The Low Countries. Jaargang 6

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The Rembrandt of Dutch Architecture
The Work of Hendrik Petrus Berlage

Hendrik Petrus Berlage: The Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 1905.

Hendrik Petrus Berlage: The Amsterdam Stock Exchange in 1989.

Just as Rembrandt will always be associated with The Night Watch, so the name of Hendrik Petrus Berlage (1856-1934) is inextricably linked to the Stock Exchange in Amsterdam. This internationally renowned building (1886-1903) is usually seen as the beginning of modern architecture in the Netherlands. The evolution of its design, from the 1886 competition entry to the final plan, perfectly exemplifies the prevailing view that around the turn of the century modern architecture began by repudiating neo-styles.

Berlage's initial design for the Stock Exchange was a picturesque variation on Dutch architecture of the seventeenth century, which was recycled by a number of architects in the nineteenth century. The final design ten years later resulted in a robust brick building that seemed to have left the nineteenth century far behind. Stylistic references to the past are no longer to be found. Characteristically, the construction is not hidden from view, but instead ‘honestly’ revealed. Thanks to these qualities, the Exchange foreshadowed

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Hendrik Petrus Berlage: The shipping exchange in the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

what in the twenties and thirties was to become a dogma of the Dutch brand of functionalism known as ‘Nieuwe Bouwen’ (‘New Building’). But it was not only functionalists who applauded Berlage; his soberness and his use of brick, the classic Dutch material, made his work a model also for traditionalists, the main opponents of the functionalists between the world wars. As a result Berlage became the father of two very different children.

Compared with what was being built in the Netherlands around 1900, the Exchange was strikingly bare and simple. According to Berlage, this soberness should be seen as the logical consequence of the turbulent times in which he lived. He believed that all the great styles of the past, from Gothic to Baroque, had coincided with periods in which society was clearly ordered. Given that in his view there was no such ordering in his own time, he thought it wisest to postpone the question of what style to build in until society had stabilised. In the meantime the architect would have to be content with what in 1893 Berlage had called ‘impressionistic architecture’, in which the emphasis was on the broad lines of planes and contours, and not on stylistic details. The remarkable thing is that while Berlage had intended the Exchange to be a building without a pronounced style, his colleagues saw it quite differently. Several architects started working in the style of Berlage's Exchange in the early years of the century, largely unbroken walls in brick and occasional accents in stone being the chief characteristics. The

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later followers of this style included J.F. Staal and A.J. Kropholler, who went on building à la Berlage well into the thirties.

Years before the completion of the Exchange, Berlage's development towards an even, almost unornamented architecture had in fact been evident in the offices of the De Algemeene insurance company (1893, destroyed by fire) on a site opposite the Exchange, in the Heymans residence in Groningen (1893-1895), and in the Amsterdam office of the De Nederlanden van 1845 insurance company (1894-1895), as well as in the building of the Diamond Workers' Union (the andb) in Amsterdam, finished shortly before the Exchange. This last commission was perfect for Berlage. A committed social democrat, he made the union offices a workers' fortress, drawing his inspiration from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian palaces like the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and the Palazzo dei Priori in Volterra. For him such buildings stood for the more or less democratic society of the Italian city states, and in this he saw a fitting metaphor for the democratic society which he believed would come and which trade unions and emancipated workers would help to build. The same symbolism can be found in the Exchange, whose conspicuous corner tower also recalls the seats of city government in Italy. The fact that Berlage gave the Exchange the form of a bulwark of democracy must be taken as veiled criticism of this pre-eminently capitalist institution. For those who might miss this subtle point, Berlage included in the interiors a number of unmistakably anti-capitalist messages, among them the three tile tableaux by Jan Toorop portraying the feudal Past, the capitalist Present and a paradise-like Future in which the worker is free and no longer exploited.

Berlage was not concerned solely with architecture. In 1900 he and Jac. van de Bosch founded the 't Binnenhuis company, a studio and shop for the furniture they designed. As well as a furniture designer and entrepreneur, he was a town planner too. In the same year, 1900, he made the first design for the southern extension to Amsterdam, his major project in this field. This led in 1915-1917 to the large-scale Plan Zuid which was carried out in the twenties

Hendrik Petrus Berlage: Sketch of the boardroom of the andb building in Amsterdam (1912).

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and thirties. Amsterdam-Zuid, intended as a mainly residential area, is a succession of monumental avenues, streets and squares surrounded by unbroken facades. It is these facades above all that give Plan Zuid its cohesion. For although dozens of architects worked on the project, because they observed a few basic rules as to materials and form, a remarkably homogeneous urban environment was created.

Berlage designed Plan Zuid during the First World War, which despite Dutch neutrality affected the Netherlands directly and indirectly in many ways. Apart from the adverse economic effects, not least for the building industry, of the war which was raging in all the neighbouring countries, the horrors of the fighting made a profound mental impression, as is evident for example from the Pantheon of Humanity that Berlage designed in 1915 (which was never built). This temple devoted to peace and internationalism underlined not only Berlage's involvement with what was going on in the rest of Europe but also the inability of the Netherlands to do anything about it. But meanwhile life went on for Berlage as for others, and he built the St

Hendrik Petrus Berlage: Second design for Plan Zuid, the southern extension to Amsterdam (1915).

