Fri, Jan 8, 2021
Her bones must still lie somewhere under the Binnenhof: Jacoba van Beieren (1401-1436), Countess of Holland, Zeeland and Henegouwen, a woman of distinction. But her title and possession are disputed by imperious men. She fearlessly enters into battle at a time that we still know as that of the Hoekse and Kabeljauwse disputes. She has to give up a lot, but at the end of her life she gains something: love.
Fri, Jan 15, 2021
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547-1619) is considered the first great statesman of the Netherlands. For over thirty years, during the Eighty Years' War, he was a state attorney and grand pensionary of the States of Holland. Side by side with Maurits van Oranje, he fights for independence. But then there is a break in their relationship. Oldenbarnevelt finds his humiliating end on the scaffold in the Binnenhof. How did that happen?
Fri, Jan 22, 2021
It is etched in the Dutch collective memory: the gruesome murder of Johan and Cornelis de Witt in the disaster year of 1672. Anyone who reconstructs the events surrounding the lynching party is still amazed at what happened in The Hague that 20th of August. How is it that two such respected regents, who have spent nearly twenty years serving the Republic, are so dishonored?
Fri, Jan 29, 2021
At the end of the 18th century, the Netherlands fell under the spell of revolution. Inspired by the American Revolution and even before the French, the so-called patriots want to get rid of the corrupt administration of the House of Orange and pave the way for reforms. Their most powerful representative is Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck (1761-1825). His great legal and political talent is recognized by the man who decided the fate of Europe at that time: Napoleon.
Fri, Feb 5, 2021
Johan Rudolph Thorbecke (1798-1872) is the political example of Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Thorbecke is the man who in many ways lays the foundation for the new Netherlands. And not only because of its much-vaunted Constitution. Thorbecke grows up in a poor family and is being groomed for something big by his ambitious father. How big, even his father cannot imagine.
Fri, Feb 12, 2021
He is one of the most interesting figures in Dutch political history: Pieter Jelles Troelstra (1860-1930). Frisian folk hero, poet, enthusiastic parliamentarian, but above all founder of social democracy in the Netherlands. In 1918, however, he made a crucial error of judgment: gripped by the revolutionary élan then prevailing in Europe, he proclaimed the revolution in the Netherlands as well.