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Post by pieter on May 4, 2019 12:11:51 GMT -7
Remembrance of the DeadRemembrance of the Dead (Dutch: Dodenherdenking) is held annually on May 4 in the Netherlands. It commemorates all civilians and members of the armed forces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands who have died in wars or peacekeeping missions since the beginning of the Second World War.
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Post by pieter on May 4, 2019 12:13:21 GMT -7
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Post by karl on May 4, 2019 16:06:59 GMT -7
Pieter It was good of you presenting this reminder of war time dead, it matters very much for the living not to forget. It needs be remembered that solders did not give their lives, but for the most part, their lives were taken from them in as well as civilians caught up in the war. Simular as in Germany, it is named: Volkstrauertag. It is every year on the second Sunday before Advent. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VolkstrauertagKarl
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Post by pieter on May 5, 2019 14:38:27 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on May 5, 2019 14:39:37 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on May 5, 2019 14:41:55 GMT -7
Volkstrauertag (German for "people's day of mourning") is a commemoration day in Germany two Sundays before the first day of Advent. It commemorates members of the armed forces and civilians who died in armed conflicts, to include victims of violent oppression. It was first observed in its modern form in 1952.
Source: Karl’s Wikipedia link. I (Pieter) respect the German Volkstrauertag (“people's day of mourning")
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Post by karl on May 5, 2019 15:33:43 GMT -7
Pieter
Thank you most kindly for your reply and related respect of our mutual remembrance of the war time dead. It would be better if we had no war for this remembrance to be, but we as people must understand the reality that it indeed so exist. In this manner as above, we must at least keep these days for us to live by and remember by.
Karl
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Post by Jaga on May 5, 2019 20:31:53 GMT -7
Pieter, Karl,
I did not know about Dutch "Remembrance of the Dead" and German day of mourning. Dutch festivities surprised me since the beginning of the Spring after Easter in my memories were always about the new life.
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Post by pieter on May 6, 2019 3:00:46 GMT -7
Jaga,
It has probably to do with the heavy, Protestant christian, Calvinist, nature of the Netherlands. This brand of christianity has heavy Old Testament influences next to the New Testament. I read an article of a Dutch Jewish woman who spoke about her Dutch Calvinist Protestant man, and she said that her husband was more Jewish than she is, in the Orthodox sense. Calvinist are very, very biblical. More than Roman-Catholics. The joyful faith. In the Netherlands Roman-Catholic people are often a little bit less heavy in their faith and life than the Heavy Dutch Reformed Calvinist churches in the sense of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), the Gereformeerde Kerken (Reformed Churches) and the Gereformeerde gemeenten (the Reformed Congregations).
Maybe this has to do with that fact Jaga. In the Roman-Catholic church you have the collective body, the traditions, the customs and etc. Protestant faith is more bible study, knowing the whole bible by heart, the central role of Jesus Christ (mary plays no role), and the every presence of the lord in the every day life of the orthodox Protestant, Calvinist christian. Most Dutch people have become secular, humanist secular, and many people abandonned the 'heavy' Calvinist Reformed faith, because that had and has a lot of restrictions in life. (Compare that to the 613 commandments of the Orthodox jewish faith). Calvinism is a christian faith, but has some heavyness of the Orthodox jewish faith.
Of course extreme orthodox or strict fundamentalist Roman-Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Mormons, Jehova Wintesses, Seventh-day Adventists also have their restrictions, heavyness, isolationalism and sometimes sectarism. But also some good things like community, charity, solidarity, social work, equality, togetherness (hygge, gezelligheid -cosyness-), responsability, responsability (responsability) in combination with business qualities, trade talents (the Dutch are Import & Export people), Financial-economical corporate talents, salesmanship (merchant skills, business instincts, commercial talents and skills), which also are 'Calvinist' characteristics and in the Calvinist nature. The combination of this social organisation with commercial individualism is the typical Calvinist mentality.
There are various Dutch festivities which surprise me too Jaga, but maybe it has to do with the theocratic, strict, old Protestant customs nature, that these memories don't follow the logic of New Life in Spring after Easter.
