off to the Netherlands

While obsessing with various migration stories in my distant family history, including the 19th century departures to the Black Sea and to Brazil, I neglected one example much closer to the present. In 1910, the oldest sister of my great-grandfather Julius (about to set up his own shop in Luisenthal) emigrated to the Netherlands with her husband who hailed from Barmen and with her three children who were all born in Krefeld.

There is some info about these people on Dutch archive sites, so let's add some flesh to the bones I had in the ancient Krefeld clan entry:

7. Karl Düselmann ~ 11.3.1841 Krefeld
oo (2) Elisabeth Catharina Imig (1851-1924)
7.2. Elisabeth (Elise) * 9.8.1876 Krefeld, +19.06.1945 Bergen, NL (I saw her referred to as a student of theology in one of the archive entries, but after finding other errors there as well, I am beginning to think that this may have been a mix-up with info referring to her son? Would be quite something if true though.)
oo Otto Finkensieper * 4.11.1871 Barmen + 2.8.1930 Alkmaar NL, aged 58, furniture trader,

7.2.1. Karl Otto * 8.11.1905 Krefeld +9.11.1960 Valburg, NL, writer, priest in Zetten (biography in Dutch), photo
oo 20.10.1932 Johanna Koning, * 10.1.1911 Meppel
7.2.2. Hugo Kurt * 10.7.1907 Krefeld, merchant in Scheveningen; received the Orde van Oranje-Nassau in Silver
oo 5.5.1931 Bergen Elisabeth Wilhelmina Kerkmeer, born 17.4.1907 in Alkmaar, 24 years old
7.2.3. Benjamin 15.2.1909 Krefeld merchant in Scheveningen
oo Augusta Matthilde Dahlhaus

Cover of the book Holland zoo ben je (1934),
to which Karl Otto Finkensieper contributed two novellas: Waterpost and Nieuw land.

As far as I know nobody in my family was in contact with the Dutch relatives after 1945. From my grandmother I had the names of the three brothers and their career choices, but that's as far as the info went. (Sounds like the families kept in touch while the Düsselmanns still were in the Lower Rhine area, but lost touch when they moved to East Prussia.) The names of their wives are from the Dutch archives website.

I didn't find any children of the three couples but I'm spooked by the discovery that there was a scandal at the Heldring-Gestichten in Zetten in the 1980s where a psychiatrist called Theo Finkensieper was the culprit (sentenced in 1992 according to Dutch wikipedia) Unfortunately, Karl Otto Finkensieper was the director of this very same institution from 1939 until his death in 1960, and I think this documentary says (at 2:20 mins) that Theo was his son. As far as I understood from the Dutch commentary, the place was known for very strict protestant morals until 1960 (when Karl Otto died), and the liberation beginning the 1960s may have led to transgressions that ended up in abuse cases.

This obviously swamps all the searches and I didn't look further for descendants, because even if I could find them I guess they wouldn't want to have their family relations publicised.

On the migration theme, in March 1930 Benjamin travelled to New York on the ship Nieuw Amsterdam, and after that I can find no further register entries in NL that mention him (apart from his father's death where he and his wife are mistakenly labelled as parents of the deceased, which doesn't really inspire confidence in these archive records). So did he emigrate??? It's a bit tricky to investigate as he shares his name with an architect who built lots of things in New York a generation earlier, around 1900. So that's all I can find right now.

Regarding the origins of the name Finkensieper, there is a hamlet and a creek called Finkensiepen which are today part of the town of Radevormwald, Oberbergischer Kreis, NRW. This would be plausible, especially as Gedbas has a bunch of Finkensieper children born in Radevormwald around 1770. Etymologically, this seems to have the same roots as Siepmann, which I've pinned down to Schwelm, which is in Westphalia but not all that far away.

bike to work

lots of European countries have programmes encouraging people to cycle to work, like for instance:

Austria: Radelt zur Arbeit

Denmark: Vi cykler til arbejde

Germany: Mit dem Rad zur Arbeit

Netherlands: Fietsen naar het Werk

Norway Sykle til jobben

To find similar campaigns near you (even a few small ones in the UK), check:

Bike 2 Work

Speaking of bicycles, our tandem, which served us faithfully from 2005 to 2014, has now left the premises, donated to a community bike workshop where it will be restored hopefully find a new lease of life.

reading the world

I was very impressed when I read that the author Ann Morgan had managed to read one book from each of the 196 countries represented at the 2012 Olympics in London. Her list of books read and others that were recommended to her is here, and the book she wrote about the experience is reviewed here.