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Hendrik Petrus Berlage: Sketch of the St Hubert hunting lodge in Otterlo (1915).

Hendrik Petrus Berlage: The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (finished in 1935).

Hubert hunting lodge in Otterlo for Mr and Mrs Kröller-Müller and - for the same clients - an office in London, Holland House (1914-1916). After the First World War, by which time Berlage was over sixty, he secured a series of large commissions, that for the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague being the most important. He worked on this project from 1919 and it was not finished until 1935, a year after his death.

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Hendrik Petrus Berlage: The town hall of Usquert (finished in 1930).

The Gemeentemuseum can be seen as the crowning glory of his work from 1910 on. But at the same time it is evident that he no longer led the way as he had done earlier in the century. Projects such as the Christian Science Church in The Hague (1925-1926), Mercator Square in Amsterdam (1924-1927) and the town hall of Usquert (1928-1930) are all remarkable architectural achievements, but they are no longer revolutionary compared with other work of the time such as the Rietveld-Schröder House in Utrecht (1924) and the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt (1928). Berlage realised this himself. In 1928 he was the only representative of the old guard at the founding congress of the ciam (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne). His contemporaries Auguste Perret of France and Peter Behrens of Germany had also been invited, but they did not come. Gerrit Rietveld, Mart Stam and Berlage formed the Dutch delegation at this meeting at a chateau in La Sarraz in Switzerland attended by the pick of progressive architects. But Berlage took hardly any part in the congress; he spent most of his time in the garden, sketching and drawing. One day he apparently said to Rietveld: ‘You're pulling down what I built up’, thus showing that he was aware of having been overtaken by time and events.

He had probably already had that feeling in 1916, when his sixtieth birthday was marked in various ways, including two special issues of the journal Bouwkundig Weekblad. In them many architects and dignitaries were invited to explain the significance of Berlage's work in the development of Dutch architecture. Intentionally or unintentionally, the effect of these eulogies was to consign him to history. Amid so much praise, the text by Michel de Klerk, leader of the Amsterdam School, stood out. He was the only contributor to criticise Berlage, who he said had lost touch with what he called truly modern architecture. For De Klerk the truly modern was what he himself produced, the Expressionist style of the Amsterdam School. The fact that

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only De Klerk ventured to strike a critical note underlines the sacrosanct status Berlage already enjoyed in his lifetime. In fact this has not changed since. In the mid-sixties there was serious talk of pulling down the Exchange, which was in a poor state as a result of subsidence, but this idea was dropped after the city architect Ben Merkelbach and others intervened.

In the same period art historians began to take a serious interest in Berlage and his work. Much had been written about him while he was alive, but from the sixties the number of publications increased sharply. Since then prominent art historians such as Pieter Singelenberg, Wessel Reinink and Manfred Bock have thoroughly researched Berlage and ensured his place in the history of architecture. His position long seemed unassailable, but now his importance is beginning to be put into perspective. In a recent book entitled Truth and character (Waarheid en karakter, 1997) Auke van der Woud, a professor at the Free University in Amsterdam who specialises in nineteenth-century architecture, opened the attack on the idea that Berlage was the first modern architect. Van der Woud is making a legitimate call for proper attention to be given to nineteenth-century Dutch architecture, while at the same time putting Berlage's significance in art history into proportion. According to Van der Woud, Berlage and before him P.J.H. Cuypers, the architect of the Rijksmuseum and Amsterdam Central Station, each did their part to establish and later perpetuate the idea that they alone found the way out of a period of decline. Van der Woud contests the notion, first, that the nineteenth century was a period of decline and second that Cuypers and Berlage offered an escape. He argues that they successfully kept up this illusion by presenting the nineteenth century as a period of stylistic confusion. Van der Woud particularly opposes this preoccupation with style, which he says was certainly not the main concern of nineteenth-century architects. In this respect the twentieth-century architects who never tired of announcing that all styles were obsolete were more obsessed by them than their nineteenth-century predecessors who worked in them, rather as temperance activists are often more preoccupied with alcohol than the regulars at the local pub.

The reassessment of Berlage's significance which Van der Woud has begun will probably continue in the coming years. But in the short term this is unlikely to change his image among the public, just as the years of research into the authenticity of Rembrandt's paintings have done little to undermine the appreciation of works it now seems were wrongly attributed to him. All Berlage's major works will be protected for the foreseeable future as monuments; moreover, not only the Haags Gemeentemuseum but the Exchange, the St Hubert hunting lodge and the andb building are now in use as museums. As a result Berlage as a person and his work are sure of a museumised and monumentalised existence for a long time to come.

hans ibelings

Translated by John Rudge.

Further reading

polano, s., Hendrik Petrus Berlage: Complete Works. New York, 1988.