Rumphius, the German-born naturalist who worked for the VOC on Ambon and was the author of two masterpieces on tropical plants and animals. Monty translated The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet and the Ambonese Herbal in seven hefty volumes, originally published in Dutch in the eighteenth century. Naturalist Rumphius became blind in 1670, lost his wife and daughter four years later in an earthquake, and lost his manuscript with illustrations in a fire in 1687. The first six books of the herbal were shipped five years later to Holland for publication, but the ship sank after a French attack. Fortunately, a copy had been made, which he amended until three months before his death in 1702 at the age of seventy-four. Both titles were published in 1705 and 1741. I invited Monty to Ann Arbor where he delivered the fourth De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture in 1999. It was a remarkable talk because he introduced uncommon things in the spirit of Rumphius, comparing it to Maria Dermoût’s interpretation in her novel The Ten Thousand Things. I quote from the book A Different Magic that we published after the lecture:

What he [Rumphius] teaches is that we should see beauty even if one’s life is a disaster, even if malignity rears up and strikes. In other words, we should try to transcend the now, overcome the constrictions that society and the human condition have forced upon our souls. Life is always difficult, but one should be able to warm one’s soul in the glow of beauty. … Wisdom is not only in the heart but also in the object. It requires listening. We should listen to nature as Rumphius did. It is a gift, because it is free, gratis, for nothing. It will restore us and it can provide solace. And that is why it is magic.

How appropriate in this botanical garden. And that is why I thank Monty, who worked tirelessly to have these works published, which always meant also battles with the rendementsdenkers, the for-profit bean counters without imagination.

Cover image from A Different Magic, by E. M. Beekman, 2001.

Over the years I have also dealt with the bureaucrats who think they define you, because they hold the purse strings and declare “Wie betaalt, bepaalt” [who makes the pay, defines the play]. You feel sometimes like a sausage from the “diervriendelijke slager,” the animal-friendly butcher. We had a few cases of bureaucratic downsizing here in Ann Arbor. One, after more than fifty-three years of an annual Netherlands visiting professor in all disciplines, the Dutch Academy of Sciences cut the popular program in 2010. Rendementsdenken, or only thinking about short-term profit! Two, after twenty-three years of visiting writers-in-residence, the program was stopped by the Literary Fund in 2005. Rendementsdenken! Three, after more than twenty years of supporting half of the lecturer’s salary, De Taalunie discontinued in 1992! Taalunie-schmaalunie! The specialists of rendementsdenken! The word should be in the Opperlans dictionary and is as useful as Hottentottententententoonstelling, but not as funny. It felt like I was always an altar boy kneeling behind the priests on the bureaucrats’ altar of Mammon giving thanks but receiving only farts that had to be stifled with incense. This may sound like sour grapes but is more like frozen grapes, used for making sweet ice wine for dessert. With a variation on an old Roman saying: beware of bureaucrats, even if, or actually because, they come bearing gifts.

What eventually saved the Dutch program here was none other than Anne Frank. The idea of starting a course on Anne Frank came at the ICNS conference of 1992. It boosted my enrollment, and to my amazement there also was still research to be done. Every year produces news items about her or closely related to the Anne Frank story. From less relevant details like the fact that Argentina has a national holiday on Anne Frank’s birthday, June 12, to the shoot of the Anne Frank chestnut tree a few miles from here in the Holocaust museum in Farmington. There will always be a discussion about the copyright of her diary and the money around it. Among the details of WWII are the silly and the trivial ones. I remember triumphantly showing a Nazi helmet made into a chamber pot, but my students were not amused. Other details give you pause and unexpected insights. Ian Buruma in his book Year Zero: A History of 1945 describes the English army liberating Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died, when in April an army consignment arrived. Due to the chaos in efficiency, it contained large quantities of lipstick. The commanding officer remembers: “I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. [It] started to give them back their humanity.” It was the result of unintended consequences, and that is what happens sometimes in the classroom, during research, or at conferences. My chance encounter at a CAANS-conference in Newfoundland resulted in a poetry publication and an endowment for Dutch Studies. This does not happen very often, and there is no magic key to success, other than to act and work hard.

In conclusion: this keynote had perhaps more notes than keys as it looked more like an eighteenth-century curiosity cabinet than a concise and intelligent lecture with sound advice. I believe it is better to have a thorough understanding of one region in the world, defined by a language and culture, than to have a mediocre acquaintance with all the countries in the atlas. Dare to be a unique specialist. One could be proud like the seventeenth-century Dutch poet Roemer Visscher, who wrote in his work Sinnepoppen, a wonderful book of emblems, next to the picture of a squirrel, symbol of ingenuity, the following: “O Dutchman … only you deserve to be praised above all nations of the world, which are all together stupid and unskilled … Do not be ashamed of your dullness [botticheyd], since in both sea trade and travel you exceed all the other nations in know-how.” This may sound like nationalistic jingoism, but it counterbalances the self-relativism and self-flagellation that is heard sometimes from Dutch “doe maar gewoon”-commentators and history revisionists. My final words of encouragement for all students and image makers of the Low Countries are thus: Follow your own instinct, work hard, be inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Thank you.

References

Adams Family Papers. An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society. 2017. Founded 1791. https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive

Barfoot, C. C., and K. J. Bostoen, eds. “Een Beytie Hollansche”: James Boswell’s Dutch Compositions. Leiden: Academic Press, 1995.

Beekman, E. M. A Different Magic: What a Naturalist Taught a Novelist. Pasadena, CA: Mitra Publications Group, 2001.

Broos, Ton J., and Peggy Daub. An Exhibit of Robinson Crusoe in the Old and New Worlds: A Selection from the Hubbard Collection of Imaginary Voyages. Catalogue of the exhibit in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan, October 5–November 25, 1992.

Pottle, Frederick A. Boswell in Holland 1763–1764: Including His Correspondence with Belle de Zuylen (Zélide). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952.

Smeeks, Hendrik. The Mighty Kingdom of Krinke Kesmes (1708). Presented by David Fausett with a translation of the Dutch text by Robert-H. Leek. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995.

Stott, Annette. Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1998.

3

History of Dutch at the University of Michigan

Interdisciplinary effort has been key to the success of Dutch (and Flemish) Studies. The diversity of the people interested in Dutch Studies has been remarkable. Many scholars and friends at the university obviously were central participants, but “outsiders” elsewhere in the state and in the Netherlands and Belgium also had a keen interest in seeing that the program developed properly. We owe a great debt to the many supporters who were deeply interested and found the university “fertile soil” for achieving their personal and collective goals. Yet it is also true that Dutch Studies here was in a constant struggle for survival. Finances were hard to come by for the Dutch professorship, for funding the library collection, and for holding special conferences and special programs. Despite these limitations, the program has grown and has been of considerable benefit to the university.

There have been grand special events, such as the visit of Queen Beatrix in 1982. There is also the rather remarkable history of over fifty visiting professors and Dutch writers-in-residence here from the Netherlands, providing scholarly continuity and linkage to Dutch culture. These visitors have represented the entire spectrum of university education. We have sponsored conferences on such topics as euthanasia and world politics, which generated considerable interest on campus and the local community. Many University of Michigan staff and students with intellectual and research interests in the Netherlands have profited from the language instruction received here. Thus, the focus on Dutch at Michigan has been of real value to the cosmopolitan goals and the intellectual life of the university over these many years.

Dutch Studies at the University of Michigan has a long and many-faceted history. The following sections will cover in some detail the programs and people who have been associated with things Dutch on the Ann Arbor campus of the university.

The Teaching of Dutch at the University of Michigan

In spite of considerable interest in Ann Arbor in things Dutch from early in the century, the first documentation of the language being taught at U-M is a 1968 letter from Willard C. Wichers of the Netherlands Information Service, Midwestern Division, in Holland, Michigan, to Robert L. Williams, U-M Administrative Dean in the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Wichers refers to the interest of his colleagues at the Dutch Embassy in the “course being offered in the study of the Dutch language by your graduate student, Mr. van Rosevelt” (Frans R. van Rosevelt, graduate student and teaching assistant in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures).

The first listing of a beginning Dutch course in the LSA Bulletin was not until the 1970–71 academic year, when Dutch 111 and 112 appeared as part of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures: “First [and Second] Special Reading Course.” In 1972, Frank Rhodes, Dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LSA), is corresponding with van Rosevelt about the latter’s plans to offer a second-year course in Dutch. Rhodes also refers to the possibility of a gift from the Netherlands government toward the cost of a chair [of Dutch] within the department, apparently in response to van Rosevelt’s own efforts to get the Dutch Ministry of Education to fund at least 50 percent of such a position. These efforts by van Rosevelt were apparently spurred on by the 1970 founding, with a substantial grant from the Netherlands Ministry of Education, of a Princess Beatrix Chair of Dutch Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (where a Dutch program had developed favorably for some years). At Columbia University, the Queen Wilhelmina Chair, founded about 1913 by private Dutch-American firms for the teaching of Dutch history, received a similar grant. The U-M chair did not materialize, and in fact van Rosevelt’s appointment was terminated at the end of the 1973–74 academic year.

But the Dutch program had other advocates. In June 1973, Associate Dean Charles Witke argues for the maintenance of the “present vigorous program in Dutch literature,” which is “most essential for not only the Program in Comparative Literature, the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, but for other components of our university such as political science, history, philosophy, and others.” Dean Hayden K. Carruth responds that “I believe the German Department to be committed to Dutch, not only for the excellent intellectual reasons which you cite, but also because of the strong cultural ties which exist between Michigan and Holland.” The LSA Bulletin for 1973–74 (van Rosevelt’s final year as instructor) lists four Dutch courses: 111 and 112, plus an independent study and Modern Dutch Poetry and Prose in English Translation.

The Dutch Studies program did continue under the direction of visiting instructors from the Netherlands. For 1974–75, Dr. Gijsbertha F. (Bep) Bos (University of Amsterdam) was named Visiting Associate Professor. In addition to the beginning Dutch sequence, she offered an advanced seminar in Dutch linguistic theory. And by September of 1975 an agreement had been worked out between the Netherlands Ministry of Education and the U-M Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures whereby the Dutch government funded half the salary of a triennially appointed instructor, recruited in the Netherlands. This person was to hold the rank of Visiting Lecturer in Netherlandic Language and Literature. The first incumbent of this position was Henk F. Meulenbeld, Drs. (MA), the University of Leiden, who taught Dutch in 1975–76 and 1976–77. In addition to the first-year sequence, he added a two-semester second-year sequence (Dutch 231 and 232) plus an advanced seminar on his specialty, Middle Dutch literature: A Medieval Dutch Play, Elckerlijc, and the Contemporary English Version. He was unable to fulfill the third year of his contract, which was taken by Dr. Kees Snoek, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden.

Kees Snoek taught Dutch at U-M during five academic years (1977–82), and under him the course offerings were expanded to include courses and colloquia on modern Dutch literature. He was also involved in the inauguration, in 1981–82, of the Dutch Writer-in-Residence program and in U-M arrangements for the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the Republic of the Netherlands and the United States (1782).

Dr. Ton Broos became the Visiting Lecturer in Netherlandic Language and Literature in the 1982–83 academic year. Under his tenure, the original agreement with the Netherlands government to appoint a different incumbent every three years was revised, and Broos continued until his retirement in 2012. In addition to the four-semester beginning language sequences, he has supervised many independent studies and taught numerous seminars in modern Dutch literature. In 1993, he inaugurated his immensely popular Anne Frank in Past and Present course (Dutch 492), in which students examined, in translation, not only the Diary but other Dutch Holocaust accounts. In the fall semester of 1998–99, he offered for the first time a topics course on the Dutch colonial experience.