Thinking about how embarrassingly far I would fall short of that figure I estimated I would be lucky to make it to 50 countries (in my life so far, not in a year) and started my own list to prove it. If and when I've reviewed a book on this list, I've included a link to the review. If I can't remember whether I've actually read it (even though it's on my shelf), I've marked it with CR. NFY means not finished yet. Still struggling to get to 50 though.

1. Algeria – Mehdi Charef: Thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed (CR - saw the movie though)
2. Argentina – Federico Andahazi: El anatomista (The anatomist)
3. Austria – Daniel Kehlmann: Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the world)
4. Belgium – Amélie Nothomb – L’hygiène de l’assassin
5. Brazil – Paulo Coelho: Der Alchemist (The alchemist)
6. Canada - L. M. Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables
7. Chile – Isabel Allende: La casa de los espiritus (The house of the spirits)
8. China – Hong Ying: K – the art of love
9. Colombia – Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Cien años de soledad
10. Congo, Republic of the – Alain Mabanckou: Verre Cassé (Broken Glass)
11. Cote d'Ivoire – Fatou Keita: La rebelle
12. Cuba – Zoe Valdes: La nada cotidiana
13. Ecuador – Alicia Yanez Cossio: El cristo feo
14. Equatorial Guinea – Guillermina Mekuy: El llanto del perro
15. France – Anna Gavalda: Ensemble, c’est tout (Hunting and gathering)
16. Germany – Charlotte Roche: Feuchtgebiete (Wetlands)
17. Guatemala – Miguel Angel Asturias: Leyendas de Guatemala (CR)
18. India – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: Heat and dust
19. Iraq - Weam Namou: The feminine art
20. Israel – Ephraim Kishon: Oh, oh, Juliet
21. Italy – Umberto Eco: Der Name der Rose (The name of the rose)
22. Kyrgyzstan – Chinghiz Aitmatov: Jamila
23. Lebanon - Vénus Khoury-Ghata: Les fiancés du Cap-Ténès (CR)
24. Madagascar – Michele Rakotoson: Dadabé
25. Mexico – Laura Esquivel: Como agua para chocolate
26. Mongolia – Galsan Tschinag: Die Karawane (NFY)
27. Morocco – Tahar Ben Jelloun: Harrouda (CR)
28. Netherlands – Anne Frank: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank (Diary of a young girl)
29. New Zealand - Katherine Mansfield: Stories
30. Nicaragua – Gioconda Belli: El pergamino de la seduccion (The scroll of seduction)
31. Nigeria – Sefi Atta: Swallow
32. Peru – Mario Vargas Llosa: El sueño del Celta (The dream of the Celt)
33. Poland – Stanislaw Lem: Stories
34. Russia – Mikhail Bulgakov: Master and Margerita
35. Senegal – Ousmane Sembene: Guelwaar
36. Sierra Leone - Aminatta Forna: The memory of love (NFY)
37. Spain – Almudena Grandes: Castillos de carton
38. Sweden – Astrid Lindgren: Pippi Longstocking
39. Switzerland – Max Frisch: Homo faber
40. Syria - Rafik Schami: Die dunkle Seite der Liebe (NFY)
41. United Kingdom – Esther Freud: Lucky break
42. United States – Megan Clark: Seduce me
43. Vietnam - Kim Thuy: ru (NFY)

Own photo of my reading pile some time in early 2014.

PS: I'll keep updating this with any further reading adventures, hoping that one day I can travel around the world in 80 books ... So this post will also serve as a directory to my reviews of world fiction.

Vermeer's China

Vermeer's Hat: The seventeenth century and the dawn of the global world by Timothy Brook

I raved about this book a few years ago after reading just a review of it - I was so jealous of the idea.

