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The following is for those on the list with Pilgrim connections wishing to
keep up to date on the latest concerning the threat to the Pilgrim sites in
Leiden. Here is an article from what is said to be the most important
newspaper in the Netherlands, NRC-Handelsblad, Thursday, 14 December 2000,
p. 7.
[translated by Jeremy Bangs, with his comments in brackets. Dr. Bangs is an
eminent Pilgrim scholar, especially of their 11 years residence in Leiden
before departing for America. He is the former curator of Plimoth Plantation
in Plymouth, MA, and currently the director of the Leiden American Pilgrim
Museum. He is a regular contributor to the NEHGS "Nexus" and "Ancestor"
periodicals (www.nehgs.org) as well as a contributor to the "Mayflower
Quarterly" and www.Sail1620.org, the website of the PA Soc. of Mayflower
Descendants. His illustrated walking tours of Leiden are found on the
Pilgrim Hall site, www.pilgrimhall.org ]
"LEIDEN VERSUS THE PRESIDENT OF AMERICA
By Frank Vermeulen
Leiden.
Jeremy Bangs ticks with his cane against a spot with recently mortared new
bricks in the rugged remains of what was once the Church of Our Lady
(Vrouwekerk). Because of the rain, he's pulled his cap, - Kruimeltje
style, -
far down over his forehead. [Kruimeltje is the hero of a recent children's
movie of an old book; Kruimeltje wore a large flat cap.] "The new masonry is
a part of the propaganda of the town of Leiden." Only a light accent betrays
his American origin.
Historian Bangs is involved in a tough fight with the Leiden governors. Or
rather, with the local division of the P.v.d.A. [Partij van de Arbeid =
Labour Party], which remains very powerful and which he consistently calls
the Contractors' Party [Partij van de Aannemers]. "Except for the
'Bioscience
Park', Leiden doesn't have any industry," says Bangs, "so to create some
employment the local P.v.d.A. continually thinks up demolition and
construction projects for the town's contractors."
At stake in the conflict according to Bangs is: preservation of the
historic heritage of the Pilgrim Fathers. That is the famous group of
colonists, who for religious reasons fled England in the beginning of the
17th century and via hospitable Leiden ended up in the New World. There in
the 19th century they acquired mythic proportions as Founders of the Nation.
Dr. Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs is director of The Leiden American Pilgrim
Museum, a rather grand name for the one-room display of Pilgrim
paraphernalia
in a centuries-old house in the Beschuitsteeg, at the foot of the Hooglandse
Kerk. Three years ago the micromuseum opened and in the mean time, according
to Bangs, there have been 8,000 visitors, about half of them from America.
Here in the misty rain of a grey December day, a messy wall stands in a
tiny square behind the Haarlemmerstraat, the shopping promenade of Leiden.
Heroic history seems very far away. According to Bangs, the Pilgrims, or in
any case some of them, attended this church. And they weren't the least
among
them: Philip de la Noye is supposed to have been one of them, and he was the
ancestor of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For Americans, especially those with
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant background looking for their roots, this
unsympathetic place has special significance.
Leiden's town council decided six years ago to demolish the remains, which
were built up a bit some time as an anti-parking measure. Area residents and
a local organization that campaigns for protection of Leiden monuments
blocked that in the courts. This case, which Bangs has joined, has reached
the Council of State in the meantime, which has to issue a decision one of
these days.
How historic is the spot? The new work on the masonry in the wall serves
in Bangs' opinion only to convince the judges that what's in question is a
young ruin produced by the town. But, - and he points to the heaped up,
bowed
pavement, - the real foundations of the church are really present, just
hidden away under the ground. Moreover, a fragment of a side wall of the
church is visible in the adjacent branch of the clothing store of Hennes &
Maurits. "When I had just come to the Netherlands in 1970, I made photos
here
[actually in 1980]; the entire wall still stood there then," says Bangs with
an accusing undertone in his voice.
Bangs sees the destruction of the Vrouwekerk ruin as a part of an
ambitious plan to revitalize the old inner city. Two years ago the P.v.d.A.
launched the so-called Aalmarkt Project between Oude Rijn [Stille Rijn] and
Breestraat: a shopping center with V.&D. [a department store], Albert Heijn
[groceries], and Peek & Cloppenburg [clothing] as major attractions. In that
territory, however, stands the wing of the former hospital where one of the
Pilgrims, Myles Standish, was a patient. Bangs has therefore also labeled it
a Pilgrim heritage area. Because the town of Leiden, and particularly the
formerly responsible P.v.d.A.-alderman Tjeerd van Rij, didn't give a hoot,
Bangs launched support among Pilgrim descendants in the U.S. via internet.
The consequent response, and threat of a consumer strike in America,
resulted
last summer in the fact that Ahold, which besides owning Albert Heijn also
possesses a series of store chains in the U.S., gingerly pulled out of the
project. Bangs has now turned his attention to Fortis Bank and ABN-AMRO,
involved in the project and big in the U.S. He shows a letter to Fortis,
where once again a consumer strike is threatened.
Former alderman Tjeerd van Rij (he resigned last May because of another
issue) views Bangs as a trouble maker. "It's lovely that he is concerned
about our cultural heritage. He just shouldn't be trumpeting untruths
around." According to Van Rij, the Vrouwekerk was scarcely used by the
Pilgrims.
And he rejects the argument against the Aalmarkt Plan because a Pilgrim
was a patient in the hospital. "I consider it pedantic of those Americans
that they are getting in the way because of that one Pilgrim. As a governor
of Leiden I had to weigh that interest off against the interests of
thousands
of Leiden's modern-day residents."
The American ambassador in The Netherlands, Cynthia Schneider, doesn't,
however, regard Bangs as a troublemaker at all. She sees the Pilgrim
locations identified by him as important cultural historical places. "Are we
supposed to prove how many Pilgrims went to church in the Vrouwekerk?
Ludicrous. The governors of Leiden are very disrespectful."
Now that the federal Supreme Court in Washington has named George W. Bush
to be the new president, Schneider, as a Clinton appointee, will be leaving
the field soon. But the town government of Leiden gets another powerful
opponent. When it became clear that Bush, also a Pilgrim descendant, will
become president, Bangs got on the phone: "Leiden can make its breast wet.
Now I have Bush as a supporter." It sounded serious.
[Serious or not, I didn't say that; and I have no idea what the meaning
is, of the sentence "Leiden kan zijn borst nat maken," which obviously makes
no sense when translated literally. All I said was that to demolish the only
monument in the country that has a direct connection with George Bush,
besides Ulysses Grant and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, may not be the best way
to promote tourism in the Bush era.]"
To help preserve these Leiden Pilgrim sites for future generations, you may
write to the following:
Fortis Investors, Inc.
PO Box 64284
St. Paul, MN 55164
Financial(a)us.fortis.com
Leiden City Council
Postbus 9100
2300 PC Leiden
The Netherlands
Sleutel(a)leiden.nl