Heritage in the Making: The Case of Mussert’s Wall and its
Contested World War II Heritage
Heritage in the Making: The Case of Mussert
’ s Wall and its
Contested World War II Heritage
Table of Contents
Introduction ……… p3 Theoretical framework ……… p6 Chapter 1: A brief history of the NSB and Anton Mussert ………. P9 Dissonances in the heritage of the NSB………p13 Mussert’s Wall today………p16 Chapter 2: The ongoing debate on Mussert’s Wall ……… p19 A recent turn of events ………p27 A research and design competition ……… p29 Chapter 3: A historiography of the development of Dutch memory culture ……… p32 Chapter 4: Perpetrator heritage in the realm of wider European memory culture ……...p43 Operation Reinhard Headquarters, Lublin, Poland ………..p43 Nuremberg Rally Grounds, Germany ……….p49 Chapter conclusions……….………p54 Conclusion ……….p55 Bibliography ……….p57
Introduction
My interest in difficult heritage (to borrow the term from Logan and Reeves, 2009) was first sparked during my BA study in German studies, where I developed a deep interest in the history, politics, and memorial practices surrounding National Socialism and the Holocaust. I became drawn to German Life Writing and autobiographies of Holocaust survivors and also to discourses surrounding the blurring of the binary of victim and perpetrator. German memorial practices and the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) were also a key focus of my studies as they highlighted the interplay between politics and historical consciousness in the process of working through events of the past.
These interests have only been deepened during the MA programme of Heritage and Memory Studies. As I have spent a number of years studying National Socialism and the Holocaust from the victim’s perspective, I have now worked to expand my research scope to study the same events but from the perspective of the perpetrators. This thesis will focus on the tangible heritage of National Socialism and in particular on perpetrator sites. These are sites which “are part of the apparatus of perpetration but not locations in which suffering was directly inflicted”, for example rally grounds like Nuremberg, and Hitler’s eyrie in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, to name two well-known examples.1
In particular, I am interested in how sites associated with National Socialism and the perpetrators of the Holocaust have (or have not been) managed and memorialised, the strategies undertaken to situate the sites in their specific historical contexts as well as in their current political and social contexts. This thesis will be framed by the current and ongoing dilemma of what can be done with the so-called muur van Mussert in the Netherlands, which was the site where the former political party called the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB) held their yearly party meetings. It is known now as Mussert’s Wall, named after Anton Mussert, the leader of the NSB. The wall is situated on a camping ground owned by businessman Roderick Zoons. Essentially, it has been left to ruin as no one really knows, nor can decide on, what to do with this remnant of the Dutch National Socialist past. Though the wall appears to have been left to ruin, it has not exactly been forgotten. 1 Macdonald, Sharon. “Difficult Heritage. Negotiating the Nazi past in Nuremberg and beyond”, (New York: Routledge, 2009), p3
There is an ongoing debate over the future of the wall and what can be done with it. With the aid of the interviews I carried out and also of newspaper articles tracking the debate, I would like to investigate this debate and the opinions of various stakeholders involved in order to explore the following research question: What does the way in which Mussert’s Wall is remembered (or not) today tell us about the development of Dutch memory culture of World War II? Within this, the history of the site as well as the historiography of Dutch memory after the war will be key in order to assess how identities have been forged in relation to the years of the German Occupation 1940-1945.
The ongoing debate about Mussert’s Wall lends real social relevance to the topic on both a national and local level. One suggestion for the wall is to give it status as a Rijksmonument (a national monument), however this is controversial and local and national stakeholders, as well as academics, have varying opinions on the future of Mussert’s Wall. The debate and these opinions will be discussed at length within this thesis. It also has real relevance for academia as the debate surrounding the wall works to show how dynamic the process of making heritage can be, as well as highlighting how the agency of local and national stakeholders plays a considerable role in this process. I find the topic so interesting as Mussert’s Wall can be seen as heritage in the making. It is the unknown future of the wall and its uncertain place in the heritage sector that makes the topic so exciting and why I have decided to undertake it as a research topic.
In order to lend the investigation into Mussert’s Wall further relevance and also to stress the dynamics of making heritage and its management, I will place the development of Dutch memory culture in a wider European context in the final chapter of this thesis. Here, I will discuss two other perpetrator sites, namely the Nuremberg rally grounds in Germany and the Operation Reinhard Headquarters in Lublin, Poland. These, too, are sites where suffering was not directly inflicted, however they were key apparatus in the system of National
Socialism and/or the Holocaust in their respective countries. I have chosen these two sites for they represent diverse ways of managing difficult heritage sites associated with
perpetratorship. For the Nuremberg rally grounds, the re-use of the site will be the focus as well as the development of German memory culture, while the Headquarters in Lublin will act as a prism through which to examine the attempted erasure of association with
perpetratorship in Poland after WWII. The use of these two minor case studies will allow me to comment on the development of Dutch memory culture as a phenomenon of its own or as a phenomenon in common with wider-European memory culture of perpetratorship during WWII.
Theoretical Framework
It is due to the ongoing debate as to how to manage the National Socialist past embedded in Mussert’s Wall as well as the site of which the wall is a part, that the wall can be considered to represent heritage in the making. So how can Mussert’s Wall be made into heritage? Laurajane Smith outlines how all heritage is constructed, or made, in the introduction to her book “Uses of Heritage”. Here, she names a number of identifiable heritage sites like
Stonehenge, the Coliseum, and Angkor Watt, and explains how these sites “are not
inherently valuable, nor do they carry a freight of innate meaning.”2 She goes on to say that
Stonehenge “is basically a collection of rocks in a field” and what makes them what we know as ‘Stonehenge’ “are the present-day cultural processes and activities that are undertaken at and around them, and of which they become a part.3 It is these processes that identify them
as physically symbolic of particular cultural and social events, and thus give them value and meaning.”4 Following Smith’s claims, it can be argued that Mussert’s Wall is simply a wall
situated on a camping ground in the Dutch countryside that carries no inherent value or meaning. Rather, it is the social and cultural processes that have been or are undertaken at the site of the wall (and on the wall, itself,) that attribute meaning and value to the wall as a heritage site. The process of making heritage, which assigns value and meaning to the site, is often politically charged and according to Smith, reflects “contemporary cultural and social values, debates and aspirations.”5
Thus, making heritage is a social, political, and cultural construction. The heritage that is made can be constructed in a diverse number of ways as Smith stresses that heritage is a dynamic process and it can change depending on social and cultural developments, changing opinions, and changing political spheres. This dynamic process of heritage construction will be the key focus of this thesis with a particular focus on one case study, that of Mussert’s Wall in the Netherlands. Representing a remnant of the Dutch fascist past, the wall is called “fout erfgoed” (undesirable heritage) and this thesis will investigate the complex nature of the remembrance and non-remembrance of the site due to its difficult heritage.
2 Smith, Laurajane, “Introduction”, in Uses of Heritage, (New York: Routledge, 2006) p3 3 Ibid.
4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.
Mussert’s Wall represents a perpetrator site, which, as defined in the introduction, is a site instrumental to the system of perpetration but no direct suffering took place there.
