Sepia Saturday 717 - Going To Work

It has been a while since I last joined the Sepians who are still uploading their weekly contribution. In fact, that last time was on the festive occasion of reaching the SS 500 milestone on December 29, 2019. Occasionally I revisited Alan's site but needed more inspiration to write an appropriate post. But the other day, I saw the March theme and thought, why not! My motivation surfaced because I remembered a couple of suitable family pictures. Here is my effort to provide you with some insight into the working life of both my grandfathers. 

Unlike Ed Mossel, the well-mustached man in the theme picture, my grandfathers were neither politicians, authors nor journalists. My mother's father was Gerardus Theodorus de Langen. He was born in The Hague on November 24, 1888. He left this earthly vale of tears 78 years later, on October 20, 1967. His father was a carpenter so it was no surprise that he had to start working when he was 13. He joined a company named Eigen Hulp (Help Yourself). Their main business was organizing the central procurement for their shops selling "everything you can think of". Although I don't know the nature of his job when he started, I do know that in 1928, the company existed for 50 years. At that time Grandpa managed their central accounting department.

Picture taken on July 7, 1928, when the company celebrated its 50-year jubilee.
Grandpa is seated in the front row (red arrow)

The fact that Grandpa is seated in the front row, tells his position in the company. Come to think of it, he did very well if you realize his education consisted of primary school only when he started in 1901! 

As I said, Grandpa was neither a politician, an author nor a journalist. But he had a mustache! Maybe it was not as impressive as the one of Mr. Mossel but still.

Grandpa De Langen approx. 1916

Switching to my other grandfather, his name was Andreas Miebies born in The Hague on April 7, 1883. He died, also in The Hague on December 22, 1957. His father was a clerk in a pharmacy but Grandpa became a civil servant for the city of The Hague. His main activities were in the social domain. At one time he was the director of a housing project for the "lower classes". He could tell exciting stories of dissatisfied tenants stabbing impressive knives into his writing desk. Later he was involved in guiding juvenile unemployed back to work. The photo below is from that period.

Andreas Miebies and his secretary (?) in June 1936

Please note the telephone on his desk. I assume that a phone in those days was for managers only. Something like a mobile in the early nineties of the 20th century.

Andreas was also very much involved in the CJMV, the Dutch equivalent of the YMCA. 

On December 8, 1933, a new CJMV chairman*
was installed. Andreas, leader of the The Hague
section, was seated beside him.

It is funny that when climbing the social ladder, both my grandfathers somehow managed to be seated in the front row. But apart from that, they went to work every day, including Saturdays! So they qualify for the theme of this month.

* Rev. G.P. van Itterzon

For more diligent people, please click here. or scan this QR code:

Today...

G.Th. de Langen - A. Doelman
The Hague, Dec. 27, 1916

Voor de tekst in het Nederlands, zie na de Engelse tekst
Today 97 years ago my maternal grandparents got married. At the time my grandfather Gerardus Theodorus de Langen was 28 years old. Granny, her name was Antje Doelman, was four years younger. Their marriage lasted for almost 51 years. It came to an end when grandpa died on Oct. 20, 1967. 
Unfortunately I have no information about the wedding itself. I know it took place in The Hague but where it was celebrated I have no clue. Also the guest list vanished in the mist of history. However, it is more than likely that the persons mentioned in the marriage certificate participated in the festivities. Those were:

• the parents of the groom: Jan de Langen and Johanna Margaretha van den Bosch



Marriage certificate

• the father of the bride: Pieter Doelman

and the two witnesses:

• the brother of the groom: Bruno Jan de Langen
• the stepbrother of the bride: Anton Mattheus Warendorff

The official marriage took place in the town hall located at the Groenmarkt. It is probable that right after the official ceremony they went to the nearby studio of photographer C.J.L. Vermeulen at 11 Toussaintkade where their official wedding picture was taken. 

During the early months of their marriage the couple lived at the Hoefkade, a little south of the city center.

In 1903 grandpa started to work for a central procurement organization called Eigen Hulp. In 1916 he was still there making a career in the accounting department. 

