Amsterdam
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More to the point, there was a cloudy grayness in her eyes, a torment, almost. She said she had been thinking, since our last meeting, about one particular question I had brought up, something that truly bewildered me: how was it possible that, in choosing an apartment for herself in the early 1990s, she had settled on this one, which was located on the very block where her family had been brought after their hiding place had been discovered and where her Auschwitz nightmare began. How, I had asked Frieda the day before, could she have chosen to live in the very locus of her family suffering?
Then, she had answered me by saying she had simply liked this apartment, liked the light, felt happy here. “But since you brought it up I’ve been thinking about all of these things,” she said now. “That building down the street, this letter, my mother … I just shake my head. How could I do that? I never saw my father again …”
And then this happened. I was holding Anthony in one arm. Frieda had clutched my other arm with both her hands as she recounted her recent tumble of emotions. She reached out and cupped the baby’s cheek. “Wat een schat!” she said: such a sweetheart. He was a big, bright-faced toddler, and he stared at her with the seriousness he could sometimes summon. “He’s thinking deeply,” she said. “He’s never seen someone so old.” And for a moment she stared back at him. This woman who for me personified the history of Amsterdam—both its legacy of personal freedom and the betrayal of that legacy—locked her gaze onto my son, who was born here and so was the physical embodiment of my own involvement with the city. And she said, “You know what I’ve often said, ever since Auschwitz. Life is absurd. It has no meaning. But it has beauty, and wonder, and we have to enjoy that.” Her hand was still on his cheek, her arm stretched out, revealing, beneath the almost silver surface of the skin, the watery blue numbers of the tattoo a Nazi clerk had pricked into it when it was still young and fresh. Then she looked from the boy to me and said, “I was wondering. Your book is about so many things: the whole history of the city. What are you going to end it with?”
“This,” I said. “I’ll end with this.”
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the following people for interviews, insights, facts and figures, lunches and dinners, canal strolls, corrections, and fruitful arguments: Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam; Jaap-Evert Abrahamse; Buford Alexander; Kiki Amsberg and Joost Smiers; Randy Berry, U.S. Consul General in Amsterdam; Bas Bruijn; Eline Hopperus Buma; Tilly de Groot; Jan Donkers; Roel van Duijn; Didi van den Elsaker, Director of the Realtors’ Association of Amsterdam; Carolien Gehrels, Deputy Mayor, City of Amsterdam; Martine Gosselink, Head of the Department of History, Rijksmuseum; Fred Feddes; Zef Hemel; Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Beth Johnson and Jan Kat; Virginia Keizer; Tim Killiam; Geert Mak; Dik van der Meulen; Iman Mreqqi; Lodewijk Petram; Alexander Rinnooy Kan; Julie Ruterbories; Marjan Scharloo, Director of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem; Paul Schuurman, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Deborah Scroggins and Colin Campbell; Jan Pieter Six; Jan Six X; Jan Six XI; and Paul Spies, Director of the Amsterdam Museum.
I am deeply grateful to Frieda Menco for her time, energy, willingness to endure my questions for long hours over many months, and most of all for her friendship.
In addition, I would like to thank Charles Gehring, Jaap Jacobs, Robert Cwiklik, Gary Schwartz, Lodewijk Petram, Paul Spies, Dik van der Meulen, and Pamela Twigg for reading the manuscript. They improved the narrative with their comments and suggestions, and saved me from many errors, though naturally any errors that remain are my own doing.
Thanks, too, to the John Adams Institute board members and staff, past and present, for their help and for putting up with the writing of this book, including Maarten van Essen, Yara Deuss, Tracy Metz, Ruth Oldenziel, Marry de Gaay Fortman, Jeannette Saunders, Arie Westerlaken, Evert van den Berg, Pim Roest, David Vermijs, Chris Kijne, Carien van der Laan, Truus Valkering, Martine Bijkerk, Cobie Ivens, Anne Wertheim, and Monique Knapen.
Many Amsterdam institutions provided me with assistance and/or inspiration, including the Rijksmuseum, Multatuli House, the Amsterdam Museum, the Anne Frank House, Stadsarchief Amsterdam, and the Rembrandt House. I would like to take special notice of the staff of the University of Amsterdam Library, an institution that lives up to Amsterdam’s ideal of openness, which affords anyone who puts down the modest sum of thirty euros yearly membership and access to its vast holdings.