Specifically, this site represents Dutch National Socialism and has come to be seen as the site that represents the collaboration of the NSB with the German Nazis. Such a site can be categorised as ‘difficult’ heritage and reveals dissonances between the NSB heritage at the site and wider Dutch society. These sites are often difficult to integrate into a national narrative of the past and, in this way, are termed ‘difficult’ or ‘dissonant’ heritage. Tunbridge and Ashworth describe dissonance in heritage as that which “involves a discordance or a lack of agreement and consistency” with the present, no longer conforming to present attitudes and goals.6 Dissonance in heritage also involves a disinheritance of the past,
whereby this disinheritance “may be unintentional, temporary, of trivial importance, limited in its effects and concealed; or it may be long-term, widespread, intentional, important and obvious.”7 These definitions will be useful in the investigation of Mussert’s Wall as I
investigate how the site has been remembered (or not) until now and what this says about Dutch memory culture of World War II and the NSB collaboration with the German Nazis. How the Dutch wish to identify themselves with regard to the German Occupation is crucial to this investigation.
While the somewhat difficult nature of such sites is implied due to their dissonances, the sites can also be categorised as ‘difficult’ heritage. Logan and Reeves discuss difficult heritage in terms of “places of pain and shame”, ranging from places and sites to
institutions; “these sites bring shame upon us now for the cruelty and ultimate futility of the events that occurred within them and the ideologies they represented.”8 While Mussert’s
Wall could be considered a place of shame, often called a “black page” in Dutch national history, it is not exactly a place of pain, as such, as no suffering directly took place there.
Ownership of heritage is a theme widely-discussed in Heritage Studies. While Tunbridge and Ashworth define dissonance in heritage in terms of inheritance and disinheritance, Logan 6 Tunbridge, John, and Ashworth, Gregory, “Dissonance in Heritage”, in Dissonant Heritage. The Management of the Past
as a Resource in Conflict, (1996), pp. 20
7 Ibid. pp. 21
8 Logan, William, and Reeves, Keir, “Introduction: Remembering Places of Pain and Shame”, in Places of Pain and Shame:
Dealing with "Difficult Heritage", (Routledge: Milton Park, England, 2009), pp. 1. Henceforth known as Logan and Reeves,
and Reeves pay attention to the managers of difficult heritage sites, quoting Teresa Leopold (2007:1) who states that “it is the manager of a site who has the most impact on its
interpretation through the way in which he/she decides what to say and what to leave out.”9
This is significant for chapter 2 where the debate about the wall and the stakeholders involved are the main focus. The stakeholders involved and their agency is crucial to the debate about Mussert’s Wall. The debate reveals which stakeholders are defined as the “legitimate spokespersons for the past.”10 In the case of Mussert’s Wall, these spokespersons
have authority on what is known as the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) on the difficult heritage site. Laurajane Smith outlines that this legitimation of one spokesperson over another is a consequence of AHD, as it limits the power of other stakeholders due to the legitimation of one stakeholder as the authority on the heritage.11 As a result of the AHD,
only one version or narrative of the past is canonised, becoming the prevailing discourse on that particular piece of the past. This will be discussed in chapter 3, whereby an exploration of an official historiography of the German Occupation will aim to shed light on the general disinheritance of Mussert’s Wall and its NSB heritage in the Netherlands.
Chapter 1
A brief history of the NSB and Anton Mussert
9 Ibid.
10 Smith, Laurajane, in “The Discourse of Heritage”, Uses of Heritage, (New York: Routledge, 2006) p29. Henceforth known as Laurajane Smith, “The Discourse of Heritage”
The Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB) was founded in the Netherlands on 14th
December 1931 by Anton Mussert (who would become party leader) and Cornelis van Geelkerken. In English, the name translates to the National Socialist Movement and was a fascist political party modelled on Adolf Hitler’s Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) in Germany, commonly known in English as the German Nazi Party.
Though the NSB was fascist, it tolerated different religions and was not anti-Semitic until after 1936.12 Mussert drew much inspiration from the NSDAP and its leader, as well as other
fascist leaders at the time like Benito Mussolini. Mussert’s ambition, like that of Mussolini’s, was to “unite the people and to lead them into a great future”.13 Around the time of the
party’s foundation, the Netherlands was experiencing great economic depression and poor living standards due to the Wall Street Crash in 1929. The driving force behind Mussert and the foundation of the party in 1931 was to gain power in order to change things for the better and he painted himself as the “saviour of Holland”.14 Bearing likeness with Hitler’s
NSDAP, this slogan was steeped in nationalist connotations. These similarities reveal the dissonances in the heritage of the NSB party for the Dutch post-war. Mussert admired Hitler and his party to the extent that he created the “Mussert Guard”, (the
Weerbaarheidsafdeling in Dutch), modelled on Hitler’s brown-shirted Sturmabteilung, the
SA, a thuggish group who used methods of intimidation to gain Hitler more power and control over the German people. That Mussert felt inspired to imitate Hitler by having his own squadron of guards is perhaps telling of Mussert’s character and ambitions.
The growing number of members
Mussert and his party became quite popular and the first NSB mass meeting took place on 7th January 1933, where 600 members came together. 9 months later, the number of
members had largely increased and it was on the 7th October 1933 that 6000 members met.
It was here that capacity in the chosen building became an issue for the leaders of the NSB. Van Geelkerken, Mussert’s second in the NSB, brought it to Mussert’s attention that there
12 Nick Aarons, Documentary “Nazi Collaborators: The Dutch Collaborator”, 2010, produced by MG Entertainment, and WMR Productions. Available in 4 parts on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nOpJp8jjfc (Part 1), time tag: 03:29-03:33. Henceforth known as Nick Aarons, Documentary followed by time tag
13 Roelf van Til, Documentary “Profiel: Mussert”, 9th November 2005, produced by VPRO KRO, time tag: 00:30.
https://www.2doc.nl/speel~KRO_1199962~mussert-profiel~.html. Henceforth known as Roelf van Til, Documentary followed by time tag
was no longer a building big enough to house their growing number of members.15 Different
methods were experimented with to try to house the growing number of members at the meetings, for example in March 1935, there were a total of 22,000 members which had to be split into two separate meetings which were held within days of each other. Another method entailed the construction of huge tents within which the then 30,000 members could be accommodated for the meeting in October 1935. However, at this meeting the level of enjoyment began to wane and members complained that they could not see or hear enough of the speeches.16 Having previously used random locations for their meetings like
the RAI in Amsterdam, for example, Mussert and his NSB comrades were fully aware that the buildings chosen were no longer suited to the meetings, nor to their ever-growing audience. It was time to build a purpose-built location for the meetings, like Hitler and the NSDAP had at Nuremberg in Germany.