I learned to live with it and tried to find in my life a good balance between my Roman-Catholic faith and my Dutch Calvinist culture. In that Dutch Roman-Catholics are different than Poles, Roman-Catholic Bavarians in Germany, Austrian Roman-Catholics, Italian Roman-Catholics and Spanish/Portuguese Roman-Catholics for instance. You (Poles) grew up in a Roman-Catholic majority culture, where the Roman-Catholic faith, Roman-Catholic culture and Roman-Catholic politicians and rulers dominated. In my country Calvinist (Dutch Reformed) Protestant Christians dominated for centuries, and Roman-Catholicism was oppressed for a long time (Roman Catholics had their clandestine churches (Dutch: schuilkerken) for centuries in barns, private houses and in open air masses in some woods. I hope that I explained it well and throuroughly.
Cheers, Pieter
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Post by pieter on May 6, 2019 3:48:20 GMT -7
Clandestine churchThe resulting clandestine churches, including Our Lord in the Attic, were hidden from view behind the facades of private residences and canal houses. By the 19th century, Amsterdam was again a more open and tolerant society allowing people of differing faiths to worship freely.A clandestine church (Dutch: schuilkerk), defined by historian Benjamin J. Kaplan as a "semi-clandestine church", is a house of worship used by religious minorities whose communal worship is tolerated by those of the majority faith on condition that it is discreet and not conducted in public spaces. Schuilkerken are commonly built inside houses or other buildings, and do not show a public façade to the street. They were an important advance in religious tolerance in the wake of the Reformation, an era when worship services conducted by minority faiths were often banned and sometimes penalized by exile or execution.
In the late 16th-century, Prince William of Orange led the revolt to gain independence from the Spanish king, Philip II. It was the time of the Spanish Inquisition, known for its bloody religious violence, with trials and torture. They persecuted anyone who was not Catholic.
The independent Republic's religious freedom contributed to a stable society of optimism and innovation, but, despite popular belief, religious freedom was in reality less free. Officially, churches and religions other than the Reformed Calvinist Church were forced to go underground. Religious communities had to buy a ‘shelter church license’ to escape persecution. The license cost as much as 10,000 euros a year. But this was no guarantee of uninterrupted services.
In 1629, the forbidden Remonstrant community was looking for a suitable location for their shelter church. They purchased Keizersgracht 104 and turned it into a place of worship. A hatter ran his business next door, making customized capotains; broad-brimmed hats of woolen felt, beaver hair, silk or velvet. In the 1630s, the hat-making business was sold to Claes Harmensson Roothoet. His last name literally means ‘red hat’, so the image on the gable stone on the façade was painted in red.
In 1642, the house came into the possession of the Remonstrant church too, and was connected to the shelter church at number 102. It became the largest clandestine church in the Netherlands. Thanks to the freedom of religion laws laid down in 1848, the Remonstrant parish could now show itself publicly. In 1876, the church underwent renovation work and was given a new, typical 19th-century facade. After a period of disuse, the church is now an independent cultural debate center focused on religion, philosophy, music and poetry.
The Red Hat was not the only clandestine church along the Keizersgracht. In fact, a second one is located nearby, at number 140.HistoryAccording to historian Benjamin Kaplan, clandestine churches became common in Europe in the wake of the Reformation as a way for governments to permit a degree of religious toleration for minority Christian denominations and Jews. Both political and religious considerations frequently led governments to ban all worship not sanctioned by the state, and in many countries, members of minority religions worshiped together in total secrecy, risking punishment by the state. However, such a regime was frequently difficult to enforce, and as a result, while many jurisdictions permitted only one form of worship, authorities knowingly permitted members of minority faiths to worship privately. In others, the law permitted public worship by minority faiths, but only if it was more or less invisible to the general public.
The 1648 Treaty of Osnabruck, part of the Peace of Westphalia, specified three types of worship: "domestic devotion", public religious services ("exercitium religionis publicum"), and private religious services ("exercitium religionis privatum"). It is into this last category that clandestine churches fall. These churches were characterized by group religious services carried out by clergy "in their own houses or in other houses designated for the purpose," and not "in churches at set hours." Kaplan writes that the pretense of clandestinity "enabled Europeans to accommodate dissent without confronting it directly, to tolerate knowingly what they could not bring themselves to accept fully."
