The Low Countries. Jaargang 5

(1997-1998)– [tijdschrift] The Low Countries

[p. 12]

Antwerp, World Port and Provincial City

The name ‘Antwerp’ - or ‘Antwerpen’ as it is in Dutch - is related to the Middle Dutch ‘aenwerp’, meaning alluvial land, but no true citizen of Antwerp will accept this modest explanation. In the local dialect the ‘h’ of, for example, ‘hand’ is not sounded, and so clearly ‘Antwerpen’ derives from ‘Hand-werpen’, meaning ‘Hand throwing’. This explanation of the

illustratie

The Brabo fountain on the main square, by Jef Lambeaux (1887).

name has its origin in the well-loved legend of the young hero Brabo, who freed the poor fishermen from the tyranny of the giant Antigoon. The giant would chop off and throw away the hand of any fisherman sailing down the River Scheldt who refused to pay a toll. After Brabo had defeated Antigoon, the Emperor allowed him to throw the giant's chopped-off hand from the tower of his stronghold, thereby demarcating the area of the new city. This legend comfortably links the origin of the city with the right to free navigation and liberation from tyranny.

However, alongside the Antigoon legend, which the romantic nineteenth century consecrated with the impressive statue of the hand-throwing Brabo on the main square, there also persists another die-hard Antwerp self-image, and this one does have a historical basis. During the sixteenth century Antwerp became a world capital and the memory of that golden age, when every burgher was a ‘Sinjoor’ (‘seigneur’ in French, ‘señor’ in Spanish), lives on to this day in the minds of the people. In 1993, when Antwerp was (again) the ‘cultural capital of Europe’ (see The Low Countries 1993-94: 272), a study of the city's image was carried out among the people of Antwerp and among ‘non-Antwerpenaren’. It appeared that the inhabitants see themselves without hesitation as tolerant, humorous, intelligent and international, while the outside world was particularly aware of the provincial arrogance and narrow-mindedness of the people of Antwerp who, in their view, mistakenly believed that they lived in ‘the capital of Flanders’.

A chequered history

According to the generally-accepted view of history, in the sixteenth century Antwerp became the successor to Bruges, which had been the

[p. 13]

A View of Antwerp, plate from Description de la Baronnie, chasteau, drefves, villages, Hame(...) & Bois et aultres appendances, terre et s(eigneu)rie de Beveren en flandres, 1602. Antwerp, Arenbergarchief, la 4413.

Entry of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, at the head of his troops in Antwerp on 27 August 1585 (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Brussels).

economic and cultural centre of the Low Countries under the dukes of Burgundy. After the conquest of Antwerp in 1585 by the troops of Alexander Farnese, the Italian governor of the Spanish Netherlands, the role of Antwerp was taken over by Amsterdam. But according to Fernand Braudel (Civilisation and Capitalism, 1979), that story is over-simplistic. He argues that Antwerp became the successor to both Bruges and Venice, and that during its brief golden age the city was the centre of the whole international economy. Antwerp was linked by busy trade routes to London, Lisbon, Cadiz, Genoa, Brazil, the Atlantic islands and to the coasts of Africa and Northern Europe.

[p. 14]

Unknown Master, Market Day on Meir and Meir Bridge in Antwerp. Late 16th century. Panel, 90 × 140 cm. Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels.

However, the prime movers in this spectacular upturn were not the indigenous people but merchants from the Northern European Hanse cities: the English, French and, above all, the Spanish, Italians and Portuguese. As befitted an international seaport in times of growing religious tension, the city of Antwerp was an example of religious tolerance. Braudel distinguishes three periods: that of the Portuguese, dominated by the trade in pepper (1501-1521), the Spanish period when the main commodity was silver from the New World (1535-1557) and finally the years of rapid industrial growth in Antwerp and the Netherlands (1559-1585). Between 1500 and 1568 the city's population shot up from 44,000 to over 100,000 and the whole infrastructure was thoroughly modernised. This growing prosperity went hand in hand with the disintegration of the traditional medieval social fabric, creating a widening gap between rich and poor and, as a result of that, social unrest and religious conflict. The estrangement between this modern, tolerant, early-capitalistic and increasingly Calvinistic metropolis and the Catholic Spanish hierarchy eventually led to Antwerp's participation in the uprising against the Habsburgs and the definitive end of its golden age.