These meetings at Nuremberg were steeped in National Socialist glory with a wealth of flags, ceremonial music and synchronised marching in front of the Führer. Of course, such
ceremony was key to the NSDAP as the use of emblems, flags, and uniforms worked to solidify the National Socialist feeling among its members, strengthening the identity of the party, its members, and most of all its leader. Mussert took inspiration from these identity-forming strategies and intended to make the meetings at the new location of the NSB equally ceremonial. It was also intended that the mass meetings would be held only once per year at the new location, like the NSDAP did at the Nuremberg rally grounds. In this way, Mussert continued his attempt to align the NSB with the NSDAP, drawing constant
inspiration from them. The ideology behind meeting only once per year, particularly for the NSDAP, was such that the meeting grounds became recognised as sacred grounds. The mass meetings, therefore, take on a ritualistic quality and work to create the feeling of a political religion. Historian René van Heijningen discusses this in his book entitled De Muur van
Mussert where he outlines how rituals at mass meetings are similar to the rituals one
performs in the church.17 He cites historian Emilio Gentile, who stresses that there are two
elements crucial to these rituals: fear and fascination. A ritual must bring together these two 15 René van Heijningen, De Muur van Mussert, (Amsterdam: Boom, 2015), p38. Henceforth known as De Muur van
Mussert
16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. p26
emotions, overpowering its participants while also luring them in to participate.18 The
NSDAP certainly achieves this at Nuremberg as the monumental scale of the place and space both overpower and attract the party members. Whether this was something that was achieved at the new location of the NSB meetings will be discussed later.
The Nationaal Tehuis of the NSB
For the upcoming meeting in 1935, Van der Weide, a party comrade of Mussert’s, suggested that the meeting could be held outdoors as a whole day event. There were suggestions of a location in Arnhem to which party members would travel by bus or car. The mass movement of people to the meeting’s location would represent an act of propaganda for the party, a re-enactment of the movement in the party’s name.19 According to Van Heijningen, holding the
meetings outside was not exactly Mussert’s first choice and he was hesitant about the idea due to fears of bad weather, rioting and the threat of being targeted by allied air-raid bombings. Despite these reservations, the outdoor location of the Goudsberg in Lunteren was chosen to become the new location of the yearly party meetings. The location was not exactly a random choice as, first of all, it was available to the party because Mussert’s comrade W.G. Nieuwenkamp owned a piece of land there of around 8 hectares.20 This meant
that the area would be sufficient to accommodate the growing number of party members. Mussert even had plans to expand the area.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the location would prove particularly useful for the NSB in the development of a more finite party ideology and identity. The Goudsberg is the official, geographical centre of the Netherlands and at the time it was also known as the Godsberg, a location deeply rooted in Germanic history, where according to legend the Nordic people who laid their foundations there practiced their religious rituals outside in the open air.21 The place was considered sacred ground. These legends worked in the party’s
favour, not only in the development of an ideology revolving around old Germanic traditions and runes but also because the act of going to the site must have felt similar to a pilgrimage going back to your roots – to a place where the seeds of Germanic culture in the
18 Ibid. p27 19 Ibid. p39 20 Ibid. p40 21 Ibid. p44
Netherlands were first sown and cultivated. The party used the site’s history to its advantage, and Frans Eduard Farwerck (party organisation leader) managed a party
newspaper called De Wolfsangel, which was instrumental in disseminating stories about the Germanic runes, history and traditions.22
It is important to note that the names given to the location were loaded with symbolism for the NSB party thanks to the Germanic roots found in the history of the site. The site where the speeches took place had multiple names, for example the Nationaal Tehuis and the
Hagespraakterrein. The former encapsulates both physically and emotionally, the feeling of
the national home of the NSB party at the site in Lunteren. These emotions are crucial to the sense of belonging that the name invites, solidifying the feeling that the NSB and its
members should feel at home at the Goudsberg and at the meetings. The second name has roots in Germanic traditions, whereby the site was named after meetings called
Hagespraken, held by Saxon farmers who once settled on the site in Lunteren. The Saxon
farmers were the embodiment of a free, self-sufficient people who would hold democratic meetings to discuss community issues. Such farmers and their practices must have inspired Mussert and the NSB. They certainly inspired Evert Jan Roskam, (himself from a farming background and member of the NSB since 1932) who preached the so-called “Blood and Soil” ideology, which elevated farmers to the status of guardians of the people.23 He believed
that “the power of the people does not come from culture in the city but in the tough willpower of the countryside”.24 Drawing from the Blut und Boden ideology in Germany, the
“Blood and Soil” ideology refers to returning to the countryside to avoid undesirable metropolitan (Jewish) influences. The love for the countryside, returning to one’s roots i.e. Germanic roots, and love for farmers who feed the nation were central ideas in the “Blood and Soil” ideology that the NSB slowly adopted. That the new meeting site was located right in the heart of the countryside, at the Goudsberg steeped in Germanic history, aligned nicely with key concepts of the “Blood and Soil” ideology.
Dissonances in the heritage of the NSB
22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. p43
24 Ibid. p44. Original: “omdat de kracht van een volk niet zit in de cultuur der stad, maar in de wilskracht – in de taaie wilskracht van het land.”
It is in the chosen location for the NSB mass meetings, the names given to the site, as well as the inspiration Mussert and his party comrades liked to draw from the NSDAP, that a number of dissonances are revealed in the heritage of the NSB party and its party home at the Goudsberg for the Netherlands post-war. While dissonance already implies the somewhat difficult nature of such sites and spheres, they can also be categorised as ‘difficult’ heritage. Logan and Reeves (2009) discuss difficult heritage in terms of “places of pain and shame”. They explain how “these sites bring shame upon us now for the cruelty and ultimate futility of the events that occurred within them and the ideologies they represented.”25 While
nothing physically cruel occurred at the mass meetings at the Goudsberg, the site certainly appears to have become a place of difficult heritage for the Netherlands post-war,
continuing to today. This will be discussed further later, whereby the current state of the site will be explored. In post-war historiography, a large focus is put on the Dutch resistance during the war (this is discussed in depth in chapter 3) and aids the feeling that there has been a clear disinheritance of the site at the Goudsberg and NSB history as a whole. There has been a disassociation with the site for its location at the Goudsberg was highly symbolic in the creation of an ideology for the NSB revolving around Germanic history. This aided in the creation and solidification of a party identity, one closely bound to Germanic history and traditions. I believe that the newspaper, De Wolfsangel, had a significant role in this, as the histories it disseminated were crucial in the development of a party ideology inspired by the “Blood and Soil” theories, and especially after 1936 when the party became anti-Semitic. Acting as propaganda, they emphasised the foundations for that ideology, one which stressed the idea of an “own” culture and “own” race”, thus defining who the party and its members were and, perhaps most significantly, who they were not. The creation of a party identity, defining the “we”, works to create a strong bond between party members and their leader. Dissonance in the heritage of the NSB party for Dutch memory culture is revealed here as the ideological foundations are all too recognisable in their attempts to imitate the NSDAP and its ideologies regarding the “master race”.
Though the NSB was a political party on an entirely different scale to that of the NSDAP, as outlined at the beginning of this chapter, its attempts to imitate the ideologies of the latter reveal the dissonances in its heritage for the Netherlands post-war. Even that the site in 25 Logan and Reeves, “Introduction”, pp.1
Lunteren was used only once per year, like that of the NSDAP in Nuremberg, reveals such dissonances. Other dissonances are more deeply rooted as the similarities with the NSDAP are perhaps a little too close for comfort, for example in the “Blood and Soil” ideology, which was instrumental in defining what being “German” or “Germanic” was and was not.
According to Van Heijningen’s research, Mussert was not exactly a believer in this ideology.26
However, despite their leader’s reservations, the NSB appeared to have taken on this ideology, as it was preached by Evert Jan Roskam and the editor of De Wolfsangel newspaper, Frans Eduard Farwerck.