In terms of financial support, the contribution to the salary of the Dutch lecturer was in 1992 taken over from the Ministry of Education by the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union), a Dutch/Belgian/Surinamese organization founded in 1980 that oversees, promotes, and subsidizes Dutch-language initiatives and projects. As of 1997, with due warning, the Taalunie’s contribution to the Dutch Studies program was reduced to a $1,000 annual book allowance made direct to the Dutch lecturer, and the University of Michigan has picked up the full salary of the lecturer. The Taalunie has since increased their contribution to the program to $1,500, to be increased to $2,500 in 2019–20 academic year.

As for strategic planning, a select committee in the 1990s, consisting of Professor Eldersveld, Professor Barritt, Dr. Broos, and Ms. Vandersypen, made a proposal to establish a Center for Dutch and Flemish Studies. The committee described goals for this center as follows in 1999: “Providing a proper foundation for the maintenance of our present Dutch and Flemish Studies program at the University of Michigan, and expanding that program to include more attention to Dutch and Flemish culture should be our primary goal. This would mean diversifying the program, attracting more students, and making it more visible outside the university. Consideration should be given to the development of new teaching programs.”

Besides this primary goal, the committee made some valuable suggestions as their secondary goals, which are still relevant today. With adequate funding, several specific scholarly activities could be sponsored:

1. Invite scholars to the university to lecture and lead discussions on various aspects of Dutch and Flemish society and culture.

2. Organize conferences on significant questions of world affairs in which there is a considerable Dutch and Flemish involvement, e.g., “The Dutch in the European Union,” “Dutch and Flemish Contributions to Contemporary Art,” The Dutch Policy towards Euthanasia,” “Centralized Diversity: Educational Policy in the Netherlands,” etc. Occasional conferences of this type in the past have been financed with very minimal funding.

3. Fellowships for our students interested in beginning or continuing study here or in the Netherlands and Belgium on some aspects of Dutch and Flemish culture. Alternately, inviting Dutch and Flemish students to this university to enhance or complete their studies. An annual possibility to visit the Low Countries should be encouraged.

4. Evaluate our library holdings regularly and adjust requests for funding, based on needs and availability.

5. Build a strong audiovisual collection in cooperation with the Language Resource Center and set up a clearinghouse for technical support and innovative techniques for computer assisted and distance learning.

6. Publication of occasional papers on Dutch language, Dutch and Flemish society, and culture by scholars at Michigan or elsewhere.

7. Publishing bibliographical reports on available materials at the university libraries and archives on Dutch/Flemish topics, e.g., material dealing with the history of the Dutch in Michigan, the Dutch colonial presence in Asia, Dutch imprints in the Hubbard collection, Elzevier and Plantijn imprints, Stellfeld and Stichting Donemus Collections. Knuttel pamphlets deserve wider online access.

8. Investigate the possibilities of closer cooperation with other schools, colleges, and universities, i.e., universities within the Council of Independent Colleges, Calvin College, Hope College.

9. Receive visiting Dutch and Flemish scholars and help with hospitality and contacts.

10. Help to prepare students who intend to do research in the Netherlands and Belgium with language and culture instruction.

Dr. Annemarie Toebosch took over directorship of the program in 2012. Since then, the strategic planning for the program comes in the form of collaborative discussions with the executive committee of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and its administration, with special mention of Ms. Sheri Sytsema-Geiger, chief administrator, whose support, vision, and collaboration have been invaluable to the program’s success. Strategic discussions are built around the program’s annual report of plans and accomplishments. Other strategic planning comes in the form of interdisciplinary collaboration on campus, such as with Judaic Studies; the Michigan Community Scholars Program; Dr. Larry Gant in Social Work; Dr. Tiffany Ng in the U-M School of Music, Theater & Dance; and Dr. Raymond de Vries in Bioethics and Social Science in Medicine at Michigan and in Midwifery Science at Maastricht Academie Verloskunde.

Under Toebosch’s leadership, Dutch and Flemish Studies has developed a clear signature as a program that examines Dutch issues of race and diversity. In a shift away from teaching Dutch for its own sake, the program now examines Dutch language, culture, and history as a way to make sense of the complex nature of diverse societies in general. The topics course on the Dutch colonial experience is now a course on diversity in Amsterdam, entitled Amsterdam: Tolerance in the XXX City. In 2019–20, a new topics course, titled Decolonizing the Netherlands, is added. It examines current civil rights movements in the Netherlands. The Anne Frank course, renamed as Anne Frank in Context and crosslisted with Judaic Studies, has been redeveloped as a human rights course and has increased in popularity with enrollment of one hundred students. It remains in high esteem among students and faculty alike.

Three generations of Dutch at the University of Michigan: Ton Broos, Annemarie Toebosch, Kees Snoek

In all, the unification of European monetary and socio-political affairs have raised interest in the Dutch language, the first language of the community after English, French, German, and Spanish, spoken by more than 24 million people worldwide. In the United States, knowledge about the Low Countries is limited. The Netherlands is the third largest investor in this country, and the Dutch were the first to establish New Amsterdam on the Hudson. While at Michigan we have always had a good variety of students who choose Dutch because of ancestry, a Dutch-speaking partner, art historical interests, anthropological and colonial interests, or linguistic curiosity, among other reasons; the history of the Dutch in the United States did not seem to translate into commensurate class sizes in the past. With conscious outreach to the larger campus community and a strong race and ethnicity curriculum, Dutch-language enrollment at Michigan has seen tremendous growth in recent years, in comparison to struggling enrollment in some less commonly taught languages around the country.

Built on a solid foundation, the recent growth of Dutch and Flemish Studies has lead to higher instructional demand. In response to the high interest in the Anne Frank course, Dutch and Flemish Studies added a graduate student instructor to the course in 2018. In 2019, a second graduate student instructor was added. In the 2019–20 year, the program adds a second language instructor for the first time in the history of the program. With additional support from the General Representation of the Flemish Government in the United States, the Nederlandse Taalunie, and the University of Michigan, a new instructor will come annually through Fulbright Belgium. The Flemish instructor will take over half of the language courses and, true to the name of the program, will strengthen the curriculum in terms of Flemish language and culture. As the program adjusts from employing one to employing four people, culture course offerings increase and plans are made for adding advanced-level language courses in the future.

First-year Dutch students, 2017

What Alumni Say: Five Decades of Dutch at Michigan

After five decades of Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan, alumni remember their experiences in the program and what the experience has meant in their life.

Students with Dr. Ton Broos

1970–80

Maria T (Trees) Blumer

In the autumn of 1976, I had the pleasure of meeting Henk Meulenbeld, my Dutch instructor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He re-activated the language that had been my native tongue until the age of five. His lessons in grammar, syntax, spelling, etc., were invaluable as I reacquainted myself with the Dutch language that I had not spoken for twenty years. We studied from a standard textbook, Introduction to Dutch: A Practical Grammar by William Z. Shetter, fourth edition. Besides that, he introduced us to Dutch newspaper articles and the writing of W. L. Brugsma in the De Haagse Post, a weekly magazine.

My second year of Dutch instruction, 1977–78, was phenomenal! A new instructor, Kees Snoek, enriched my Dutch instruction beyond my expectations. Not only did he teach me a second year of the language and literature. In an independent study, he introduced me to the poetry and art of modernist Dutch artists, like Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, and Paul van Ostaijen. He taught me about the expressionist period and De Stijl movement launched in the early twentieth century.

The biggest treat, though, was the special visit by Dr. Leo Vroman, arranged by Kees Snoek, to the University of Michigan’s campus. Dr. Vroman was “a Dutch hematologist, a prolific poet, mainly in Dutch, and an illustrator” (wikipedia.com). “He was awarded nearly every possible Dutch award … and in 1970, he was awarded the Individual Science Award by Wayne State University of Detroit, Michigan” (newnetherlandinstitute.org). Not only did he read some of his poetry when he visited, but he also presented everyone there with a signed copy of his book, Just One More World.

Overall, I would say that my Dutch instruction was excellent and memorable. It was among my best learning experiences at the U of M!

1980–90

Margaret Helton

Though the Modern Language Building (MLB) was one of the drabber buildings on campus, inside its sterile, featureless white walls I found a brilliant instructor who became one of the most influential teachers in my life when I enrolled in Dutch 111 in the fall of 1980. Kees Snoek led a course in introductory Dutch that taught the basics of the language through the prism of modern Dutch culture, with creative teaching that involved Dutch newspapers, cultural writings, poetry, and Indonesian food. My four semesters in Dutch language were an oasis of creativity that were a complement to the engineering and pre-med curriculum that filled the rest of my course schedule.

The Dutch program was small but rich. This includes a significant enhancement of the learning environment when the Dutch Writer-in-Residence program was started in the academic year 1981–82. With support from both the university and the Dutch Ministry of Culture, the first writer-in-residence was Bert Schierbeek. He had been involved with the Iowa Creative Writing Program and came to Ann Arbor to give a reading from his work, at which time he proposed a writer-in-residence program at U of M. Joost de Wit, then the Director of the Foundation for the Translation of Dutch Literary Works, played a major role in procuring the finances. The program’s second recipient was Philo Bregstein, who had just published Op zoek naar Joods Amsterdam, a book reflecting on his film by the same name that was made in 1975. Both of these writers were fascinating men who took the time to interact with students and others in the Dutch community in Ann Arbor. To this day, I treasure my copy of Bert’s book Shapes of the Voice as well as the personal comments he made on a poem I wrote. While in Ann Arbor, he was the subject of a long article in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool entitled “Ik zit hier tenslotte niet als een sort ijdele kwast” about his residency at the University of Michigan. Philo Bregstein also engaged with students, and I enjoyed organizing a day trip for Philo and several students in my class to my home town of Holland, Michigan, which he found fascinating.

My course work in Dutch ended in 1982, which was also Kees Snoek’s last year in Ann Arbor. We have maintained a true friendship through the years, and I appreciate the significant influence he has had on my life, keeping me in touch with Dutch and Indonesian literature, poetry, and culture. This rich enhancement had the unlikely beginning in those drab rooms in MLB.

Marcel Bonnewit

As the first child of two Dutch ex-patriates, my first conversational language was Dutch. Thanks to the advent of Sesame Street, I learned English but that caused me to lose any sense of proper Dutch sentence structure. I began to take Ton Broos’s Dutch class as a sophomore. Despite my basic knowledge of Dutch vocabulary, I had never written (thank you cards to my Dutch relatives aside) or read in Dutch. Ton really taught me proper grammar and syntax – although I still struggle with the proper use of “de” vs. “het.”

Dutch class was a far more intimate environment than most of my classes that featured several hundred students in large lecture halls. I enjoyed having the ability to interact with teacher and students alike. This atmosphere allowed me to form great and lasting relationships with both the love of my life, Heather, and my close friend Bill Burk.

1990–2000

Anouk Weiss (Bonnewit)

I first began Dutch class as a freshman with Professor Ton Broos in 1993 and took any class he taught for six semesters. Although I am the daughter of two parents who were born and raised in the Netherlands and we spoke Dutch at home, I had never written or read in Dutch. While I had an advantage over many of my classmates, it was still a challenge to learn the ins and outs of the language.

