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2015-01-27 14:49
This afternoon I walked through the city and my eye was caught by a building I had never noticed before. When I searched it on the web, it proved to have an interesting history. It was the building of the first cooperation in the Netherlands (where the idea started a bit later than in the UK).
The building is called 'De Toekomst' (the Future), and it was built in 1887, primarily to provide a meeting place for worker organisations, that had a hard time renting meeting places with commercial landlords.
It also housed a cooperative bakery, and two homes.
The cooperation was organised by the head of public works of the city of Groningen, Joan Nieuwenhuis. A year earlier he had started a socialist newspaper and wanted to resign from the city, but the (conservative) mayor convinced him to stay on.
His newspaper was financed by a rich farmer, Derk Roelof Mansholt, grandfather of Sicco Mansholt, who would become one of the founding fathers of the European Economic Communion, and architect of the (infamous?) common European agricultural policy.
For the cooperation the collateral was interestingly provided by the biggest factory owner and grand entrepreneur Jan Evert Scholten, and the nobleman Jhr.Mr. W.C.A. Alberda van Ekenstein, Dutch parliamentarian.
So although relations between workers and employers could be harsh in 19th century Groningen, there was also a genuine recognition and even assistence by those employers of the worker organisations.
2015-01-20 12:54
De gegevens komen uit "De Wolden en het water", W.A. Ligtendag, Groningen 1995.
In deze lijsten van het klooster Werden uit de 9e eeuw en later worden een groot aantal plaatsnamen uit dit gebied voor het eerst vermeld.
Zij behoren tot de oudste bronnen over dit gebied.
Bij het openen van de kaart in Google Earth kunnen de gegevens over de plaatsen bekeken worden. De oude en de overeenkomstige moderne namen zijn vermeld. Ook zijn de plaatsen uit de lijsten vermeld die niet gelokaliseerd konden worden.
Het is handig om de overlay Groningen-800nc half doorzichtig te maken, zodat de moderne topografie van Google Earth er doorheen te zien is.
De overlay komt van de Paleogeografische kaarten uit de Atlas van Nederland in het Holoceen (2011), situatie 800 AD.
2015-01-16 13:35
In 1974 heb ik met Erik de Vries en Jan Bos bij VERA een zeefdrukkerij opgezet om posters voor concerten te maken.
Bovenstaande poster is de eerste die we toen gemaakt hebben, met uitgesneden letters van papier.
De afbeelding vond ik op het Pop Archief Groningen.
2013-06-11 17:04
In the year of our Lord 1251, immediately after Easter [Apr 16], those of Fivelgo and Hunzingo gave each other hostages and renewed their alliance; and with the help of those of Menterne[1] they laid siege to Groningen. Some crossed the ramparts, and climbed on ladders and started to fight them manfully. The Groningers defended themselves for a long time with stones and trebuchets, expecting that the Frisians would, according to their customs, soon return to their own region. But when the Frisians had maintained their siege for four weeks, the Groningers began to fear that, when the city would be taken by force, an enormous carnage would take place. Therefore they surrendered themselves in the hands of the enemy. The Frisians set the condition that the walls would be destroyed, and that the stonehouses would be pulled down till the storage rooms; the traders were allowed to keep living there with their possessions, but the knights would have to leave the city with their life and property, and would never be allowed again to have a residence there. And so the the walls were leveled for the largest part and the houses were lowered. The knights resided that year on the other side of Coevorden[2], where it was possible. Also the fortification of Peize was destroyed.
[1] Menterne: Frisian shire East of Fivelgo.
[2] Castle guarding the Southern moor pass of Drenthe
[3] Peize: village to the SW of Grongingen, where the Van Groningen clan had a castle.
2013-06-11 16:57
In 1250 AD the weather was once again much too dry, and a contagious disease spread among the animals. Almost all the cattle in the Wolden[1] that had survived last year or that was bought to replace what had perished, died. And in the heat of the summer the corpses rotted and there was a terrible stench, that also made people ill. Like Galenus says, rotten air is even worse than rotten food.
In the Wolden a new kind of plague appeared among the people. A poisonous blister appeared between the skin and the flesh, in the beginning the size of an acorn. People thought it was some kind of sting from an insect, but those who studied it more thoroughly said that a few days before it appeared they had felt that the balance in their bodies had been disturbed. It seemed to travel all through the body looking for a way out, and very often it broke out in the neck, above the shoulders. If the blister was cut out on the first day, and the wound burnt with a hot iron, the person could recover. If not, one died in seven days. Without surgical treatment almost nobody survived.
[..about Galenus and Vergil on illness and rotten air ..]
We include this in case of a - hopefully not - similar pestilence in the future, that one may, especially in the summer, bury the corpses deep into the ground. [..]
In the same year Pope Innocentius returned from Lyon to Rome.
In the same year, while the Frisians were hit so hard, the Groningers seemed to mock them. Without mercy they raised the prices of the grain they imported by ship from other countries. But behold, they suffered a different peril. Because. Koenraad of Groningen, the knights Adolf and Rudolf of Peize and their following, as well as the majority of the citizens of Groningen, have done the Frisians injustice, and they disturbed the peace of the horse market - they confiscated the best horses of their choice for themselves. They even imprisoned nobles from Fivelgo, and caused a lot of damage and discomfort to people from Hunsingo. So then the people of Fivelgo and Hunsingo finally made peace, after twenty-two years of conflict over the island of the people of Uithuizen. It appeared as if God had arranged for the destruction of Groningen. The peace was brokered by Sicco, dean of Farnsum, an eloquent man skilled in worldly affairs, together with other wise men, both monks and laymen. Thus the fight that had kept on for so long and had cost so much blood was ended. It was ruled that one quarter of the island would go the those of Eenrum, who had tried to acquire half of it originally, and the other three quarters would go to those of Uithuizen.
For all those fallen in the war, the headmen of both parties paid weregild. The party of Fivelgo had killed about hundred men, the other party short by eighteen the same. The ransoms for the prisoners were returned, by the headmen, not by those who had received them. For the clearly by them committed plunder and arson those of Eenrum gave to those of Fivelgo and their headmen, namely those of Uithuizen, 24,000 mark in Fivelgo coinage.
Those of Uithuizen gave those of Hunsingo 900 mark. The plundering of cloths and weapons, and all inflicted wounds, except those of the six limbs, was forgiven, for God and the good of peace.
When the peace between them was made, but everything was not yet settled definitely, they flocked together as one people to attack Groningen. After they had conducted brave attacks, they destroyed the castle Gronenburg[6]. That castle was built specifically against the inhabitants of Drenterwolde, on the banks of the Hunze, and that same Hunze surrounded it almost completely; one considered the castle as a threat to many, especially the residents nearby. Next they laid siege to Groningen, but because of the wet autumn and the unstable air they didn't manage to take the city that year.
[1] Wolden: (lit. Woods) the (partly developed) peat areas between the coastal clay lands and the sandy high ground of the inland.
[2] Hunsingo: Frisian shire around the river Hunze, NW of Groningen
[3] Fivelgo: Frisian shire around the river Fivel, NE of Groningen
[4] Uithuizen: coastal village in Fivelgo
[5] Eenrum: coastal village in Hunsingo
[6] Castle of the Van Groningen family.
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