The NSB were a curiosity for the Germans, and Mussert was invited to meet Hitler in Berlin in November 1936. That day, Mussert wrote in his diary that Hitler was “powerful, muscular, harsh, a prophet.”27 Thus, the NSB began to align more and more with Hitler’s NSDAP and,
though Mussert was reluctant, it was decreed in 1938 that Jews were no longer allowed to be members of the NSB.28 Reportedly, in 1940 as the Germans invaded the Netherlands,
Mussert went into hiding, scared that the people would be angry and it was only upon the capitulation of the Netherlands that Mussert appeared again as the leader of the NSB.29
Directly after the liberation of the Netherlands by the Allies, Mussert was arrested for being a landverrader – a collaborator and traitor to the Netherlands. In this way, Mussert, the NSB and all that was associated with it, including therefore the site of the mass meetings in Lunteren, were considered a black page in the history of the Netherlands. Having also accepted visits from leading Nazi officials at the Goudsberg, for example, Heinrich Himmler in May 1942, and having gifted the bronze bell that was situated there to Hermann Göring in 1940, further dissonances with the heritage of the NSB and its national home in Lunteren are revealed. It is said that the gifting of the bell was the biggest mistake Mussert would ever make in his life, as it symbolised “the resurrection of the Netherlands”,30 and the gifting of it
in 1940 could be seen as the metaphorical handing over of the Netherlands to the Germans. In this way, the site at Lunteren, which has come to be known as De Muur van Mussert, or
26 De Muur van Mussert, p43
27 Paul Verhoeven, Documentary, “Portret van Anton Adriaan Mussert”, 1970, produced by VPRO, retrieved from
https://www.2doc.nl/speel~WO_VPRO_043128~portret-van-anton-adriaan-mussert~.html, time tag: 23:49-24:03 28 Ibid. 25:57-26:00
29 Roelf van Til, Documentary, 15:45-16:23 30 De Muur van Mussert, p18
Mussert’s Wall, has become a site of difficult heritage for the Netherlands and the development of Dutch memory culture of this period.
Today, the contested WWII site and Mussert’s Wall is located on a camping ground which is home to Polish migrants seeking work in the Netherlands. I visited Mussert’s Wall in
September 2017 and was confronted with a wall that is in a slowly decaying state where parts of the wall’s complex have collapsed (whether naturally or intentionally destroyed by vandals, it is not known). Here, Mussert would deliver speeches from a podium on the wall to thousands of NSB members who had travelled long distances to the countryside for the meetings. The podium or balcony where he would have stood can no longer be seen today as it appears to have been removed. An explanation for its removal may be that it was deemed unsafe due to the wall’s slowly crumbling state, however it could also have been removed in order to deter people from re-enacting the past on the exact spot where Mussert once stood.
View of Mussert’s Wall. Image source: www.bunkerinfo.nl
As can be seen in the image above, this remnant of World War II heritage has been partly taken over by nature, as trees shroud the wall making a good view of the whole wall
impossible. The rooms and buildings located behind the wall, where Mussert would write in private, for example, are now fenced off to the public and the windows boarded up. The
fences and boards do not deter those determined enough to enter, however, as there are many broken boards and there is much evidence that rooms in the complex have been entered and used long after its original users.
Boarded up windows on Mussert’s Wall. Image source: www.bunkerinfo.nl
When standing on the wall, one can look out over the area and try to imagine the scene Mussert would have seen before him, that of thousands of party members sitting on the grass to hear him speak. In reality, it is quite hard to imagine the scene as many caravans now stand on the site where the members of the NSB would have once been standing and sitting. As I stood there, I had images in my mind from documentaries I had watched and photographs I had seen of the mass gatherings and of Mussert speaking. I was also
reminded of the scenes in documentaries and historical photographs of Hitler orating to the masses at the Nuremberg rally grounds and the feeling of glory the scenes created: flags flying, uniformed men and women, an adoring crowd. However, this cannot be imagined today at the site in Lunteren. Mostly this is due to the current circumstances of the site, that it is now used as a camping ground and the trailers that block the view from the wall, but also because the sights to behold in Nuremberg and the National Socialist fervour whipped
up by Hitler there are so far from those that were seen at the Hagespraakterrein (the site of the mass gatherings) in Lunteren. Unlike the Nuremberg rally grounds, the site never had an air of polished, monumental glamour. Apart from the wall and a few rooms behind it, the site in Lunteren was never finished and the grand plans Mussert had were never fully realised.
Mussert and his intended legacy
Despite being unfinished, Mussert was clearly proud of the amphitheatre-inspired structure that the NSB had collectively built on the site in Lunteren. Mussert aspired to situate a long-lasting legacy of the NSB there, making the site into a monument of the NSB legacy. Writing in a party promotion brochure in 1938, he claimed that:
“The woodwork will have perished, the ironworks consumed by rust, but the great meeting area will remain, made as a great open-air amphitheatre where hundreds of thousands of people can find their place. And generations of people thereafter will talk about the history of the Dutch people, saying that in Alkmaar began the victory, in Lunteren at the Goudsberg began the resurrection […]”.31
After the Netherlands was liberated, Mussert was sentenced to death for being a traitor to his country and in May 1946, around a month before his execution, he was interviewed by N.W. Posthumus, the president of the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, (later known as NIOD).32 Here, he proudly told his interviewer that “if you want to see something of my
work and the atmosphere of our Movement, then go to Lunteren. It is not yet finished and you must think about it”.33 That the site in Lunteren potentially still holds the legacy of
Mussert and the NSB in its very being, as Mussert had intended, makes it a contested heritage site from the WWII period for the Netherlands today. That the wall is still standing, and bearing witness to the history that took place there during WWII, has resulted in an ongoing debate as to what can be done with the wall and its difficult heritage. The differing opinions as to the wall’s future will be the subject of the following chapter.
31 De Muur van Mussert, p52 32 Ibid. p150
Chapter 2
A place of pain and shame? The ongoing debate around Mussert’s Wall
The stakeholders
In order to begin discussing the ongoing debate around Mussert’s Wall and its difficult heritage, it is important to first discuss the stakeholders involved in such a debate. There are governmental stakeholders like the Rijksdienst voor Culturele Erfgoed (RCE) (the Cultural Heritage Agency) and attached to them is the government department for Education, Culture and Science based in The Hague. Together they are considered to be the main authority on cultural heritage and are two of the most important stakeholders in this debate. Local government stakeholders like the Stichting Erfgoed Ede (the Foundation for Heritage) in the municipality of Ede is also heavily involved in the debate, with Jan Kijlstra at the helm. Non-governmental heritage associations like the Erfgoedvereniging Heemschut are also involved, as they work nation-wide to protect cultural heritage objects and spaces. Other stakeholders include historians and researchers from the National Institute for War,
Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) with academic interests in the wall and its future, as well as the local community of Ede and Lunteren. The stakeholder which plays a significant role in the future of the wall and its heritage is businessman and camping ground owner, Roderick Zoons, who owns the land where the wall is located. It could be argued that he is the most important stakeholder, as he is able to approve or reject plans regarding the wall because he is the legal owner of the land on which it is situated.
Who owns the past at Mussert’s Wall?
