2016 - 1

Inhoud

Jade Bosmans en Ilja Van Damme
‘Naar buiten, stedeling! Zie wat groeit in het laboratorium van Onze-Lieve-Heer’. Het vegetarisme van het natuurgeneeskundig Hygiënisch Gesticht Van den Broeck en het denken over het geïndustrialiseerde voedselsysteem in het Antwerpse interbellum.

Ad Knotter
Het Boschstraatkwartier in Maastricht in de eerste decennia van de twintigste eeuw: een socialistisch (vrouwen)bolwerk.

Werk in uitvoering
Laura Nys en Lith Lefranc
Het spektakel van het socialisme. Naar een sociale en architecturale biografie van Europese volkshuizen.

Jan Naert
Herlokalisering van de macht? Burgemeesters in bezet en bevrijd België en Noord-Frankrijk (1914-1921).

Reviews
Susan Hogervorst en Pieter de Bruijn
Verbindend erfgoed, vervreemdend verleden. Het nieuwe Museum Rotterdam en lokaal historisch besef.

Jeroen Puttevils, Jelten Baguet, Ellen Debackere, Dagmar Germonprez, Pieter De Graef, Julie De Groot, Boris Horemans, Yannick De Meulder, Sanne Muurling, Marjolein Schepers en Ans Vervaeke
Stadsgeschiedenis in Belgische en Nederlandse tijdschriften (2014).

Abstracts

Jade Bosmans and Ilja Van Damme. ‘Go outside, citizen! Seek out what grows in the laboratory of our Dear Lord’. The vegetarian praxis of the Hygiënisch Gesticht Van den Broeck and its critique on the industrialised food system in the Antwerp interwar period.

This article analyses the public discourse of an early vegetarian movement, active in Antwerp during the interwar period (1923-1940). It questions the social background of the vegetarian Hygiënisch Gesticht Van den Broeck, and identifies Aloïs Van Son as its main driver and architect of a radical Lebensreform. By an in depth reading of the main periodical of the movement, Terug Ter Orde, it is argued that the early Antwerp vegetarians developed an extensive, religious inspired critique against the modern food-system, and proposed a coherent alternative regarding the production, distribution and consumption of food. Although the social impact of the movement remained limited, and mainly attracted people from well to do Flemish cultural circles, some of its ideas regarding industrial food reform are still remarkably actual and to the point.

Ad Knotter, The ‘Boschstraat’-quarter in Maastricht in the first decades of the twentieth century: a socialist (women’s) stronghold Maastricht was an early stronghold of socialism in the Netherlands from the late 1880s.

In this article the local implantation of the Dutch Social Democratic Labour Party (sdap) is analysed by research into the electoral support for and membership of the party in each electoral district in 1920. Both were highly concentrated in a neighbourhood called ‘Boschstraatkwartier’, close to the glass- and earthenware factories of Regout (‘De Sphinx’). It is argued that there was a close relationship between the experience of working at Regout in an earlier period and electoral support for the sdap in 1920. By linking individual data of party members with data from the personal files in the archives of the company, this is corroborated for the membership. Even more interesting, female members in this neighbourhood were highly overrepresented. I argue that this can be explained by the high proportion of female workers employed by Regout, and cite evidence of particular female militancy.

Laura Nys and Lith Lefranc, The spectacle of socialism. A social and architectural biography of European People’s Houses.

At the turn of the century, numerous European cities witnessed the birth of a new type of building: the so-called ‘Maisons du Peuple’ or ‘People’s Houses’. These monumental buildings, often founded by the (socialist) labour movement, were meant to give ordinary people a place of their own within the urban space by means of impressive architecture. In order to grasp the remarkable individual life stories of the People’s Houses as well as their rich variety, this article proposes a multi-layered biographical approach. Four different phases in the biography of the People’s Houses each highlight another dimension of the building. The biographical framework is illustrated using the Brussels Maison du Peuple (1899-1964) as an empirical case study.

Jan Naert, Relocating Power. Mayors in occupied and liberated Belgium and northern France, 1914-1921.

Wars are often considered as the most important catalysts for state formation. Paradoxically, wars are at the same time the most important cause of temporary state disintegration. This is exactly what occurred at the Western Front during the First World War. The German occupation of Belgium and Northern France caused a ‘re-localisation’ of daily and political life. As such, local authorities not only got cut off from central state authority, but they were also largely left to their own devices and had to fall back on themselves. This article focuses on the role of mayors in occupied and liberated Belgium and France (1914-1921). As such, it aims to present the work in progress of a mixed urban and war history research project.

Susan Hogervorst and Pieter de Bruijn, Bonding heritage, distanced past. The new Museum Rotterdam and local historical consciousness.

In February 2016 Museum Rotterdam reopened with two new permanent exhibitions. This article shows how Museum Rotterdam aims to create ‘bonding heritage’ through a dynamic approach, that acknowledges new perspectives. Furthermore, it reveals how a strong distinction between the representation of the past and the present in the museum relates to the local memory culture, that is shaped by a temporal gap created after the bombing of the city in World War ii. In order to realise its goal of ‘bonding’, the authors recommend for the museum to show its own choices in selecting and presenting the objects and narratives on display, and therewith to address its own role in constructing and performing the city’s identity.