I loved that I was in a smaller class in such a large school. Because of this, we were all able to really get to know one another well. Dutch class was always a highlight of my day. I’d be remiss if I didn’t share a story that I love to share because it shows what a good sport Professor Broos is: I woke up one morning to go to a dentist appointment to have a cavity filled. I was given novocaine and went to class. At some point during the class, which ran from 1:00–3:00 p.m., I fell asleep. When I woke up at 3:30, the class was gone. That evening I emailed Professor Broos to find out what happened (and hopefully apologize – I can’t remember if I did that, but I hope so!).

He said he thought it was so funny that he asked everyone to leave quietly so I wouldn’t wake up. Later on, while celebrating Sinterklaas, a Dutch tradition involving writing a poem for someone else, mine referenced my little nap. It was all in good fun … great fun. This story has been one that I have told often … and people love it from beginning to end.

2000–2010

Sarah Richmond (Doorn)

Even before I had collegiate aspirations of my own, these were two of our family’s defining characteristics: first, we are Dutch (and proud of it); second, we are Wolverines (did I mention we are proud?). My mother, originally from California, met my father who had emigrated from the Netherlands, and they settled in Ann Arbor after attending U-M. They helmed our proud little island – living far from any extended family – where my older brother and I were raised with Maize, Blue, and Oranje running through our veins.

My brother, Hendrik “Henk” Doorn, eventually went on to study Dutch at U-M with Professor Ton Broos. During those same years (1999–2000), however, I was further isolating myself as an unruly teenager who couldn’t be bothered with classes or SAT scores. After some hard knocks and three years of community college, I finally began attendance at the University of Michigan in 2008. They say college doesn’t prepare one for the real world, but I learned the same could be said for the real world not preparing me for the undergrad experience at a four-year institution. There I was on campus, in the heart of a town I knew and loved, fulfilling my destiny, and yet I felt utterly alone and out of place. That is, until I walked into my first Dutch class.

With a language like Dutch, class is not held in an echoing auditorium but a small, cozy room seating a unique mix of young people. And I was one of them. Not one of a hundred, but one of ten or so. That close-knit environment fostered laughter where there may have been silence in an auditorium. I’ll never forget how we laughed while listening to the silly little recording of “Wie ben jij? Wat is je naam?” Additionally, held unceremoniously every Thursday was Dutch Lunch, where various people across campus gathered for respite and friendly conversation. These were some of the things/places/feelings that shaped my U-M experience.

In my final term, we lost my brother Henk in a traffic accident, and one of the places I found refuge was in my Dutch class because in many ways it was like family, and the loss of Henk was felt there, too. Professor Broos gave me a copy of Henk’s taped senior presentation from when he was in his final term in the Dutch program, and I must have watched it twenty times. Again, I would have a difficult time expressing how much this touched me and how all of this has impacted my life. The Dutch program at the University of Michigan did not just end up being a badge of pride for me – it was like a patch that helped me hold it together during difficult times. Hartelijk dank aan mijn UofM Nederlandse familie!

Students with author Kader Abdolah, 2010. Left to right: Micky Byrnes, Sipkje Pesnichak, Leah Vandemark, Kader Abdolah, John Westra, Sarah Doorn, Saul Allen, Meleah Auten, Dan Birchok, and Stuart Strange.

2010–20

Dan Birchok

I took Dutch with Ton Broos from 2010 until 2012. At that time I was a graduate student in Anthropology and History, and I had just finished carrying out ethnographic and archival field research in Aceh, Indonesia. I had a collection of Dutch-language documents, to which I added more a few years later following some research in Leiden and Den Haag. After my initial year of basic Dutch training, Ton and I began working on translating those documents through an independent study. He was much more patient with me than I deserved, as I slogged through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial records with a modern Dutch-English dictionary in hand. We both learned a lot through translating together and had a great time.

Having a great time has long been vital to the Dutch program. Some of my fondest memories involve end-of-semester gatherings at Ton’s house at which we would eat pizza (not very Dutch, I know!) and sing liedjes (very Dutch!). He also introduced me, and his other students, to the local Dutch community. As I still live in Ann Arbor (I am a professor of Anthropology at University of Michigan-Flint), I frequently attend local Dutch community events. Being connected to this network allows me to continue to to improve my still very rudimentary spoken Dutch. It is a prime example of how Ton ensured that all of his students had opportunities to experience Dutch as a living language and have much fun in the process!

Jessica McCauley

When deciding between graduate programs, the opportunity to enroll in Dutch-language courses was part of what tipped the balance in favor of the University of Michigan. But what easily could have felt like an over-ambitious extracurricular tacked onto my graduate work turned out to be central to my experience. Achieving fluency and broadening my career options in the Netherlands quickly became secondary as I came to realize that the benefits of learning Dutch extend far beyond the practical. Critically engaging with a new language and culture pushed me to consider and challenge my own worldview each day, informing and enriching how I approached all of my other courses and projects. It also provided access to a welcoming local community and the basis for the closest connections I have in Ann Arbor. These experiences not only cultivated my interest in the languages and cultures of the Low Countries but cemented my identity as a lifelong language learner and global citizen.

During my two years at the University of Michigan, I took advantage of every opportunity to participate in Dutch and Flemish Studies, even ones that did not previously exist (such as my role as the first GSI for Anne Frank in Context). In addition, I participated in the program as a summer intern, strengthening its race and ethnicity curriculum. I feel incredibly fortunate to have become involved at such a pivotal and exciting time, and I look forward to seeing how the program continues to grow and develop.

4

The Netherlands Visiting Professorship at the University of Michigan

Since 1950, the University of Michigan had welcomed a series of Dutch professors, each visiting for one academic year. This Netherlands Visiting Professorship (NVP) was underwritten jointly by the government of the Netherlands and the University of Michigan. Because the visitors came from different disciplines, Dutch Studies benefited in different ways from their specific knowledge. Until the present day we have developed close ties with many of the professors, who have been invited to give challenging presentations and meet students.

How did it start? At the end of World War II, U-M Professor of History Albert Hyma and Willard C. Wichers, Director of the Netherlands Information Bureau, Midwestern Division (Holland, MI) approached the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Arts, and Science about the possibility of establishing a chair for Dutch culture and literary history at the University of Michigan. The original interest leading to negotiations was due to the upcoming celebration of the hundredth anniversary (in 1947) of the founding of the Dutch colony in Holland, Michigan. In April 1947, the Minister began a correspondence with U-M President Alexander Ruthven on this subject, in the hope of strengthening the cultural relations between the two countries, especially the connections between the state of Michigan and the Netherlands.

The proposal called for a distinguished Dutch scholar to be appointed for a term of one academic year. Such a scholar was to offer courses in the broad field of Dutch culture (history, literature, political and social institutions, and the arts) or, if this was not feasible, to represent a field of academic interest that would contribute to international understanding. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences was to make nominations, with the final selection to be made by U-M. The Dutch government and U-M were to split the cost between them of the professor’s salary and travel expenses. Because of the precarious foreign exchange situation following the war, the program was deferred until 1950, when the first Netherlands visiting professor, Theodore J. G. Locher (History) arrived for the 1950–51 academic year. Locher gave a public lecture inaugurating the Netherlands Visiting Professorship program at U-M on December 4, 1950, speaking on “Freedom and Democracy in the Netherlands.”

Although the agreement between U-M and the Netherlands government was hoped and expected to be a continuing one, it took some time to work out a smooth system of nomination and selection. Only one other NVP came to Ann Arbor (J. Th. Thijsse, Civil Engineering in 1952–53) before the program became an annual one in the 1955–56 academic year. In 1964, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) committed to paper “Principles of Administration of the Netherlands Visiting Professorship at the University of Michigan.” Revised in 1968, the principles indicate some refinements that evolved with practical experience, viz. the professorship was to be awarded to as many different departments as possible; the faculty assignment of the professor should provide time for “utilization by representatives of the Netherlands Government with Michigan citizens of Dutch ancestry”; and the nominations by U-M will be made for three years in advance.

Cover image from The Netherlands Visiting Professorship by Eric Ketelaar, 2001.

The stipulation of time in the teaching schedule “for utilization with Michigan citizens of Dutch ancestry,” listed in the principles of administration of the NVP program was undoubtedly due to the efforts of Willard C. Wichers at the Netherlands Information Service, Midwestern Division, in Holland, Michigan. In the 1950s and 1960s, he arranged for the NVPs to lecture at Hope College (Holland) and Calvin College (Grand Rapids), and sometimes the venues extended to Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo) and the Upper Peninsula.

A hiatus in the program occurred again in the academic years 1994–95 and 1995–96, when the Committee on Selection (Deans of Engineering, Law, LSA, plus a representative from the Vice President for Academic Affairs) apparently did not act. Responsibility was transferred to the International Institute, and the program resumed with the 1996–97 year. The later years saw scholars selected through the cooperation of the Center for European Studies of the International Institute, with the view of yearly themes, e.g., “democratic projects within the European Union” or “the practices of arts and culture within an integrated Europe.” Unfortunately, after years of friendly cooperation, the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences decided to stop contributing to this enterprise for budgetary reasons, and visiting professors from the Netherlands and Belgium find their way to the University of Michigan on a less frequent basis, more often through individual contacts and personal invitations.

A complete list of the Netherlands visiting professors follows:

1950‑51

Theodore J. G. Locher (History)

1951‑52

[no visiting professor]

1952‑53

J. Th. Thijsse (Civil Engineering)

1953‑54

[no visiting professor]

1954‑55

[no visiting professor]

1955‑56

Hendrik D. Kloosterman (Mathematics)

1956‑57

J. Droogleever Fortuyn (Anatomy) ‑ Jan. 1‑June 30, 1957

1957‑58

M. G. Rutten (Geology)

1958‑59

Geert Wielenga (Education)

1959‑60

Herman Zanstra (Astronomy)

1960‑61

Isaak Kisch (Law) ‑ declined the appointment in order to become a Justice of the Netherlands Supreme Court

1961‑62

H. P. H. Teesing (German)

1962‑63

Andries Teeuw (Far Eastern Languages)

1963‑64

Henricus Rumke (Psychiatry)

1964‑65

Jurriaan ten Doesschate (Ophthalmology)

1965‑66

Ivo Schöffer (History)

1966‑67

Coenraad Jan Oort (Business Administration)

1967‑68

Kornelis Rietema (Engineering)

1968‑69

Henricus G. Schermers (Law)

1969‑70

Frans P. G. M. van der Linden (Dentistry)

1970‑71

Jakob A. Steketee (Aerospace Engineering)

1971‑72

William den Boer (History)

1972‑73

Cornelius Veeger (Biological Chemistry)

1973‑74

Wietze Eizenga (Business Administration & Economics)

1974‑75

Niels Luning Prak (Architecture and Design)

1975‑76

Albert Breimer (Geology)

1976‑77

Paul T. Beurskens (Chemistry)

1977‑78

J. W. Schulte Nordholt (History)

1978‑79

Willem Bakker (Engineering)

1979‑80

Richard H. Lauwaars (Law)

1980‑81

C. Hoede (Mathematics)

1981‑82

Ton Beekman (Education)

1982‑83

H. J. Huisjes (Obstetrics)

1983‑84

M. Hazenwinkel (Mathematics)

1984‑85

Arne van der Gen (Chemistry)

1985‑86

Frits L. van Holthoon (History)

1986‑87

S. R. Gradstein (Biology)

1987‑88

Frans Stokman (Political Science)