As was normal in those days grandma's career was at home. She truly managed the household and the finances pertaining thereto. All income and expenses were recorded in a booklet. The first entry dates from December 28, 1916, one day after her marriage took place.

Record of household income and expenses Dec. 28-30, 1916

Although Grandma does not provide insight in what she bought, she shows how much she spends in the various shops on a daily basis. It is always fun to see the prices of the various articles of almost a century ago, right in the middle of the Great War. (To avoid misunderstandings, the Netherlands did not participate in this war but many people from Belgium fled to the low countries.)

Expenses December 28:

Grocer (kruidenier) 2 guilders and 24½ cents

Butcher (slager) 65 cents

Coal and peat (kolen en turf) 1 guilder 35 cents

Oil fuel (olie) 12 cents

Baker (bakker) 20½ cents

Milk (melk) 13 cents

Potatoes and vegetables (aardappels en groenten) 26½ cents 

Glassware (glas) 11 cents

To give you an impression of the value of the Dutch guilder then, I'll convert some of these amounts into US$ and UK£. In those days US$ 1.00 = UK£ 0.20 = Dutch guilder 2.40.

So for the grocer Grandma paid a little less than a dollar or UK£ 0.19. And the butcher received the royal amount of $ 0.27 or  £ 0.05. (My apologies for not using shillings and pence.)

Although all this bookkeeping may seem a little childish, for Grandma it was a method to control expenses and save money. In the late thirties she surprised my grandfather with the news that she had saved enough money to buy a house! And so they did. I believe they paid some 5.000 Dutch guilders for the house shown below on the right hand side. Now, if that is not an economical housewife, I don't know who is!

14-18 Mispelstraat, The Hague

Nederlandse tekst
Vandaag zouden de grootouders van mijn moeders kant 97 jaar getrouwd zijn. Dat zou wel een unicum geweest zijn maar dat hebben ze niet gehaald. Hoewel, bijna 51 jaar is ook een mooie tijd! Toen mijn Oma en Opa trouwden waren ze 24 en 28 jaar oud. Ik heb helaas geen informatie over de (plaats van de) bruiloft, noch over de genodigden. Maar aangenomen mag worden dat de mensen die in de trouwakte genoemd staan, er in ieder geval bij zijn geweest. Dat zijn:

• de ouders van de bruidegom: Jan de Langen en Johanna Margaretha van den Bosch
• de vader van de bruid: Pieter Doelman
en de twee getuigen:
• de broer van de bruidegom: Bruno Jan de Langen en
• de stiefbroer van de bruid: Anton Mattheus Warendorff

Het burgerlijk huwelijk vond plaats in het toenmalige stadhuis aan de Groenmarkt. Dat is niet zo gek ver verwijderd van de fotostudio van J.C.L. Vermeulen aan de Toussaintkade 11. Daar werd de "officiële" huwelijksfoto gemaakt (zie helemaal bovenaan).

In die eerste maanden van hun huwelijk woonde het paar aan de Hoefkade. Grootvader werkte toen al sinds 1903 op de administratie van Eigen Hulp, een inkooporganisatie voor o.a. kruideniersartikelen met eigen winkels voornamelijk in het Haagse. Opa zou later hoofd van de administratie worden. Thuis zwaaide Oma de scepter. Daar moet niet al te veel betekenis aan gehecht worden maar zij bestierde wel het huishouden. Alle inkomsten en uitgaven werden vastgelegd in haar huishoudboekje. De eerste aantekeningen daarin dateren van 28 december, twee dagen na het huwelijk. Via mijn moeder heb ik de hand op het boekje weten te leggen. Hoewel Oma niet aantekende wat en hoeveel ze kocht, is het toch leuk om te zien hoe de dagelijkse uitgaven toen (halverwege de Eerste Wereldoorlog) lagen.