The economic and intellectual elite fled to the free, up-and-coming North, where they made a great contribution to the development of the Dutch Republic, while the closing of the River Scheldt in 1609 sealed the material fate of this port city. Curiously enough, Antwerp remained an important centre of culture even in the seventeenth century: the Jesuits saw to the modernisation of education, where great emphasis was placed on (Jesuit) drama and mathematics as well as on the Greek and Latin classical writers. This distinctly intellectual order also stimulated the blossoming of the baroque in what was now the Antwerp of the Counter-Reformation. For

[p. 15]

example, both the interior and the exterior of the Carolus Borromeus Church are among the finest examples of the so-called ‘Jesuit style’. Indeed, Pieter Paul Rubens had a hand in the plans for the church's interior and made a series of remarkable paintings for it. This world-famous painter was also involved in the building of the Porta Regia on Vlasmarkt and, of course, in his own ‘Rubens' House’ (see The Low Countries 1996-97: 302).

But Rubens and his school (which included Otto van Veen) were not alone. There was Jacob Jordaens (who, among other things, drew up the plans for the St Anna Chapel and ‘Jordaens' House’); there were also Antoon (later Sir Anthony) van Dyck, Ambrosius Francken, Maarten de Vos, Abraham Janssens and Jan Bruegel. True, the printing trade was by now almost entirely in Roman Catholic hands, but it produced a wealth of theological, Christian humanist, liturgical and devotional works. And religious sculpture reacted to the ravages of the Calvinist iconoclasm of 1566 by creating altars, pulpits, confessionals, communion rails and organ and rood screens of great artistic quality, as well as images of saints and representations of the Madonna (St Paul's Church, St James' Church and Carolus Borromeus). Even after the partition of the Low Countries in 1648, Antwerp remained an internationally-renowned centre of silver making (Abraham Lissau, Willem van der Mont, Johannes Moermans, Wierik Somers iii and Han Herck) and of violin and harpsichord building (Hans Ruckers, Johan Daniel Dulcken and Pieter Borlon Jr.).

But the real revival came in the nineteenth century with Napoleon, who

illustratie

The facade of the Carolus Borromeus Church.

[p. 16]

began modernising and expanding the port. The River Scheldt was reopened

illustratie

In front of the medieval ‘Steen’ stands Lange Wapper, the bogeyman from Antwerp folk tales.

in 1839 when the Netherlands and the new Belgian state signed the London peace treaty, and Antwerp gradually became one of the largest seaports in Europe. In the twentieth century, Antwerp, along with the rest of the country, was twice occupied by the Germans, but when liberated in 1944 it lost no time in resuming its role as a large naval and, later, trading port.

Containers, pipelines and diamonds

As an Allied supply port, the city suffered severe damage from flying bombs (the German v1 and especially v2 rockets) towards the end of the Second World War. However, it was possible to rebuild or restore the oldest buildings and streets so that today's visitors can easily form a picture of the city's rich history: from the medieval castle known as the ‘Steen’ and the high Gothic tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady (see The Low Countries 1993-94: 266), via the Town Hall and the guildhalls in Flemish Renaissance style, the baroque churches of St Paul and St Carolus Borromeus to the Art Nouveau houses that line Cogels-Osylei and even the single house designed

illustratie

The Cathedral of Our Lady, seen from the south-east (Photo Provincial Government of Antwerp).

[p. 17]

by Le Corbusier located near the first Canadian tank, now preserved as a monument, which signalled the liberation of Antwerp in September 1944. What visitors do not immediately see are the Plantin and Moretus printing works (see The Low Countries 1994-95: 236-243), the birthplace of the independent-minded sixteenth-century polemicist, poet and teacher Anna Bijns and the Ruusbroec Society's collection of mystical manuscripts, to mention just a few of the hidden treasures.