I would also like to express gratitude to Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, former U.S. Ambassadors to the Netherlands Clifford Sobel, Terry Dornbush, and Fay Hartog Levin, former Mayor Job Cohen, and their Royal Highnesses Willem-Alexander and Máxima for the courtesies they have extended me at various points over the past eight years.
My thanks to Miriam van der Meij for her outstanding work as researcher, translator, summarizer, and fact checker.
Thanks, as always, to my terrific editor, Bill Thomas, for his patented mixture of wisdom and calm, and for encouraging me with this project when it was just an idea. Thanks also to Coralie Hunter for her smart assistance. A thousand thanks to Anne Edelstein, my agent and friend. And thank you, Haye Koningsveld and Laurens Ubbink of Ambo/Anthos.
Lastly, I want to acknowledge the role that Friso Broeksma played in fostering this book. Once upon a time, he and his life partner, the renowned Dutch designer and gay rights activist Benno Premsela, built a remarkable house on Prinseneiland in Amsterdam. While enjoying a long stay in the guest apartment there, which also doubles as the travel library, I hit upon the idea of this book. Friso and I subsequently had many excellent chats about the city, its history, and its liberalisms. During one of those conversations, Friso told me he believed that his late partner’s insistence that their house include a “refuge” for visiting friends was related to Benno’s period in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam—to his sensitivity to the concept of refuge. The thought that I was a beneficiary of such an impulse, which came out of the period when Amsterdam’s liberalism faced its greatest threat, puts the mere task of writing a book in proper perspective.
Notes
CHAPTER 1: A BICYCLE TRIP
1 “Now, where was I?”: All quotes from Frieda Menco come from a series of personal interviews conducted in 2011 and 2012.
2 “In Amsterdam, craziness”: Personal interview, April 3, 2010.
3 The city has between 5,000: http://www.hetccv.nl/nieuws/2010/10/amsterdam-steunt-kwetsbare-prostituees.html.
4 “No, I will speak”: Othello, V, ii, 218.
5 “In them I trust”: Henry VI, Pt. 3, I, ii, 42.
6 “her liberall brest”: OED.
7 “go down in history”: Churchill, “The Truth about Hitler,” Strand, Nov. 1935.
CHAPTER 2: THE WATER PROBLEM
1 “anarchists, provos, beatniks”: Roel Van Duijn, Provo, no. 1, July 12, 1965.
2 “We were leftists”: Personal interview, September 6, 2011.
3 One day, while: De Kruif, Dagboek van broeder Wouter Jacobsz., 8.
4 Or not quite all: Koopman, “Huisvesting Universiteit van Amsterdam,” 139.
5 medieval phenomenon: Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 1:230, 263–66, 395.
6 The Holy Place: Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 1:267.
7 Dutch fishermen: Unger, “Dutch Herring”; Unger, Dutch Shipbuilding; Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 1:135–37.
8 sailors, gutters: Unger, “Dutch Herring,” 257.
9 200 million herring: Unger, “Dutch Herring,” 263.
10 Whereupon he was given: Tracy, Erasmus, 17, 18.
11 “whipping boys to death”: Tracy, Erasmus, 91–92.
12 “superstition of ceremonies”: Tracy, Erasmus, 136.
13 He questioned the very: Tracy, Erasmus, 93.
14 “liberal studies”: Israel, Dutch Republic, 49.
15 “Luther is pestilential”: Israel, Dutch Republic, 50.
16 Two Amsterdam
printers: Visser, Luther’s Geschriften, 10.
17 “books made by”: Visser, Luther’s Geschriften, 9.
18 “certain books of St. Paul’s”: Visser, Luther’s Geschriften, 14–15.
19 “My lords of the righteous”: Visser, Luther’s Geschriften, 12.
20 “Alienation of a society”: Israel, Dutch Republic, 148.
21 Jan Goessens, a card maker: Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975.
22 In another sense, however: De Vries, Dutch Rural Economy, chs. 2–4.
23 Where land was controlled: Israel, Dutch Republic, 108–9.
24 There was a good deal: Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975, quoting Wagenaar.
25 Sheriff Dobbenszoon arrested: Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 1:328–50; Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975.
26 They removed the local: Israel, Dutch Republic, 127.
27 A printed appeal: Kossmann, Low Countries, 86–88.
CHAPTER 3: THE ALTERATION
1 Later, he would attempt: Thomas, Golden Age, 18, 20.
2 Income from taxes totaled: Parker, Dutch Revolt, 39.
3 “maintain friends and informants”: Parker, Grand Strategy, 78.
