Historical story

New historical database sheds new light on research into Dutch emigrants in Germany during the Revolt

About 60,000 Dutch people fled the country during the Revolt. A large part of them ended up in the German Rhineland. They built their refugee churches there and radicalized, according to the current theory. New research shows that radicalization was not that bad.

The research has not yet been completed, but it is already seriously confusing existing theories about the Dutch refugees in the Rhineland at the time of the Revolt. According to Mirjam van Veen, professor of church history at the Free University of Amsterdam, things immediately go wrong with the division between Dutch and German.

“I gradually realized that I also thought too much about these nationalities, but they have only existed since the nineteenth century. In the sixteenth century, border areas overlapped much more than they do today. For example, there was no Dutch-German language border. The difference between an Amsterdammer and an Arnhemmer was therefore a lot greater than that between someone from an eastern province of the Republic and from the German Rhineland.”

Van Veen and a team of historians study these religious refugees in the Rhineland (between 1550 and 1618). Together they are making a database, for which they have been collecting all the information that can be found about the Dutch refugees since 2015. She wants to use the data to show, among other things, to what extent there was emigration, since most refugees seem to come from the Rhineland area. This goes against the prevailing idea that Protestants from all over the country fled to Germany.

Those seeking refuge in the Rhineland fled the growing intolerance after the Iconoclasm in 1556 and the violence of war that broke out in 1568. At that time, the Netherlands was still part of the Habsburg Empire, with the deeply religious Catholic Philip II as monarch. He was not very tolerant of Protestants.

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Most people who left for the Rhineland appear to have already lived in the vicinity of this area. This made it easy for them to keep in touch with the home front and to travel back and forth. The group of refugees was very mixed. Rich and poor, Protestant or Catholic:the researchers find all sorts of things. “We know about 20 percent of the profession and a large part of it consists of young men looking for work. The choice for Catholic Cologne, for example, was primarily an economic one for Protestants.”

The refugees were not warmly received everywhere and for various reasons. In Frankfurt, the guilds feared economic competition and the group of Dutch Reformed people also refused any religious compromise, according to Van Veen:“At a certain point the Lutheran inhabitants were fed up and closed the refugee church. Until then, the refugees were allowed to hold their services openly, which was very tolerant of the Lutherans.”

When the refugees were willing to compromise, they were welcome in most cities. The refugees were allowed to profess their own faith or to integrate into existing congregations, such as in the reformed Aachen and the Lutheran Weasel.

Religious Compromises

Another dominant image among historians that Van Veen questions is the radicalization of the refugees in the Rhineland. Once back in the Netherlands, these refugees are said to have spread radical Calvinism, which gave this religion the upper hand.

“Most of the refugees who ended up in the Rhineland did not radicalize at all. They adapted, including religion, built a new life and stayed there. Those who did return were often exiled pastors, but not everyone was radicalized either.”

Many of these pastors were and remained moderate. They should have made compromises with the Germans on a religious level and saw the necessity and the value of this, according to Van Veen. “In the town of Goch, for example, the compromise consisted of a partly joint church service for Protestants and Catholics. They only split up at Mass. Refugees took this example back to the Netherlands, such as the preacher Hubert Duifhuis (1531-1581) in Utrecht, but it failed there. At that time, the Germans were a lot better at 'live and let live' than the Dutch."

The problem was that most Dutch people did not look further than what they had been used to for centuries:one religion within ecclesiastical and secular government. The orthodox Calvinists also tried to achieve this unity by excluding other religions. “In the Republic there has always been a strong orthodox movement, but the unorthodox also remained within the same new people's church. Is that tolerant? True tolerance only exists when fragmentation is possible”, adds Van Veen.

Calvin overestimated

So where does this image of the radicalizing refugee in the Rhineland come from? It is a theory of historian and preacher's son Aad van Schelven and dates from the nineteenth century. The refugees would see themselves as the chosen people, just like the Biblical Israelites in Egypt, and then radicalize. They found comfort in Calvin's doctrine of predestination, in which it is already established at birth whether you are a chosen one of God. According to Van Veen, this cannot be right:"Every refugee experiences flight and war differently and it is therefore impossible that everyone would have become radically religious."

Van Schelven was a student of the Reformed theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). These men were not objective and their religious views have greatly influenced historiography, explains Van Veen. “For example, Kuyper promoted the idea that John Calvin was the most important religious reformer for the Netherlands, but that is nonsense. After 1650 Calvin was hardly read. Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575), for example, was much more famous then. His sermon book was used and even went on every VOC ship. But who still knows his name? Unlike Calvin.”

Van Veen does not think it is surprising that historians still fall back on the works of Kuyper and his followers. “They published many sources, but they did so from a certain conviction. These source editions are still widely used, partly because some of the original sources were destroyed during World War II bombing.” The researchers' new database provides a historically reliable source, also for future research.

App with cycling routes

Never before has research been conducted on this scale into refugee communities in Germany. In addition, Van Veen now looks further than just religion. In order to make more people aware of this unknown history, she has had an app developed. Here you will find all kinds of information about the refugees, their daily life in the new cities and the mutual influence of the Dutch refugees and the Germans. Van Veen tells about the sights that can still be seen there and highlights famous refugees, such as the Catholic scholar Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert and the Gouda pastor Herman Herbers.

The app contains all cycling routes that Van Veen has also traveled himself:“The route from Nijmegen to Gennep is very beautiful. Also nice is the unknown Reformed hidden church in Rees, Germany. This town of Rees also has old fortifications that were built by stadtholder Maurits van Oranje. The church is beautifully maintained, but the Reformed congregation has meanwhile been completely Germanized.” Anyone interested in following the tracks of these Dutch refugees can now indulge themselves with this app.