Product Code Database
Scheveningen () is one of the eight districts of The Hague, Netherlands, as well as a subdistrict (wijk) of that city. Scheveningen is a modern seaside resort with a long, sandy beach, an esplanade, a pier, and a lighthouse. The beach is popular for water sports such as windsurfing and Kitesurfing. The Hague Tourist Board page on Scheveningen The harbour is used for both fishing and tourism.
The Battle of Scheveningen was fought between English and Dutch fleets off the coast of the village on 10 August 1653. Thousands of people gathered on the shore to watch. In 1660 Montagu's flagship picked up the English king at Scheveningen in order to accomplish the Restoration. Dictionary of national biography. Edited. London: Oxford University Press. XIII., pp. 680–681.
A road to neighbouring The Hague was constructed in 1663 (current name: Scheveningseweg).
In 1470, a heavy storm destroyed the church and half the houses. The village was again hit by storms in 1570, 1775, 1825, 1860, 1881, and 1894. After this last storm, the villagers decided to build a harbour. Until then, the fishing boats had had a flat bottom (bomschuiten), and were pulled up the beach. By around 1870, over 150 of these boats were in use. Once the harbour had been constructed in 1904, more modern ships replaced the bomschuiten.
In 1818, Jacob Pronk constructed a wooden building on a dune near the sea, from where people could bathe from four separate rooms. It marked the start of Scheveningen as a bathing resort. Since then, Scheveningen has attracted numerous tourists from all over Europe, notably from Germany. The hotel Kurhaus was opened in 1886. The village attracted a number of Dutch artists over the centuries, who painted the bomschuiten drawn up on the beach, or fishermen at work in the North Sea. Notable painters who recorded the village include Adriaen van de Velde, Simon de Vlieger, and Hendrik Willem Mesdag, whose large Panorama Mesdag, 14 m high and 120 m wide, preserved the view of Scheveningen in 1881.
The International Skating Union was founded in Scheveningen in 1892.
Anecdotal evidence exists of the name Scheveningen being used as a shibboleth during World War II to identify German spies: they would pronounce the initial Sch as one consonant (the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative, pronounced approximately like , ), rather than the native Dutch sequence of the voiceless alveolar sibilant followed by the voiceless uvular fricative: , , as in Genghis Khan.
Scheveningen was never an independent municipality, but it has its own coat of arms, officially recognised by The Hague local council (proposal 136 of 23 March 1984); even in the Middle Ages, it was part of the same administrative region as The Hague. Vaderlandsch woordenboek, 1787
Nevertheless, Scheveningen always had a strong identity of its own. For instance, it had its own football club, playing in the highest Dutch division (its name was "Scheveningen Holland Sport"). In the course of the second half of the 20th century, this club was forced to merge with ADO Den Haag.
From 21 April 1960, Jan Akkerman interviewed in Dutch magazine Veronica, 1973 the pirate radio station Radio Veronica Juul Geleick - Geschiedenis Veronica 1973 broadcast its programmes from an anchorage in the North Sea about four miles off the Scheveningen coast, originally calling itself Vrije Radio Omroep Nederland (VRON), Free Radio Station of Netherlands. It was joined by Radio Noordzee Internationaal in 1970 Hans Knot - De vermeende spionage van RNI and the relaunched Radio Caroline in late 1972. When the Netherlands ratified the Treaty of Strasbourg on 1 September 1974, Billboard (5 May 1973) Veronica applied for legal status and became the VOO, Caroline moved anchorage to the English coast, and RNI closed down. Memorable episodes during this period included the stranding of Radio Veronica's ship, the Norderney, which lost its anchor in a storm and ran aground on Scheveningen beach on 2 April 1973, and a firebomb attack on RNI's ship, the Mebo II, on 15 May 1971.
Since the 1970s the population of the original Scheveningen changed as the fishing industry declined and some artists and professionals moved in. Most of the fishermen, captains and trawler owners houses were demolished. Some still remain and have been protected by the authorities, including some of the original 'hofjes', in an enclosed area with small row houses on each side.
Slobodan Milošević, the 3rd president of Serbia and Montenegro was found dead in his prison cell on 11 March 2006 while he was being held in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention center in Scheveningen.
Because of the closedness of the original village community, many shared the same surnames. This led to the introduction of nicknames in order to distinguish families better. For example, certain members from the Pronk family were known as 'the horse man', 'Piet the mouse', 'Born without a tooth' or 'Gerrit de sermon'. Some common 'typical Scheveningen' family names are, for example, Bal, Dijkhuizen, Groen, Korving, Den Heijer, Knoester, De Niet, Plugge, Pronk, Rog, Spaans, Taal, Toet, Vrolijk, Zuurmond and Van der Zwan. Through the opening up of the fishing village from the beginning of the 20th century, this phenomenon has gradually become obsolete. (Access date 26 September 2023)
|
|