Kruidenier 2 gulden en 24½ cent (tegen de koers van de euro zou dat € 1,02 zijn)

Slager 65 cent (€ 0,30)

Kolen en turf 1 gulden 35 cent (€ 0,61)

Olie 12 cent (€ 0,05)

Bakker 20½ cent (€ 0,09)

Melk 13 cent (€ 0,06)

Aardappels en groenten 26½ cent (€ 0,12)

Glas 11 cent (€ 0.05)

Zeker met deze getallen klinkt het vandaag-de-dag allemaal wat kinderachtig om zo de uitgaven bij te houden maar voor Oma werkte dat prima. En ze wist er ook nog van te sparen. Aan het eind van de dertiger jaren kon ze Opa, tot zijn verrassing, meedelen dat ze genoeg gespaard had om een huis te kopen. Daar had ze dan wel zo'n 20 jaar over gedaan, maar toch, petje af. Het verhaal wil dat Opa geen idee had dat zoiets tot de mogelijkheden behoorde. Vervolgens kochten ze voor 5.000,= gulden het huis Mispelstraat 18 in Den Haag (zie foto) waar ze tot in de vijfiger jaren zijn blijven wonen.
Het moge duidelijk zijn dat Opa en Oma niet meer onder ons zijn maar ik bewaar de allerbeste herinneringen aan ze! 

Sepia Saturday - United grocers

Back in 1901, when my grandfather Gerardus Theodorus de Langen was 13 years old, he started his working life. His first job probably was something like a junior clerk in the offices of Eigen Hulp in The Hague. Eigen Hulp, which can be best translated as "Help Yourself", was a central procurement organization involved in the exploitation of shops established in 's-Gravenhage. (The Hague is the colloquial name of 's-Gravenhage, the city where the Dutch government resides.) The shops sold a wide range of things such as groceries, wine and office supplies. 
Legally the organization was owned by its Members, the majority of which were day to day customers.

Company logo of "Eigen Hulp"

Quite coincidentally this weeks Sepia Saturday theme is visualized by the   grocery section of Bell and Macauley's Store in Drouin VIC, Australia. So I can safely continue the grocer's career of my grandad.

Unfortunately I don't know very much about that career. In fact all I know is that some 25 years later he was managing the organization's accounting department. And I only know that because I found the website of Theo van Ewijk whose father was also employed by Eigen Hulp. That website displayed a lot of information about my grandad's employer. The website also shows the picture below.

Eigen Hulp staff on Aug. 29, 1928 during the 50 year jubilee of the 
company. My grandad is seated in the front row, #4 from the right.

Two years earlier he celebrated his own 25 year jubilee. A slightly damaged photograph of that event survived the past 86 years. It shows my grandparents amidst what I presume is grandfather's staff. They are flanked by his managing director and his wife.

The 25 year jubilee of my grandfather in 1926.

When my mother got married in November 1942 and WWII was 2,5 years underway, she apparently felt the need to inform her father's employer. In return the happy couple received a congratulatory letter from the Board of Directors.

Congratulatory letter from the Eigen Hulp Board of Directors
on the occasion of my parents' marriage in 1942.

Some time after this event, probably after the war, my grandfather retired from the company. It is very well possible that a measure of disagreement about certain financial matters, was sufficient reason for him to resign. After that he started several companies in the field of staff training and fiscal consultancy. Gramps stayed with us until a few months after the birth of his first great-grandson Robert in 1967. He missed his 79th birthday by just a month. Contrary to what you might think, I don't believe money was important to him. My grandmother managed the "cash flow" in their household. This is evidenced by the meticulous recording of the household expenses in  a booklet which I still have. Obviously the booklet and the method come from my grandfather but the handwriting is hers.

Household expenses in December 1917. A.o. groente (vegetables), brood (bread), kaas (cheese), kruidenier (grocer) and also huur (rental, 14 guilders/month). There is also the expense for a bottle and teat (flesch en speen) obviously for my mother who was 30 days old at the time.

 She did this so well that some time prior to WWII she was able to tell my surprised grandad that "we have now saved enough to buy a house!" And so they did. That is the very same house that I remember so well from my earliest youth. And that, dear readers, may serve as evidence that if your grandfather works for a grocer, it creates very fond memories for his grandchildren.

For more grocer's stor(i)es, and I can recommend those,
please see here.