Years later, after laying hands on an actual copy and actually reading it, I'm not quite as excited any more (it may be a sign that I forgot to post the review here after I wrote it in May and posted it on amazon).

The author uses the compact and widely known oeuvre of Vermeer and, particularly, the objects pictured in it as a window into the 17th century world. (Very fittingly, as windows (or more likely, the same window) often feature in these pictures.) There is some great storytelling and intriguing connections between Old Europe, the New World, and China, which in this day and age we are very prone to interpret as the "dawn of globalisation."

I was a little disappointed, however, to find that Brook didn't stick with Vermeer - of the eight works he discusses, only five are Vermeer paintings. As an expert in Chinese history, the author is ultimately more interested in the global trade routes in the 17th century than in Vermeer, and he only uses the painter as a tool to popularise his academic discipline. Of course he has every right to do so, but I'd still be interested in a book that tries to shed light on the story of every object of every single Vermeer painting. There aren't that many, so it should be possible.

I see a rainbow rising

The unforgiving

Within Temptation

I’ve followed WT since The heart of everything, and love the Black Symphony recording to bits. But what might they do after something as dazzling as BS? The new album left me confused at first. I loved the sound from the beginning, but just couldn’t place it. Plus, I didn’t quite know what to make of the expanded videoclips (which they somewhat grandiosely call “movies”), where a figure called Mother Maiden brings people back from the dead to “put wrongs right”. I wasn’t sure I actually needed that. While I like the dark moods underlying much of their work, I don’t have to have it spelt out who killed whom and why. There’s enough darkness to go round for all, anyway.

Then, suddenly, it all fell into place. Listening to the track no. 6, Iron, for something like the 27th time, I realised that Mother Maiden had accidentally resurrected Ronnie James Dio, and the band now aimed at reviving the elegiac anthem sound produced by Rainbow when Dio was their singer (I actually saw them live, back in the last century!) . And guess what, it works amazingly well. Other tracks with Rainbowesque qualities include Iron, Where is the edge, and A demon’s fate – well I guess if I were to analyse it in detail, it would be most of the album.

I’m firmly expecting a holographic rainbow rising above the stage on their next tour. But it’s all good, I still love the album, even though the Rainbow memories now make me chuckle at times.



amazon.co.uk

PS: the short video of the first single, "Faster" is here - this one also comes with a Rainbowesque chorus.

faster

Friday Video:

Within Temptation's new release Faster, from the album "The Unforgiving", out in Germany next Friday, 25.3.



Here in the UK we have to wait till Monday ...

Two cultures and counting

Review of
The Honest Look by Jennifer L. Rohn
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 2010
(out on November 30th)



The cultural divide between the worlds of science and arts has stirred much debate since CP Snow diagnosed it in the 1950s. How much specialisation is good for society, and how much general knowledge from the sciences should extend to the other side of the divide? The idea has inspired several generations of science popularisers, but we rarely read about its effect on people who straddle both sides or are unsure which side they should be on.

The protagonist of “The Honest Look”, Claire Cyrus (no relation of Miley I hope), is one of the straddlers. She has just completed a PhD in biology, but is more passionate about writing and reading poetry than about her science, which involves a monstrous proteomic analysis instrument, a machine with the size, complexity, and neediness of the Beckman model E ultracentrifuge from the 1960s (no, I’m not that old, but my PhD supervisor still used two of these in the 90s).

Adding to the culture shock is the fact that her first post-doctoral appointment, taking care of the first commercial specimen of that machine, is in a biotech start-up, where we have the corporate culture conflicting with her hitherto purely academic upbringing. A third cultural divide opens up as the company in question is based in the Netherlands, but most of the scientific staff members are Brits who migrated there with the scientific founders. Oh, and our heroine is bilingual, the child of a Spanish mother and British father.

Unlike Rohn’s first lablit novel, Experimental Heart, which had a thriller plot, this one is essentially a romance, so as a fifth binary we have two contrasting male specimens competing for the attention of our heroine, and naturally each has different views on the cultural conflicts listed above, so love also pulls her in different directions on these other issues of cultural identity.

