Leidsch Dagblad
- The Defective Water Supply Explained and Reduced to Modest Proportions
- Order of the Star in the East
- The Cinemas
The front page of the Leidsch Dagblad for 9 October 1926 mixed civic business with culture. A municipal notice signed by Mayor N. C. de Gijselaar announced that permit requests under the Nuisance Act were open for inspection and that objections would be heard at the Town Hall on 23 October. Below it, a city-news item set out to explain Leiden's faulty water supply and play down its scale, opening with a reference to the Electric Power Station. The paper also reported a lecture to a packed Nutszaal, where P. van Stam of Naarden spoke for the Leiden group of the Order of the Star in the East on "the expectation of Christ" and called human hope a constant from childhood onward. A cinema review described the sold-out Casino screening of the long-awaited "The Three Musketeers", twelve acts long, and judged that its length had not harmed its quality.
Translation
The Defective Water Supply Explained and Reduced to Modest Proportions
Give notice to the public that the said requests, with their enclosures, have been laid open for inspection at the Secretariat of this municipality; and also that on Saturday, 23 October next, at half past ten in the morning, at the Town Hall, an opportunity will be given to bring forward objections to these requests, while they draw attention to the fact that those who have not appeared before the municipal executive or one of its members, in accordance with Art. 7 of the Nuisance Act, in order to explain their objections orally, are not entitled to appeal.
N. C. DE GIJSELAAR, Mayor.
VAN STRIJEN, Secretary.
Leiden, 9 October 1926.
1938
CITY NEWS.
THE DEFECTIVE WATER SUPPLY EXPLAINED AND REDUCED TO MODEST PROPORTIONS.
Now that the Electric Power Station, thanks to the [?]
Order of the Star in the East
(Scheurleer & Zn.'s Bank), Breestraat 19.
ORDER OF THE STAR IN THE EAST.
The Expectation of Christ.
Before a completely filled Nutszaal, Mr. P. van Stam of Naarden gave a lecture last night on the above-mentioned subject. After the chairman had welcomed the numerous attendees on behalf of the Leiden group of the Star, the speaker began his address with the question: Do we then still expect anything? And the answer followed at once. From our childhood on, we have had our expectations, our illusions. And not only then; even now we still expect, we keep hoping.... because expecting is, after all, in our blood. What lies behind all those expectations? The hope and the longing for better, for more harmonious conditions of life. But still, we know that even when already
The Cinemas
we are able to do so, with those whom we recognize as our spiritual superiors.
THE CINEMAS.
For a long time, for many months even, the Casino management waited for "The Three Musketeers," and with it, undoubtedly, a large part of the Leiden public that takes an interest in watching films. But at last it has succeeded in securing this picture, and so the theatre was sold out last night! There was hardly any supporting programme to speak of, with the exception of the nice 3 October film. Everything this evening revolved around d'Artagnan and his three bosom friends: Athos, Porthos and Aramis, all well known from Alexandre Dumas's famous novel. Six acts before the interval, and six after! Clearly there was no time left for anything else. The length of the film, meanwhile, has certainly done nothing to detract from its quality. True, only a selection here and there could be taken from the story, but the connection is preserved, and d'Artagnan especially is by [?]
Context
What the Order of the Star in the East was waiting for
The lecture title, "the expectation of Christ", states the purpose of the organisation that hosted it. The Order of the Star in the East was set up by the leadership of the Theosophical Society to prepare the world for the arrival of a messianic World Teacher identified with Maitreya. It was named after the Star of Bethlehem to signal the approach of a new manifestation of "Christ-Maitreya", and its Head was the young South Indian Brahmin Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom leading Theosophists had singled out as the expected vehicle. By about 1926 the Order reached well beyond Theosophical circles: a third of its members did not belong to the Theosophical Society. That breadth fits the scene the paper describes, in which a speaker from Naarden, introduced by the chairman of a Leiden group of the Star, addressed a full Nutszaal and framed his message in terms of ordinary human hope rather than doctrine.
Why the Netherlands mattered to the movement
The Netherlands held a special place in the Order's history. Philip Dirk baron van Pallandt van Eerde met Krishnamurti in London in 1919, and in 1924 he gave away all his possessions at Ommen to the Eerde Foundation for the work of the new world teacher. When the Order of the Star in the East was succeeded by the Order of the Star in 1927, the new body was based at Ommen. Van Stam's Leiden lecture of October 1926 thus took place in a country that was becoming a centre of the movement. The expectation he described did not last long: Krishnamurti later rejected the messianic role, repudiated the Order's mission and in 1929 disbanded its successor, three years after this evening in the Nutszaal.