1988‑89

Richard K. Todd (English)

1989‑90

Helene W. A. M. Sancisi-Weerdenburg (History & Near Eastern Studies)

1990‑91

Simon R. Slings (Classics & History)

1991‑92

Willem Koops (Psychology)

1992‑93

Hendrik Huiskens (Medicine ‑ Orthopedic Surgery)

1993‑94

Freerk Loodsma (Mechanical Engineering)

1994‑95

[no visiting professor]

1995‑96

[no visiting professor]

1996‑97

Bert van der Knaap (Economics & Urban Planning)

1997‑98

Peter van Rooden and Johanna Spaans (History/Religion)

1999

Ernst van Alphen (Art History and Comparative Literature)

1999‑2000

Albert van Goudoever (History and Political Science)

2000‑01

Eric Ketelaar (School of Information)

2001‑02

Dick de Boer (History)

2003

Frans Dieleman (Urban Planning) ‑ winter term only

2003‑04

Jean-Marie Viaene (Economics)

2004‑05

Maarten Lindeboom (Economics)

2005

Chris Lorenz (History) ‑ fall term only

2006‑07

Ben Arps (Javanese/S.E. Asian Studies)

2008

Jos de Mul (Philosophy/Art History) ‑ winter term only

2009

Henco Bekkering (Urban Planning) ‑ fall term only

2010

Linda Senden (Law) ‑ winter term only

2010

Madeleine Hosli (Political Science) ‑ fall term only

For a more comprehensive account of the Netherlands Visiting Professorship until 2000, see Eric Ketelaar and Els Ketelaar-de Vries Reilingh, Holland in Ann Arbor: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Netherlands Visiting Professorship at the University of Michigan: A Partnership between the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI: International Institute and Center for European Studies, 2001).

In the 2019–20 academic year, and after a long hiatus, the program will be sponsoring a visiting scholar, Dr. Olga Panteleeva. Trained at the University of California, Berkeley, as a musicologist, a former Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University, she visits from Utrecht University. Her research and teaching focus on the contemporary politics of music, relationship between production of knowledge and state power, and music’s intersections with critical theories of race, gender, sexuality, and disability. Her work here will include research into transnational networks of antiracist scholarship and activism in the United States, the Netherlands, and Russia. During her stay at Michigan, she will hold the Telluride Faculty Fellowship.

5

Dutch Literature

The Dutch Writer-in-Residence Program

Early in 1980, discussions began between the U-M and the Netherlands about instituting a Dutch Writer-in-Residence program on the Ann Arbor campus. The initial spark came from the visit to U-M of distinguished Dutch author Bert Schierbeek in October 1979. By January 1981, an agreement had been worked out between U-M and the Stichting voor Vertalingen in Amsterdam (Foundation for the Translation of Dutch Literary Work) and its energetic director, Joost de Wit. The two institutions would share the cost of the salary of the visiting writer, who would be selected through a mutual review of applicants on a list of finalists nominated by the Stichting. The initial period of the program would be for three years, with the opportunity to evaluate and renew the program if appropriate. Each resident writer would spend one academic year in Ann Arbor. The unanimous choice to fill the position in its inaugural year was Bert Schierbeek, who spent the 1981–82 year at U-M.

Poster for The return of Bert Schierbeek, on-campus event, November 4, 1983

In May 1984, the program was renewed for another five years, and thereafter it was renewed again. The list of visiting writers is an extraordinarily impressive one to those familiar with the Dutch literary scene. The incumbents typically made lectures and did readings not only in Ann Arbor but also on campuses all across the United States.

Initially, the visiting writer was a member of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and the more advanced students of Dutch were able to profit from the presence of such an expert who put in an occasional guest appearance at their classes. But the majority of the writer’s students were budding creative writers from any and all disciplines, mostly from the English Department. Eventually this was acknowledged, and in later years the Dutch writer-in-residence offered his/her creative writing courses through the English Department, in agreement with the Literair Produktie Fonds in Amsterdam, which proposed the candidates. As of 1994–95, the program changed to an every-other-year basis, for one semester only, and in the early 2000s lacked further commitment from the institution in the Netherlands. Nowadays, only an occasional visit of a writer to the United States gives American students an opportunity to meet Dutch literary talents. The visit of celebrated novelist Kader Abdolah in 2010 to several American universities resulted in the publication How Europe is changing, with his short stories translated by our Dutch students.

Cover image from How Europe is Changing, by Kader Abdolah, 2011

A list of the Dutch writers-in-residence at the University of Michigan:

1981‑82

Bert Schierbeek

1982‑83

Philo Bregstein

1983‑84

Mischa de Vreede

1984‑85

Peter Ten Hoopen

1985‑86

Arie van den Berg

1986‑87

Renate Dorrestein

1987‑88

Thomas Rosenboom

1988‑89

Graa Boomsma

1989‑90

Henk van Kerkwijk

1990‑91

Mia Meijer

1991‑92

Herman Stevens

1992‑93

Martin Bril

1994

Robert Vernooy – fall term only

1997

Daphne Meijer – winter term only

1999

Renee Huigen – fall term only

2002

Patty Scholten – winter term only

2004

Karel Glastra van Loon – winter term only

2005

Henk van Woerden – fall term only

Literary Authors Visiting the University of Michigan

The number of visiting Dutch writers over the course of two decades has been overwhelming, especially since the Dutch Writer-in-Residence program started in 1981. We recall with fondness the following authors (with year of their visit):

Bert Schierbeek (1979, 1981, 1992), Esteban Lopez (1978), Henk Romijn Meijer (1981), H. C. ten Berge (1981), H. van Kerkwijk (1981, 1983, 1989, 1993), H. Bernlef (1982), Lucebert (1982), H. Plomp (1982), Remco Campert (1982), Simon Vinkenoog (1982), Jules Deelder (1982), Hugo Brandt Corstius (1983), Leo Vroman (1983, 1997), Cees Nooteboom (1984), Gerrit Kouwenaar (1984), Hugo Claus (1984), Judith Herzberg (1984), Arie van den Berg (1985), Hella Haasse (1985, 1989), Jan Willem Holsbergen (1985), Kester Freriks (1986), Renate Dorrestein (1986), Andreas Burnier (1987), Jan Donkers (1987), Rob Schouten (1987),Thomas Rosenboom (1987), Marja Brouwer (1988), Marga Minco (1988), Graa Boomsma (1988), Benno Barnard (1988), Dick Schouten (1989), Jean Pierre Plooij (1989), Mia Meijer (1990), Maria Stahlie (1991), Martin Bril (1992), Herman Stevens (1993), Jan Kuitenbrouwer (1993), Robert Vernooij (1994), Astrid Roemer (1994).

Renate Dorrestein at the University of Michigan

6

The University Library Holdings of Dutch-Language Materials

Karla Vandersypen & Ton Broos

The tenure of University Librarian William Warner Bishop (1915–41) resulted in tremendous growth of the university’s collections in literature and history of other-than-English-language materials. Through European book-buying trips and the connections he established with European book dealers, Bishop laid the foundation for U-M Dutch collections that have grown steadily since. The U-M relationship with the firm Martinus Nijhoff in the Hague began in 1918, just after World War I. The Library’s manuscript accessions books contain many hundreds of entries, beginning November 25, 1918, for which the vendor is Nijhoff, and a large number of these titles are Dutch and Flemish. In 1945, Bishop’s successor, Warner G. Rice, writes to Wouter Nijhoff, authorizing him to select for the U-M Library from his stocks books published in Holland and Belgium during the years of the Second World War; important monographs in ancient and modern philological fields, in the social sciences (especially history, economics, and political science), and in the pure and applied sciences, including medicine, were purchased. Dealings with Nijhoff continued until the late 1980s, when the firm itself reorganized.

Since the 1990s, various U-M librarians have been responsible for selecting titles of Dutch and Flemish imprints to add to the Library’s holdings. They have consultations with the Dutch lecturer in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures as appropriate, and with units within the library system that have significant Netherlandic materials: the Special Collections Library (including the Labadie Collection of anarchist, radical, labor, liberation materials), the Music Library, the Art and Architecture Library.

Correspondence between Bishop and Cornelia Steketee (Mrs. Henry) Hulst between 1919 and 1927 discuss the founding of a Chair of Dutch History and the acquisition of Dutch historical publications to support such a program. From 1914, Mrs. Hulst, her brother Jacob Steketee, and other citizens of Dutch ancestry in the western part of Michigan had been collecting funds to support a Dutch history program at U-M. The war deferred their plans, but beginning in 1919 Bishop sent Mrs. Hulst lists of titles that Nijhoff was supplying the Library and that her “Dutch History Fund” was in part financing. He refers to buying trips in the Netherlands made by himself, by U-M graduate student Henry Lucas (later Professor at the University of Washington), and by U-M Professor of History Albert Hyma. In 1925, and again in 1928, the Library purchased, through Nijhoff, large collections of Dutch historical pamphlets from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. These pamphlets, most of which are listed in the bibliography by W. P. C. Knuttel, Catalogus van de Pamfletten-Verzameling berustende in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Den Haag, 1889–1916), now number some 4,300 titles; the “Knuttel Collection” is one of the jewels of the Library’s Dutch holdings. Karla Vandersypen cataloged these pamphlets between 1997 and 2008, creating an online bibliographic record for each title in the collection, searchable by author, title, subject, and keyword, making the pamphlets accessible for future research.

Beginning in 1923, Regent Lucius Lee Hubbard presented his collection of imaginary voyages to the University of Michigan Library. Of the approximately 1,500 titles, mostly from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, which now make up the collection (many being various editions, translations, and versions of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels), some 140 are in the Dutch language. This is an important subset: not only were the Dutch great travelers who produced much travel literature, imaginary and real, but some scholars maintain that the Dutch have some claims to providing Defoe his source for Robinson in the 1708 account of Hendrik Smeeks. In 1992, the U-M Library cooperated with the University of Groningen (which also possesses a large collection of Robinson Crusoes, the Staverman Collection) in organizing parallel exhibitions of their Robinsonades. A publication to commemorate this cooperative effort was produced: Robinson Crusoe inthe Old and New Worlds, with contributions by scholars from around the world. Two of them, Ton Broos (U-M) and Jelle Kingma (Groningen), spoke at the U-M reception/exhibit opening, and Broos also spoke at the Groningen program, along with Dr. Peggy E. Daub, Head of the U-M Special Collections Library.

Cover image from Robinson Crusoe in the Old and New Worlds, edited by Ton Broos, Jelle Kingma, Anton Bossers, 1992

In the 1931–32 academic year, the Library’s most important acquisition was the Copinger Collection (ca. 500 titles) of editions of the Elzevier Press (Leiden, Amsterdam, Utrecht, and the Hague), which at its height in the seventeenth century was the greatest publishing house in the world. They produced the best scholarly books of the time: textually sound, legible, and relatively inexpensive. These are mostly not Dutch-language titles, however, as the language of scholarship was Latin. The Library’s holdings of imprints by the Antwerp printing house of Plantin-Moretus are also considerable (more than 100 separate titles, plus a large percentage of the Knuttel pamphlets described above).

The School of Music in 1954 acquired the Stellfeld Library in Antwerp through the offices of Dr. Louise Cuyler of the School, who was in Belgium on a Fullbright grant. The collection was assembled over a period of fifty years by J. A. Stellfeld, a Belgian jurist and musicologist. It consists of more than ten thousand books and scores, strong in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The trust fund established by the Estate of Dr. John Hulst in 1956 generates some $2,000 per year for the purchase of books on the history and literature of the Netherlands. Administered by the selectors in the Special Collections Library, the Hulst Fund has financed many expensive antiquarian items in recent years.

