De Moderne Tijd - Volume 8, Issue 1/2, 2024

Religious and civic realism. A comparison between the novel poetics of De Tijdspiegel and De Gids

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the monthly magazine De Tijdspiegel (established in 1844) developed a novel poetics that could be described as ‘religious realism’ to distinguish it from the more liberal ‘bourgeois realism’. Like the liberals, De Tijdspiegel attached great importance to the modern novel, but the magazine rejected the liberal separation of the spheres of life (and thus art for art’s sake), their view of mankind and the world, and their empiricism. De Tijdspiegel reverted to Jean Paul’s humour theory, as it had been introduced in the Netherlands in 1820 by Weiland. This theory of humour determined the form and content of the magazine, as well as their mutual interdependence, which would repeatedly lead to problems of interpretation. According to the Christian humourists’ view of mankind, the weak individual, making his way in an imperfect world, could only rise above himself through religion. Only through (Christian) religion the author, who should always be characterised as the (omniscient) narrator in the text, could elevate the world and mankind to a true ‘humanity’. The importance of this, often ironic, ‘religious realism’ should not be underestimated. The religious aspect has perhaps been proven indispensable, but to this day the novel’s ability to increase ‘sympathy’ is regarded as a crucial quality of this genre.

‘A penny for my sustenance’. Strategies used by letter writers in the correspondence archive of Willem Albert Scholten

In this article, several letters from the extensive archive of Willem Albert Scholten (1819-1892) are discussed and analysed, in order to discover what strategies were used by the people who asked Scholten for a favour. The letters were chosen to serve as examples of broader trends or because they are exceptions within the archive.

Per ardua ad astra. Why J.C. Kapteyn never got an observatory

Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn (1851-1922) was appointed professor of astronomy in Groningen in 1877. Three times he submitted a plan for an observatory, but each one was rejected. There are two explanations for this, but neither is supported by evidence. The archives of the Arts and Sciences Department of the Ministry of the Interior offer a third explanation: the plans from 1881 and 1890 were thwarted by Victor de Stuers, head of the department, because he felt that the two existing observatories in the Netherlands, in Leiden and Utrecht, cost more than enough.

Roots of innovation? The machine industry of the Eindhoven region 1870-1920

Nowadays, the city of Eindhoven is known for its technical innovation, with companies like Philips and, more recently, ASML. It has been assumed, though never thoroughly researched, that this innovative character had already cultivated been in the early stages (1870-1920) of the industrialization of the city. The results of this article show that. The Eindhoven machine industry during this period was not yet the innovative force that it would later become. But, thanks to the many different kinds of industry (textiles, cigars and many more), local machine mechanics did develop a broad understanding of many different types of machines. This knowledge would influence the next generation of mechanics and entrepreneurs, like for example DAF founder Huub van Doorne.