Interviews with striking Gelderlanders

Mien van der Meulen-Nulle
(The Hague, 17 March 1884 – Winterswijk, 8 January 1982)

Louisa Wilhelmina (Mien) van der Meulen-Nulle was a Dutch teacher of lace technology and director of the Royal Dutch Lace School in The Hague.

Nulle studied useful handicrafts at the Industrieschool voor Meisjes in The Hague. She came into contact with lace through books. She received additional lessons from Elisabeth Manhave, a former pupil of the lace school in Sluis. In 1903, she taught at the Lace School, then based in Apeldoorn. At the age of 22, she became headmistress of the lace school in 1906 when it moved to The Hague. She was given access to an attached studio. She designed the cradle cover for Princess Juliana in 1909. On the occasion of a parade in Leiden depicting the entry of Frederik Hendrik in 1629, she designed several 17th-century lace based on paintings in 1910. It earned several awards.

Louis Frequin
(Arnhem, 29 July 1914 – Berg en Dal, 13 October 1998)

Interview on 11 August 1976 (tape 1 missing – interview 28 April 1976)

Louis Hendrik Antonius (Louis) Frequin was a Dutch journalist, author and resistance fighter. Louis Frequin was married and had eight children, the oldest of whom, Willibrord Frequin, is the best known.

Louis Frequin was Roman Catholic and had worked in journalism since 1930. Former editor-in-chief of the Gelderlander and the Nieuwe Krant.

Herman Martinus Oldenhof
(Apeldoorn, 17 September 1899 – Ede, 11 April 1985)

Interviewer J.P. Gansenbrink, 21 July 1977

Oldenhof was a Dutch mayor. He was a member of the Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP). Oldenhof was mayor of the municipalities of Lopik, Jaarsveld and Willige Langerak from 1929 to 1936. He then served as mayor of Kampen from 1936 to 1942 and from 1945 to 1952.

Oldenhof left for the municipality of Ede, where he was mayor until 1962. Under his administration, the municipality grew from 47,656 to 60,162 inhabitants and much was invested in new education and infrastructure. In 1962, he became deputy of the province of Gelderland. He continued to live in Ede, though. Here he died in 1985 at the age of 85 in retirement home De Klinkenberg.

Jan Taminiau
(1 April 1903 – 17 July 1993)

Interviewer G. J. Mentink, 16 October 1975

Taminiau was director of the Gelderland fruit processing company Taminiau Elst Overbetuwe (TEO)

Jan Hendrik de Groot
(Alkmaar 13 March 1901 – Zeist 1 December 1990)

Jan H. de Groot was a poet, journalist in Arnhem.

In 1948, he became editor of Het Vrije Volk in Arnhem and from 1950 until his retirement in 1966, he was press chief of the AKU in Arnhem. From 1950 to 1962, he was secretary and treasurer of the Dutch branch of the international authors’ association PEN.

In spring 2015, STUK celebrated. For 37.5 years, the Leuven arts centre has been at the artistic forefront. A book (STUK, a history 1977-2015; Hannibal Publishing House) and an exhibition (Was it now ‘t Stuc, STUC or STUK?; STUK Expozaal) underlined this contrarian anniversary. At the same time, the historical retrospection served to pause for a moment and look back, only to choose a new future as the House for Dance, Sound and Vision. Yet such a radical change of direction is by no means unique in historical perspective. Reinventing itself is in the DNA of the organisation, as a logical consequence of the constant search for artistic renewal.

In this smoothly written book, cultural historian Marleen Brock (KU Leuven) tells the story of 37.5 years of STUK – not a nicely rounded anniversary, but as contrary as the arts centre itself. Amusing anecdotes and quotes from interviews with key figures, photos, posters and documents bring the rich history to life.

In recent years, archaeologists have demonstrated that they can help to deconstruct dominant heritage narratives and develop new ones which are more nuanced and sensitive to both past and present stakeholder and subaltern communities. In this study, material culture from excavated enslaved villages, human remains from excavated enslaved cemeteries, and oral histories from participant interviews, were used to construct alternative narratives of the lifeways of enslaved people on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curaçao, St Eustatius, and St Maarten/St Martin. The use of qualitative data in a thematic analysis facilitated nuanced understandings of many aspects of enslaved lifeways and allowed comparisons to be made between the islands and between the various datasets as well as between the study area and other regions of the Caribbean and the wider Americas. On each island, the research provided a perspective lacking in the existing literature: in St Maarten/St Martin the evidence indicated that enslaved people here had highly complex spiritual, cultural, and communal lifeways which were intricately linked with the island landscape; in St Eustatius the evidence indicated that enslaved people experienced high levels of stress despite periods of economic and material wealth; and in Curaçao the evidence indicated that the social structures of Atlantic slavery persisted well into the 20th century. Overall, the study demonstrates that narratives describing slavery in the Dutch Caribbean as ‘mild’ have neglected many of the physical and psychological aspects of enslavement for which there is ample evidence. The new narrative presented here is therefore important for our understanding of Dutch Caribbean heritage and structures of modern slavery, the development of island identities, and positive social and political change.