In Heritage Studies, the ownership of the past is discussed at length because it greatly influences how past events and histories come to be managed (or not). If Zoons is the owner of the site where Mussert’s Wall stands, does this make him the owner of the past at the site? I posed this question to Jan Kijlstra, the founder of the Stichting Erfgoed Ede, whom I interviewed in October 2017. Kijlstra is heavily involved in the campaign to preserve
Mussert’s Wall and has been the initiator behind many of the letters written to the local and national government. Due to this, I believe Jan Kijlstra to be an important stakeholder in the debate and why I refer to his interview throughout the thesis. While it is doubtful Zoons owns the past there, he does have his own memories of the site. Jan Kijlstra told me that
Zoons and his family used to live inside the buildings at the site.34 In this way, the site has
emotional baggage for Zoons as he grew up there. Often, ownership of the past comes hand in hand with the claiming of the past as one’s own, inheriting the responsibility for it and its future uses. In my opinion, despite the personal memories Zoons has there, he has not exactly inherited the past at the site in Lunteren, rather he inherited the camping ground (upon which the wall happens to be located) from his grandparents. They had nothing to do with the site when it was associated with the NSB. In my opinion, Zoons does not feel the responsibility to petition to do anything with the site and its heritage. He is, after all, a businessman so he perhaps has other ambitions. There is still a lot of emotion in the site for Zoons, as Jan Kijlstra informed me that Zoons had been angry to find out that a group of students and their project leader had been to the site without permission.
The ownership of a site is highlighted by Logan and Reeves when they cite Teresa Leopold, according to whom “it is the manager of a site who has the most impact on its interpretation through the way in which he/she decides what to say and what to leave out.”35 As the site
where Mussert’s Wall is located does not yet have a heritage practitioner responsible for it, the manager in question is Zoons as the owner of the camping ground. It is the differing opinions of Zoons and other stakeholders regarding what to do with the site that has resulted in nothing yet being done with the site in terms of its heritage. These opinions and attempts at the heritagisation of the site by stakeholders form the basis of this chapter.
“Should Mussert’s Wall be preserved and given status as a monument, or should this black page in the history of the Netherlands quickly be forgotten?” 36
Mussert clearly intended to leave a lasting NSB legacy at the site in Lunteren, and after the war, the wall was labelled as a “guilty wall” due to its association with Dutch National Socialism.37 So why would anyone want to preserve it? In order to analyse the various
arguments for and against the wall’s preservation, newspaper articles will be examined as well as interviews I conducted with key stakeholders and academics.
34 Interview with Jan Kijlstra, 26/10/17. Transcript can be found in appendix. 35 Logan and Reeves, “Introduction”, pp. 2
36 Ede Gemeente Nieuws, “Mussert’s Wall: a dilemma?”, 4th March 2015,
https://www.ede.nl/fileadmin/user.../GemEde_wk10LR3e.pdf
There are two categories of monuments in the Netherlands, Rijksmonumenten (national monuments) and gemeentelijke monumenten (municipal monuments). The former is considered the highest and most official grade of monument while the latter does not give the monument in question official status but is nonetheless considered important by the local community, particularly in terms of local identity formation. For Mussert’s Wall, reasons for its preservation were given by the Monument’s Commission in the municipality of Ede in 2004, when they petitioned for the wall to receive protected status as a municipal monument due to the architectural and cultural historical values the wall represents.38 Such
values are laid out in the letter written by the Heritage Association Heemschut to the RCE around ten years later in April 2015.39 I decided to interview Jan Kijlstra, the founder of the
Stichting Erfgoed Ede (Heritage Foundation in Ede) as he is heavily involved in the ongoing debate to preserve Mussert’s Wall. He is an important stakeholder in the debate and he could be considered to be a local activist for the wall’s preservation. Jan Kijlstra was involved in both the 2004 and 2015 attempts to give the wall protective status as a monument. While the Monument’s Commission in Ede is focussed on local heritage, the involvement of Heemschut, an association that advocates for cultural heritage nation-wide, had a good impact on the 2015 attempt. They also see great value in preserving the wall. Jan Kijlstra told me that it was important for an association like Heemschut to be involved. Being a national heritage association, effectively it helped to bring a piece of local heritage to a more national stage. Jan Kijlstra gave me access to the 2015 letter written by Heemschut to the
Department for Education, Culture and Science and the RCE so that I could see the exact argumentation used to persuade the government of the values the wall represents. The letter can be found in the appendix of this thesis. The letter describes how it is in the wall’s architectural structure that symbols of German-Nazi ideology from the 1930s can be seen, as well as characteristics of new modern architecture too. Heemschut furthers their argument for preservation by highlighting the wall’s architectural uniqueness as it dates from before 1940, making it the only existing construction commissioned for and designed by the NSB. It is also the only preserved structure of the architect Mart Jansen, who designed the
'Nationaal Tehuis' in Lunteren. Due to these factors, the wall is of considerable rarity. The 38 Ibid.
letter states that these reasons alone make it an unmistakeable addition to the list of protected monuments.40 When talking to Jan Kijlstra, his opinions matched those of
Heemschut, since he was involved in the 2015 attempt to preserve the wall as a monument. When asked what his personal interest in the wall was, Kijlstra replied that he had always been interested in history and learning about one’s own surroundings. Born and bred in Ede, he has always lived there, so the site in Lunteren has formed part of his surroundings. He truly believes that people, especially young people, should be told about the events from the past so that they can learn from them and such sites. He hopes that they can then do something with it for the future.
After Heemschut sent the letter to the RCE in 2015, the alderman in Ede, Johan Weijland, requested that NIOD give their opinion on the matter. NIOD is the National Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies and has great authority in its field. They wrote a letter to Weijland in March 2015 similarly advocating the preservation of the wall. In the letter, they highlight the importance of framing the site in its appropriate historical context and
providing thorough information of this context in order to tell the story of the site. They call the wall, “fout erfgoed”, meaning wrong or undesirable heritage, while highlighting how nowadays “‘wrong heritage’ is relatively scarce and can be seen as a supplement to war heritage in the Netherlands, as it is reminiscent of prosecution, military struggle and daily life during the occupation.”41 Similar to Heemschut’s argumentation, NIOD also advocate the
uniqueness of the site in Lunteren, while stressing that the responsible framing of the site that will enable the necessary reflection on this black page of history.