From the late 1960s on, the U-M has benefited from gifts of Dutch books financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Education. A September 18, 1973, letter from the Ministry’s Miss E. Talsma to Professor V. C. Hubbs, Chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, refers to a list of books requested by Frans van Rosevelt, U-M Teaching Assistant in Dutch, which had been ordered and would be dispatched shortly to Ann Arbor. In an earlier letter to van Rosevelt, she reports that her Ministry made annual gifts of books to the established lectureships and chairs of Dutch language and literature at foreign universities.

In 1984, a subsidy of about $2,000 from the Netherlands Ministry of Welfare, Public Health, and Culture was granted to enable the Donemus Foundation to make the U-M Library an American depository for contemporary music from the Netherlands. Donemus is a promotional institution for contemporary Dutch music, and U-M Music Library had been subscribing to their “Composer’s Voice” sound recordings from the late 1970s. Since 1983, the Library has continued to add to its holdings of twentieth-century music of which the Donemus archive forms an important part.

A 1980 letter from U-M Collection Development Librarian Mona East to Professor Jan DeVries reports that the U-M Library’s overall holdings in Dutch language and literature (ca. 3,150 titles) ranked third in the 1977 US National Shelflist Count (smaller than the Library of Congress and the University of California, Berkeley, but larger than the collections at Cornell and Wisconsin). The history of the Netherlands collections numbered some 1,900 titles, ranking fifth, after the Library of Congress, Cornell, Wisconsin, and Berkeley. The U-M collections included at that time more than 200 periodicals published in the Netherlands. According to Mona East then, and to Holde Borcherts (Selector for Germanic Languages and Literatures) in 1998, the Library relies heavily on members of the faculty for suggestions. As of 1997, the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language Union) has been providing a subsidy of $1,000 per annum to the U-M Dutch lecturer to purchase books to support the teaching of the language. These titles eventually are added to the holdings of the U-M Library. In these modern times we are also adding audiovisual material to the large collections.

7

Events and Conferences

In November 1947, the U-M helped to celebrate a century of Dutch settlement in (Holland) Michigan by sponsoring a series of cultural events relating to the art, music, and history of the Netherlands. A rather grand convocation was held in Hill Auditorium on November 3 at which Arthur Vandenberg, US Senator from Michigan, and Dr. Eelco Van Kleffens, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United States, gave addresses, and the Men’s Glee Club sang the Dutch national anthem. From November 13 to 28, the U-M Museum of Art exhibited a collection of Dutch paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, looted by the Nazis, restored by the US Army, and loaned by the Dutch government as a gesture of appreciation. On November 16 and 23, the Collegium Musicum of the U-M School of Music presented two concert programs of early Dutch music. At the same time, exhibitions of Dutch holdings were on view in the William L. Clements Library, and the Michigan Historical Collections, then located in the Rackham Building.

Many events were organized in close cooperation between university units and the local organization Netherlands America University League (NAUL), between university staff and faculty, and many helpers and volunteers.

In 1982, another anniversary was celebrated: the bicentennial of the Treaty of Amity and Trade between the United States and the Netherlands. At this occasion Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands visited the University of Michigan.

Several cultural events have been mentioned within a broader context of a conference or manifestation but could be specified: exhibitions in the Special Collections Library in 1986 and 1992, violin concerts by Jaap Schröder during the International Conference in 1986, and the Amsterdam String Trio during the Dutch Dada-Manifestation in 1990.

Fifty years after the liberation of the Netherlands from the Nazis, on May 5, 1995, the Dutch community in Ann Arbor celebrated the occasion with an evening of documentaries, personal recollections, and discussions.

The following is a partial list of lectures and events organized by Dutch Studies:

Lectures in the Fields of Dutch Language and Literature

E. M. Beekman – Dutch Colonial Literature 1600–1800 (1982)

H. van den Bergh – Multatuli (1982)

Gerrit Bussink – Governmental Support for Literature (1982)

Ton Broos – A Bird’s Eye View of Modern Dutch Literature (1983)

Walter Lagerwey – Calvinism in the Dutch Novels of Arthur van Schendel (1983)

Johan Snapper – 17th Century Dutch Farce (1984)

William Fletcher – Cursing Can Be contagious in Dutch (1984)

Henk Harbers – Unromantic Romanticism: Cees Nooteboom’s Rituals (1987)

Roland Willemyns – Social and Linguistic Variation in Dutch (1989)

Johanna H. and Johanna W. Prins – Translation of Contemporary Dutch Literature (1993)

Rik van Daele – Medieval Animal Fable Van den Vos Reynaerde (1994)

Conferences, Mini-Conferences, and Symposia

Third Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies: American Association for Netherlandic Studies, with scholars from around the world (1986)

Mini-conference: The Netherlands in the World Community (1988)

Conference: European Integration and the Role of the Netherlands (1991)

Symposium: Dutch Euthanasia Movement (1993)

Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies: American Association for Netherlandic Studies, with scholars from around the world (2002)

Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies: American Association for Netherlandic Studies, with scholars from around the world (2016)

Events and Exhibitions Fully or Partially Dedicated to Dutch

Cover image from the Exhibition of Patriots and Orangists, An Exhibition, 1986

Exhibition of rare Dutch books from the collection of the University of Michigan (1982)

Exhibition: Dutch Books in Translation (part of the Third Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, 1986)

Exhibition: Patriots and Orangists – an award-winning exhibit on 18th-century patriotic pamphlets (part of the Third Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, 1986)

Exhibition of Dutch animation films (sponsored by Dutch Cultural Ministry, part of the Third Interdisciplinary Conference on Netherlandic Studies, 1986)

Dutch Dada Manifestation – multimedia event with author J. P. Plooij (1990)

Exhibition: Robinson Crusoe in the Old and New Worlds (in cooperation with the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, 1992)

Catalog of An Exhibit of Robison Crusoe in the Old and New Worlds, 1992.

Lectures in History

J. W. Schulte Nordholt – The Dutch in North America after 1675 (1978)

J. W. Schulte Nordholt – Dutch Travelers in the USA in the 19th century (1982)

Marjorie Barritt – Archives in the Netherlands (1985)

Lectures in Public Policy

Harold Shapiro, W. Bakker – University Governance in the Netherlands (1979)

H. Lammers – Every Nation Has the Social Security System It Deserves (1979)

H. Philipsen – New Curricula in Health and Disease (1981)

Henk Huisjes – Obstetrics in the Netherlands (1983)

Jac Geurts – Games in Urban Planning (1983)

Ruud van der Veen – Can a Welfare State Avoid Bankruptcy? (1983)

D. Kohnstamm – 20 Years of Early Childhood Education and Psychology in the Netherlands (1983)

P. Kok – Current Developments in Social Psychology of Health (1985)

Frans Stokman – Recent Trends in Society and Politics (1987)

Beatrijs Smulders, A. Limburg – The Role of Mid-Wives in the Dutch Health System (1988)

Feerk Lootsma – Dutch Universities in the New European Constellation (1994)

Sam Eldersveld – Local Politics in the Netherlands (1995)

Loren Barritt – An Elementary School in Holland (1996)

Ton Beekman – Coffee Houses in Amsterdam (1997)

Bert van der Knaap – Recent Developments in Urban Planning in the Netherlands (1997)

Peter van Rooden – Secularization in the Netherlands (1998)

Arts, Music, and Film

Percival Price – History of the Carillon in the Low Countries (1978)

Karel Appel – Master class for students in the School of Art (1982)

Philo Bregstein – Showing of his many films, e.g., In Search of Jewish Amsterdam, Gesprekken met Jacques Presser, Otto Klemperer’s Long Journey through His Times, and Jean Rouch, Anthropologist‘ (1983)

Johan van der Keuken – Film festival (1984) with the director present

Margo Halsted – Recital and carillon music (1988) and organizer of annual carillon concerts with Dutch and Belgian carilloneurs (1994–present)

Celeste Brusati – Picturing the Word: Rembrandt as Printmaker (1991)

Jaap Schröder – Mini concert and lecture (1994)

Ben Broos – Vermeer and his fans (1995)

Peter Rose – The influence of the Dutch on the American Cuisine (2014)

8

Annual De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lectures

In 1996, as part of an effort to draw more attention to things Dutch, with the eventual aim of fund-raising on behalf of the Dutch Studies program in the U-M Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture was inaugurated (supported by the fund by this name which honors two influential former NAUL members, Jan de Vries and Meindert van der Kooy). This memorial lecture has become an annual event, and the speakers make a distinguished list of experts in various fields. Over the years, the lecture audience has grown to over a hundred, with diverse participation from departments and units around campus and generous financial support from the Dutch diplomatic corps and in particular the Netherlands Embassy in Washington, DC. A few sample lecture posters follow the list of lectures.

First lecture (October 9, 1996), Dr. Richard Lauwaars, Raad van State of the Netherlands: “The Netherlands Council of State and the Private Citizen’s Interest; Ways and Means to Protect Individuals against Undue Interference by the State”

Second lecture (November 11, 1997), Leo Vroman, Dutch (although long a resident of the United States) poet/artist/scientist: “Common Grounds: Science, Arts & Poetry”

Poster for the second De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 1997

Third lecture (November 4, 1998): Marion van Binsbergen Pritchard, recipient of the 1996 Wallenberg Medal for her work in rescuing Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and since the late 1940s a resident of the United States where she is a social worker and psychoanalyst: “Jewish Children in the Netherlands, 1939–1949”

Fourth lecture (October 28, 1999), E. M. Beekman, Multatuli Professor of Dutch Literature, University of Massachusetts, and renowned authority on the literature of the Dutch East Indies: “Colonial Magic: The Naturalist and the Novelist”

Fifth lecture (October 31, 2000), Dr. Corrie Hermann, medical doctor and public health expert, member of the Dutch Parliament for Groen Links: “The Dutch Health Care System: Public vs. Private”

Sixth lecture (October 22, 2001), Jaap Polak and Ina Soep, husband and wife, Holocaust survivors, authors of the recently published book Steal a Pencil for Me – Love Letters from Camp: “Love and the Holocaust”

Seventh lecture (November 19, 2002), Dr. Charles Gehring, Director of the New Netherlands Project in Albany, NY: “The New Netherlands Project: Recovering New York’s Dutch Past”

Eighth lecture (October 29, 2003), Robert Swierenga, Professor Emeritus of History, Kent State University: “Chicago’s Dutch Scavengers: From ‘Mafia’ to Millionaires”

Ninth lecture (November 30, 2004), Philo Bregstein, writer and filmmaker: “Remembering Jewish Amsterdam”

Tenth lecture (October 27, 2005), Jonathan Israel, Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, scholar of Dutch history: “Spinoza and Other Dutch Intellectual Rebels of the Late Golden Age (1650–1720)”

Poster for the tenth De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 2005

Eleventh lecture (October 18, 2006), Susan Kuretsky, Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor of Art, Vassar College: “Nothing to Hide: Reflections on Rembrandt’s Creative Process”

Twelfth lecture (October 10, 2007), Rob Kroes, Professor of American Studies, University of Amsterdam: “Dutch Immigration and Family Photographs: Ways in Which Family Bonds Were Preserved across the Atlantic”