The Musketeers film the Casino had waited for
The visible part of the review names only the title, Dumas's novel and the characters, not the production or its star. One candidate is the 1921 American silent film directed by Fred Niblo, with Douglas Fairbanks as d'Artagnan, adapted from Dumas's 1844 novel. Fairbanks's biographer Jeffrey Vance called it the first of the grand Fairbanks costume films. If this was the film shown, the sold-out Leiden screening came about five years after its American release, a late run for a provincial theatre; the reviewer says the Casino management had waited many months to secure the picture. The paper's account of a twelve-act programme with only a short 3 October film alongside shows how a long feature could fill an entire provincial cinema evening.
Cinema-going in the Netherlands in the 1920s
The Casino review belongs to a period of rapid growth in Dutch cinema. The number of cinemas in the Netherlands rose from about 170 in 1916 to 300 in 1930, and national attendance doubled over the same span, from 15 million filmgoers to 30 million. The trade was organised: the Nederlandsche Bioscoopbond, officially founded in 1921, dominated the Dutch cinema world for years, and the rise of distributors as intermediaries between producers and exhibitors fundamentally changed how films reached Dutch screens. A local theatre's months-long wait for a sought-after foreign title, as the Leiden reviewer reports, took place within this system, in which exhibitors depended on distributors to obtain prints.
Original
DE GEBREKKIGE WATERVOORZIENING VERKLAARD EN TOT BESCHEIDEN PROPORTIES TERUGGEBRACHT.
Geven kennis aan het publiek, dat genoemde verzoeken met de bijlagen op de Secetarie dezer gemeente ter visie gelegd zijn; alsmede dat op Zaterdag, den 23 October e. k. des voormiddags te halfelf uren op het Raadhuis, gelegenheid zal worden gegeven om bezwaren tegen deze verzoeken in te brengen, terwijl zij er de aandacht op vestigen, dat niet tot beroep gerechtigd zijn zij, die niet overeenkomstig art. 7 der Hinderwet voor het gemeentebestuur of een zijner leden zijn verschenen, teneinde hun bezwaren mondeling toe te lichten. N. C. DE GIJSELAAR, Burgemeester. VAN STRIJEN, Secretaris. Leiden, 9 October 1926. 1938 STADSNIEUWS. DE GEBREKKIGE WATERVOORZIENING VERKLAARD EN TOT BESCHEIDEN PROPORTIES TERUGGEBRACHT. Nu de Electrische Centrale, dank zij de [?]
ORDE VAN DE STER IN HET OOSTEN.
(Scheurleer & Zn. ' s Bank), Breestraat 19. ORDE VAN DE STER IN HET OOSTEN. Christus verwachting. Voor een geheel gevulde Nutszaal hield gisteravond de heer P. van Stam uit Naarden over bovengenoemd onderwerp een voordracht. Nadat de voorzitler de talrijke aanwezigen namens de Leidsche groep van de Ster had welkom geheeten, begon spr. zijn rede met de vraag: Verwachten wij dan nog iets? En het antwoord dadelijk er op. Van onze kindsheid af, hebben we onze verwachtingen, onze illusies gehad. En niet alleen toen, ook nu nog verwachten we, hopen we steeds.... omdat het verwachten ons eenmaal in het bloed zit. Wat zit er achter al die verwachtingen? De hoop en het verlangen naar betere, naar meer harmonischen levensverhoudingen. Maar toch, we weten dat zelfs, wanneer al
DE BIOSCOPEN.
wij zulks kunnen, met hen, die wij geestelijk als onze meerderen erkennen. DE BIOSCOPEN. Lang, gedurende vele maanden zelfs, heeft de Casino-directie op " De Drie Musketiers " gewacht, en mèt haar ongetwijfeld een groot deel van het Leidsche publiek, dat zich voor het filmkijkspel interesseert. Maar eindelijk toch is het gelukt beslag op deze rolprent te leggen, en zóó was het theater dus uitverkocht gisteravond! Van eenig bijprogramma, met uitzondering van de aardige 3-Octoberfilm, was nauwelijks sprake. Alles draaide dezen avond om d'Artagnan en z'n drie boezemvrienden: Athos, Porthos en Aramis, allen welbekend uit Alexandre Dumas ' befaamden roman. Zes acten vóór de pauze, en zes daarna! Het is duidelijk, dat er voor de rest geen tijd overbleef. Die lengte der film heeft intusschen aan de kwaliteit zeker niets afgedaan. Wèl kon men slechts hier en daar een greep uit de geschiedenis doen, doch het verband is behouden, en vooral d'Artagnan wordt door [?]
Source: Source: Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken (leiden.courant.nu)