Unfortunately, the petitions in 2004 and 2015 to recognise Mussert’s Wall as a protected monument failed. According to René van Heijningen’s research, the petition by the municipality of Ede in 2004 was met with protest and the responsible councillor was
persuaded by former members of the Dutch resistance that there was enough NSB history to be seen in other parts of the Netherlands.42 This presented a counter-argument to the
uniqueness of the site, as advocated by Jan Kijlstra and also René van Heijningen himself. I 40 See appendix for 2015 Heemschut letter
41 Yuri Viisser, “NIOD wants to preserve Mussert’s Wall”, Historiek, 20 August 15, https://historiek.net/niod-voor-behoud-muur-van-mussert/52197/. Link in article to letter: https://historiek.net/niod-voor-behoud-muur-van-mussert/52197/2/
interviewed historian René van Heijningen in October 2017 and he told me about various other buildings associated with the NSB, for example on the Maliebaan in Utrecht, there were buildings which were used by the NSB.43 He explained that although it is true that there
is other NSB heritage to be seen in other parts of the Netherlands, such buildings are not uniquely NSB heritage. The wall and its complex, however, is. It is the only building to have been commissioned for and designed by the NSB. During the interview, he seemed
disappointed that nothing yet has been done with the remnants of the past in Lunteren. He said that in the Netherlands “we have nothing at all about the NSB heritage and I think it’s a pity, if you have such a site available and to leave it untouched”.44 He said that the long
duration of the ongoing debate was telling of the way in which the Netherlands looks at the fascist past or rather does not look at the fascist past. He commented that the Dutch “have never really been interested in looking at [their] own dark past.” Jan Kijlstra perhaps provided reasoning for this when we discussed the development of Dutch memory culture of WWII in our interview. He told me that after the war, people were focussed on rebuilding the country, on the present and, most of all, the future, not on what had happened in the past. The site in Lunteren was also re-used directly after the war and was given to the scouting association to use for recreation and camping. In 1949, it became an official camping ground and was owned by Roderick Zoons’ grandparents. When asked whether people camping there knew about the wall’s history, Jan Kijlstra answered that they probably did not, for the people who would have known, i.e. the former NSB members, would not be the people going camping there. He said that no one really cared about the wall and its history. What does this say about Dutch memory culture of the NSB? René van Heijningen did not seem unsettled that campers did not really know the history of the site. He admitted that he did not know about the site before he started to look for a research topic for his PhD thesis. He said that it is not really what happened there that matters, for such little did actually happen there, rather it matters what the site represents and how the story is told. If we look at the NSB, it is bigger than just Lunteren.
Contextual status
43 Interview with René van Heijningen on 25/10/17 44 Ibid.
It is the placing of the wall in its historical context that is one of the most important elements for the stakeholders involved. Between the 2004 and 2015 attempts to preserve the wall, ten years had passed. Opinions of the so-called “guilty wall” had begun to change. The voices of the former members of the resistance were no longer really heard. René van Heijningen told me during our interview that he had spoken with some of these former members, and when the purpose of preservation is explained to these people, of course they cannot object. There appears to be a consensus nowadays that the purpose of
preserving the wall is to make it a monument for remembrance and to portray a warning. It is the educational aspect of this warning that is emphasised the most. One of the most prominent objections to the wall’s preservation as a monument, particularly in 2004, was based on fears that the site would become a pilgrimage destination for neo-Nazis. This was advocated by CIDI, the Israel Information and Documentation Centre who were completely opposed to the site becoming a monument. They said that “at the time, the wall was erected to glorify National Socialism, and we all know where that leads. After 70 years, you should not want to repair this wall at the risk of making it a place of pilgrimage for
unsavoury organisations in the Netherlands.”45
When discussing the fears with René van Heijningen and Jan Kijlstra, it was agreed that the fears had no real foundation. Generally, Mussert is characterised by history as a ‘loser’ because he did not really achieve much in terms of the NSB ambitions, for example the cult of the Volksgemeinschaft in the Netherlands never really took off, and Mussert and his party were more or less flagging in popularity around 1938/39 before the German Occupation. René van Heijningen said: “so suppose we do have neo-Nazis then I don’t think they would ever associate with Mussert but obviously instead directly with the German Nazis, because even the German Nazis thought Mussert was an idiot back then” and that the neo-Nazi pilgrimage site fear “was a classic answer that people gave and it lacked all foundation”.46
According to him, CIDI have since changed their opinion about the preservation of the wall and they now support it for the purposes of education and to serve as a warning.
A breakthrough with a catch
45 “Different visions for Mussert’s Wall”, Reformatorisch Dagblad, 19/02/15,
https://www.rd.nl/vandaag/binnenland/verschillende-visies-over-de-muur-van-mussert-1.450955
In July 2015, the RCE let Heemschut and the other organisations involved know that
“although the wall refers to a dark period in our history, and is very emotional, preservation is recommended. The wall can be seen as an icon of a particular period that can tell the story of the war years to future generations.”47 It was announced on behalf of the minister in 2016
that an investigation into the wall would be carried out, but for now no new monuments were identified. This was a positive response for those advocating for the wall’s preservation, and in early 2017, the RCE announced it would consider the proposal to make it a
monument.
However, in February 2017, the decision changed. After the RCE consulted their colleagues in The Hague (in the Department for Education, Culture and Science), the decision to consider the wall as a monument was withdrawn and a new investigation was proposed. According to the RCE, there was “more research needed as the wall might be better suited to a monument policy in which the telling of a particular story is central.”48 Unfortunately, a
time-frame for this investigation was not given, likely resulting in yet another two-year delay. Jan Kijlstra is particularly frustrated by this decision, calling it “cultural barbarism”, a highly emotional term, and is worried that the two-year delay might make it too late for the wall, as it is already in a state of decay.49 In our interview, I asked him to explain his use of this
term. He told me that he used the term on purpose, knowing that it is a heavy term but he truly believes that it is a form of cultural barbarism to delay the decision. He stressed to me how if you have a site that needs preserving and you allow time to go by, then it is cultural barbarism, you should make the decision and restore it.50 Since he founded the Foundation
for Heritage in Ede (Stichting Erfgoed Ede) in 2012, he has consistently stressed the need to preserve Mussert’s Wall. He told me that he strives to keep the discussion on the wall alive and how hard it is to get any kind of traction/movement from officials.
Historian René van Heijningen was also disappointed by the withdrawal of the decision, but it appeared to me that he was not exactly surprised by it. “It’s politics, right?”, he said – the 47 Barneveldse Krant, ‘Mussert’s Wall is deteriorating”, 19 April 2017, http://barneveldsekrant.nl/lokaal/muur-van-mussert-gaat-hard-achteruit-232632
48 Ibid. 49 Ibid.
mentality is “let’s delay, then people will stop thinking about it”.51 The withdrawal of the
decision to make the wall a monument in early 2017 presents the second time that a politician was persuaded to back down (similar happened in 2004 when the responsible alderman was persuaded by former resistance members). I asked René van Heijningen what he thinks it says about the governmental departments when it comes to being persuaded to back down. He was critical, saying that the proposal for the wall’s preservation came at a time when the government was not really willing to discuss it, i.e. it was election time. He inferred that because it was election time, the topic of Mussert’s Wall was not exactly high on the agenda as it brings up too many memories of a part of the history of the Netherlands which people do not really want to be reminded of and does not exactly win people’s votes.
