Cafe Schlemmer, The Hague; Coffee Chronicles 4/100

My earliest memories of Cafe Schlemmer in The Hague are from 33 years ago. After the initial training in the Dutch Navy in the northern harbor town of Den Helder, our class of young officers feared losing our newly formed friendships when we received our officer's rank and were sent to different places in the Netherlands. So we looked for a cafe for a weekly get-together, and one of us proposed a meeting in Schlemmer.

It had opened six years earlier in a former flower shop. A brother and sister, grandchildren of the owner who still lived upstairs in what is now referred to as 'Grandpa's room,' decided to open a restaurant. Not hindered by a complete lack of catering experience, they wrote a business plan to transform the space into a 'café-tabac-animé.'

The idea was to turn Schlemmer into an artists' café, which makes sense since the Royal Theater is around the corner, with many actors, directors, and guests from the Art Academy. But since the opening, it was much more the politicians and civil servants from the nearby ministries that became the clientele.

For me, Schlemmer is one of those many places that form part of my life, a place to happily return to in different stages of my life. Soon after leaving the Navy, I moved to The Hague and often met with friends and colleagues in this cafe. In later years, after returning from postings abroad and finding a new place to live in The Hague, this cafe was a beacon and constant factor that provided continuity in my The Hague experience. I remember work meetings in Grandpa's Room upstairs, receptions, dinners, and drinks. While typing this, I think of a lunch I had in Schlemmer with a longtime friend from my Vienna days who is a loyal supporter of this newsletter.

Yesterday, I unexpectedly ended up in Schlemmer after walking through the city where I have lived for 15 years in different phases of my life. Each street is familiar; I don't think there are many years in my life that I haven't visited The Hague; even in my school days, this city was never far, and walking its historic streets feels like coming home.

As an urban geographer passionate about history, I've always been fascinated by the endurance of our cities' street patterns. So, I might as well use a map by the Dutch cartographer Bleau from 1649. Just like in those days, orienting in the city is easiest by starting at the pond next to Parliament, which was likely once a little dune lake. 

You can see the pond in this photo, which I took from where I put the blue star on Beau's map. On the right, you see the parliament buildings of the Binnenhof. The road left of the pond is known as Lange Vijverberg, in which even non-Dutch speakers will recognize the word "berg." We have no difficulty calling something a "mountain" in our flat country, knowing it wouldn't even be recognized as a hill in any other country. This slight elevation was created with the sand pulled up from the pond when it was made.

Yesterday, on the Malieveld. The Haagse Bos forest is on the background.

Schlemmer is on the right of this map, so to the northeast, where you see the red star. Further to the top right corner, you can see a small part of a vast open field known as the Malieveld, often in the news for either demonstrations or pop concerts. Yesterday, I parked my car in the garage below the Malieveld and took this picture of a Christmas circus tent simply because I loved the bright colors and recognizable shape in the vast, open, grey winter landscape. 

Previously, the Malieveld was used for military exercises. It owes its name to the playing field for the Malie game (with a croquet mallet and ball) located on the field's north side in the 17th century. At the beginning of the 80 Years' War (1568-1648), the Malieveld was still wooded, but it was soon cleared to use the wood to build defenses.

A plan was to sell the rest of the forest, the Haagse Bos, for logging to boost the war chest. However, the government of The Hague objected and was prepared to pay heavily in exchange for the promise that the Haagse Bos would never be sold. That promise, the so-called Act of Redemption, was signed by William of Orange in 1576. It was a wise decision: the Haagse Bos forest is still there, and when living in The Hague, I loved running there. Like Central Park in NYC, it's like a green lung for the city.

Yesterday, in The Hague.

Nearby is a fenced area where fallow deer are kept; it's another example of traces of the city's rich history that can be found everywhere in The Hague. At the end of the 16th century, the game population had declined sharply, and stadtholder Maurits van Nassau, the de facto head of state of the Dutch Republic, imported fallow deer from England and released them in the Haagse Bos, adjacent to the Malieveld.

Archeologists found remnants of a croquet mallet, croquet balls, and the skull of a fallow deer in The Hague. Isotope research has shown that the fallow deer comes from England. It is a fascinating find since this is likely one of the hundred deer imported by Maurits van Nassau.

Visits to The Hague often include a visit to Schlemmer; here is one more photo of the restaurant part I took yesterday evening.

These Coffee Chronicles started as a publication on Buy Me a Coffee, but I soon discovered that the BMaC site is not designed to publish articles and add photos. So, I moved this initiative to The Planet newsletter on Substack, even though I realize this series isn't about our planet's challenges or beauty. 

However, the world would be less beautiful without simple joys, such as savoring coffee's warmth in cozy cafes, meeting other people, and finding my way through charming alleys to a favorite restaurant. And since beauty is everywhere waiting to be discovered, this series may fit better into The Planet's concept than I realized. 

I might make the Coffee Chronicles a "section" within The Planet publication so you can control your email settings for this content. I'm not sure yet; ideas are welcome.

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Notes:

https://schlemmer.nl/ Lange Houtstraat 17, Den Haag

www.archeologie.denhaag.nl