In Memoriam: Piet Lourens 1946-2024

In Memoriam

A year after the war, Piet was born on a farm just inside the town of Aardenburg. Pete cherished a photo of his father behind the plow, a mighty Belgian tuber in front of it. I knew his mother as a sweet, caring woman.

His oldest sister, still from just before the war, was allowed to learn to be a teacher and Pete was allowed to go to grammar school. This meant that every day from Monday to Saturday he cycled from Aardenburg to Oostburg, the only place with a gymnasium in the province of Zeeland, where he passed with no less than three tens.

In Utrecht, he obtained a degree in history, after which he chose to specialize in Medieval History. His intelligence and reading skills were not to blame, but he got bogged down in writing his doctoral thesis, in which his excessive perfectionism got in his way hopelessly. In early 1973, after studying in Leiden, I was newly appointed to the department of socioeconomic history in Utrecht. One of my colleagues there had offered Pete an assistant job and so I, a year younger, became acquainted with Pete.

Soon my colleague ran out of work for him, while I was saddled with a complicated research problem. In Lippe-Detmold, Germany, there turned out to be lists of names of seasonal workers unique to Europe, brickmakers accurately registered from 1778 onward before their departure to Groningen, among other places. With his fabulous paleographical skills and his accuracy, Pete was the ideal man to edit them. That was precisely the time when the computer was emerging for more general use, and so together we took programming classes with Martin Boot, a linguist who was already much further along in that field than almost any historian. That was the time when you used your program to have punch cards made, with which the university's central computer would spit out on chain paper the desired outcomes, at least if it went right, because with programming and thus punching, there were always discouragingly many things that went wrong. It even resulted in a joint article in the 1983 journal Computers and the Humanities.

Pete thus quickly developed from assistant to de facto full-fledged colleague and many publications on the seasonal migration of Lipper brickmakers in particular were to follow, a total of 11 between 1983 and 2020, including our book Arbeitswanderung und berufliche Spezialisierung. Die lippischen Ziegler im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Osnabrück, 1999) was the highlight. But in addition, Pete's indispensable contribution to a more qualitative source edition, the Hollandgang im Spiegel der Reiseberichte evangelischer Geistlicher published in two volumes (1250 pages in total), is also worth mentioning. Quellen zur saisonalen Arbeitswanderung in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Münster, 2007).

When I was asked to set up a research department at the IISH in 1988, it was only natural that Piet would join me, and so we ended up together in Amsterdam. Thanks to our collaboration, it was possible to realize one of my ideals in setting up a coherent research program: an extension of the history of work to the pre-Industrial Revolution period, a period to which the then customary “labor history” was limited. Piet's medievalist knowledge came in especially handy when we also began to study the craft guilds and their social services in that context. Piet took care of a database of all Dutch craft guilds we could find from the Middle Ages onward, and together with Dutch, Belgian and German colleagues, this led to quite a few publications, among which the concluding volume Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power and Representation (Aldershot, 2006) may be mentioned with honor, in which Piet co-authored an overview concerning the Low Countries. One - much-used - by-product was our joint survey of population numbers of Dutch cities.

But Piet has also meant even more than his co-authorship of 23 publications and the creation of three large source collections that will basically be available to researchers in perpetuity. He has also done much for the Institute's collections, and especially for the opening up of manuscripts and small archives of the Netherlands Economic History Archive (NEHA). These collections are housed at the IISH and have a very special character, especially because of the long period of five centuries and the many countries they cover. But also because of the special skills required to read ancient writing, to interpret widely varying weights and measures, and anyway to place them in their proper historical context. Especially in collaboration with Jacques van Gerwen (researcher and subject expert in economic history), we have been able to provide countless descriptions over the last twenty years, with Piet indulging in, among other things, the large series of price lists and placards. He had also made a special study of how all those pieces had been acquired and was thus a regular source of questions for colleagues in the reading room.

After his retirement in 2011, he continued to make daily trips from Utrecht to the Institute at the end, even taking his walker on the train and bus. Until a few years ago it really wasn't possible anymore and he moved to a nursing home in Arnhem.

But Piet was more than an outstanding scientist with a great output, he was also a good person. Shy and withdrawn as he was, not everyone will have seen that immediately, but his selflessness towards other researchers should be underlined here. In my family I was also able to experience how nice he was with our children. Moreover, Pete was a real nature lover. In his spare time he could always be found outside with his camera and enjoyed his fabulous knowledge of plants.

Jan Lucassen - 16 December 2024
 

Bibliography

M. Boot, P. Lourens, J. Lucassen, “A linguistic preprocessor for record linkage in socio-economic historical research”, in: Computers and the Humanities 17 (1983), pp. 45-64.

