We lived in Leiden for a year and started to understand a little of the history of that non-conformist city. Historically a site of tolerance and diversity, from whence the “Founding Fathers” sailed to establish their version of freedom in America. There are several monuments to and reminders of the Mayflower connection at various points around the city, including the ruins of the Vrouwekerk (Our Lady’s Church) where children now play and locals meet for a quiet evening drink.

Leiden occupies a central space in the emergence of the Netherlands as an independent and modern nation, for it was here that William of Orange won a great victory over Spanish Imperialism with the “Leiden Ontzet” in 1574. That was the “Relief of Leiden”, enabled by breaching the dykes and flooding the countryside. A defence strategy the Dutch developed and adhered to until the Nazi invasion. The photo at right shows a dramatic interpretation of Leiden during the siege, held in the Pieterskerk back in 2011 and photographed by Erwin Olaf.

There’s a lot of history here, much of it “official” and just as much generated by people and groups in the community. For example, Leiden was known as Lugdunum Batavorum in Roman times and was the Empire’s northern-most outpost on the Rijn, with a canal dug from their fortress at Matilo to what is now Rotterdam. Not much building remains because stone had to be shipped down the Rhine, so most construction was wood, now rotted away.

For hundreds of years this was the river’s only crossing point, the spot today marked by the junction of the “Old” and “New” Rhine with markets and cafes and Rondvaart (“roundtrips” or river cruises). No wonder it was the seat of the Counts of Holland for centuries, and you can visit their Gravensteen, or Count’s stone, ie castle, with its pretty forecourt – once the execution square. And across the square is the Latin School attended by Rembrandt, because Leiden was the artist’s birthplace and hometown until he moved to Amsterdam as a young man.

Shortly after the Relief from the Spanish Siege, Willem van Oranje established Leiden University, the oldest in the Netherlands (1575) which includes amongst its alumni and academic staff – Descartes, Hugo Grotius (progenitor of the Law of the Sea), Spinoza, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2014’s Fields Medal winner Manjul Bhargava, mathematician Paul Ehrenfest, and his wife Tatyana Afanasyeva, the physicist Lorenz and Einstein.

And then in 1590 the University set up the Hortus Botanicus, the oldest Botanic Garden in Europe, within the original university grounds. It soon came to host and cultivate plants from around the world, especially from the growing Dutch empire in the Caribbean and the East Indies.
All through this old city are hofjes or almshouses established by nobles, merchants and the Gemeente (city community) for looking after old people, especially widows. And the Graan Magasyn which stored grain for the poor. Like the Netherlands generally, Leiden has a rich legacy of community-mindedness.
But then, today you’ll find a series of sculptured stone suitcases scattered at various points in the inner city. During the Nazi occupation, these were places where Jews were apprehended and just left their luggage behind them. The first case sits outside the old Police Station, used by the Gestapo as their HQ.

As well, Leiden was the hometown of Marinus van der Lubbe. Who? you may well ask. Well, van der Lubbe was the communist drifter who set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin, giving Hitler the excuse to stage a coup and jail most of his leftist and liberal opponents. Marinus has variously been regarded as a stooge, hapless victim, idiot or pawn, but the full story is much more complex and interesting. He is one of the misunderstood figures of the last century, and to Leiden he is worth remembering.
There’s a modest but prideful monument to him next to the Morspoort, or “gallows gate” which matches similar stones in Berlin and Leipzig (where he was executed).
The second photo shows him with his mother and two older brothers. For more on Marinus look here (in Dutch) and a nice retelling of his life in English, here.
Lots more photos of Leiden here on iPernity and also on 500px.

Later, right before Xmas Eve, South Holland was buffeted by an even bigger windstorm. I couldn’t sleep listening to the house shaking and century-old timbers creaking and far-off doors banging. All the untold and unfathomable noises of a wild night like the whispering of the worlds. The morning gave us a wintry day, not particularly cold but always threatening. People scrambled through the narrow streets for last minute shopping. Rows of bikes were blown over by sudden gusts. Clatter clatter clatter in a chain reaction or like a line of dominos falling. It started raining about midday and I got soaked going to the shops, had to change my pants and dry off my boots under the heater. But then the storm eased as it always does on the eve of Christ’s birth, or as a pagan might prefer - the midwinter festival. I go for a walk about 11 o’clock through wet historic streets, listening to hymns and carols from the catholic church in what would be the town square, except that Leiden is so old and chaotic it doesn’t have a centre. The wind has dropped and the calm of christmas eve descends on the whole of Holland. The choral voices carry across the Old Rhine, past the little castle on the man-made hill, built around 1250 as a shelter from the floods of nature. People arrive at the square solid church as others are leaving, all well dressed in double breasted coats, neatly folded scarves and leather gloves. The establishment, or at least men with connections.

