Herman de Man house

Salomon Herman (Sal) Hamburger was born on July 11, 1898, in Woerden, Rijnstraat 24. He was the youngest in a family of three children. Later, he became a Dutch writer under the pseudonym "Herman de Man," known mainly for literary regional novels set primarily in the Lopikerwaard and Krimpenerwaard.

The Hamburger family rented the house (1906-1910) at the corner of the village square in Benschop. In this front house, owned by Cornelis Pieter Beijen, there was also a textile shop. Father Hamburger also went door-to-door with thread and ribbon.

He wrote many books. Many stories in De koets are set in Benschop. 
The Hamburger family lived from 1910 to 1916 in Oudewater at Leeuweringerstraat 61. Many places from this town appear in his books.

From 1916, the Hamburger family lived at Keizerstraat 35-37 in Gouda.
Herman Salomon Hamburger Sr. had a venduhuis (auction house) at Molenwerf 9 starting in 1916.

De Man became known for novels and stories set almost without exception in the Dutch polders. Farmers, vagabonds, day laborers' cottages, monumental farms (On a Journey with Herman de Man, Gé Vaartjes)

 De Man grew up as the Jewish boy Sallie Hamburger in the South Holland polders, amidst a strict Calvinist population. He wrote stories, novellas, and novels, of which Het wassende water is the most famous book.

Biography Gé Vaartjes: De Man wrote long letters weekly about what he experienced and what moved him, and almost all of them have been preserved. Sometimes it is beautiful literature: touching, also entertaining, but above all revealing. Most letters are so informative, so interesting, or so poignant that I would like to include them in their entirety at first. Of course, that’s not possible. It’s like having to throw away ninety percent of a large collection of gemstones simply because your box is too small. (Biographical resuscitation About Herman de Man, Gé Vaartjes)

He would like to settle in the fertile Willeskop. His land is good and free from twigs. It has largely been spared from white clover, thistles, henbane, and common mullein through continuous faithful cultivation. The last tenant there in Linschoten can be proud of it. Gieljan likes to walk over that land in the evening. The view here particularly resembles 't Hoenkoopsche, although it is more treeless and therefore wider.

The land borders Blokland, a remote neighborhood, and then extends wider to 't Benschopsche. Especially near the Benschopsche wetering, there are excellent heads of river clay. He likes to go there with his gun. Not so much to hunt, but to wander over the richly vegetated boundaries, where he can dreamily imagine being in distant foreign lands, as it is so lush and so unreal far from inhabited areas. For even in Willeskop, he cannot shake off that wild dream of happiness.

As long as the flat land is still winter, there are many Nordic duck legs to shoot. But at the wild opening of a new blooming year, when all crops burst from the ground with uncontrollable will and lust, it becomes so lovely and quiet on those dikes.
 

And the Lekijs was not yet passable, for there on the boundary of the rivers, there are ice holes. Then they were stuck like rats in a trap, and that lasted two days. The radio announced it well, but back in Cabauw, the people were too frugal and hardly heard about it.

goats:

I know all the neighborhoods from this region, and I know them well. In some way, I love all those neighborhoods, some a bit more, some a bit less. The land of stinking wealthy farmers on one side, and on the other side, poor day laborers without land and feed, where the children get sore heads due to food shortages in the winter.

On that Tiendeweg between Benschop and Blokland, with the low wall of greenery, bordering the hay fields of the Benschopsche farmers. How good it is here. The sun above the ripening grass, the hayfield turning into a lush multicolor, the warm sun above his head and neck and hair; delightful that sun... delightful that growth power in the coppice, where all kinds of grass thrive out of the warm earth. The ditches are full of proud flowers, which shoot up vigorously from the ditch. And also in those ditches, the fierce myriad life stirs. Fish and black beetles, water fleas, damselflies, salamanders with their speckled bellies, one eats the other... but it lives, it lives fiercely.

The laborers from Koolwijk sail by with their pointed boats, on which the blue and yellow copper milk cans stood in rows.
Their bread was very good, baked by Mrs. Verlouw herself in the red brick oven. When crispy white sugar was sprinkled on top, it tasted unforgettable. There was also white spring cheese with large holes, which smelled of wet young grass and had a taste reminiscent of another world. And then came one egg after another, just laid by the cuckoo; then a plate of porridge and some berries and strawberries to color the cool porridge... dear me, Liesje didn't remember ever having eaten so much and so deliciously.
The sound of scythes and rumbling carts gradually faded over the land at her feet. The persistent sad bass of a dog emerged as the silence started to dull, and only the rustling song of the poplars remained
where it was unbearably hot in summer and creaked in winter.