In a surviving Dutch document from 1691, the Regents of the City of Amsterdam specified the terms under which a Roman Catholic church, called the Glabais, could be built by the Franciscans "to avoid giving any offense." The entrance must not be on the Jodenbreestraat, but "behind" on a lesser thoroughfare, the Burgwal. There would be no parking of sleds on the Jodenbreestraat. There was to be no "waiting for another person" on the street after services. The priest was responsible for seeing that no beggars came to ask the worshipers for alms. Services were timed so that there would be no chance of Roman Catholics offending Protestants by meeting them in the streets on their way to Dutch Reformed churches. And, finally, the Catholics must not walk to church in groups, nor carry prayer books, rosaries, or "other offensive objects" in a manner that made them visible to Protestant eyes. Benjamin J. Kaplan regards these requirements as typical of those in effect across Europe wherever clandestine churches were permitted.
In 1701, the intendant of Alsace, Félix Le Pelletier de La Houssaye ruled against a complaint brought by an abbe, writing that "The worship which the Jews established in Reichshoffen is not as public as one would have you believe. There is no synagogue per se, only, by a custom long established in this province, when there are seven Jewish families in one locale, those who compose them assemble, without scandal, in a house of their sect for readings and prayers."[1] A line was crossed when an actual building was erected as a prayer house, as the Jews of Biesheim, Wintzenheim and Hagenthal discovered when each community had a newly built synagogue razed by the Conseil Souverain of Alsace in the 1720s.
Although early clandestine churches were makeshift spaces, by the 17th century some, usually Catholic, churches had constructed elaborately decorated baroque interiors. Artists who painted works commissioned by clandestine churches include Gerard van Honthorst, Abraham Bloemaert, Jan Miense Molenaer, Pieter de Grebber, Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert and Jan de Bray.
In 1781, under the Patent of Toleration, the Austrian Empire for the first time instituted limited legal toleration of minority faiths, permitting them to conduct "private religious exercises" in clandestine churches. Emperor Joseph II's Patent specified that these clandestine churches might not ring a bell or build bell towers or any public entrance on the street. Vienna's Stadttempel, a synagogue built in 1825 with an extremely handsome interior, is an excellent surviving example. It is completely concealed in the interior of a block of residential buildings.TypesSome are freestanding buildings constructed in rear courtyards. What they share is that they are not readily recognizable as houses of worship by passersby. Such churches were built in large numbers during the time of the Dutch Republic for use by Roman Catholics, Remonstrants, Lutherans and Mennonites. In cities schuilkerken were especially established in houses and warehouses, whereas in the countryside such churches generally had the appearance of a shed and so became known as Schuurkerken (barn churches). All clandestine churches of necessity lacked exterior markers that would identify them as churches; they had no bells, towers, steeples, crosses, icons or exterior architectural splendor.Rural
St. Ninian's Church, Tynet, Scotland, is a typical, rural clandestine Catholic church. Built in 1755, it resembles a long, low barn. It is a dramatic contrast with its replacement, St. Gregory's Church, Preshome, Scotland, the first openly Catholic church to be built in Scotland after the Reformation, whose proud Italian Baroque facade with the date in Latin, "DEO 1788," announcing its Catholicism to the world.Freestanding urbanAmsterdam's Vrijburg (1629) is a typical freestanding, urban clandestine church. It is built at the center of the block, completely surrounded by houses on all four sides, so that it neither fronts on, nor is visible from, any public street.House churchesThe church Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder in Amsterdam, currently a museum, is a notable example of a house Catholic church. A Jewish house synagogue survives in Traenheim in Alsace. It is an upstairs room in a half-timbered house renovated for use as a place of public worship in 1723 over the "vociferous" objections of the town's pastor but with the permission of the government. The room still has Hebrew prayers on the walls.The "Old Secret Catholic Church" in Amsterdam. The Amstelkring Church, Our Lord in the Attic, is housed in a 17th-century canal house with authentic living rooms on the lower floors and a preserved Roman Catholic Attic Church upstairs. A maze of rooms, halls and staircases with lots of peepholes remind you of Holland's Golden Age. Following the Alteration in 1578 (when Amsterdam became Protestant), Catholics were not permitted to practice their religion in public. These churches were privately owned and designed not to be recognizable as churches from the outside. The building now houses a museum.Map of the "Old Secret Catholic Church" in a chanal house at the Oudezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.The "Old Secret Catholic Church" in a chanal house at the Oudezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.The chanal house with the bright lights is the building in which the Clandestine church, thge "Old Secret Catholic Church" is located at the Oudezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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Post by pieter on May 6, 2019 14:25:03 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on May 6, 2019 14:32:03 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on May 4, 2022 11:28:05 GMT -7
Dutch anthemWilliam of Nassau am I, of German* descent;
True to the fatherland I remain until death.