This is particularly telling for the development of Dutch memory culture of this period, as it reveals that the disinheritance of the NSB past is rife in all areas of Dutch society, from the government to the people. However, not all of the so-called dark pages of Dutch history are subject to disinheritance (though perhaps still subject to a level of ignorance). Minister for Education, Culture and Science, Jet (Mariëtte) Bussemaker, pledged around two million euros for the retrieval and investigation of De Rooswijk, an 18th Century trading ship that was
used by the VOC, the Dutch East India Company.52 The ship sunk in 1740 off the coast of
south-east England and represents one of hundreds of VOC shipwrecks that have been discovered and retrieved. The remains and treasures found have been added to museum collections in the Netherlands. The so-called Golden Age of the Netherlands, of which the Dutch East India Company was an integral part, is a widely-discussed part of the history of the Netherlands. But behind the stories of the Dutch’s trading success lies a darker page in the history of the trading company, that of slavery and poverty for the lands whose riches were plundered. But this part of the history is not what is under investigation by the team recovering the sunken ship. Therefore, it begs the question that if numerous ships have already been found and their treasures added to museum collections, then what is the added value of investigating more of these ships? This is a question that was highlighted in my interview with Jan Kijlstra when we discussed the pledge of money for the latest VOC 51 Interview with René van Heijningen on 25/10/17
52 Christiaan Paauwe, “VOC cargo ship ‘De Rooswijk’ will be excavated further”, 18 April 2017, NRC Handelsblad,
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/04/18/lading-voc-schip-de-rooswijk-wordt-verder-geborgen-a1554920, and Rijksdienst voor Culturele Erfgoed, “Minister Bussemaker visits VOC ship ‘De Rooswijk’ research team, 18 August 2017,
shipwreck. He said that there is very little added value of digging up yet another ship, that so much has already been researched and the history is already there. He stressed how the Dutch like to forget the not so glorious aspects of the past, and that is why the focus of the Golden Age is on paintings and trading glories. In terms of NSB history in the Netherlands, there needs to be more interest, Kijlstra said. But the problem, he highlighted, is that “we do not want to acknowledge that we were not heroes during the war – we do not want to be confronted by it, by these black pages. You have to keep in mind that a huge part of the population, the Jews, were killed and the Dutch people organised those trains. People do not want to be confronted with that.” While motioning a hand over one’s eyes, Jan Kijlstra told me that directly after the war, people just looked away and did not focus on what had happened in the very recent past. In chapter 3 I will try to shed light on these post-war attitudes as I explore how the historiography of the war years has played a considerable role in the development of Dutch memory culture and the ability to reflect on the history and heritage of the NSB and of collaboration.
A recent turn of events for Mussert ’ s Wall
In early November 2017, Roderick Zoons, the owner of the camping ground, announced that he would like to demolish Mussert’s Wall as it is “standing in the way” of his renovation plans for the new holiday park he would like to build as part of the local area’s regeneration project.53 This wish for demolition has threatened the wall’s existence and due to this, there
has been a rush to protect the wall as a municipal monument while waiting for the government’s decision to make it a national monument. According to many newspaper articles advocating for the wall’s preservation, the wall would be protected from demolition threats all the while the procedure to decide whether it receives monument status is underway.54 That Zoons wishes to demolish the wall is telling of how even a man who has
personal memories of the wall sees very little value in preserving it.
53 Omroep Gelderland, ‘Camping ground owner: Mussert’s Wall is in the way’, 7 November 2017,
https://www.omroepgelderland.nl/nieuws/2148090/Eigenaar-camping-Muur-van-Mussert-staat-in-de-weg
54 See, for example: Mark de Bruijn, ‘Demolition threat to Mussert's Wall before monument status decision’, 13 November 2017, Een Vandaag, https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/item/sloop-muur-van-mussert-dreigt-voor-besluit-monumentenstatus/?, and Barneveldse Krant, ‘Ede knew about Mussert’s Wall demolition plan before summer’, 9 November 2017, http://barneveldsekrant.nl/lokaal/ede-wist-al-voor-zomer-van-sloopplan-muur-van-mussert-293702
This rush to save the wall leads to the question: why is there a surge in support to preserve the wall only when it is in immediate danger? The debate over the wall has been ongoing since 2004 with a select number of stakeholders involved and the decision to make it a monument has been years in the making. What does this lengthy struggle tell us about the value of the wall and its heritage for the Dutch? The next chapter will investigate the historiography of Dutch memory culture of the occupation period and will aim to shed light on these struggles with Mussert’s Wall and the general disinheritance of its difficult
perpetrator heritage.
“Only a heritage ever reanimated stays relevant”: A research and design competition for Mussert’s Wall55
As consistently advocated by Jan Kijlstra, more interest for Mussert’s Wall and its unique NSB history needs to be roused and he endeavours to keep the discussion around the wall alive. In 2017, headed by Jan Kijlstra, the Foundation for Heritage in Ede initiated a research project and competition in cooperation with Wageningen University and the Technical 55 David Lowenthal, “Fabricating Heritage”, in History & Memory, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1998, pp.19
University Delft to generate interest and new ideas for the future of Mussert’s Wall. Jan Kijlstra gave me access to the design and research proposals produced by the students and these can also be found online. It is interesting to note that the students make up a very international group with students from European countries like Greece, and non-European countries like China. There is also one student from the Netherlands participating. Having seen the proposals, the international group certainly bring open minds and fresh ideas to the soon-to-be 80-year old wall and its history.
One idea from the project was already advertised on the news website for the city of Ede in June 2017 and is that of a reflection park.56 In the description of the project, it is stressed
that it is not a memorial park, and that the reflection park is designed so that the story of the NSB is in no way glorified, rather it allows visitors to reflect on the impact of the NSB
movement in society.57 Actions and their consequences are central to the proposal, which
plays with the idea of there being two walls. Mussert’s Wall demonstrates the ‘actions’ and becomes a ‘Gallery of the Past’, a sort of museum displaying historical photographs and documents which tells the story of the NSB. The second wall is called the Remembrance Wall representing the ‘consequences’, and is situated on a reflection pond where one can pay their respects to the victims of the actions of the NSB. As both Jan Kijlstra and René van Heijningen pointed out to me in their interviews, the NSB were instrumental in aiding the Germans’ plans regarding the Jews and their fate. It is, however, debated as to whether the story of the Holocaust should be combined with the story of the site in Lunteren as
monuments have already been established at transit camps in the Netherlands, for example Vught and Westerbork.
56 Ede Stad, “Idea for reflection garden at Mussert’s Wall”, 19 June 2017, http://edestad.nl/lokaal/idee-voor-reflectietuin-bij-muur-van-mussert-249720
Image of the Reflection Park taken from the project booklet found at https://assets.heemschut.nl/docs/4463d6d1-8a08-4315-bcdc-62ec22bdb602.pdf, page 24.
The student’s proposals are very creative and fresh, and René van Heijningen told me in our interview how members of the older generations and in particular members of the former resistance, would be shocked by the plans. He highlighted the generational differences as to what is deemed the appropriate way of memorialising such sites, for example by saying that he is of the opinion that the site should be kept as authentic as possible.58 While design and
research competitions are a good exercise in keeping the discussion on the site alive, it is doubtful whether the plans would ever be realised. For anything to be realised at the site, the owner of the camping ground needs to be involved from the very beginning. That has been a complaint of his and in a newspaper article he inferred that he has often not be approached about these things. While he admitted that he was impressed with the new ideas, he emphasised how he is, after all, a businessman. About the reflection park, he said: “if you make a reflection park at the wall, I have to think about how you can make money from this… The drawings I have seen do not really combine with what I am doing here. That is something completely different.”59
It is perhaps irrelevant whether the proposals for the site were ever intended to be realised, as they could be viewed as purely an exercise in ideating on a difficult heritage site in order to produce fresh perspective and new thought. An American scholar on the Holocaust, James Young, stresses how he believes that it is the constant debate about a site that keeps the memory fresh in people’s minds, and he believes that it is in the decision to finally create a monument (for example) that memory is appropriated and therefore eventually
forgotten.60 I discussed this with Jan Kijlstra, who agreed that the constant discussion is very
important and this is exactly what he strives for with Mussert’s Wall, however this constant discussion is dependent on the site still being there in its physicality in order to prompt such discussion. He said that if the site is no longer there then the discussion will not have basis,
58 Interview with René van Heijningen on 25/10/17
59 Freek Wolff, ‘Idea for a reflection garden at Mussert’s Wall’, Ede Stad, 19 June 2017, http://edestad.nl/lokaal/idee-voor-reflectietuin-bij-muur-van-mussert-249720
60 Young, James. “Germany’s Memorial Question: Memory, Counter-Memory, and the End of the Monument” in The
nor will it be prompted. This is his worry for the ever-decaying Mussert’s Wall, and is precisely why he campaigns so hard to keep the site alive in public discussion.