March 4th 2023, the finalization of the oral history project of the women’s movement in Bonaire was celebrated. This project was executed by Liliane de Geus and Judith Brekelmans in 2021-2022 and was mentored by Prof. dr. Rose Mary Allen, chair of Culture, Community and History at the University of Curacao.

The project is part of the capacity development activities of the NWO-funded project ‘Cultural Practices of Citizenship under Conditions of Fragmented Sovereignty: Gendered and Sexual Citizenship in Curaçao and Bonaire, 2017-2022 coordinated by Dr. Sruti Bala , Associate professor Theatre studies, University of Amsterdam’.

Twenty-eight persons were interviewed in total. The first group interviewed consisted of 14 persons who were older than 60 years, some of whom were members of the different women’s organizations and the Steering Committee, the umbrella women’s platform. Some of the women in this first group were not directly involved in a woman’s group but were women activists and groundbreakers in their own right in the areas of politics, the labour movement, social affairs, or culture and the arts. The second group consisted of women in the 50-60 age group, while the third group comprised women between the ages of 20 and 49, generally called young professionals. The youngest woman interviewed was 29 years old at the time, and the oldest was 92.

Preparing for a series of extensive oral history interviews on Bonaire to document the women’s movements and participation in the public sphere …. Rose Mary Allen with Jolanda Helmyer-Marsera

This book narrates the development of education in St. Maarten between 1954 and 2000, by tapping into the experience of the protagonists, giving them a voice in the recording of their own history. As such, it lends a voice to postcolonial subjects, who have often been bypassed or forgotten by most traditional historians, and thus rendered voiceless. The work is based on both written and oral history, including interviews with important educational agents, as well as former pupils and parents. By doing this, it describes the overall framework of education in St. Maarten within the juridical space of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The first part of the book deals with the Dutch Antilles in general, and with St. Maarten in particular, examining the effects of slavery and its consequences. Both before and after the restructuration of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954, education was essentially shaped by the different religious denominations on the island. Over time, St. Maarten’s schooling system developed from an almost non-existing entity to a well-structured one, which closely resembled the educational framework in the Netherlands, its former colonial ruler.

Part two reflects the respondents’ reactions to several issues concerning education in St. Maarten. It was only after local St. Maarten students became teachers that topics about the island found their place in the curriculum. Even though it took some time to integrate St. Maarten in the curriculum, the people did not (and still do not) have the feeling that education has let them down. It is only now that they are beginning to question whether, and to what extent, schools were, and are, able to positively influence young people. In the past, they believed that schooling – however foreign its curriculum may have been – did actually help them to find a niche in the world.

After studying both written and oral sources, the book concludes that the coat of arms of St. Maarten is representative of its findings about education on this island: Semper progrediens – “Always progressing”. Education in St. Maarten has progressed without showing radical breaks.

Dr Milton George was born in Suriname, and has lived and worked in St. Maarten, the Netherlands, London, Belgium, and Oman. His research interests and publication comprise education, religion, linguistics, and the sociology of the Caribbean. In addition, he has also coordinated and taken part in several volunteer projects in India, Ethiopia, and Egypt.

Social history of 19th- and 20th-century St Eustatius through life histories told by a number of ‘Statians’.

This 500 page book includes oral histories of 28 Sabans collected in 1970 by an ethnographic team led by Julia Crane. It contains interviews of a diverse group of people from the island.

Julia G. Crane’s thesis at the Columbia University is a scholastic effort devoted to the Saban people. It inscribes Saban in the journals of history. 

Living with water and drought is not only an issue today but also in the past. What did you do as a farmer if the Slinge flooded? How did estates ensure sufficient water in canals and ponds? How did a copper mill work? What was water management like in the past and today?

Farmers, estate owners, (retired) employees, dike wardens, water board heirs, water millers and stream volunteers told their stories.

Since 2016, volunteers from the Oral History Working Group Gelderland have been recording life stories about historical water management in order to make the work of the water authorities (past and present) visible. All kinds of people have been interviewed: a laundry owner, volunteers who maintain streams and springs, estate owners, farmers, millers, people who experienced dike breaches up close. How did they live with water?

This is a special project because these stories have been recorded province-wide for the first time.
All the stories can be read via a map tour on the website of Landschapsbeheer Gelderland.

With fifty notable Bommelaars fifty years back in time

In the past fifty years Zaltbommel has grown from a sleepy little town on the river Waal into a modern city in the middle of the country. In this book well-known Bommelaars tell how life has changed in Zaltbommel. 

Former general practitioner and writer Paul van Dijk has chronicled the history of half a century of Zaltbommel on the basis of fifty interviews. Notable inhabitants of Zaltbommel tell about the recent history of the church, art, education, the police, the housing market, politics, the multicultural society and about their love for their city. 

On the basis of these stories, discover how a city changes and how we continue to write history together, even today. 

The notable Bommelaars have been portrayed by photographer André Dieterman. The book therefore not only gives you a special picture of the recent past of Zaltbommel, but because of the beautiful photographs it is also a unique reading and viewing book that should not be missing on any reading table.