4 “Remember that the French”: Thomas, Golden Age, 506.
5 “As we have seen and discovered”: Parker, Grand Strategy, 115.
6 Where Charles had ordered: Thomas, Golden Age, 506.
7 After his marriage to Elizabeth of Valois: Kamen, Philip of Spain, 89.
8 At the end of his life: Kamen, Philip of Spain, 189.
9 “God’s service and mine”: Kamen, Philip of Spain, 233.
10 “To think that a passion”: Kamen, Philip of Spain, 233.
11 He made two decisions: Parker, Dutch Revolt, 46–50.
12 He thought he had found her: Lettenhove, Relations politiques, 2:257.
13 Whereupon the king let: Aubery, Mémoires, 9.
14 The king should abandon: Arblaster, History of the Low Countries, 54.
15 Over the course of several years: Israel, Dutch Republic, 99; Arblaster, History of the Low Countries, 74–75.
16 “Alias Tyranny”: Arblaster, History of the Low Countries, 75.
17 But there was also a strong: Arblaster, History of the Low Countries, 78–80.
18 “to imagine—even”: Arblaster, History of the Low Countries, 82.
19 events in the south: Arnade, “Beggars, Iconoclasts,” 84.
20 He was a vigorous: Quoted in Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 289.
21 But the Calvinists had: Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975.
22 Within three days: Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975.
23 For proof, they had: Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 1:455.
24 “You priests, stop”: Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975, 137.
25 “In the Old Church”: Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975, 137.
26 “Stand up against”: Emeis, Ons Amsterdam, May 1975, 137.
27 “distrust, bias, and”: Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 1:463.
28 Alba hanged every: Kamen, Alba, 46.
29 “I’m here in the kitchen”: Wedgwood, William the Silent, 90.
30 “Cousin, if you take”: Kamen, Alba, 87.
31 “I have satisfied myself”: Kamen, Alba, 87.
32 “No one dares to”: Kamen, Alba, 83.
33 “Our Devil, who art”: Kamen, Alba, 106.
34 “freedoms, rights, customs”: Kossmann, Low Countries, 84–86.
35 “the Originals of the two”: J. Adams, Collection of State Papers.
36 “cut the throats”: Kamen, Alba, 112.
37 “slit the throats”: Kamen, Alba, 113.
38 “Making me come here”: Kamen, Alba, 107–8.
39 “If you strike camp”: Kamen, Alba, 115.
40 “care not whether”: De Kruif, Dagboek, 18.
41 One night he saw: De Kruif, Dagboek, 43–44.
42 “The whole of Amsterdam”: De Kruif, Dagboek, 47.
43 “On December 4, with”: De Kruif, Dagboek, 47–48.
44 He couldn’t make the nuns: De Kruif, Dagboek, 7–10.
45 “Everywhere they go”: De Kruif, Dagboek, 133.
46 “O Lord, I have sinned”: De Kruif, Dagboek, 20–21.
47 “the 26th of May in the year”: Mak, Kleine geschiedenis, 95.
48 “as if the beer were water”: De Kruif, Dagboek, 319.
49 In March of 1580: Arblaster, History of the Low Countries, 295–97.
CHAPTER 4: THE COMPANY
1 They were nearly two months: My sources for the voyage of De Houtman’s fleet are Roeper and Wildeman, Om de Zuid; Hakluyt, Principal Navigations; Swart, “Lambert Biesman”; Gaastra, De geschiedenis van de VOC; Rouffaer and Ijzerman, De eerste schipvaart.
2 “Our flesh and fishe”: The quotation is from the first English-language account of the voyage, published in 1598, which is supposedly a translation of the Dutch but seems to be a composite, since it includes many details, such as this quotation, not found in the original journal.
3 Schumpeter said that: Lesger, Rise of the Amsterdam Market, 139–41.
4 While in the Indies: Knobel, “Frederick de Houtman’s Catalogue”; http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/startales1c.htm#houtman.
5 “Getting rich became”: Fruin, Tien jaren, 267.
6 “So long as Holland”: The quotation is in Boxer, Dutch Seaborne Empire, 22–23, without attribution. It is also in Bastin, “Changing Balance,” 25.
7 More sails bent toward: Israel, Dutch Primacy, 68.
8 One area was helpfully: Keyes, Pieter Bast.
9 “a unique politico-commercial”: Israel, Dutch Primacy, 71.