She also looks at her old man. He is not beautiful, but crooked from toil and misgrowth. He has given his bloom to the farmer, for eight guilders a week, sometimes in winter even seven. It is a wage that can be called a weekly wage, but the farmer gets a lot from it.

There is a cage house at the Benschopper upper end. One was happy if a duck landed just on the cage water. One already knew well how to mask his human scent. And sneak up to the pipes, sweep the end net, command the little dog, like a trained cage keeper. If the duck is gone, the footwood is soaked in the pipes, after the foot peeling time, one has to work in the fields, and then the grass ripens, and they continue with haymaking. After haymaking, he must dig up early potatoes, and once that’s over, the nets and mesh, the mats, hoops, and duck nests are checked. There is always something to renew because unbeknownst to him, it is cage time again every year. When the boys living around the village release the kites, the first flights of ducks also land on the cage wheel; that always comes together. And then there is much work in the cage, almost day and night.

When for weeks the summer sun shines from a clear sky, and suddenly in the morning there is no prancing light over the green polders anymore, but such a sickly oppressive fog with a stench hanging in it, then he always thinks of wash day. On the opposite side of the wetering stands a church poplar, a slender dark tree reaching towards heaven without any flaws whatsoever. The branching top of that church tree is beautifully divided, forming a twisted column. It is the most beautiful tree in Benschop,

he estimates. But when fumes hang over the polders, he also sees that tree only as a formless shadow, a long haziness, without color or edges.

Because everyone is in their environment, and everything belonging to it is the closest. The farmer gladly smells manure and slurry because manure and slurry bring joy to the soil. And the profit, which is all it started with.

Nineteen years, poor and not overly well-nourished. Being a child in a day laborers' house, a shabby house far too small for their fourteen alive children, of which he is the eldest. A father who is bent from working the land and silent. A father who parsimoniously fills his pipe, not until he feels the fire burning on his tongue. And a mother who had to provide for everyone with just a few guilders a week; but not to ask what kind of food that sometimes was.

Potatoes were generally enough; they grew them themselves. But that does not suffice, only then for a sagging belly. And now in the last years, three of the fourteen earn a small extra bit. After him follow two sisters who serve in Termeij, for living, for clothes, and some more money for mother. But he still stays home and pays all earnings properly, 

The harsh winter of the nineties:

"Life has become ebbing and dull for the inhabitants of the remote neighborhoods; they, however, know the tides and are prepared in their defense against boredom. What a winter does not offer to do in the house and stable, where no skilled worker needs to come. Mending nets, sealing traps, knitting hurdles, greasing wagon axles, painting and brushing here and there. And then there is the care for seed and planting material, manure, summer gear, and the maintenance of all ongoing equipment. And does the care of the cattle in the stable, of the feed in the attic, and the own harvest not require work in abundance? Certainly, a farmer always has his work. That is known from old."
 

"And also in the farmsteads, much winter work had to remain undone. Thus the eight-foot hop wood had become much too bitter to knit hurdles from. And when the small craftwork in the farm and stable was completely finished and suffered, there was honestly no dry slice of bread left to earn for a day laborer."

"

Every day, as the unemployed day laborers of the koepolders looked over the endless snow fields, they found there other dead animals, that had been struck down by the severity of this unusual cold. And they said to their wives: ‘man, man, this will also become our turn, because such cold, we cannot possibly avoid from the house.’

"Yes, because what was actually available for heating in those small workers' huts? Loosely willow bark, which is just flimsy fodder for the open fireplate. And so they all huddled together in the kitchen, where they also slept together, just to not lose any warmth. And during the day, the anxious wives wrapped molton blankets around the children; the children shivered. They did not have enough fat, and their clothes were certainly not suited for a winter like this. And one knows it: old clothes, cold clothes!"

Ah...... it was just dark in those houses. Those houses, yes, what kind of houses are those? Meter by meter added up, it’s still not much. Low walls, often brick walls, where the spiteful east wind blows through and a warm thatched roof on top, warm as long as the reed has not yet degenerated and is. Shelters against the elements, certainly, that they are, but not built for winters of this kind.