Sepia Saturday - Inside knowledge

Mist u een Nederlandse vertaling? Of kunt u het met het Engels prima af? Laat het mij weten door op dit blog een reactie te plaatsen. Dat kan, helemaal aan het eind.
As you can see in the Sepia Saturday logo at the end of this post, this weeks theme - also - has to do with a shop interior. Now, that poses a problem for me. Among my ancestors there are no shopkeepers, none that I know of at least. The man whom I consider my oldest ancestor, started as a farm hand in what is now Belgian Limburg. After that he joined the military and later, in The Hague, he had a more popular job. He was a (beer) tapper in a pub and as far as I know he was not the innkeeper. We are talking 1805 now. 
Then there was one of my great uncles. Around 1895 he was an errand boy in a pharmacy. He delivered medicines. (I don't think he would have liked being called a drug runner!) 
Ever since, most of my forbears earned their living as a civil servant, either for the municipality or for the government. So not many shop interiors there.
However, it is a small step from a shop interior to the inside of a house. And since Sepia Saturday organizer Alan is a flexible man, my pictures will show house interiors with which my ancestry can be associated.

The first picture is the interior of the house in the De Perponcherstraat 83(?) where my matrilineal grandparents lived in The Hague during the twenties of the previous century. The focus of the photographer is on my grandparents celebrating my grandfathers 25 year jubilee with his employer Eigen Hulp, a cooperative association of shops. I believe that event took place in 1926.

My grandparents Gerardus Theodorus de Langen and
Antje Doelman in approx 1926.

Looking with my today's eyes I see a number of things in this interior that I think are characteristic for the 1920's. In the red circles there are Dutch art deco patterns on earthenware. Also the vertical blue arrow points to examples of such patterns. The black cupboard is ornate with wooden decorations (blue circles) which I believe were typical for the turn of the century. On this side of the black cupboard is a fireplace. To avoid having to look at a big black hole in summer, people used a decorative shield, see the blue horizontal arrow.
The combination of my grandfathers neck tie and the heavily starched collar was commonly known here as a "father's killer", a vadermoordenaar in Dutch. In granny's dress you can already see the first signs of the charleston fashion of the thirties.

When I was about 3 years old, I vaguely remember that I, together with my mother and kid brother, stayed at a luxurious country house in a place called Laag Soeren. We are talking 1947. My most vivid memory is the availability of a tennis court on the premises. Funny, the irrelevant things a 3 year old remembers. My mother kept a few pictures of the house including a view of the inside of the living room.

The country house in Laag Soeren. The height of the windows on either
side of the front door is indicative of the presence of high ceilings.

The living room in Laag Soeren

The thing that strikes me most in this interior, is the height of the ceiling. You can't even see it! Must be more than 3 metres/10 ft! The fire place has already been modernized by installing a stove there (red arrow). But with a 10ft high ceiling additional heating is no luxury. So they put in a central heating radiator as well (blue arrow). Just after the war central heating was not unusual in industrial environments. However, in houses it was still exceptional. 
In those days the largest lamp in the room was over the table (black arrow). Certainly during the evening all activities took place there. The oak furniture is equipped with lavish ornaments (green arrow). Please also note the separate curtains for the upper windows (yellow arrow).

Unfortunately, in neither interior there is a clock visible. So I hope I did not disappoint you there. Still, I expect to have increased your inside knowledge. Before I refer you to my fellow Sepia Saturday adepts, I like to show you our previous house and its insides. We finally managed to sell it (pfft!) although not for the price mentioned... But I have to warn you, it's a bit different compared to the ones I showed you above.

For more clocks and interpretations of this week's theme,
please click here!

Update Oct. 13, 2012: A gentleman from Hoog Soeren, his name is Jan K., drew my attention to the fact that it was unlikely that the country house shown above, was situated in his village. After some further consultations and investigations, it is very probable that the house is (still!) located at 3 Badhuislaan in Laag Soeren. It is visible on Street View, be it that the black and white picture shows the rear of the house and the view below the front. Therefore, the text in this post has been corrected.