With all those conflicting forces tearing her apart and cultural canyons to fall into, not to mention a serious moral dilemma arising from an unexpected scientific result, one does worry about Dr Cyrus a lot, which keeps the pages turning just as fast as a thriller plot. Rohn pulls out all the writerly stops to make the poetic sensibility of her heroine believable, and succeeds as far as I can discern from my vantage point between cultures (English poetry buffs may have their own opinions).

She is also very good at bringing the expat perspective on Amsterdam (where she lived herself for several years) and the surrounding lowlands to life. With my rather vague and informal knowledge of Dutch I loved the paragraph where one of the characters translates mundane everyday Dutch into Shakespearean English to illustrate the similarities. (I might have used this as a running gag, actually, for comic relief when the story gets tense.)

What I found less convincing was everything involving the use of Spanish – firstly, I don’t understand why Claire, with Spanish and English and a love of words, doesn’t really extend her love to Spanish, which in my ears is the more interesting and poetic language of the two. Then, the character called “Ramon” (rather than Ramón) lost his accent in more than one way – the dialogues reported to have been held in Spanish don’t sound like something translated from Spanish to me. Even some of the Spanish interjections (querida, Dios mío, por favor,) sound as though they had been translated from English, not glimpsed from a Spanish dialogue. I think with a language used so widely in popular culture (CSI Miami through to latin pop music) one can actually get away with longer snippets giving a more authentic impression.

Having said that, it’s still a wonderful novel, and it addresses cultural conflicts that are very important to me and should be to a wider readership as well. So I hope it does find readers on all sides of these cultural divides, and thereby helps to bridge the gap between Snow’s Two Cultures (and a few more).

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Within Temptation, partially unplugged

Within Temptation at the Koningin-Elisabeth Saal, Antwerpen 28.4.2010

I just about caught the tail end of the second run of Within Temptation’s “theatre tour,” so by this time I already had the resulting CD “An acoustic night at the theatre” and was kind of expecting a live rendition of the CD. Although the programme started much like this CD (Towards the end, stand my ground, somewhere), it turned out to be much more. In fact, the acoustic set was interspersed with an equal number of pieces in full-on inferno mode, so we got two full hours of music (and thankfully, no support act!).

While the acoustic equipment included two guitars, piano, cello, and violin, the acoustic set wasn’t completely unplugged either, as the bass was still electric. One could feel immediately that some of the musicians and large parts of the audience weren’t quite comfortable with the low-voltage part of the programme. I saw one of the guitarists was fidgeting so much I had the impression he wanted to jump up and start headbanging. I, for one, think the music of the band would work well in an even more drastically unplugged version, eg in an MTV unplugged programme, with a few more interesting instruments.

Everybody’s attempts to stay in their seats faltered just before the half-time break, when the electric guitars came out, and the hard-core fans streamed to the edge of the stage. The second half alternated between acoustic and electric parts, with fans flooding forwards and being shooed back to their seats accordingly.

One of the bonus features of the event was to observe the violinist and the cellist during the louder parts of the concert. At one time they put on helmets (builders’, not motorcyclists’) as if they feared the building would collapse. At another time, one of the other musicians appeared to be instructing them in the high art of playing an instrument while jumping up and down. I certainly haven’t seen any cellist trying that before.

The background video projection was apparently shown on some sort of semi-transparent gaze, making it hard to distinguish between things that were real but behind the screen and those in the videos. Duet partner Anneke van Giersbergen appeared to walk in at the back of the stage but turned out to be a projection, while the cellist, violinist, and second drummer working behind the gaze initially looked a bit two-dimensional but turned out to be real.

For anybody who missed this experience, I recommend the live package “Black Symphony,” a recording of a one-off concert with the Metropol Orchestra and a large choir – the best and most generous live CD/DVD pack I own. I’m still hitting myself because I missed that concert when it happened.


PS didn’t get very good pictures from row 8, but here’s the stage before the concert (no idea where they hid the amps and everything, the big sound just came out of nowhere):



And here’s singer Sharon den Adel: