By Kor Kegel
It is a strange sensation to read these facts in a historical yearbook. You expect such salient details in current crime reporting. It was well known that the dozens of rogue car dealers in the Spanish Polder looked at you crazy if you wanted to have your tires changed there, but that it was so bad that drug-related crime here prepared murder and manslaughter, we only learned because Peter de Lange went for a walk with former mayor Cor Lamers, who opened a book about it in passing.
It’s a pleasant conversation – leave that to Peter de Lange. It gives an insight into how this mayor experienced the city of Schiedam. Never previously recorded from his mouth: “Verver has never seen further than her nose.”
In the interview, Cor Lamers speaks out for the first time about Wilma Verver-Aartsen, who was mayor of Schiedam before him – only Joan Leemhuis-Stout was among them as acting mayor. In the interview, Cor Lamers says he is surprised at how negative his predecessor could be about Schiedam (dirty town, underdeveloped Schiedam residents). While it is a beautiful city. Cor Lamers really shines as the mayor who gave the city of Schiedam its self-confidence back. It is a neat account, he has never been interviewed so extensively before – but the question is whether it could have been as candid as when he was still in office.
Expertise
The Historical Yearbook Schiedam is full of articles that are… worth reading? – no, which you will enjoy reading because the authors have put a lot of effort into it, with palpable pleasure and each from their own experience and expertise.
It is already the eighth edition. When the Dr. K. Heeringa Foundation first published it in 2016, the objective was described as: promoting professional historical research relating to Schiedam – but in a broader context. It explains the close collaboration with the Schiedam municipal archives. It also explains the collaboration of some authors. Henk Slechte, Hans van der Sloot, Ingrid van der Vlis, Froukje Holtrop – like Peter de Lange, they were among the permanent employees of Musis, the best cultural magazine Schiedam has ever had – it existed from November 1994 to July 2014. It is especially the merit of editor-in-chief Hans van der Sloot and municipal archivist Laurens Priester that they were able to keep this team writing. This has laid the foundation for an extremely interesting collection of in-depth stories about – including current – Schiedam issues every year.
Some articles deserve further consideration. Here, only a brief table of contents will suffice. Despite the loss of major shipyards, Schiedam remained a maritime metropolis, nicknamed the Offshore Valley of the Netherlands. Director Diederik von Bönninghausen talks about the new directions that the National Jenever Museum Schiedam is taking. We read how Schiedam once promised to become the oil man of the Dutch film industry. And it beautifully describes how the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama became a world star after she caused a riot in the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam in 1967.
Other topics: the slave trade, Theo Gootjes, the raid, the Stadserf. The Historical Yearbook Schiedam was published in an edition of 1,200 copies and can be purchased for €25 at the bookstore and at the counter of the municipal archives at the Stadserf.
