Andere Tijden

Lots of coughing and lots of homesickness. In the sixties and seventies, young children with asthma were sometimes placed in a home with other asthma patients for years to get their asthma under control. There was a constant search for the right treatment methods for asthma. Children from that time look back on that time; torn from their families and placed outside of society. One of them is actor/writer/director Edwin de Vries, who was placed in a home in Davos, Switzerland, for almost a year when he was nine. He sent desperate letters home and tells what that time meant to him.

In the mid-1990s, Utrecht counted hundreds of homeless people. There were few facilities for this group. Constand de Jonge and Sylvia van Woudenberg wanted to improve the living conditions of the homeless. They had to be able to generate an income, feel better about themselves and they wanted to give them a face. Together they founded the Utrechtse Straatnieuws, the first homeless newspaper in the Netherlands. It became a resounding success, but nowadays the newspaper is in dire straits. What has changed?

In the late sixties, the centre of Arnhem is confronted with an explosion of violence, intimidation, prostitution and undermining of authority. The underworld rules and both entrepreneurs and residents are terrified. The police are laughed at and cannot get a grip on the matter. Things get so out of hand that, for the first time, a special police unit is created. The Group Special Assignments, under the inspiring leadership of the then very young Jan Wilzing, must put an end to this. And they do. Their unorthodox methods quickly earn the group the nickname Het Gelders Bloedorkest.

In the 1960s, the Netherlands faced a major shortage of nurses. To make the profession more attractive, special nurse flats were built at many hospitals. They were also called the Turtle Dove or the Hunker Bunker. These residential complexes offered young women a protected environment during their nursing training. While their contemporaries celebrated freedom in those years, these women worked 45 hours a week. The responsibility was great and both physically and mentally challenging. How did this period shape them?

Once, in the heyday of the Cold War, the Netherlands had almost a thousand tanks. But after the Fall of the Wall, there were fewer and in 2011 the last tanks disappeared from the Dutch army. What is hard to imagine for the average citizen: the old tanks still evoke nostalgia among the tankers, as the crew is called.

At a time when concerns about AI, big tech and social media are growing, we look back at the early days of the internet.

The Wadden Sea, nursery and foraging area for countless birds, fish and seals, is an internationally recognised nature reserve. This has not always been the case. In the 1960s, the Wadden Sea faced numerous threats: pollution by industry, gas drilling, excessive discharges and the controversial use of the so-called 'grease pipe' in Groningen. The impact of overtourism and plans for land reclamation and dams in the area also led to heated discussions about the future of this vulnerable ecosystem.

Langs de Europese westkust, van de Noordkaap in Noorwegen tot aan de Spaanse grens, staan ze nog altijd: tienduizenden Duitse bunkers, verspreid over meer dan 5.000 kilometer. Deze betonnen overblijfselen maken deel uit van de Atlantikwall, de gigantische verdedigingslinie die de nazi's tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog aanlegden om een geallieerde invasie tegen te houden. Ruim tachtig jaar later zijn ze uitgegroeid tot stille getuigen van een donkere periode. Een tweeluik over de geschiedenis van de Atlantikwall.

After reconstruction, the Netherlands had to learn how to recreate. Since 1960, work-free Saturdays have brought us extra free time, and with annually rising incomes, we flock to parks, bulb fields, campsites, and pop concerts. For many, summer vacations have become the most wonderful time of the year: caravans travel further and further, even to the southern Spanish sun, where you can even buy meatballs. Nowadays, technology offers us every comfort, and we don't even have to leave the house to shop. Yet, we seem to spend our increased free time increasingly scrolling endlessly on our phones. Should we learn how to recreate now, too?

1980. A tank drives through Amsterdam's city center to evict squatters from Vondelstraat. Anyone who thinks society has only just become truly polarized forgets that fierce disagreements have always existed throughout our history. And even then, the world kept turning. Left-wing activists battling riot police, farmers protesting, and anger over the arrival of an asylum center; it's all happened before. At times, emotions ran so high that tanks were even deployed to bring things under control. Yet, even that conflict has died down over the years and has been forgotten by many.

Along the European West Coast, from the North Cape in Norway to the Spanish border, they are still: tens of thousands of German bunkers, spread over more than 5,000 kilometers. These concrete remains are part of the Atlantic Wall, the gigantic line of defense that the Nazis installed during the Second World War to stop an allied invasion. More than eighty years later, they have become silent witnesses of a dark period. A diptych about the history of the Atlantic Wall.

Sometimes love is innocent, sometimes painful. You could meet the love of your life on the shop floor of a garment factory. But often love stories are more complex. Like that of the priest who fell in love with a young Papuan woman. They fled to the jungle and married. In the 1970s, some clergymen questioned celibacy. This made the Netherlands international news. The engagement photos of Crown Princess Beatrix and Claus also went viral. The choice of a German man raised eyebrows among some, but others felt validated by it.

These days, the call is to have an emergency kit in the attic and be resilient to emergencies. In the 1950s—in the midst of the Cold War—we prepared for the Russians' arrival. Pamphlets, training sessions, and a newly formed Civil Defense organization were intended to ensure well-prepared citizens. The fear of war was immense, with the horrors of World War II still fresh in memory. Prisoners, eyewitnesses of the bombing of Rotterdam, and members of the resistance share their experiences. These heroes are juxtaposed with a portrait of people who later turned out to have been on the wrong side.

After Suriname's independence on November 25, 1975, some 300,000 Surinamese people arrived in the Netherlands—as Dutch citizens, with full rights. But the welcome was far from warm. It highlighted a painful chapter in Dutch history: how Surinamese families, despite their rights, were excluded from certain neighborhoods.

A two-part series about the hostage-taking of the Indonesian Consulate in Amsterdam by seven Moluccan youths on December 4, 1975. For the first time, the Moluccan hostage-takers themselves tell what happened during the hostage-taking, and what motivated them to act as they did.

A two-part series about the hostage-taking of the Indonesian Consulate in Amsterdam by seven Moluccan youths on December 4, 1975. For the first time, the Moluccan hostage-takers themselves tell what happened during the hostage-taking, and what motivated them to act as they did.

Dutch folk music seems to have become increasingly mainstream, and the genre's artists are working overtime, performing night after night. But many artists before them had to fight hard for a little attention in the Netherlands. National radio stations, in particular, should have paid much more attention to this quintessentially Dutch product. Zangeres Zonder Naam (The Singer Without a Name) felt deprived, as did Johnny Hoes. In the 1950s, the VARA even announced a full-blown boycott of Johnny Jordaan's songs, claiming they were corrupting the working class.

Flashback to the 1980s and 1990s, when AIDS was still a fatal disease and patients often died in isolation. We speak with former buddies who volunteered to support AIDS patients until their final days, offering practical help, closeness, hugs, and a listening ear, at a time when many others were afraid to even touch them. We also hear the story of someone who organized holidays at IJsselvliedt, an initiative where people with HIV could briefly escape the daily fear and stigma. These testimonies make tangible how intense, human, and intimate the fight against AIDS in the Netherlands has been.

He is widely regarded as the greatest Dutch conservationist of all time: Jac. P. Thijsse. He put nature in the Netherlands on the map as the founder of Natuurmomenten (Nature Moments) in 1905 and as the author of the Verkade nature picture books. His book "Texel" launched mass tourism to the Wadden Island. Author Dik van de Meulen now presents a new biography about the Freek Vonk of the last century, a master of all trades: writing, drawing, and storytelling. Jac. P. Thijsse influences politicians, biologists, and writers and is a beloved and well-known Dutchman. What has become of his ideals eighty years after his death?