| • Death of Caroline Pelsman | ||
| • A colourful character - Frits van Laar | ||
| • "FIN" - Bob Kommer | ||
| • Forger Han van Meegeren had studio in Sumatrastraat | ||
| • Memories - a walk with Couperus | ||
| • Scandals in the Archipel - Jacques de Bergh | ||
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Photo: Leyla Colenbrander-Pelsman
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A colourful character |
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Bob Kommer (1921 - 2010)
Bob Kommer lived in Archipel for more than 55 years. His company (Bob Kommer Studios) was also based here for several years before it became too big and moved to Van de Spiegelstraat. Kommer began as a photographer but gradually applied himself more and more to producing films, usually commissioned by trade and industry. One of his own projects was a documentary about the famous Hague painter Co Westerik. The film studio was later joined by a sound studio, which could, if necessary, accommodate complete orchestras. Bob Kommer was a great jazz enthusiast and mixed tapes for many well-known musicians. One of Wim Kan’s first television shows broadcast by the BRT (Belgium Radio and Television) was recorded in his studio. He retired in 1990 and sold the business. Part of it is still going strong under the name Bob Kommer Sound | Studio's bv and he always kept in touch with former colleagues. He remained in Riouwstraat after his retirement, sharing the house with his daughter Karen and her husband Fritz Griffin. Not only will they miss him but many of his fellow residents too. MW, April 2010 |
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Forger Han van Meegeren had studio in Sumatrastraat
The master forger worked behind the offices and storage rooms of a painter and decorator firm at 226 Sumatrastraat from 1920, producing brand-new old masters. The painting “De kantwerkster” (the lace-maker) after the style of Vermeer also became famous. As well as the creation of seemingly old paintings, this murky trade involved concocting a watertight provenance to tempt potential buyers. A book entitled “The Man Who Made Vermeers” by Jonathan Lopez will shortly be published in New York. Source: De Groene Amsterdammer, 29 August 2008 |
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“Ton souvenir nous caresse”. Do you know the café on the corner of Atjehstraat and Batjanstraat? (De Tapperij) Well, once it was a little pub and liquor store run by Meneer and Mevrouw Scholten. It was a real local and the whole neighbourhood dropped in and out, irrespective of class or status. From time to time, the phone would ring and a voice would growl from the shadows ‘I’m not here’ or ‘Say I’ve just left’. Mr van ’t Hoff Stolk, a renowned criminal lawyer living in the Celebesstraat, speaks with admiration of the landlady: ‘Did you ever see a woman of eighty look so good in a low-cut dress?’ Mevrouw Scholten is always full of cheery conversation: ‘My father-in-law opened this café here in 1885, straight after the house was built. The bar has stayed the same. Even the bentwood chairs. Sell a lot of beer in the summer? No fear. Too much like hard work, all those big glasses. Give me the little spirit glasses any time.’ "... on his way back from a stroll."A Imagine the scene that met Couperus’ eyes during his strolls in the Scheveningse Bosjes. Tall trees with dense foliage filter the sunlight through green shadows. Beech, oak, maple and scented lime trees are interspersed with acacias, slender silver birch, heavily perfumed privet, fragrant honeysuckle and countless bushes, blossoming shrubs and wild flowers ... And through the whole tranquil scene, the network of elegant footpaths winds over the undulating dune landscape. He crosses the bridleway and smartly clad equestrians canter by. Over there, the bridleway widens out into the exercise ground where members of the Royal Household – sporting blue tricorn hats and blue tunics with gold or silver buttons over white riding breeches – train the horses from the Royal Stables to execute perfect pirouettes, jump and trot, all in the shade of the tall trees. Curt commands ring out and children are shooed away. They might frighten the horses. Here and there, patches of woodland are enclosed with barbed wire to make little nature reserves where delicate plants flourish: ferns, Solomon’s seal, speedwell, purslane, snowdrops, lily of the valley, grape hyacinth, bluebells, ragged robin and mosses... Nightingales nest there. Bumblebees buzz and scramble from flower to flower. Butterflies eddy gaily past like dancing flecks of sunlight. The Bataaf, Sorgvliet and Vosmaer fountain
Crossing the Cremerweg, Couperus can enjoy the beautifully landscaped Waterpartij, splendid lakes sculpted in flowing, elegant shapes, their surfaces glittering silver between the reflections of the trees, encircled by pleasant footpaths. Here he can contemplate the children sailing their model boats attached to on long lines, the ducks quacking and splashing, and the stately swans gliding elegantly by. Returning beneath the swaying branches, his path might take him past the Vosmaer fountain, the graceful white marble monument to man of letters Carel Vosmaer, whose book “Over het schone en de Kunst” (“On Beauty and Art”) heralded the fashionable Art Nouveau movement or Jugendstil as it is known in the Netherlands – art for art’s sake and beauty is – a blissful dream, to be cut cruelly short by the horrors of the First World War; after it, people will look back nostalgically and recall the period as the “Belle Epoque”. A marble bas-relief on the Vosmaer monument represents the Battle of Salamis, where Greek cunning defeated crude Persian might. It is based on a design by one of Couperus’ favourite artists, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, and the sight of it allays his nostalgic yearning for the classical beauties of Italy and southern France. The playground is still there On his way back to the Archipelbuurt, Couperus has to pass by the large sandy playground where children (many of them from the city’s orphanages) build sandcastles and impromptu huts, and excavate moats, which they fill with water from the municipal pump. Where they frolic and romp. And perhaps he ponders the fact that this was once the site of the gallows. Strange that the area has always remained an open stretch of sand. Can it be that trees and bushes refuse to grow in a place with such a sinister past? The Hague School During his walk he will certainly have come across artists, members of what will later be called the “Hague School”, busy drawing and painting the beauties of the woodland scene. The city attracts many artists at this time, drawn by its distinctive light: the product of the reflected colours of the sea, beach, dunes, woods, water and pastures surrounding the small urban area, veiled by a thin haze that filters the sunlight. The clouds produce a shifting interplay of light and shadow and there is easy access to the countryside. Perhaps he has even taken the opportunity to drop in at the studios of artists Willem B. Tholen and Floris Arntzenius in the Kanaalvilla, a large, solid house on the edge of the pinewood by the ‘White Bridge’ (where Madurodam now stands). He may also have bumped into the gloomy novelist Marcellus Emants, who has described the woodland walks around The Hague in his heart-rending novel “Een nagelaten bekentenis” and whose widow will have his tombstone in the Kerkhoflaan cemetery engraved with the words ‘Weep not for him who has escaped the madness we call life’, an inscription which his daughter will later cause to be erased. "...the trees have been restored..." But the madness was not over yet and Couperus’ world was soon to be brutally disrupted. During the German occupation of the Second World War, the Nazi authorities gouged out an antitank ditch through the middle of the woods. And in the midst of the desperate struggle to survive the bitter winter of 1944/1945, when the western Netherlands was starved of food and fuel, the people of the Archipel and other areas of The Hague stripped the Scheveningse Bosjes of all their timber. Quite a feat for unpractised hands to fell such woodland giants with domestic handsaws and axes. But in our own day, more than half a century later, the trees have been restored and we can once again feast our eyes on the kind of mature woodland that was familiar to Couperus, Emants and the painters of the Hague School. Only the enclosed nature reserves, the marble monument to Vosmaer and the stone bench have gone for ever. The antitank ditch was filled in with building rubble after the war and is now a broad and busy highway. The elegant lake at the Waterpartij is sorely neglected and the Bataaf is no longer a country café. But the sandy playground beside the Kerkhoflaan, opposite the Timorstraat, is still largely open ground. And the Scholten’s little local pub is still a café-restaurant welcoming all comers, whatever their tipple or the size of their glasses. (Based on an article by L. van Heijningen Translation JT Photo source: Municipal Archive of The Hague
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| Scandals in the Archipel
- Jacques de Bergh
For many years, Jacques de Bergh was a prominent figure in the Archipel. Born in 1844 in Boxmeer (North Brabant), he came to The Hague to work as an official with the State Railways and later at the Ministry of Finance and the Chancery of the Netherlands Orders of Knighthood. On the side, he pursued a career as a campaigning journalist and in 1884 he was rewarded for his efforts by being appointed to the highly prestigious post of editor-in-chief of the political weekly “De Amsterdammer”. He moved to Amsterdam to take up the post but returned just three years later in poor health and died in the city in 1888. The “Penkrassen” (literally penstrokes) which made him famous were pamphlets measuring just 13 by 10 cm and sold in local bookshops for ten cents apiece. They were written between 1873 and 1887, when De Bergh was living in the newly-built Duinweide neighbourhood – now the Archipel – first at Kanaal 16 (now the Koninginnegracht, near the Riouwstraat corner), later at Batjanstraat 13 and finally at Riouwstraat 50. Fear and trembling De Bergh penned his tracts at a table in the still popular Gouden Hoofd cafe (near the Grote Kerk). Just across the road, at the town hall (now the ‘Oude Stadhuis’), they were read with fear and trembling, and not a little anger. De Bergh’s main targets were official errors, abuse of power and corruption. So the authorities hated him. But the local people in the clubs, cafes, reading rooms and homes of the city adored his leaflets. They respected the accuracy of his revelations and the fact that his attacks were never personal but always directed at professional failures or misdemeanours. All the same, he was a sinister skeletal figure with his black clothes, dark moustache and black slouch hat, and people shivered when they saw him passing through the city, trailed by a black dog, noting the details of his next exposure. It was even rumoured that he carried a revolver and slept in a coffin! The city’s chief of police, a man called Schermbeek, was a favourite target for his attacks. Once, during an official visit by King Leopold II of Belgium to the Nassauplein, the police chief was heard to mutter, with a haunted expression, “There’s De Bergh on the prowl again”. And, indeed, there he was – waiting to report that Schermbeek was flaunting a decoration he had no right to wear! He even castigated the police chief for the broken French in which he addressed an international congress held in the city on the prevention of prostitution. A stink about the Nassauplein