Chapter 3
A Historiography of the development of Dutch memory culture of World War II and the German Occupation
Aside from the number of stakeholders involved in the campaign to preserve Mussert’s Wall, there is generally a lack of interest in its preservation from the wider general public. In my interviews with René van Heijningen and Jan Kijlstra it was made apparent that the majority of Dutch people do not know about Mussert’s Wall and are also not really interested in knowing about it, nor its history.The main arguments put forward for the Wall’s
preservation as a monument are its architectural values, its uniqueness, as well as its history which can serve as a warning for the present and the future. However, these values have been advocated by academics and members of heritage associations, and it appears that the voice of the wider general public is somewhat missing from the debate. In this chapter, I aim to explain this general lack of interest and value in Mussert’s Wall by exploring the concept of Authorised Heritage Discourse in the form of the historiography of the development of Dutch memory culture of World War II particularly regarding the German Occupation and NSB collaboration.
The immediate post-war period
“They looked away”, is the answer Jan Kijlstra gave when I asked him about Dutch people’s attitudes to the war in its immediate aftermath.61 He told me that the focus of people’s
attention in the aftermath of the war was more so on the present and on rebuilding the country for a brighter future than on reflecting on events of the war and what would come to be known as a “black page” in the history of the Netherlands. Though focus may have been on the present and future, this is not to say that it was unemotional in the immediate post-war period. Directly after the war, around 150,000 collaborators were rounded up and arrested, Anton Mussert among them, in an emotional and almost vengeful frenzy. NSB members were disliked during the war and they were certainly disliked after the war. The population could no longer tolerate the presence of collaborators after the war and the large-scale detention of such collaborators “was the answer to the equally extensive
domestic collaboration with the Germans that had taken place during the occupation.”62 The
collaborators that were arrested were temporarily detained in internment camps.
Jan Kijlstra discussed the arrests in our interview and he explained that “you cannot manage such a number” of arrests.63 He told me that there was a difference between the treatment
of the leaders of the NSB and the NSB members, for example the leader of the NSB, Anton Mussert, was given the death penalty while others received prison sentences. In Jan Kijlstra’s opinion, Mussert was made an example of because he was the leader of the party,
remarking that nowadays Mussert would probably only have been imprisoned for his actions. According to him, the other founder of the NSB, Van Geelkerken spent a number of years in prison and then went back to Lunteren and lived without any problems. This perhaps supports the idea that an example was made of Mussert as the leader of the NSB, otherwise other lead NSB members would have presumably received the same punishment as he did. As for the members of the NSB that were arrested and put in internment camps, Jan Kijlstra explained that for “a lot of the minor people, we could not even think about prosecuting such a number of people, we were forced to work towards the future, to rebuild 61 Interview with Jan Kijlstra, 26/10/17
62 Helen Grevers, “Inleiding” in “Van landverraders tot goede vaderlanders. De opsluiting van collaborateurs in Nederland en België, 1944-1950”, (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 2013) p1. Henceforth known as Helen Grevers, 2013
the country. We needed everyone to help and we needed even those people with a black mark on them. We are a reformed country, we give people second chances and people always want to forget the bad things. You are eager to leave behind what was not so pleasant. People needed to look forward, the economy was blossoming and promising a brighter future.”64 These are some thought-provoking remarks when thinking about the
development of Dutch memory culture, as it appears that in light of needing to rebuild the country in the present and the hope for a brighter future, reflecting on the war years was not a top priority.
The immediate reaction of the general public and their intolerance of collaborators shows that there was a feeling that justice needed to be served before moving forwards and that justice was probably served in the form of Mussert’s execution. The internment camps where the collaborators were detained became a problem and reports of violence in the camps cropped up in public and political debate and people worried that the internment camps themselves would become another black page in the history book.65 “There was a
normative consensus on the recent war past that was expressed in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’… Everyone who had been ‘bad’, such as the members of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) were labelled as ‘un-Dutch’. For example, a group of former resistance members described the NSB members as ‘enemy of the people… characterless… We abhor the attitude of these groups of people because they sold the honour of our Dutch people, blemished our flag’.”66 As such, when groups of collaborators were released from the
internment camps, a culture of silence ensued among them, for “in the prevailing discourse of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, there was no place for the voice of the people who had been on the ‘bad’ side.”67 I believe this is related to the lack of interest and value in Mussert’s Wall today,
for this authorised discourse of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ labels this site as ‘un-Dutch’ because of its association with the NSB. That the site is identified as ‘un-Dutch’ helps to explain the disinheritance of Mussert’s Wall and its NSB heritage as this difficult heritage does not align with or conform to present-day goals and context. This could be a reason why the RCE and
64 Ibid.
65 Helen Grevers, 2013, p4-5 66 Ibid. p4
the Department for Education, Culture and Science in The Hague have delayed the process of giving the site protected status as a monument.
Loe de Jong: The Official History Writer
Though it may have been the case for the wider general public to look away from the events of the recent past in the immediate post-war period, it was quite different among academic fields of history. It was only a few days after the liberation of the Netherlands that the collection of war documentation and the study of it began. The Royal Institute for War Documentation (the Rijks Instituut voor Oorlogs Documentatie or RIOD, known today as NIOD) was set up in Amsterdam led by historian Professor Dr. Posthumus (Mussert’s post-war interviewer). After the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945, Loe de Jong, a Dutch-Jewish historian, was named the head of RIOD. He had fled to England during the war and there he had made a name for himself among the Dutch in being the lead presenter of Radio Orange which broadcast radio messages to the Netherlands during wartime. This created a sense of solidarity between the general population and himself. His appointment as head of RIOD continued his so-called fame and he became a national celebrity of sorts as he
appeared on cinema news programmes as an expert on research of the years 1940-1945.68
In this way, De Jong solidified his identity in the eyes of the general population as an authority on history and maintained a connection with the people that he had established during the war years.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Second World War
In 1954, Loe de Jong received the task of writing a historiography of the Netherlands during wartime, namely of the German Occupation between 1940 and 1945. With the receiving of this task, De Jong was defined as the legitimate spokesperson for the past. Laurajane Smith outlines that this is a consequence of the Authorised Heritage Discourse, as it aids and legitimises the making of only one version of the past and its history.69 As such, with the
writing of this historiography, De Jong became “the most remarkable, most productive and best financially rewarded historian of the second half of the twentieth century in the
68 Boudewijn Smits, ‘Bijlage 9 English Summary’ in Loe de Jong 1914-2005. Historicus met een missie. (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2014) retrieved from www.uitgeverijboom.nl/loedejong p375
