Erik Spaans

Huis met de Hoofden, Keizersgracht 123

Hermetically unsealed

One of the finest canal houses in Amsterdam, the so-called ‘Huis met de Hoofden’ (the house with the heads) on Keizersgracht, acquired a new destination a few weeks ago. On 15 November the monumental house – the former property of the city of Amsterdam – was transferred to the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (BPH), an institution with a vast collection of books and manuscripts which has been open to the public since 1984. The library will not move to the new house soon, because substantial (expansion) work needs to be done first. In the meantime the BPH will remain in its present premises in the Amsterdam Jordaan.

The BPH’s collections comprise a number of subjects in the field where theology and philosophy meet: mysticism, alchemy, gnosis, hermetica and (Western) esotericism. By no means easy fare, and a considerable part of the library’s readers consists of (foreign) scholars consulting books or manuscripts in the reading room.

Yet the institution (the initiative of Amsterdam businessman Joost Ritman) tries hard to dispel the image of impenetrability. Every visitor is welcome and staff members jokingly characterize the library as being ‘hermetically unsealed’. The next six months there is an exhibition on the mystic Jacob Böhme (1575-1624).

Böhme was a shoemaker who lived in Görlitz in Silesia. He believed to have gained insight into ‘divine reality’, and committed his experiences to paper. His works show him as a true advocate of personal faith, which make him a precursor of the Pietists.

In Böhme’s time Görlitz was a Lutheran town and the local ministers regarded Böhme as a dangerous fanatic. He was soon forbidden to publish any works. But Böhme also had influential patrons who took care of the dissemination of his work by circulating copies of his manuscripts.

These works also found their way to the Dutch Republic, where the Amsterdam merchant Abraham van Beyerland became so inspired by Böhme’s thought that he made it his personal mission to distribute it. Beyerland, whose income was largely derived from the civet trade (or rather the musk derived from the glands of the civet), acquired scores of manuscripts and letters by Böhme and personally edited and translated them. The result was a series of German and Dutch-language publications, large parts of which remained unsold in the attic of his house after his death.

Later generations, too, were committed to preserve Böhme’s ‘heritage’. The exhibition even features indignant letters written by a German during the Second World War, whose anger was provoked because the the Nazis had confiscated Böhme’s manuscripts. Yet the manuscripts survived the war. A considerable part of them can now be seen in Amsterdam, together with the seventeenth-century books and pamphlets published by the industrious Beyerland.

There will be more room for exhibitions like the present one when the BPH moves to the Huis met de Hoofden. The future location is intended to become a ‘diverse platform’, which will undoubtedly also attract visitors because the interior will be restored to its former seventeenth-century glory. The Rijksmuseum and Instituut Collectie Nederland (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage) are thought of as possible suppliers of loan objects.

The Huis met de Hoofden is also a suitable location for the BPH for historical reasons. In the seventeenth century it was the domicile of the De Geer family, an affluent mercantile dynasty which twinned cool business sense (the family traded in canons and other weaponry) to a strong interest in spiritual matters. When the Moravian educator and theologian Jan Amos Comenius sought refuge in the Republic, Louis de Geer offered him a roof over his head in the Huis met de Hoofden. The BPH owns a number of works by Comenius, who is regarded as one of the founders of theosophy.

According to José Bouman, curator of the exhibition, the BPH will also be able to highlight the role of Amsterdam as a haven for heterodox thought once it has moved to the new accommodation. ‘Amsterdam had a remarkable history in this respect, certainly in the seventeenth century, when the Republic offered greater religious freedom than the surrounding countries. We will want to show some of that history’.

That the BPH will be housed in such a prominent place in the centre of Amsterdam is also a triumph for Joost Ritman, founder of the library. In the last decade of the previous century Ritman – successful producer of disposable cutlery – was faced with financial setbacks and was forced to sell his art collection. Some feared the BPH, too, might not survive. But these fears were ungrounded. The state acquired a part of the collection (immediately offering it in loan to the library) while the future move to the new premises means the BPH is solidly anchored in Amsterdam soil.

Seventeenth-century merchants like Abraham van Beyerland and Louis de Geer combined their entrepreneurial skills with an active sponsorship of cultural and scholarly activities. In a sense Ritman is a successor. When the BPH opens its doors on Keizersgracht it will not only be a tribute to the authors, thinkers, theologians and various heterodox minds it collects, but also to the merchants who supported them.

Translation of an article by Erik Spaans in Financieel Dagblad, 7 December 2007

Abraham Willemsz van Beyerland, Hendrik van Someren, 1640