Matters of life and death In the 19th century, when hygiene regulations were less strict and farmers sold their produce directly to the public, milk could be a serious health hazard. For this reason, little Princess Wilhelmina (the heir to the throne) was supposed to be given milk from three cows specially inspected and approved by a vet. De Bergh discovered that the rule was being broken and published a furious exposé. He also reported high rates of childhood disease in the newly built Archipel. But less life-and-death matters of local interest also attracted his derision: the Victorian prudishness that led to Billitonstraat being spelt on the street sign with a P (to avoid the word ‘bil’, Dutch for bottom); the carelessness that led to the manhole covers in Bankastraat being laid with the slits in them at right angles to the curb, so that the wheels of perambulators got stuck in them and babies were at risk of being tipped out; and the fact that Riouwstraat and its side streets remained unpaved for years, so that residents had to wade through the mud to reach their homes, and that a street opposite Borneostraat was left unnamed.
Corruption While a member of the city council, Mouton paid five guilders a year to rent a milk kiosk in Bankastraat. It was sited in such a way that it forced the horse-drawn tram running from Bankaplein to Hollands Spoor station to slow down and, as a result, passengers were missing their trains. De Bergh also pointed out the health risks caused by the milk kiosk. Mouton had announced that old newspapers and magazines could be handed in there for the use of penniless patients in the city’s hospitals. Citing expert evidence in support of his case, De Bergh argued that the scheme risked spreading diseases like smallpox. He also identified the health risk posed by the existence of a public urinal immediately adjacent to the milk kiosk. Toll gate on the Scheveningse Weg
A masterpiece of detection On the evening of 23 September 1880, farm workers in the Dekkersduin area – more or less where the Nachtegaalsplein is now situated – heard screams in the gathering dusk. A thirteen-year-old boy called Marius Bogaardt had been kidnapped as he left his school (the Instituut Bouscholte, which occupied the house at the corner of the Koninginnegracht and what is now Dr Kuyperstraat) in the afternoon. His abductor took him to the lonely dune outside the city and stabbed him to death with a wooden stake. The next day, the distressed father received a ransom note demanding 75,000 guilders. In an effort to solve the crime, facsimiles of the letter were widely circulated. De Bergh asked to see the envelope and noticed that “s-Gravenhage” was written with a hyphen after the “s”. During a meeting with police chief Schermbeek, the national procurator general, the local public prosecutor and the provincial governor, De Bergh suggested that less than 1% of the population would write the name that way and advised the authorities to check the addresses on all letters passing through the sorting office. Schermbeek brushed his idea aside as an insignificant detail. However, De Bergh published his thoughts on the matter and was approached a few days later in the Gouden Hoofd café by one Sergeant Masquetier. The Sergeant told him that he used to receive letters from a certain Mr De Jongh, then based in the Dutch East Indies, who addressed them in that way. With such flimsy grounds for suspicion, he hesitated to go to the police but Den Bergh persuaded him to do so. As a result, the perpetrator was indeed identified and De Bergh had a new reason to attack the luckless chief of police in his next pamphlet. The drama left a lasting scar on the face of the city. The grief-stricken parents left The Hague and went to live at their country home in Brummen (Gelderland), where their tragedy is commemorated in the cemetery by an impressive gravestone, overshadowed by an ancient weeping willow and carrying an inscription stating that the monument There is another sad and rather horrifying footnote to the Bogaardt case. Following the murder, the famous writer Multatuli (Eduard Douwes Dekker, author of the novel Max Havelaar) also went to the police. He reported that he suspected his own son, for the sole reason that he was such a bad person that he simply had to be the culprit. When the son publicised the fact that he had been falsely accused, Multatuli merely responded “Just like my son to boast about not having done it”. Conduct unbefitting a public official? In 1884, the lower house of parliament debated the motion that it was inappropriate for a public official to attack other officials in print, as De Bergh was doing in his pamphlets. The Minister of Justice felt that such conduct was unbefitting a public official, but the Minister of Finance defended his employee and De Bergh could have kept his job in the end. Typically, however, he preferred to thumb his nose at officialdom and accept the editorship of De Amsterdammer. In his final Penkras he wrote in triumph that he would now be earning a salary better than that of the top civil servant at his old ministry. Translation JT Photo source: Municipal Archive of The Hague |
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16 April 2010 – The funeral took place today of one of our most colourful neighbourhood characters. Frits van Laar was the owner of the vanLaar%20begrafenis.jpg)
having realized his dream, Frits died unexpectedly on his “farm” in Pijnacker on 10 April 2010.
