"Huis Doorn have been awarded the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award 2015.
A total of 28 organizations receive the heritage prize. The Vrienden Huis Doorn foundation receives the prize in the Special effort category. Europa Nostra received 263 nominations from 29 countries.
The award will take place at a ceremony on June 11 at Oslo City Hall in Norway. On that occasion, seven prize winners will also be declared Grand Prix laureates and one winner will receive the Audience Award based on an online election. You can vote until May 31.
Huis Doorn is a country house from the seventeenth century that is best known as the residence of the expelled German Emperor Wilhelm II, who lived there from 1920 until his death in 1941. The dedicated efforts of the 180 volunteers of Friends Huis Doorn are of great importance to the preservation and accessibility of Huis Doorn.
The EU Prizes for Cultural Heritage are awarded each year by Europa Nostra. Nominations for the Europa Nostra Awards 2016 can be submitted from 1 May."
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House Doorn Association of Friends
April 14, 2015 | Dedicated service | Netherlands
Huis Doorn is a 17th century manor house near Utrecht which achieved fame as the last residence of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. He lived there from 1920 until his death in 1941 and is buried in a mausoleum in the grounds. The house is now a museum, arranged and furnished exactly as it was when the Kaiser was in residence.
The Friends of Huis Doorn were formed over 20 years ago to support the Museum. Its volunteers provide indispensible services to the museum, from the restoration of vulnerable historic textiles, helping with the housekeeping tasks of the curators, executing collection registration tasks, maintaining the rose garden and conducting guided tours. The Friends' role increased substantially in 2012, when the Dutch Ministry of Culture decided to cut back on subsidies for the Museum by 50%. The number of staff members had to be reduced and the effects would have been devastating had not the Friends taken the responsibility to fill the gap and increase their support for Huis Doorn.
This is a further worthy example of the importance, even necessity, of volunteer contribution today. The activity of the 'Friends of Huis Doorn' is a salutary example of volunteers supporting a public heritage institution through focused organization of different task groups dedicated to the management of a historic house museum. The Jury was particularly struck by the commitment of some 180 volunteers when, threatened with closure due to withdrawal of state support, Huis Doorn was saved by their efforts, securing the accessibility to this popular site and the conservation of its fine collections. Furthermore, the Friends have created an admirable synergy between public and voluntary initiatives, encouraging active citizenship and social development. By offering hands-on experience of the traditional skills essential in its work, the Friends give visitors, both local and from further afield, the opportunity to become engaged with this unusual heritage memorial.
More information
www.huisdoorn.nl/nl/organisatie/stichting-vrienden"
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History Huis Doorn
"Huis Doorn is a castle, knight's court town and estate on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug in Doorn in the Dutch province of Utrecht and is best known for the German ex-Emperor Wilhelm II, who lived there from 1920 until his death in 1941.
The first mention of the place Doorn dates from the year 838. The medieval house was originally a moated castle that was built at the end of the 13th century for provost Adolf van Waldeck.[1] In the centuries that followed, it remained the property and residence of the cathedral priests of Utrecht. In 1322 it was destroyed. Rebuilding began about twenty-five years later. The remains of this structure were found during excavation work, the municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug announced on 23 February 2015.[2] It consisted of three round towers and a square main building.
In 1536 it became a knight's court town. In the 16th and 17th centuries, residential buildings arose around the courtyard that now form a whole with the main building. In 1796 the house was radically renovated, possibly under the direction of the Amsterdam architect Abraham van der Hart. The surrounding park was laid out in English landscape style.
The size of the estate was an obstacle to the development of the village of Doorn. In 1874 the estate was parceled out.
At the end of the 19th century, the house was inhabited by Frans Labouchère (1854-1938), alderman of the municipality of Doorn and in 1894 the first chairman of the Doornsche Golf.
Wilhelm II
On August 16, 1919, the former German emperor Wilhelm II bought Huis Doorn, including the adjacent sixty hectares of forest, from the owner Ella Baroness Van Heemstra (Audrey Hepburn's mother). One of the reasons was that the estate was easy to secure. He paid half a million guilders for it and then had it renovated. The additional costs amounted to 850,000 guilders. The castle was fully equipped, including electricity, modern plumbing and heating. He also moved the driveway from Dorpsstraat to the quieter Langbroekerweg, where a gatehouse in Dutch neo-Renaissance style was erected. The castle was decorated with objects from his imperial palaces in Berlin and Potsdam. This furniture came to the Netherlands in 59 train carriages. On May 15, 1920, the former emperor moved into Huis Doorn.
Wilhelm lived in Huis Doorn with his wife Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, but she suffered from a serious heart ailment and died on April 11, 1921. With great ceremony, Augusta was taken by train to Potsdam, where she, at her own request, found her final resting place in the 'antique temple'. Wilhelm remarried on November 22, 1922 and then lived with his second wife Princess Hermine van Schönaich-Carolath at the castle until his own death on the estate on June 4, 1941. It was also remarkable that Wilhelm developed a great passion for woodcutting and felled trees almost daily and sawed into pieces. This was a great achievement for Wilhelm, especially because, due to complications at birth, he could not use his left arm all his life: so he did everything with only his right arm. After several years, the estate was largely deforested. Nowadays, however, there is not much to see because the forest on the estate has recovered and Wilhelm himself also took care of new plantings in his time. In Wilhelm's period, Huis Doorn itself contained paintings by Frederick the Great, battles and parades, portraits of himself, gobelins by Marie-Antoinette, a gold-decorated toilet bowl and more.