I walk through narrow lanes towards Pieterskerk over cobblestones wet and shiny in the lamplight. This is the oldest part of the city, Gothic and picturesque by day. It includes a house Rembrandt lived in, and the Latin School he attended. The limestone church was there when William the Silent relieved the Spanish Siege during the 80 Years War in 1574, effectively setting Holland on its course towards modern nationhood. There’s a courtyard in front flanked by a garden wall and the House of the Counts of Holland, the seat of the rulers for 500 years. It’s a quiet and reflective little square, but on the other side of the Palace is different square where criminals and traitors were publicly executed. A medieval brick tower holds the gallery from which ladies watched the executions. I hear voices from within the Pieterskerk, but no carols. A few lights in the high stained glass windows. Another well dressed man goes towards the huge doors and pushes past a square dark figure, who then lurches suddenly towards me. She speaks at me in sing-song Dutch and then guttural English, asking if I know her. I do in fact recognise her as one of the homeless from Centraal Station, she’s always scamming one way or another, and this time she’s selling postcards. And it’s christmas eve and that line from the Pogues’ song is running through my head, the boys of the NYPD choir still singin’ “Galway Bay” and the bells are ringing out for Xmas Day. So maybe she’s a drunk and a prostitute but I’ve got money in me kick as Australians used to say, and the good burghers are all rugged up and going their own way, so I pull out the first note I find in my wallet and give her twenty euro. She kisses me and luckily I turn my head and her stinking breath lands on my cheek.

I venture on along the Rapenburg, once famous as the grand avenue of the city, rivalling the canals of Amsterdam. Except Leiden has only one of them, tree-lined and curved this elegantly. Many prominent and famous people have lived along here including the anthropologist Siebold who opened Japan to Dutch trade before the Americans used their gunboats, and who’s house is now a museum. Nearby at Rapenburg 23 lived Rene Descartes, the French mathematician and writer known as the “father of modern philosophy” mainly because of his saying I think therefore I am. Not far to the southeast, across the Witte Singel, I could have strolled to the home of Paul Ehrenfest and his mathematician wife Tatyana Afanasyeva who’d fled from anti-Jewish discrimination in Germany and Russia. Their “White House” on White Rose Street was the focus of many formal and informal meetings and discussions between the great minds of Europe in the early 20th Century, including Einstein who stayed often in the upstairs bedroom facing the Pieterskerk. All those eminences signed the wall and their signatures are still there, although the house is closed to the public. Their scientific and philosophic discussions helped transform the world as we know it today, with electric grids and controlled voltage, batteries for our iPads, quantum theory, nuclear physics, and all the technological good and bad we take for granted a century later. Of course, we know, the world is a much better place this christmas eve than it was when those important people talked late into the night on White Rose Street nearly a hundred years ago. And the church bells rang then as they do now. A Non-conformist Haven So many famous people inhabit the books written about this place, and Leiden has lots of books. At one stage it was the biggest publisher of banned and unacceptable texts in all of Europe. A haven for non-conformists and rebels. And yet there are still the down and out and the homeless, hanging around the alleys near the station. All the bells in the city are ringing by this late hour and I consider walking back across to van der Lubbe’s square but go past his memorial stone at the Morspoort instead. Mors in Dutch means “moors” or swamp and this was the swampy side of town in the 15th and 16th Century.

Rather funny since most of central Holland sits in an extended swamp. Outside this gate they located the hanging ground for common criminals, after the execution square near Pieterskerk ceased to be used because the large houses around there were bought up by rich merchants and academics. So we call this part of town “the gallows gate.” Beside the picturesque 16th Century gateway, unnoticed by most passers-by, is a grey stone cube inscribed for Marinus van der Lubbe. A local born communist, he set fire to the Reichstag in 1933 and gave Hitler the excuse to seize power. He was later hanged at Liepzig. Often portrayed as an idiot and a stooge, van der Lubbe is remembered and honoured here, although he was clearly from the wrong side of town. An orphan, self educated, blind in one eye, expelled from the Dutch Communist Party for being too sincere. He twice tried to swim the English Channel for a bet, walked to Calais, slept in the fields, walked to Berlin and intended to walk on to Russia in 1933 because he’d heard it was a worker’s paradise. On the way he tried to start a revolution in Germany by setting their parliament alight, was caught and executed, with no one there to speak for him or know who he really was. Only small tour groups, mostly middle aged and all white, stop to look at this engraved stone and even then most of them turn to photograph the Morspoort instead. So here in one little medieval city, on a cold yet still winter’s night, the night before christmas, a wanderer can find bits and pieces of modern history and minor fragments of significance. The Galgewater, at the end of the Rapenburg near where the Rhine opens out to a small harbour, is now a ship museum. Little lights sway up the masts and down the rigging, giving the appearance of a row of illuminated xmas trees bobbing away to the west, as the river slowly glides to the sea. As it has always done. And just as I turn towards home I look up at the clear cold sky and the uncounted frozen stars. The Milky Way seems less crowded than in Australia but I find Orion’s belt and look lower to the left searching for the Pleiades. They’re not there. I stand on a cold bridge over the Old Rhine scanning the northern hemisphere, and yes, there they are, the Seven Sisters, to the right of Orion. To the right! It’s the opposite way round, here on top of the world! Finally I stroll back down Haarlemmerstraat thinking about that line from Shane Maloney, a friend of mine in youth and now a crime writer. His character lies drunk in the gutter and looks up at the band of stars who speak to him - we may be tiny, but you are insignificant.

And so it goes, year after year.