In February this year 89-year-old local resident Bob Kommer died. Just over a year ago the webteam did an 
Seventy years ago in 1937 the painting “De Emmaüsgangers” (the disciples at Emmaus), supposedly painted by the famous 17th-century artist Johannes Vermeer, popped up from nowhere. The canvas was bought by the Boymans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam. Not until 1945 did Han van Meegeren admit to the forgery. It was a scandal in the art world that ruined many a reputation among art experts. 
nd, proudly: ‘See that stool there? That’s where 
He strolls over the hilltop with the stone bench to the 
the polite salutations of pedestrians, accompanied by her little daughter, the youthful Queen Wilhelmina, clad in immaculate white. And there goes Princess Sophie, daughter of King Willem II and her Imperial Highness and Royal Majesty Queen Anna Paulowna, off to 
As one of the first residents of the Archipel, De Bergh also recorded numerous abuses in the new neighbourhood. Between the Mauritskade and the original Alexanderkazerne barracks (now demolished and the site of the Couperusduin flats), passing via the Nassauplein, ran a narrow, smelly waterway known as the Schelpsloot. It became such a public nuisance that it eventually had to be covered over. It could not be filled in because it was needed for drainage purposes and for the boats carrying away barrels of excrement from the barracks (there were still no sewers). It was not until the work was complete that it was realised that the roof was too low to allow the boats through when they were carrying the empty barrels. The iron roof trusses also proved to be too weak to bear the weight of a roadway and traffic. The only solution was to lay out public gardens in the Nassauplein instead. De Bergh’s pamphlet on the subject suggested that the official bodies responsible for the fiasco should meet the costs of the gardens.
He also directed his attacks at an influential city councillor called Mouton, the founder of the Hague dairy known as De Sierkan and of many melksalons (milk bars avant la lettre). De Bergh praised Mouton’s improvements in dairy hygiene, but accused the councillor of dishonesty and corruption. For example, he revealed that the containers used to measure the milk from the farms contracted to supply it contained more than the amount marked on them. The farmers were being cheated and Mouton was making dishonestly large profits. As a result of the publication, Mouton was taken to court. To De Bergh’s publicly expressed indignation, he got off lightly because the judge assumed he had acted in good faith. In a scam that had being going on for five years!
At the beginning of the Scheveningse Weg there was then a toll gate. The white toll house can still be seen. The elegant gate, dating from the time of Golden Age poet and statesman Constantijn Huygens, who designed the Zeestraat, now stands in the Kerkhoflaan, opposite the entrance to the Roman Catholic cemetery. When a second road was built to Scheveningen, originally passing along the Koninginnegracht and later along the higher part of the Bankastraat, tolls were imposed on that too. De Bergh campaigned fiercely against this, pointing out that tolls were never levied inside city boundaries in the Netherlands. He foresaw that tolls would also be imposed on new roads passing through the area that would later be developed as the Statenkwartier. He pointed out the considerable inconveniences that resulted, such as doctors having to pay a toll in order to visit their patients, the traffic jams of waiting carriages that formed in good weather etc., and suggested a toll-free route over the General Cemetery (Algemene Begraafplaats), which has two entrances and exits. It was years before the city council realised this.