"Listen maid. In the past? Then I used to knock the plums out of the trees at the neighbors with a stick. They hung over a mud ditch. I wiped them a bit and ate them. Back then, people had resistance. That fuss of today. A little pill here, a little pill there..."

 day laborer very alone, an old gnarled farmer, whose back is bent towards the spade. His wife is dead, his children are gone, and he remains alone in poverty. But he does not ask for much. The women from the Nieuwpoort berry house live, reportedly, on nineteen cents per day; well, then that old day laborer can certainly manage with seventeen cents and perhaps even less. Because he lives off kohlrabi that he grows himself and fish that he catches himself. Like a hermit from antiquity; believe it or not. But where is it. Because it is claimed all around, by men who know a good deal about gathering and spending money. That crooked man comes to Houten Gert and says hungrily: ‘Boss Gert, you have skinned an otter, may I have the leg?’

‘What do you want to do with the leg? Not to make soup, I hope?’ asks Houten Gert grimly.

A lonely man from the backcountry who speaks little, who can only fight against the unfavor of the elements, who has almost unlearned to speak because there are no neighbors around, has certainly unlearned to lie. And he says earnestly, having heard from his grandfather when alive - and he lived near Gorcum along the broad Waal - that otter leg is tasty and edible. And in six years that toiler has not tasted meat again since the rabbit trapping has cost him exorbitantly. Not to mention the heavy beating he received from the Frisian poacher of Mr. Baron. The Lords of the Court punish the poachers severely.

It is an age-old institution that, on the right side of the Lopiker wetering from Schoonhoven to IJsselstein, the poor people live. And that is easily explained. The Lopiker wetering, formerly called the Lobeke, runs parallel to the Lek River, at most no more than four hundred meters behind it, yes, here and there even less. There are only shallow tracts of land between the two rivers. But on the other side of the wetering, the lands extend behind the Polsbroeksche and Benschopsche quay, half an hour's walk deep. There, the grass farmers have room for mowing and grazing land; on this side, there are also the low wide farms, as old as the polders themselves. And it goes back further than human memory and human recounting, because when the Dike was still managed by the Church of Utrecht, these polders had already been drained by a stepped wind drainage on Lopik, Willeskop, and the Vlist."

"It is an age-old institution that, on the right side of the Lopiker wetering from Schoonhoven to IJsselstein, the poor people live. And that is easily explained. The Lopiker wetering, formerly called the Lobeke, runs parallel to the Lek River, at most no more than four hundred meters behind it, yes, here and there even less. There are only shallow tracts of land between the two rivers. But on the other side of the wetering, the lands extend behind the Polsbroeksche and Benschopsche quay, half an hour's walk deep. There, the grass farmers have room for mowing and grazing land; on this side, there are also the low wide farms, as old as the polders themselves. And it goes back further than human memory and human recounting, because when the Dike was still managed by the Church of Utrecht, these polders had already been drained by a stepped wind drainage on Lopik, Willeskop, and the Vlist. Poverty on one side - day laborers and reed workers, reed cutters, bulrush binders, and small tradespeople - the wealth of heavily inherited farmers on the other side gives this extended neighborhood, which only has two tiny village centers, a completely unique position."

"Cold, cold, everywhere cold, everywhere inhospitable chill." 
 

"All the vermin in the ground has frozen in the nineties, even the badger in his burrow. No more mouse-hunting was left, no creeping vermin, no ferrets and weasels. Everything searching for quarters and shelter in the warm earth or in hollow trees was cut off from life chances. Because two meters deep, the ground was devoured. But the vermin above the earth has bred to this day, because the longer that freezing lasted from all corners of heaven, the more the irregular life increased."

"

Thus, the hardship did not shorten nor turn back. The months passed, it was Christmas, it was New Year, the month of January passed in the same severity, and hunger came to the lips. Waiting mother - was it the resigned parole of the menfolk: everything comes to an end; so bitter, so desolate, it will not remain. Waiting mother......

And yes, towards the end of January, there was a solution. It had even been too cold that month to chop knots along the waterways, as is customary around that time, and to saw branches from the high trees."

"The Pauwen, Lekkerkerkers, and Griffioens have much money and all the land. All that, whether social or religious, stands up against this wise authority, must perish. All that is foreign and wants to invade, becomes impoverished. There, the mighty farmers reign, an hereditary dynasty. In the civil administrations, the church councils, and the polder chairs, those names have counted from old. They are bastions of orthodox faith and land loyalty. Worthily, they have, through the centuries, cultivated, governed, and protected this region against disbelief and water."

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