10 Its surviving archives: Van Boven, “Towards a New Age.”
11 The expansion of Dutch shipping: Israel, Dutch Primacy, 407, passim; Van Boven, “Towards a New Age,” passim.
12 “Tea rejuvenates the very old”: Schama, Embarrassment, 172.
13 His street-level rooms: Petram, “World’s First Stock Exchange,” introduction and ch. 1.
14 Indeed, one of the oldest: http://stadsarchief.amsterdam.nl/presentaties/amsterdamse_schatten/geld/voc_aandeel_van_een_wees/index.nl.html.
15 Within days of Dirck van Os’s: Van Dillen, Poitras, and Majithia, “Isaac Le Maire,” 54–55.
16 This in itself was not problematic: Details of the Le Maire scandal come from Van Dillen, Poitras, and Majithia, “Isaac Le Maire.”
17 So, for example, in April 1610: I calculated the quantity of mace using figures from Klerk de Reus, Geschichtlicher Überblick, appendix 4.
18 within a decade or so: Israel, Dutch Primacy, 74.
19 NYSE Euronext, as the: http://www.nyx.com/who-we-are/history/amsterdam.
20 “In such condition there”: Hobbes, Leviathan, 95–96.
21 The year after, thanks to especially: Bastin, “Changing Balance,” 287.
22 “Greater trade is done”: Sutton, Jan van der Heyden, 12.
23 The city needed to expand: My telling of the story of land speculation and the expansion of Amsterdam’s canals is based on, among other sources, Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam, liv–lxxvi; Abrahamse, De Grote Uitleg van Amsterdam, 42–88; Lesger, Rise of the Amsterdam Market, 174–80; Brugmans, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, 207–10.
24 One example, cited by Clé Lesger: Lesger, Rise of the Amsterdam Market, 175.
25 Hoe heeft hem: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/vond001dewe03_01/vond-001dewe03_01_0038.php.
26 “How did Amsterdam know”: Thanks to Jaap Jacobs for the translation.
27 Once Hooft saw what was going on: Abrahamse, De Grote Uitleg van Amsterdam, 86.
28 Six miles of canal: Figures come from calculations made by architect Tim Killiam in the 1970s.
29 Twelve miles of canal-side land: Canal houses, pile driving, and figures for canals, bridges, etc.: Killiam and van der Ziejden, Amsterdam Canal Guide, 344, passim; Janse, Building Am
sterdam, 34.
30 Peter the Great set himself: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1349.
31 “When they constructed”: Personal interview, March 12, 2012.
CHAPTER 5: THE LIBERAL CITY
1 “the people who live”: Jarrell, A Sad Heart at the Supermarket, 16.
2 We know that she had: Wijnman, “Een episode.”
3 When Willem of Orange rode: Kuijpers, Migrantenstad.
4 And the inhabitants: Israel, Dutch Republic, 328.
5 At least a third were: Israel, Dutch Republic, 309.
6 There were people who only: Barnes, The Butcher, passim.
7 Among the canals you could find: Cook, Matters of Exchange, 142.
8 Claes Pieterszoon was born: My sources on Dr. Tulp include Dudok van Heel, Nicolaes Tulp; Afek, Friedman, et al., “Dr. Tulp’s Anatomy Lesson”; Rogge; Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes.
9 He even made a joke: Sources on Harvey and Tulp are Dudok van Heel, Nicolaes Tulp, 165; Shorto, Island, 98; Shorto, Descartes, 10.
10 “like our locks”: Dudok van Heel, Nicolaes Tulp, 201.
11 “Speculation … comes when”: Galbraith, Short History, 28.
12 More than a few people: Dudok van Heel, Nicolaes Tulp, 196.
13 the son of a miller: My main sources on Rembrandt are Schwartz, Rembrandt’s Universe; Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits; Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes; Bailey, Rembrandt’s House; Hughes, “God of Realism”; Fuchs, Rembrandt en Amsterdam.
14 “the greatest and most”: Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits, 17.
15 “In their extraordinary”: Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits, 10.
16 “gives himself wholly”: Quoted in Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits, 17.
17 “the supreme depictor”: Hughes, “God of Realism,” 10.
18 The art historian Ann: Adams, Public Faces, 4, 21–23.
19 The Blaeu family of: Bailey, Rembrandt’s House, 140.
20 “ships arriving laden”: Descartes, Philosophical Writings, III:31–32.