Thirteenth lecture (October 16, 2008), David Barnouw, the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam: “Myth and Reality about the German Occupation of the Netherlands, Then and Now”

Poster for the thirteenth De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 2008

Fourteenth lecture (October 15, 2009), Michiel van Kempen, Professor of Dutch Caribbean Literature, University of Amsterdam, Dutch writer, and literary critic: “Circular Journeys: On Going Native in Postcolonial Studies”

Fifteenth lecture (October 13, 2010), Anton van Kalmthout, Professor from the Law Faculty at Tilburg University and member of the European Committee on Torture: “Illegal Immigration and Human Rights in the Netherlands”

Sixteenth lecture (October 20, 2011), Ludo Beheydt, Professor, Dutch Linguistics, University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and cultural historian: “The Cultural Identity of Netherlandish Painting”

Poster for the sixteenth De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 2011

Seventeenth lecture (October 4, 2012), Jane Wolff, Professor of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto: “Two Stories about a Delta: Dutch Expertise in the Rebuilding of Post-Katrina New Orleans”

Eighteenth lecture (October 22, 2013), Jan Willem Duyvendak, Professor of Sociology, University of Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research: “What Happened to a Progressive, Tolerant and Multicultural Country: The Rise of Nativism in the Netherlands”

Poster for the eighteenth De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 2013

Nineteenth lecture (November 20, 2014), Russell Shorto, author and journalist: “From Amsterdam to New Amsterdam”

Twentieth lecture (October 22, 2015), Dr. Irene Butter, Holocaust survivor and humanitarian: “Building Cross-Cultural Bridges”

Poster for the twentieth De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 2015

Twenty-first lecture (October 6, 2016), Ronald Bartlema, editor-in-chief of NOS Jeugdjournaal, the national Dutch children’s news: “NOS Jeugdjournaal: How a Pioneer in Children’s News Prepares Dutch Children for the World”

Poster for the twenty-first De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 2016

Twenty-second lecture (October 12, 2017), Gea Sijpkes, CEO of Humanitas, Deventer: “Aging and Engaging: Dutch Pragmatic Innovation in the Care for Old and Young”

Twenty-third lecture (March 28, 2019), Bernice Severin, social worker with Veilig Thuis: “Bright Lights and Windows: A Look behind the Curtain of Dutch Sex Work”

Poster twenty-third De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, 2019

9

Reflections on Anne Frank in Past and Present

Ton Broos

This lecture was originally delivered by Ton Broos at the occasion of the celebration of 50 Years of Dutch at Indiana University in Bloomington in 2015.

The title of my talk refers to my course I taught at Michigan, which started after I heard a presentation on Anne Frank here in the United States at one of our Dutch conferences. It boosted my enrollment: to a certain extent Anne Frank did save Dutch Studies. The amount of material about WWII is so enormous that I had to concentrate but also not forget to put Anne Frank in a wider context. After all, how much biography is there to tell about Anne? What had she experienced in this short life of fifteen years? Even reading her diary, there are hardly spectacular moments, breathtaking cliff-hangers, or fascinating dialogues. Not a lot of action either. Anyway, the hardest part was the separation of serious material from the childish saccharine admiration. Don’t just google Anne Frank, because you will get millions of entries. I told my students that one has to have an imagination trying to understand the Holocaust. It does not mean that one has to fantasize or fabricate, because you are not entitled to your own facts. However, it is not easy to imagine life in the thirties and forties before the words Holocaust and Shoah had entered the collective memory.

Here are some basic facts about Anne Frank. She was born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt am Main in Germany; she moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in February 1934. The family lived in a nice middle-class neighborhood among about 15,000 fellow German Jews. She goes to a regular school, has many friends, but after the German invasion in May 1940 and German orders, she moves to a Jewish middle school, Joods Lyceum. When her sister receives a notice to report for deportation, the family goes into hiding on July 6, 1942. Two years later they are arrested on August 4, 1944, sent to transit camp Westerbork in the Netherlands, and to Auschwitz on the last train from Holland on September 3, 1944. In October 1944, Anne and sister Margot are taken to Bergen-Belsen in Germany. They die of typhus in February or March 1945, a month before the camp is liberated by the Allies on April 12.

The Frank family consisted of father Otto (1889–1980), mother Edith (1900–1945, Auschwitz), daughter Margot (1926–1945, Bergen-Belsen), and Anne (1929–1945).

Otto Frank, who was a decorated World War I veteran, initially thought that German anti-Semitism was directed mainly towards the Orthodox Jews but soon found that his whole family was in danger. He was a well-educated man from a bankers’ family, and despite his studies in art history, he ended up in the family business with his brothers. It included also managing mineral water and manufacturing cough drops, as well as loans in foreign currency. A banking enterprise brought him to Amsterdam, where he met Jo Kleiman, who helped initially with the unsuccessful exchange trade, much later with the successful production of pectin for jam making and spice mixes. The franchise of the Opekta company was the business they were in when the war broke out. It had moderate success, because they had to rely on fluctuations like the strawberry harvest, etc., but the family was not poor.

With them in hiding in their place of business on Prinsengracht 263 were the van Pels family: mother Gusta († Theresienstadt, 1945), Hermann van Pels († Auschwitz, 1944), and son Peter († Mauthausen, 1945) who had moved from Osnabrück in 1937. Van Pels joined in 1941, which after dejuidification was called Trading Company Gies&Co. The name Gies refers to two people: Jan Gies († 1993) and especially his wife, Miep Gies-Santrouchits (1912–2012), originally a refugee from Austria in the First World War, who stayed in Holland. She worked in the office and became important as keeper of the diary. Her dentist Fritz Pfeffer joined them later.

Other helpers were Bep Voskuijl († 1983), Johannes Kleiman, and Victor Kugler.

It would take too long to explain the situation in the Netherlands before the war. A conventional country, democratic, women had the vote since 1922, neutral in WWI, taking in one million Belgian refugees. Rising fascism was a worry, but Germany was an important trading partner. The system of religion and political belief has been described as “verzuiling” or pillarization, describing peaceful coexistence of groups in most aspects of daily life. Jews were too small in number to have their own pillar, 1 percent of the population, mostly belonging to the socialist or economic liberal pillar. Historian Robert Jan van Pelt is correct in my view when he writes “Bye and large, the prejudice against the Jews was perhaps somewhat stronger in degree but not different in kind from the prejudices among the pillars. The bourgeois, middle-of-the-road, and commonsensical character of society in the Netherlands was largely immune to the anti-Semitic hysteria that arose in France in the 1890s and in Germany in the 1920s.” Jews felt at home, Amsterdam was Mokum, the Jerusalem of the West. The Netherlands had a long history of allowing Jewish refugees from the East, the Ashkenazim, and Spain and Portugal, the Sephardim, to find protection. Going back to the seventeenth century there are synagogues in Amsterdam and extensive Jewish trading in the Dutch colonies Suriname and New Amsterdam.

How many Jews lived in the Netherlands? According to the census by the Jewish Council in 1940, there were 118,295 Dutch Jews, 14,493 German Jews, 7,297 other foreign Jews totaling 140,547 (with half and quarter Jews, 160,815). The number for Jewish survivors, as registered with the Jewish Coordination Commission in 1945, is 21,674.

Anne Frank writes about daily life and German restrictions. She does not mention two important events in 1941: on February 12 a Jewish Council is ordered, and on February 22–25, first roundup of Jews in Amsterdam. This led to the so-called February Strike in 1941. It was the only resistance on a large scale against the treatment of the Jews in German-occupied countries. Did it help the Jews? Not much. Was there no resistance? Not much in the first months, at least no large outcry beyond the February Strike, and not well organized.

In our course we studied the circumstances and of course analyzed the famous diary, which is more than just the red-and-white checkered book. The whole body of texts also includes short stories, the beginning of a novel, and a book with favorite quotes from world literature. The story of her diary’s publication is one of intrigue and money, and so are the diverse theater and film versions. Amsterdam welcomes one million visitors every year to the Anne Frank House (mostly Americans), and they have a special Anne Frank theater.

Since the early sixties, the diary became part of the curriculum in the American schools. When I asked my students at what age young children should be taught or made familiar with the Holocaust or the Shoah, the answers vary, based on their own experiences. Jewish students will mention earlier ages, before middle school, but often stress to be careful. Most of them agree that Anne Frank’s diary is a good introduction to the Shoah.

I have often asked what makes Anne Frank so popular in the USA. Here are some reasons from my students’ comments:

1. She has a loud personality, spoke her mind, acted older, was basically a little diva.

2. They (Americans) love celebrities: a breakdown from daily life.

3. USA was more removed from the war, which becomes romanticized. This tone matches up with Anne Frank.

4. There are no horrific moments in her diary.

5. Americans like tragedy; we like to cry, feel, and empathize.

6. Europe is less distanced from WWII.

7. The movie and the play were the main reasons.

8. Americans consider it a story.

9. It shows the will in Anne to fight.

10. The optimism in young love.

11. Americans did not see war firsthand.

I think we can safely say that our new generation can be very thoughtful and observant and not as superficial as we tend to assume.

Of course there has been a long educational process since the early sixties when Anne was part of English or social studies. Anne Frank became a symbol of universality, the hope of world peace where people “in spite of everything, etc.” Otto Frank was in fact one of the supporters of the movement to bring world youth together in the Anne Frank House and promoted international discussions and conventions. Today, many schools have the Holocaust as part of the curriculum, and Anne’s diary becomes a starting point. The optimism of earlier times is being directed towards a discussion about moral values, tolerance, and prejudice. I read teacher’s manuals where the problems of eight people in a cramped secret annex are being evaluated on character flaws and behavioral shortcomings. On the other hand, the diary is still on the list of censored books in this country. Francine Prose in her book on Anne Frank cites a case in Colorado where a teacher was fired for teaching the diary to ninth graders in 2004. Explicit descriptions of her body and infatuation with Peter were often mentioned.

One of the aspects that I thought was not well examined were the literary qualities of the diary. As it was published in 1947, it was in fact a revamped, edited version of a diary, a story with narrative aspects. A diary is different from a novel: it is private, and a diarist tries to ban the idea that someone else is reading it or will be reading it. The first version is such a private diary. Anne’s rewrite gives us unique material. Comparing the first with the later version one sees that she kept very close to the actual facts and many of her original feelings. She takes out many things when she edits, is less critical of her mother, but she does not really invent new stories, she does not fictionalize. That is of course a sign of a good journalist. Besides, she has to have talent. And Anne did have that as one sees her growing in her writing.

One does not really look for literary motifs or themes in her diary, but one can make connections between happenings and repeats. Most striking passages are repetitive thoughts about guilt feelings, education, growing up, teenage questions, fighting with adults, etc. She keeps reworking her notes as a “war diary.” She writes down the daily events of eating, sleeping, washing, etc. She would be the perfect candidate for Facebook or Whatsapp, with likes and dislikes and a halfhearted love affair. On the other hand, she is a hard worker, learning words, shorthand, history, and other subjects that keep her going, and writing is part of that. By reading, Anne also learned how to write. From April 1944 onwards, you can see in her diary that she uses the experiences of her hiding in a positive way. She becomes stronger and calmer, she finds her goal in writing, her desire to become a journalist, and she has more or less finished the transition from child into adulthood. I think that she grew up faster in hiding than she would have in the normal world, with a lot of social obligations.