The visitor who wonders what the people of Antwerp do for a living need only pay a visit to the docks and the diamond district. It soon becomes clear that Antwerp is now first and foremost a container port, its quays stretching right up to the Dutch border. The port area is also home to a whole string of oil refineries, hence all the tankers travelling to and fro. So Antwerp lives on an increasing volume of world-wide container traffic and on the refining of crude oil. The port, which handled a hundred million tons of cargo in 1995, provides jobs directly or indirectly for some 106,000 people. Despite its distance from the North Sea - compared to Rotterdam or Zeebrugge, for example - Antwerp is still the second biggest port in Europe, a fact that is largely explained by its central location and its exceptionally high productivity (33 containers per hour). Antwerp is directly linked to Germany, Switzerland and France by motorways, the Scheldt-Rhine Canal and an extensive railway network. Thus in 1992 the port realised added value of 10 billion us dollars.

Art Nouveau in Antwerp: Jacques de Weerdt's Hôtel de Maître ‘Quinten Metsys’ on Cogels-Osylei, Berchem, 1904.

In contrast to these two recent forms of economic activity, the diamond trade is one of the oldest examples of a truly Antwerp industry. Today diamond processing and the diamond trade are the domain of Jewish and non-Jewish ‘Antwerpenaren’, and of Indians and Africans. However, documents dating from 1465 prove that, as far as the Low Countries are concerned,

illustratie

The Antwerp docklands (Photo by Guido Coolens).

[p. 18]

this industry began in Bruges, though there were Flemish diamond

illustratie

The diamond trade is one of the oldest examples of a truly Antwerp industry.

cutters working in Paris as early as 1407. In 1483 we find the first mention of an Antwerp diamond cutter, Wouter Pauwels. In the sixteenth century merchants from Genoa, Venice and Portugal were largely responsible for the prosperity of Antwerp's diamond trade. After their expulsion from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1497), there were large numbers of Portuguese Jews working as diamond merchants in Antwerp. The tolerant religious climate that prevailed at the time partly accounts for this. However, the real heyday of the ‘Antwerp diamond’ began in 1871 with imports of rough diamonds from South Africa and the simultaneous mass immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe. Ever since, the traditionally immigrant district around Central Station has been known as the ‘Jewish quarter’ and the ‘diamond district’, for it is here that both the traditional religious life and the main economic activity of the Jewish immigrants is located (see The Low Countries 1995-96: 21-26). In these few streets with their hundreds of jeweller's shops, it is indeed (apart from diamonds and pearls) a question of ‘all that glitters really is gold’, even though the really important deals are done behind the closed doors of the Diamond Exchange and the Diamond Circle (which accounted for between 7 and 8% of Belgium's total exports in 1995). This area, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the orthodox Jewish streets of New York and Tel Aviv, is nevertheless typically ‘Antwerp’ for several reasons: in addition to Yiddish - which is in fact also spoken here by many non-Jews - one can also hear ‘pure’ Antwerp dialect, and it is a well-known fact that in the Kempen around Antwerp thousands of people make a living from industrial diamond processing. And one should not be deceived by appearances: though 80-85% of the Jews still work in the diamond industry, these days more than half of the diamond workers and traders are non-Jewish.

Antwerp multiracial or multicultural?

Today some 300,000 people live in the city and more than 600,000 in the Antwerp agglomeration. In addition to Jews, Indians and Africans, Antwerp is home to tens of thousands of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. The majority of them have lived and worked in Antwerp for two generations or more, so that it is no exaggeration to speak of a ‘multiracial’ metropolis. Multiracial (or ‘multiethnic’?) is however not the same as ‘multicultural’; which is to say that these different ethnic communities live alongside each other rather than with each other. That is apparent, among other things, from their geographical distribution in the city and its suburbs and from the obviously different religious and cultural worlds in which these communities seek to preserve their own identity. Though the members of these ethnic groups come into contact on a daily basis at work and in public life (schools, public services, medical services), and though there is little or no sign of inter-ethnic violence, at present one cannot really speak of successful integration, let alone of a true ‘multicultural’ experience. Since the occasional friction that does arise usually concerns real or alleged social differences, it is understandable that political programmes that champion ‘ethnic purity’ meet with most success in those areas where the underprivileged, indige-

[p. 19]

nous Antwerp citizens feel threatened by the visible presence of ‘the others’.