Although Wilhelm looked contemptuously at the Nazis and their ideology, in June 1940, barely a month after the Netherlands had been occupied by the German Nazi regime in May 1940, he did send a congratulatory telegram to Adolf Hitler regarding his victory in France. This gesture was more an initiative of Hermine, who was more committed to Nazism, and Wilhelm saw this as an opportunity to appease the Führer about the position of the nobility, which was increasingly under threat in the Third Reich. This 'telegram of happiness' to Hitler was seen by many Dutch people and the government, now in exile in London, as betrayal of, and ingratitude for, the hospitality of the Netherlands, which granted asylum to Wilhelm in 1918. This was one of the reasons for expropriating Huis Doorn from the Hohenzollern family after the war.
After the death of Wilhelm II, his remains were taken to the chapel, near the gatehouse. His funeral was, against the will of the former emperor, also attended by representatives of Nazi Germany, including the head of the German occupation forces in the Netherlands Arthur Seyß-Inquart. A mausoleum in classicist style was later built in the park of Huis Doorn under the direction of the German architect Hans Martin Kießling, after a design by Wilhelm himself. Wilhelm's body was placed in the mausoleum on June 4, 1942. Wilhelm's wish was to be buried with his other relatives in Potsdam after the restoration of the monarchy in Germany, but since that never happened, Germany became a republic after the Second World War, his body remains in Doorn where he still lies laid out.
Confiscation
After the Second World War, the Dutch State confiscated the house and estate as enemy property. Only the mausoleum containing Wilhelm's remains remained in the possession of the Hohenzollerns. In 1943, the Dutch government in exile issued the Enemy Assets Decree. This meant that all possessions of enemy nationals in the Netherlands passed into the hands of the Dutch State after the liberation. This confiscation not only served as 'Wiedergutmachung', but with the sale of these assets the Dutch government also obtained financial resources for the reconstruction of the Netherlands.
House Doorn was placed with the newly established Nederlandsche Beheersinstituut (NBI) of the Ministry of Justice, which managed it until the sale of the contents had taken place and the house had acquired an economic and social function. Enemy nationals could submit a request for de-enemy to the NBI.
The former Crown Prince Wilhelm von Preußen claimed the castle after the war, but a reduced council of ministers decided in 1947 not to return it to the family.
Since 2010, the management and maintenance of the building and estate has been in the hands of the Central Government Real Estate Agency. However, when Huis Doorn threatened to collapse in 2012 due to government austerity measures, Georg Friedrich Ferdinand Prinz von Preußen, the great-great-grandson of Wilhelm II and also the head of the Hohenzollern family, tried to get hold of the castle. In vain. Huis Doorn remained in the possession of the State of the Netherlands, as an independent Rijksmuseum.
Museum
Huis Doorn has been set up as a museum since the Second World War, after the death of Wilhelm II. Wilhelm II's adjutant wing, Sigurd von Ilsemann, became the first administrator. The opening was such a success that Von Ilsemann banned entry for persons under the age of fourteen to prevent damage to the interior.[11]
In 1991 and 1992 the castle was closed for renovations. The renovation was deemed necessary due to the presence of longhorn beetles in the rafters. The opportunity was taken to redecorate the basement with toilet facilities for visitors, a coffee room and a public area with reception. An alarm system was also installed.[11]
In 2000, the Council for Culture recommended scrapping the government subsidy. The argument given was that the museum is not important enough for the history of the Netherlands. After protests, the advice was not adopted. Otherwise it would have meant the death knell for the museum. Twelve years later, the same council recommended that the subsidy be halved. This time the advice was accepted. The Stichting tot Beheer van Huis Doorn stated that closure would threaten again as a result. This was prevented by, among other things, the dismissal of employees and the deployment of volunteers. In June 2015, the government announced that the park around the country house will be renovated for 2.8 million euros.[12]
The interior is largely as it was when the emperor lived there. Efforts have been made to keep these authentic as much as possible, but parts of the collection were returned in 1964 to the heirs of the emperor, the Hohenzollern family. The 18th-century painting De Dans by Antoine Watteau is also no longer in Huis Doorn. It was purchased by Nazi Germany after the death of Wilhelm II. The rooms on the first floor and the first floor are still almost authentic. In addition to furniture and utensils such as cutlery, the museum also contains a collection of imperial artifacts. Sometimes pieces are loaned for exhibitions elsewhere.
In 2021, the staff quarters in the attic of Huis Doorn will be redecorated with the largely authentic inventory from the depot. The staff quarters can be visited via a special tour.
The museum is open to the public from Tuesday to Sunday."
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