The new generation has a different emotional attitude towards the Holocaust. The questions are different. Twenty years ago, a good number of students had parents who lived through the war or parents who were second generation with emotional attachments. Today there are still some grandparents who tell stories, but there is a generational layer shoved in between. The questions change and become more factual and more general, like: How could people do this to each other?

One of the newer aspects to my teaching of the last five years was the study of bystanders, their motivations, impassiveness, and memories after the war. Did years of propaganda change the attitude towards the Jews? Questions can be asked how the Dutch government approached the returning Jews. Handling and returning stolen property is a recurring topic that has not completely been resolved. I read once that humans tend to hate those they have harmed. Also, heroes are preferred over returning victims, who embarrass. Victims do not always arouse pity, sometimes even criticism.

Nevertheless, there are some hard questions that have to be addressed when discussing WWII in the Netherlands, starting with the fact that three-quarters of the Jews perished. Researchers are in agreement about some aspects: the Netherlands is a flat country without mountainous regions to hide, and the geographical situation hinders escape possibilities (Germany, Belgium, the sea are the borders). The majority of the Jews were assimilated into the society and less aware of or used to open anti-Semitism as in other countries. Many of the horror stories were not believed. Dutch bureaucracy was too obedient and passive or servile towards the Germans. This can also be said of the Jewish Council. The attitude of many civil servants was too respectful for authority, and perhaps the Dutch are in that respect too much like the Germans. Their offices of registration were perfectly organized, and their identity-card (with the J) was foolproof, a result of a Mr. Jacob Lentz’s efforts. The Germans were thus very successful in separating Jews from non-Jews. Police units like the Schalkhaarders were German trained, and there were “Jewhunters” for money. Dutch historian Lou de Jong mentions the 140,000 Jews, of which only 25,000 returned. Three thousand Jews who were able to escape abroad, 25,000 who went into hiding, of which 9,000 were detected or betrayed. He also points out that there were many Jews who refused help “because they believed that deportation gave them a better chance to survive than going into hiding.” I remember we always had a discussion in class whether a family should stay together or split up. The Jewish Council was every year a hotly debated topic. Were they collaborating, accommodating, or appeasing? It was a discussion that many Jews had problems with at the time, and so did we.

Likewise, there is the romantic picture that many people have of the resistance. I gave a sobering statistic about the many Jewish lives lost, while on the other hand, the Netherlands has the largest number of “righteous gentiles” at Yad Vashem, people who helped the Jews. At the end of the war, some 300,000 non-Jewish Dutchmen were in hiding to avoid slave labor in Germany, there were over 1,200 different underground papers, some 3,000 Allied men were able to pass to Spain via underground groups, and there was a large underground economy. It is in no one’s interest to blame an entire country or speak of collective guilt, and I can agree with de Jong when he concluded his lecture in Harvard in 1988: “Nations of heroes do not exist. But there were among the Dutch tens of thousands of ordinary human beings, men and women, who did save the country’s soul.”

Historian Jan Bank recently put another perspective on European attitudes towards Jews. In his God in de oorlog: De rol van de kerk in Europa 1939–1945 [God during the war: the role of the church in Europe 1939–1945], he says that several factors colored the Christian views. First, there was the opinion that the Jews had killed Jesus Christ, deicide. Second, because of long-lasting discrimination, Jews became dominant in certain professions like medicine, jurisdiction, etc., which caused for some jealousy. Finally, there is the opinion that Jews were especially represented in socialist and communist organizations. Fact is that the Dutch churches were more outspoken in their anti-Nazi criticism than most other European churches in, for instance, Italy or Germany or Belgium.

I think we should be well aware of putting modern values and judgments on historical events. With the Anne Frank worshipping we should be weary of making her an icon of the feminist movement, the religious movement, the tree conservation movement, etc. I also have my doubts about the connection to the Middle East conflict of modern times. Anne was a young girl of flesh and blood, a teenager with her own prejudices. On December 12, 1942, she writes: “The people in this neighborhood don’t look so very attractive now. The children especially are so dirty you wouldn’t want to touch them with a barge pole, real slum kids with running noses, I can hardly understand their lingo.“ Not exactly the words of a social icon. The opinions about her mother are well known and as ordinary as any teenager’s. “Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong” is what she writes on March 17, 1944. Many parents would smile in recognition. It makes her into a normal brat who, as they say “was finding herself” and who wrote a few days later, “I want to be useful or give pleasure to the people around me yet who don’t really know me, I want to go on living even after my death!” If you take that into account, she is well worth your time; she can be inspiring and funny and an example of a beautiful human being in very difficult circumstances. She never could have imagined the impact she had and still has.

10

A Selection of Publications

This chapter contains a selection of publications from or related to Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan.

Abdolah, Kader. How Europe is Changing. With introduction by Ton Broos and translations by University of Michigan students of Dutch: Saul Allen, Meleah Auten, Daniel Birchok, Micky Byrnes, Sarah Doorn, Sipkje Pesnichak, Leah Vandermark, and John Westra. Berkeley: University of California, 2011.

Beekman, E. M. A Different Magic: What a Naturalist Taught a Novelist. Pasadena, CA: Mitra Publications Group, 2001. Occasional Papers of Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan. De Vries – Van der Kooy Memorial Lecture, October 28, 1999.

Dutch-American Correspondences in Feminism. New Occasional Papers in Women’s Studies, no. 3 (spring 1988), edited by Lynne Huffer, Catherine Hutchinson, and Stacy Spencer. With a story by and interview with Renate Dorrestein. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan’s Women’s Studies Program, 1988.

Dutch Poetry in Translation: Kaleidoscope. From Medieval Times to the Present, with Parallel Dutch Text. Translated by Martijn Zwart in collaboration with Ethel Grene. Wilmette, IL: Fairfield Books, 1998. CD-set with Dutch narrator Ton Broos, English narrator Nicholas Rudall. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Media Union, 2001.

Cover image for Dutch Poetry in Translation: Kaleidoscope. From Medieval Times to the Present, with Parallel Dutch Text, translated by Martijn Zwart and Ethel Grene, 1998

Half Dozen Dutch: Six Writers-in-Residence at American Universities / Een half dozijn Nederlands. Zes Writers in Residence aan Amerikaanse universiteiten. Benno Barnard, Graa Boomsma, Renate Dorrestein, Thomas Rosenboom, Bert Schierbeek, Arie van den Berg. Compiled and with an introduction by Ton Broos. Ann Arbor: QED Press, 1988.

Cover image for Half Dozen Dutch: Six Writers-in-Residence at American Universities / Een half dozijn Nederlands. Zes Writers in Residence aan Amerikaanse universiteiten, by Benno Barnard, Graa Boomsma, Renate Dorrestein, Thomas Rosenboom, Bert Schierbeek, Arie van den Berg, 1988.

Patriots and Orangists: Revolutionary Pamphlets and Caricatures in the Netherlands, 1780–1800. Compiled and edited by Karla Vandersypen and Arie van den Berg, with an introduction by F. van Holthoon. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 1986.

The Return of Bert Schierbeek. A selection of Bert Schierbeek’s poetry accompanying his reading on November 4, 1984. Ann Arbor: Department of Germanic Languages, 1984. Illustration by Margot Massey.

An Exhibit of Robinson Crusoe in the Old and New Worlds: A Selection from the Hubbard Collection of Imaginary Voyages. Catalogue, compiled and edited by Ton J. Broos and Peggy Daub. Ann Arbor: Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library University of Michigan, 1992.

Robinson Crusoe in the Old and New Worlds. Edited by Ton Broos with Jelle Kingma and Anton Bossers. With articles on Hubbard and his collection at the University of Michigan Special Collections. The Hague: Bibliographia Neerlandica, 1992.

Toebosch, Annemarie. “Populist Wilders May Have Come up Short, but Dutch Intolerance Is Still Real.” The Conversation (University of Michigan), March 15, 2017. https://theconversation.com/populist-wilders-may-have-come-up-short-but-dutch-intolerance-is-still-real-74668. Reprinted in Newsweek with title “Shattering the Myth of Dutch Tolerance.” https://www.newsweek.com/shattering-myth-dutch-tolerance-569274

Toebosch, Annemarie. “De gladgestreken symboliek van Anne Frank en Martin Luther King.” Joop (BNNVARA) February 9, 2018. https://joop.bnnvara.nl/opinies/de-gladgestreken-symboliek-van-anne-frank-en-martin-luther-king

Toebosch, Annemarie. “Thierry en de Latijnse School.” Joop (BNNVARA), March 4, 2018. https://joop.bnnvara.nl/opinies/thierry-en-de-latijnse-school

Toebosch, Annemarie. “Mars voor ons leven.” Joop (BNNVARA), March 29, 2018. https://joop.bnnvara.nl/opinies/mars-voor-ons-leven

Toebosch, Annemarie. “Dutch Memorial Day: Erasing People after Death.” The Conversation (University of Michigan), August 15, 2018. https://theconversation.com/dutch-memorial-day-erasing-people-after-death-97236. Translated into Bahasa Indonesia and reprinted in The Conversation Indonesia with title “Cara Belanda menanggapi sejarah perang kemerdekaan Indonesia.” https://theconversation.com/cara-belanda-menanggapi-sejarah-perang-kemerdekaan-indonesia-101698

Toebosch, Annemarie. “Dutch Memorial Day: Maintaining Colonial Innocence by Excluding People of Color.” The Conversation (University of Michigan), March 3, 2019, an updated version of “Dutch Memorial Day: Erasing People after Death.” https://theconversation.com/dutch-memorial-day-maintaining-colonial-innocence-by-excluding-people-of-color-116410

Toebosch, Annemarie. “De Ene Standrechtelijke Executie Is De Andere Niet.” Joop (BNNVARA) July 2, 2019. https://joop.bnnvara.nl/opinies/de-ene-standrechtelijke-executie-is-de-andere-niet. Reprinted in Histori Bersama in English as “Not All Summary Executions Are Created Equal” (translation Toebosch) https://historibersama.com/not-all-summary-executions-are-created-equal/ and in Bahasa Indonesia as “Tak Semua Eksekusi Singkat Dianggap Sama” (translation Yongky) https://historibersama.com/tak-semua-eksekusi-singkat-dianggap-sama-joop-nl/?lang=id

11

A Race and Ethnicity Focus

This chapter lays out some of our recent academic activism, outreach, and public scholarship. Additional publications in this area are listed in chapter 11.

Academic Activism

A Call to Action: Holocaust. Choreography: Krisilyn Tony Frazier. Film: Jenna Marie Kulhawik. Commentary with Dr. Irene Butter. Recipient of the Detroit Short Film Festival Best Michigan Film, 2018.

“Questions for NIOD by Dr. Annemarie Toebosch.” Histori Bersama. Played at a closed round table discussion to raise concerns about the four-year research program “Independence, Decolonisation, Violence and War in Indonesia, 1945–1950.” NIOD, Amsterdam, January 31, 2019. https://historibersama.com/questions-for-niod-by-dr-annemarie-toebosch/. Translated into Bahasa Indonesia as “Diskusi Meja Bundar dengan Tim Peneliti 1945–1949.” https://historibersama.com/questions-for-niod-by-dr-annemarie-toebosch/?lang=id.

Outreach

Toebosch, Annemarie. “Populism: Where Dutch Progressivism and American Conservatism Meet.” Presentation in the Camp Michigania Faculty Forum, July 25, 2018. [This presentation has been updated for use in the Dutch program curriculum as Being Dutch: A Tolerance of Us and Them.]

