As part of the BHIC fellowships, Kirsten van der Wielen conducted research on the ZMV women’s movement in North Brabant (black, migrant and refugee women). For this research, she focused specifically on the Centers for Foreign Women in Oss and in Tilburg. Based on archival research and interviews conducted, an overview of the organizational formation of ZMV women in North Brabant was created. An overview (page) of the project can be found here.
This project can be divided into a research proposal and the results and uses thereof. Van der Wielen focused on the 1980s, specifically feminism and migration. Her goal was to map the ZMV women’s movement in North Brabant. She focused on the initiatives for and by ZMV women (through the CBV, Centers for Foreign Women), both through archival material and interviews. For this, she researched the cities of Oss and Tilburg.
The final products are aimed at both a broad audience and researchers. First, it produced research results on the different functions and origins of CBVs. Future researchers can easily pick up this same topic with this research guide and a list of available primary sources.
The interviews will eventually be posted on the website.
Title: Het stond in de krant: Twente door de lens van de persfotograaf
Author: Marco Krijnsen
Publisher: Uitgeverij Wbooks, Zwolle, 2023
ISBN: 9789462585898
On May 13, 2000, in the middle of the Roompot neighborhood in Enschede, the fireworks storage facility of S.E. Fireworks exploded. The explosions killed 23 people, including four firefighters. Nearly a thousand were injured and about two hundred houses in this neighborhood were destroyed.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the commemoration of this disaster, a series of interviews with people involved were made between 2018 and 2019. Marco Krijnsen, public historian and journalist portrayed 23 people who were affected by this disaster. The interviews give a good picture of the experiences during and after the disaster of both residents of the neighborhood and various other people involved including a journalist, a police officer, a firefighter, the widow of a firefighter who died, a factory manager, a head of social affairs and an alderman. The interviewer has also published a photo book about Twente. Using 125 selected photographs, Krijnsen discusses the history of Twente, including fireworks disasters.
An overview of the interviews can be found on the Atlasvanooit
The interviews can be found on Youtube with the search terms “Atlas van Ooit interviews vuurwerkramp” – They are on the Youtube channel @atlasvanooit5632
In the late 1970s, a textile museum was opened in the former Jannink textile factory on Haaksbergerstraat in Enschede. To gain insight into how people lived and (co)-resided in the working-class houses of Textielstad Enschede in the period from around 1900/1920 to the 1960s, a number of interviews with elderly textile workers were held in 1982 and 1983. The main theme was the three Ws: Living, Working and Welfare. Based on the descriptions, themed rooms were set up in the museum . The interviews were conducted by Carla Bruynel, museum educator at the time, and by Mieke Grobbink, who was an intern at the new museum. The interviews can be found on the Erfgoed Enschede website.
The interviews focus on the home and home furnishings, facilities such as water and light and cover issues like the large families, having fun together, poverty, alcohol consumption and violence.
The project deals with the globalisation heritage of World War II in the Limburg Kempen region. This heritage was created during and after World War II by foreign influences on the local, conservative and rather closed society in northern Limburg.
One of the aims is to collect and map intangible heritage -the stories of the last witnesses- and movable heritage; with a special focus on globalisation heritage.
The five themes were:
A total of 45 interviews were conducted by both individual volunteers and local history circles. By collecting stories, and taking stock of photos, letters, the aim is to gain insight into what impact this had on the local, fairly closed and rural community. The focus is not on the feats of arms but on people’s experiences.
Ten North Limburg municipalities united in the project association Erfgoed Limburgse Kempen, namely Bocholt, Bree, Hamont-Achel, Hechtel-Eksel, Leopoldsburg, Lommel, Meeuwen-Gruitrode, Neerpelt, Overpelt and Peer.
The conditions for giving birth have changed rapidly over the past century. The City Archives looks back at the evolution of pregnancies, births and the maternity period over time. The exhibition takes you back to the old Ypres maternity home in Lange Torhoutstraat where thousands of babies from Ypres and the surrounding area were born.
Using photos, objects and archive documents from the museum’s own archive collection and private collections, you can imagine yourself back in the Bieke, Bartje or Roosje department. Stories of mothers and midwives and a unique collection of medical instruments bring history to life.
Thus, the Ypres City Archives has supplemented its collection with a pack of new material in the form of life stories and testimonies. The archive team conducted interviews and, with sound files and videos, collected an aural and visual record for future generations. Above all, this method of working was heartwarming. The collaboration with so many enthusiastic people makes this exhibition a project of many. A comprehensive catalogue accompanies this expo. In it, individual themes such as ‘midwifery in Ypres’, ‘the history of the maternity home’ or ‘from delivery table to maternity bed’ are explored in depth and widely illustrated with archive documents, dozens of photos and personal documents.
Altogether, these are testimonies from some 25 people about giving birth in the Westhoek.
The interviews could be heard in edited form at the exhibition ‘In de Wieg Gelegd- bevallen door de eeuwen heen’, which ran in CC Het Perron in November/December 2021.
Three stories about the flood disaster in Overasselt and Nederasselt on New Year’s Eve 1925 have been recorded from eyewitnesses who lived in Overasselt during the dike breach. They were respectively 7, 5.5 and 5 years old at the time. What they did not know in 1925 was that the water had been up to the crest of the dykes for days due to snow and heavy rainfall in late December. On New Year’s Eve, the south-westerly wind was right on the vulnerable dike and the water punched a hundred-metre hole in the dike between Overasselt and Nederasselt near ´t Roth farm.
Pastor van Riel was at early mass in Overasselt church with parishioners at the Gospel just after 7.30am. Before he knew it, the church emptied and was left with one altar boy. They heard someone shouting, “D´n diek is doorbroken.”
At Eye Filmmuseum, Gerdien Smit uses oral history to investigate the early years of Feminist Film Collective Cinemien, which was founded in Amsterdam during the heyday of the second feminist wave.
Cinemien felt there were too few women working in film production, distribution and screening. Through the acquisition and distribution of women’s films, they wanted not only to improve the position of women directors, but also to counterbalance the stereotypical female image in mainstream films, and to help raise awareness of women’s film culture.
The video recordings of the interviews and transcripts will be stored in Eye’s catalog and digital archive, and will be available to all at the Eye Collection Center’s center of excellence, the Eye Study. The recordings will be made public in mid-2024, well before the 50th anniversary in 2025, so that researchers, students, journalists, filmmakers and enthusiasts will have access to new source material for their work.
Idea: Tjerkje Dijkstra
Camera: Truus Hoge-Verheij
Hours of intensive interviews were conducted with women from Reiderland ranging in age from 63 to 88. Conversations that were captured on DVD.
The project recorded their own personal history. A piece of oral history. Small stories that make the known history more complete. Women were especially asked, because very little is known about their lives. The ladies interviewed all still live independently and each has an eventful life behind them, often a life of hard work. These women have a lot of stories to tell.
Reiderland is a former municipality in the Dutch province of Groningen, in the region of the same name, Reiderland. In Reiderland lies the easternmost place in the Netherlands (near the village of Bad Nieuweschans)
Interviews with: Tinke Modderman, Tantje Kuiper, Grietje Stek, Gezien Mellema, Annie Hillinga en Bieuwke Lodewegens
Prominent Gelderlanders
5 digitised interviews
Gelderland Heritage
Investigating whether and how the collection can be archived and made public
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 2017, the Dutch Milling profession was declared an Intangible World Heritage Site by Unesco. In addition to traditions, rituals, and customs, the list of Intangible Heritage includes crafts and professions that people do not want to be lost and want to pass on to future generations. Protecting intangible heritage can be done by keeping it alive (using it), passing on knowledge and skills, and by recording the stories of the practitioners of the craft and passing them on to the public.
With the new Molenaars in Noord-Holland storytelling project, Stichting Verhalen Verbinden wants to record and pass on the story of the miller and other crafts that contribute to maintaining the mill. They will do this through storytelling meetings with millers, public meetings and especially by recording all the stories of millers, other mill professions and the volunteers and professionals involved in the mills in a book. Characteristic of their books is that they are low-threshold and accessible to a wide audience.
Uitgeverij Noord-Holland, publisher of the books Leven van de Wind (2007) and Molens in Noord-Holland (1981), would like to publish the book. The book with personal stories nicely complements these ‘standard works’ on mills in North Holland.
The book will be published in the 2nd half of 2023.