Yet this does not explain everything: even in relatively homogeneous ‘white’ areas, sympathy for these programmes seems to be growing; with the result that during the last elections in 1994 almost 28% of the Antwerp electorate voted for a party, namely the Vlaams Blok, which advocates the ‘organised repatriation’ of these ‘foreigners’. This electoral behaviour can be compared to reactions in other large European cities, but it may also have to do with the idiosyncratic political profile of the Antwerp electorate. Though the city has been ruled for more than seventy years by a coalition of Christian Democrats and Socialists (joined after the recent elections by Liberals, Greens and Flemish Nationalists), the people have often made a point of voting perversely: for example, in 1928 the Flemish activist August Borms was elected to Parliament while in prison serving a life sentence, and the extreme left-wing anarchist Leo Frenssen won a seat in Parliament and six seats in the city council.

I think that the success of the Vlaams Blok is partly explained by this tradition of political idiosyncrasy. After almost a century of centre-left government, people want to express their dissatisfaction with social degeneration and bureaucracy in the only way they believe really hits the political establishment. Unfortunately, in doing so they also give a licence to people who have elevated intolerance to a (political) programme and who take advantage of every mistake and every scandal within the majority party, without ever having to prove anything. It is impossible to predict whether this trend will continue - for the moment the Vlaams Blok has been pushed into opposition by a ‘mammoth alliance’ of all the other parties - but it is certainly a crucial challenge for all the democratic forces in the city.

Jan Baptist Bonnecroy, The Antwerp Roadstead. 1657. Canvas, 165 × 260 cm. Maritiem Museum, Antwerp.

[p. 20]

Antwerp 1997: a postmodernist metropolis?

Meanwhile, Antwerp is still a European metropolis with much to offer in terms of national and international culture. The principal museums, churches and historic buildings are all within walking distance of each other, with the exception of Middelheim Park, the open-air modern sculpture museum that accommodates some three hundred works by modern artists from Rodin on (see The Low Countries 1994-95: 119-124). In the last twenty years more and more art galleries and workshops have been set up around these museums, including that of Panamarenko (see The Low Countries 1994-95: 181-185) and Bernd Lohaus. But Antwerp is also a theatre city offering a wide choice of traditional and experimental theatre and a Flemish Opera which the German quality weekly Die Zeit recently declared ‘one of the best in Europe’. A Summer Arts Festival is organised every summer, with the Canadian Cirque du Soleil and the French Zingaro among the 1996 highlights. Autumn brings the Festival of Flanders which focused special attention on the Dutch and Flemish Polyphonists (see The Low Countries 1993-94: 39-50; composers such as Ockeghem lived and worked here) and attracted guest conductors like Anthony Rooley, Paul van Nevel and Giogi Savalas. In 1998 Middelheim will be mounting a major retrospective of the sculptor Henry Moore and in 1999 Antwerp, in association with London's National Gallery, will round off the twentieth century with a historic Anthony van Dyck exhibition featuring some eighty of his most famous works.

However, the culture of everyday life looks rather different: now that the traditional ideological denominationalism is steadily crumbling and the great historical distinction between ‘Catholics’, ‘Socialists’ and ‘Liberals’ has long been blurred, new forms of fragmentation are emerging in Antwerp. Without much effort one can grow up, go out, marry and have friends in a Turkish, Moroccan, Jewish or Flemish environment without ever once really talking to someone from another milieu. In the long term, spontaneous ‘ghettoising’ such as this can be of little good to a city which in its best periods was characterised by openness and hospitality. If this situation does not change, Antwerp will become a postmodern agglomeration of a convivial but narrow-minded provincial city surrounded by all kinds of exotic villages. Luckily there are a number of groups, both in the city council and in the districts, who dream of turning this world port back into a real world city, where the presence of so many different cultures is regarded as enriching and where an effort is made to stimulate the necessary interaction. This can be achieved through education; people must again be made aware of the city's rich international and interactive past and, without in any way seeking to decry the positive achievements of each community, people must learn to experience that internationalism in their own district without complexes. After all, this city became great through the ‘alluvium’ (the ‘aenwerp’) of centuries of immigration, and not by tyrannising passing fishermen or restricting free development.

ludo abicht

Translated by Alison Mouthaan-Gwillim.

The Low Countries. Jaargang 5 (1997-1998)