Toebosch, Annemarie. “Racism Made Innocent: The Story of Zwarte Piet.” Presentation in the Camp Michigania Faculty Forum, July 23, 2018.

Public Scholarship

What follows is the updated and republished version of an article on the racism of Dutch Memorial Day, published in The Conversation on March 3, 2019. The original article was titled “Dutch Memorial Day: Erasing People after Death.” The full reference for this article is given in chapter 11.

Dutch Memorial Day: Maintaining Colonial Innocence by Excluding People of Color

Annemarie Toebosch

The Dutch Royal Family lays a wreath at the National Monument in Amsterdam on May 4, 2009. Reuters/Olaf Kraak

On Dutch Memorial Day – May 4 – the Netherlands remembers its war dead from World War II and after. A close look at the holiday reveals a culture that maintains its innocence about a history of colonial oppression.

Indonesia declared independence from the Netherlands on August 17, 1945. This followed 350 years of Dutch East India Company control[1] and Dutch state rule, as well as Japanese occupation during WWII. After the declaration, the Netherlands waged a war[2] to re-establish colonial control over Indonesia. The war, whose dead included Indonesians killed by summary execution, cost an estimated 300,000 Indonesian lives and around 6,000 casualties on the Dutch side.[3]

While Indonesia has, to some extent, faced its history of decolonization violence, the Netherlands has not done so.[4] As a social scientist[5] and director of Dutch and Flemish Studies at the University of Michigan, I examine the reasons for this in my writing and teaching about issues of inclusion in the Dutch-language area.

Paid Independence

The Indonesian War of Independence ended in 1949 with the signing of an internationally mediated independence agreement requiring Indonesia to take over the Dutch East India government’s debt, effectively paying the Netherlands 3.8 billion guilders for its independence.[6] Payments continued until 2002.[7]

A Western European nation thus rebuilt itself after World War II with Marshall Plan loans[8] from the United States, plus a comparable amount of money from Indonesia, which was itself recovering from the war.

The struggle for historic justice for Indonesia continues today, on Dutch Memorial Day. The day involves a ceremony with two minutes of national silence and the laying of wreaths by the Dutch monarchs. The Indonesians who fought against the Dutch and were killed in the war are not commemorated in this ceremony, despite the Netherlands officially considering them Dutch at the time.

Indonesian soldiers training to fight the Dutch in 1949.

An Exclusive Memorial Day

Dutch Memorial Day is no stranger to protests against exclusion,[9] and the Indonesian victims of the war are not the only ones who have been ignored on this day. It took decades, for example, for Dutch Holocaust victims to be remembered.[10]

Currently, a Dutch movement called “No May 4 For Me” has been protesting the exclusion of Indonesian casualties from remembrance while their killers are remembered.[11] Among the killers were former Dutch Nazis, who were sent to Indonesia after World War II to fight for Holland in the War for Independence.[12]

Recognizing Indonesian Independence

So who is, and who is not, commemorated on Dutch Memorial Day? The key to the answer is this: The Netherlands does not officially recognize Indonesia’s 1945 Independence[13] – it recognizes the 1949 date of the sovereignty agreement instead.[14]

Here’s why the Netherlands cannot recognize Indonesia’s 1945 independence: If the Netherlands recognized that date, that would mean that the country had attacked a sovereign nation after World War II with the purpose of recolonizing it. And then the massacres, euphemistically referred to in the Netherlands as the “police actions,” would not be “police actions” but war crimes, as explain by Ady Setyawen and Marjolein Van Pagee.[15]

Military Action

According to the official Dutch story, however, Indonesia was “Dutch” during the “police actions,”[16] and thus killing your own people is not a war crime but, rather, law enforcement gone wrong. Except that law enforcement in the “police actions” were not police officers but soldiers serving in the Dutch army.[17]

Dutch soldiers in Indonesia in 1947. Fotograaf Onbekend/National Archive of the Netherlands

The publication “De Doden Tellen”[18] (“Counting the Dead”), issued by the government-appointed National Committee for Memorial Day, betrays the inconsistencies of the official story. It cites the conflict as “police actions” while simultaneously using language of military “conquest.”

“During the so-called police actions, the Netherlands conquers areas and declares them as Dutch territory once again,”[19] the National Committee publication says.

Apartheid

The Netherlands wants to count the people it has killed as its own, so as not to have committed war crimes, while at the same time not commemorating their deaths. What lies beneath the surface of the exclusion is segregation on the basis of race.

Dutch colonialism did not grant citizenship to indigenous Indonesians.[20] Until this past year, on Dutch Memorial Day, colonial apartheid policies were applied even after death. On a day that commemorates civilian casualties of war, Indonesian civilian casualties were not commemorated because they had no citizenship under colonial rule. The chair of the National Committee for Memorial Day, Gerdi Verbeet, admitted as much in 2018 when she said that “those who had no Dutch passport are not remembered at the moment.”[21]

For example, consider the Indonesian victims of World War II. Although the number is not verified, civilian casualties in Indonesia are commonly estimated at 4 million.[22] The official document that counts the dead to be commemorated on Dutch Memorial Day lists around 20,000, a stunning discrepancy.[23] The way that the Dutch come up with such a wildly different number is because they have been excluding all indigenous people.

A Change?

This year, following years of pressure, the National Committee for Memorial Day states in e-mail correspondence with me that the Netherlands now commemorates these stateless dead.[24] The change has not been made public, however, nor have the dehumanizing numbers above been updated. The National Committee did not answer direct questions about when these updates will be made.

In any real sense then, millions of people effectively continue to be erased on Dutch Memorial Day. Also, any victims killed by the Dutch state in Indonesia between 1945–1949 continue not to be commemorated.

White Innocence

So now, all Indonesian civilians who died under Japanese occupation in WWII may be commemorated in the Netherlands. But those civilians killed by the Dutch state after WWII are not – only Dutch military are recognized. These are the rules today, and when I asked why the shift to “military-only” commemoration happens after WWII, I did not receive an answer.

One sticking point remains. While the Netherlands was still catching its breath from Nazi terror in the months after World War II, Dutch civilians died in Indonesia. They were killed as Indonesia started to defend itself, violently, against recolonization attempts initially perpetrated by colonial British allies of the Dutch.[25]

Yet current rules state that the cut off for military-only commemoration is not WWII but “directly after WWII,”[26] just in time for Indonesian victims of Dutch violence to be excluded and for colonial innocence to be maintained.

Counting the Dead

Dutch Memorial Day is a colonial story, then, about the value of human life, about who counts, who doesn’t and who gets to decide. Four million brown civilian casualties of World War II have yet to be counted in official documents; 300,000 brown victims of the “police actions” do not count.

And in a sad twist in this tale, exactly one group of brown people does count: the fallen Indonesian soldiers, most of them Moluccans,[27] who fought on the side of the Netherlands during the recolonization war. They are the victims-made-perpetrators by a colonial oppressor after a centuries-long history of exploitation.

The Colonial Mind

Colonial thinking as a form of racial supremacy is never far away in the Netherlands. In Indonesia, it took the form of an assumed right to enslave people,[28] kill them and take their land for profit. Afro-Surinamese Dutch scholar and writer Gloria Wekker, in her groundbreaking book White Innocence,[29] analyzes it as the racial exceptionalism that paved the way for white Dutch culture’s blindness to the many forms of racism today. Examples are the country’s worst employment outcomes[30] for people of color in Europe other than Sweden. The ratio for arrests of non-whites to whites in the Netherlands is three times worse than that ratio in the US.[31]

And Forum for Democracy, the party that openly warns of the dangers of mixing Dutch and non-Dutch blood[32] and laments the demise of the Dutch colonial empire[33] just became the largest party in the Dutch Senate.

It is hardly surprising when, on May 4, in two solemn minutes, the country continues its colonial silence.

This is an updated version of a story[34] that first ran on August 15, 2018.

1. https://www.britannica.com/place/Indonesia/Growth-and-impact-of-the-Dutch-East-India-Company ↵

2. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Indonesian_War_of_Independence ↵

3. https://www.singeluitgeverijen.nl/de-arbeiderspers/boek/koloniale-oorlogen-in-indonesie/ ↵

4. https://theconversation.com/dutch-memorial-day-erasing-people-after-death-97236 ↵

5. https://lsa.umich.edu/german/people/faculty/toebosch.html ↵

6. http://degrauweeeuw.blogspot.com/2019/02/persbericht-nederland-stal-miljarden.html for its independence, https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-indonesische-injectie↵

7. https://www.waterkant.net/suriname/2014/07/03/nederland-en-herstelbetalingen-column/ ↵

8. https://nl.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/marshall-plan-1947-2017/ ↵

9. https://www.werkgroepherkenning.nl/maud-van-de-reijt-zestig-jaar-herrie-om-twee-minuten-stilte/ ↵

10. https://www.werkgroepherkenning.nl/maud-van-de-reijt-zestig-jaar-herrie-om-twee-minuten-stilte/ ↵

11. https://nltimes.nl/2018/04/25/noise-protest-planned-national-wwii-commemoration ↵

12. https://www.trouw.nl/home/bernhard-wilde-nederlandse-ss-ers-in-1946-naar-indie-sturen~a60cd3cf/ ↵

13. https://nos.nl/video/549112-indonesie-wil-erkenning-onafhankelijkheidsdag.html ↵

14. http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0002055/1949-12-22 ↵

15. http://www.roodebrugsoerabaia.com/book-surabaya-di-mana-kau-sembunyikan-nyali-kepahlawananmu/?v=7516fd43adaa ↵

16. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2012.719362 ↵

17. https://indisch4ever.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/militaire-spectator-10-2016-limpach.pdf ↵

18. https://www.4en5mei.nl/onderzoek/publicaties/de_doden_tellen ↵

19. https://www.4en5mei.nl/nieuws/nieuwsbericht/248/herziene-editie-‘de-doden-tellen’ ↵

20. https://joop.bnnvara.nl/opinies/algemeen-kiesrecht-werd-1919-ingevoerd ↵

21. https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/1985563/verbeet-oproep-tot-lawaaidemo-is-respectloos ↵

22. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/japans-occupation-of-java-in-the-second-world-war-9781350022201/ ↵

23. https://www.4en5mei.nl/nieuws/nieuwsbericht/248/herziene-editie-‘de-doden-tellen’ ↵

24. https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/581/Toebosch_emails_final.pdf?1556814631 ↵

25. https://historibersama.com/ ↵

26. https://www.4en5mei.nl/media/documenten/kransleggingdecijfers(1).pdf ↵

27. https://www.britannica.com/place/Netherlands ↵

28. http://www.worldcat.org/title/daar-werd-wat-gruwelijks-verricht-slavernij-in-nederlands-indie/oclc/884589447 ↵

29. https://www.dukeupress.edu/white-innocence ↵

30. https://www.volkskrant.nl/economie/allochtoon-erg-slecht-af-op-nederlandse-arbeidsmarkt~bf882e77/?akamaiType=FREE ↵

31. https://www.bjutijdschriften.nl/tijdschrift/tijdschriftcriminologie/2018/3/TvC_0165-182X_2018_060_003_001.pdf ↵

32. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/03/16/alt-right-beweging-juicht-op-het-web-hard-voor-baudet-7415174-a1550730 ↵

33. https://www.trouw.nl/opinie/baudet-vult-het-gat-dat-god-heeft-achtergelaten-met-een-geloof-in-de-natie~a55d9d182/ ↵

34. https://theconversation.com/dutch-memorial-day-erasing-people-after-death-97236 ↵