Prince of Orange am I, free and fearless.
To the King of Spain I have always given honour.
You, my God and Lord, are my shield, on You I rely.
On You I will build; never leave me,
So that I may remain pious, your servant at all moments,
Dispelling the tyranny that wounds my heart.(*He was born in Dillenburg castle, in the then County of Nassau-Dillenburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, now in Hesse, Germany. So "of German descent" is technically correct Futhermore at the time it was written 'German' ('Duitsen') may be more appropriately translated as ' Germanic', which one could also argue as ' Dutch' when translated in a modern context) source: www.lyricsondemand.com/n/nationalanthemlyrics/netherlandsnationalanthemlyrics.html
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Post by pieter on May 4, 2022 11:47:38 GMT -7
Fire of Freedom
The eternal Freedom Fire burns in Wageningen, City of Liberation. The Fire of Freedom is the symbol for living in peace and freedom. Every year on May 4 at midnight, the fire is received in order to be able to ignite the Freedom Fire on May 5 in the rest of the Netherlands.
In 2020 everything was different; we lived in a time where we felt what limitation of freedom is. We had an invisible face. Not comparable to wartime but, it was indeed.
That is why we handed over the Freedom Fire to fire bearers that year on May 4 at 21.00. These were individuals who carry with them a story of the impact of war. These fire bearers collect the fire to the cities where Liberation Festivals normally take place on May 5. Together with this fire, the Freedom Fire was ignited throughout the Netherlands at midnight.
We commemorated 75 years of freedom in 2022. We marked this moment by lighting the fire. For them, all offers, with the realization that our freedom is not self-evident.
Firebearers of the Liberation Festivals Liberation Festival Zeeland in Vlissingen by Stef Traas (35) Liberation Festival Groningen by Maureen de Witte (19) Liberation Festival Fryslân in Leeuwarden by Ronald Nooter (60) Liberation Festival Drenthe in Assen by Alfred Kool (64) Liberation Festival Limburg in Roermond by Rachel Schepers (50) Liberation doll in Haarlem by Dieuwertje Blok (62) Liberation Festival South Holland in Rotterdam by Cheryl Bartelings (59) Liberation Festival The Hague by Mostafa Hilali (46) Liberation Festival Flevoland in Almere by Hakim Radwan (12) Amsterdam Liberation Festival by Frank van der Lende (31) Liberation Festival Overijssel in Zwolle by Brita Röhl (63) Liberation Festival Brabant in Den Bosch by Wadec Salewicz (74) Liberation Festival Utrecht by Maayke Botman (51) Liberation Festival Gelderland in Wageningen by Lavinia Meijer (37)
In this evening the eternal Freedom Fire will be light again in Wageningen.
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Post by pieter on May 4, 2022 12:40:19 GMT -7
The Second World War left scars in old people who survived Gestapo or SD prisons, Concentrationcamps, the execution of their parents. Such old Dutch people today said on national tv that the things that are happening in Ukraine and the images they see brings back the Second World War back to them. Fear, anxiety, bad sleeping and old images that hounted them came back, because some of the terrible images they saw of suffering women, children, elderly or abused or dead soldiers reminded them of their time from 1940-1945 in the Netherlands, but also abroad as slave workers in Germany that suffered under bad treatment and allied bombings in Germany, people that were in German/Austrian Nazi concentration camps in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Poland or the Czech Republic.
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