Leidsch Dagblad
28 February 2001, p. 17 (Region page)
[translated by Jeremy Bangs]
Readers Write
Misunderstandings and Facts about the Remains of the Vrouwekerk
Your reporter Wim Koevoet is the source of numerous misunderstandings about the Vrouwekerk. One of them really must be corrected. In the other cases one can agree with him that, "The facts speak for themselves..." People should, however, listen to those facts. But first I want to correct something: Mr. Koevoet is wrong to call me the "true enemy"of alderman Pechtold {in the satirical column, "The Mood"- editors}. I am absolutely not an enemy of Mr. Pechtold, whom I don't even know personally. I have nothing against him as a person, to such an extent that I have always explained his behavior as alderman for culture and monument protection as probably nothing more than a reflection of the relationships within the city's coalition. Mr. Pechtold, to be allowed to play along, has to accept a position of total dependency on the Labor Party [P.v.d.A.] and their demolition policy. If one presumes that Mr. Pechtold has political ambitions, one cannot blame him for not wanting to endanger his position as a government official in Leiden, where so many alderman have had to leave the scene before their term was up, because of friction with the "Contractors' Party" [P.v.d.A.] With such a dangerous political environment it's understandable that Mr. Pechtold takes positions that no competent and well informed alderman, responsible for protecting monuments and stimulating culture, would otherwise dare take. That Mr. Pechtold might be an "anti-cultural barbarian," as Mr. Koevoet writes, is something I have never said. I think that that description came from an NOS [Netherlands News Service] interviewer (by which it got onto CNN), and that it concerned alderman Tjeerd van Rij. Wim Koevoet writes further that I have to be held responsible for Leiden's image problem, by which, according to him, soon companies will stay away from Leiden. Has he conveniently forgotten the report from Ernst & Young Accountants? According to your paper, it mentioned that crucial items necessary for checking the city's finances were missing. The highly remarkable recommendations also were found there, that decisions on bids should not be left to a single official, and that a limit on gifts to officials ought to be instituted! How am I supposed to have created an image problem, while it's the alderman who goes ahead with plans to demolish the Vrouwekerk despite the fact that thousands of Americans experience the ruin as an important symbol among their historic roots. I, - responsible for such an image problem? I only report the facts. The facts do indeed speak for themselves: In 1646 Pilgrim Edward Winslow wrote in his book Hypocrisie Unmasked that both in Leiden and in America the Pilgrims and Walloons [Huguenots] went to communion together. Walloons who emigrated as Pilgrims to New England are found in the Last Supper lists of the Vrouwekerk. Some of these Walloon Pilgrims were married in the Vrouwekerk, and their children were also baptized there. Still others from the Vrouwekerk belonged to the founders of New Amsterdam (New York City). In 1920 Dr. Daniel Plooij, together with Rev. J. Rendell Harris, published important information about this. In 1925 Prof. Albert Eekhof alerted Americans to further information about it. Drs. B. N. Leverland of the Leiden Municipal Archives devoted an article to the De la Noye family (Walloon Pilgrims) in 1954. I published extensive information with archival references in 1989. There is, consequently, not the least scholarly doubt about these historic facts, or about the fact that the Vrouwekerk played an important role in the history of founders of New England and New Amsterdam. Former alderman Tjeerd van Rij (urban planning, P.v.d.A.) said that little of the Vrouwekerk is original, and that it is almost all 20th century. Mr. Pechtold described the ruin as a mixture of bricks from the middle ages, the 17th century, the 19th century, and just twenty years ago, with the implication that because of that it is not authentic and not worth preserving. Mr. Reinout van Gulick (project manager, Aalmarkt Project) wrote that the wall remains largely date form 1983. Mr. Ton Boon (Pieterskerk Foundation) published on the foundation's internet site, besides disdain for the attempts to protect the Vrouwekerk against demolition, his opinion that the Vrouwekerk wall remains are a 19th-century copy. A series of ten photos that the monument service of the town of Leiden sent as evidence to the court in 1999 (and which are now to be seen on the www.vrouwekerk.org site) shows beyond any doubt that almost everything is medieval, partly shored up, however, and with a thin protective layer added onto some other parts. The protective measures indicated in these photos are fully in accordance with the normal restoration practices accepted throughout Europe. Would one want to tear down the upper part of the Pieterskerk nave, because of the protective layer of stone that was added to it in the 20th century? We are confronted with a comparable restauration technique at the Vrouwekerk.
And one last fact: since the death of Drs. Leverland, there is not a single Pilgrim expert working at the municipal archives. One amateur local historian who knows this subject only superficially does not, even with the best intentions, make a source of expertise. I carried out thorough research about the Pilgrims there, in the years 1980 through 1985, which resulted in various publications. After that I became Chief Curator of Plimoth Plantation Museum (ca. 600,000 visitors a year; compare that with the number of 130,000 visitors to the Pharaoh exhibit in the National Museum of Antiqities in Leiden, which was considered a record), 1986-1991. Then I was Adjunct Archivist of the town of Scituate, Massachusetts, where I published the complete 17th-century city archive of the most important town of Plymouth Colony (3 vols.), 1992-1996. I was also [visiting] curator of manuscripts at Pilgrim Hall Museum, where I prepared the largest collection of Pilgrim manuscripts for publication, 1993-1996. Since then I have been director of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum, besides continuing my research and publication about the Pilgrims for the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, Massachusetts. My archive about the Pilgrims is, without exageration, the most complete in the world, because besides all the Leiden records I am the only person with both the published town archives and the published colonial archives (12 vols.), as well as the still unpublished records (another 12 vols.), of which I am the editor. Among my books and articles about the Pilgrims one in particular may interest Mr. Koevoet: Indian Deeds, Land in Plymouth Colony, 1620-1692 (forthcoming, NEHGS: 2002). The history of the colonists and the Indians is not always equally fine, but Mr. Koevoet seems not to understand that the Pilgrims and the Indians maintained a peace treaty that lasted around 50 years, and that this was relatively speaking a very long-lasting peace. This attempt to live in peace is one of the attractive and special aspects of the Pilgrim emigration. The Indians who revolted in 1675 were finally killed by other Indians. But what kind of nonsense is this, that Mr. Koevoet wants to talk continually about the extermination of the Indians, while that has little, perhaps the least, to do with the Pilgrims? Are we supposed to treat the Dutch Golden Age without any respect because of the inhumanity of the contemporary slave trade being carried out by some Netherlanders? Naturally it's possible to try to provide information about the Pilgrims without my help. But if Americans know that I live in the same town and that my help is not desired, it will be quite incredible. Happily for Leiden, I have nothing against professional collaboration with my colleagues at the town archives. But it's time that the responsible alderman understands that it's ridiculous not to ask for it. Moreover, it's definitely time that Mr. Koevoet really understands the facts well before he starts flinging words like "slander." Dr. Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Director
[To this the newspaper added the following:]
Leiden American Pilgrim Museum
Postscript from Wim Koevoet: Mr. Bangs is himself responsible for the biggest misunderstanding in this question, and that is that the wall remains of the Vrouwekerk would have to be removed because of the Aalmarkt project. With this disinformation, that he spreads via the internet, he is frightening off businesses and banks that want to invest in this shopping area, because they would rather not be depicted as demolishers of Pilgrim monuments, certainly not if they have interests in America.[See the explanation to the relation of Vrouwekerk and Aalmarkt under "False Claims"!