P. Lourens, J. Lucassen, “Mechanisering en arbeidsmarkt in de Groningse steenbakkerijen gedurende de 19e eeuw”, in: Jaarboek voor de Geschiedenis van Bedrijf en Techniek 1 (1984), pp. 188-215.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen,  Lipsker op Groninger tichelwerken. Een geschiedenis van de Groningse steenindustrie met bijzondere nadruk op de Lipper trekarbeiders 1700-1900 (Groningen, 1987).

P. Lourens, J. Lucassen, "Marx als Historiker der niederländischen Republik", in: M. van der Linden (Ed.), Die Rezeption der Marxschen Theorie in den Niederlanden (Amsterdam, 1992), pp. 430-454. 

P. Lourens, J. Lucassen, "Ambachtsgilden in Nederland: een eerste inventarisatie"  in NEHA-Jaarboek voor economische, bedrijfs- en techniekgeschiedenis 57 (1994), pp. 34-62.

P. Lourens, J. Lucassen, "Ambachtsgilden in Nederland: een beknopt overzicht", in: De Gilden in Gouda (Zwolle, 1996), pp. 9-18.

P. Lourens, J. Lucassen, Inwoneraantallen van Nederlandse steden ca. 1300-1800 (Amsterdam,: NEHA, 1997).

P. Lourens, J. Lucassen, "De oprichting en ontwikkeling van ambachtsgilden in Nederland (13e-19e eeuw)" in: C. Lis / H. Soly (eds), Werelden van verschil. Ambachtsgilden in de Lage Landen (Brussel: VUB-Press, 1997), pp. 43-77.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, "Ambachtsgilden binnen een handelskapitalistische stad: aanzetten voor een analyse van Amsterdam ca. 1700", NEHA-Jaarboek voor economische, bedrijfs- en techniekgeschiedenis 61 (1998), pp. 121-162.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, Arbeitswanderung und berufliche Spezialisierung. Die lippischen Ziegler im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Osnabrück, Studien zur historischen Migrationsforschung 6, Edited by Klaus J. Bade. Universitätsverlag Rasch,1999)

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, "Die Gilden der nördlichen Niederlande in ihren Verflechtungen", in: Knut Schulz (Ed.), Verflechtungen des europäischen Handwerks vom 14. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert (München, 1999), pp. 65-79.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, "'Zunftlandschaften' in den Niederlanden und im benachbarten Deutschland", in: Wilfried Reininghaus (Hsg.),  Zunftlandschaften in Deutschland und den Niederlanden im Vergleich. Kolloquium der Historischen Kommission für Westfalen am 6. Und 7.November 1997 auf Haus Welbergen, in: Schriften der Historischen Kommission für Westfalen 17 (Münster: Aschendorf, 2000), pp.11-43.

Sandra Bos, Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, "Die Zünfte in der niederländischen Republik", in: Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (Ed.), Das Ende der Zünfte. Ein europäischer Vergleich (Göttingen 2002), pp. 127-153.

Boudien de Vries, Jan Lucassen, Piet Lourens, Harm Nijboer, “Het economisch leven: spectaculaire succes en diep verval”, in: S. Groenveld (Ed.),  Leiden. De geschiedenis van een Hollandse stad. Deel 2 1574-1795 (Leiden: Stichting Geschiedschrijving Leiden, 2003), pp. 85-107.

Jan Lucassen, Piet Lourens, Bert De Munck , “The distribution of guilds in the Low Countries, 1000-1800”, in: Paola Massa, Angelo Moioli (eds.), Dalla corporazione al mutuo soccorso. Organizzazione e tutela del lavoro tra XVI e XX secolo (Milano, 2004), pp. 33-56.

Bert De Munck, Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, “The establishment and distribution of craft guilds in the Low Countries, 1000-1800", in Maarten Prak, Catharina Lis, Jan Lucassen, Hugo Soly (eds.), Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low Countries: Work, Power and Representation (Aldershot etc., 2006), pp. 32-73. 

Albin Gladen, Antje Kraus, Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, Peter Schram, Helmut Talako, Gerda van Asselt, Hollandgang im Spiegel der Reiseberichte evangelischer Geistlicher. Quellen zur saisonalen Arbeitswanderung in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Baerbeitet und herausgegeben von (Münster, Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Westfalen XXII A. Geschichtliche Arbeiten zur westfälischen Landesforschung. Wirtschafts- und sozialgeschichtliche Gruppe Band 17, 2007).

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, “Lippische Ziegler in Mittel, West- und Nordeuropa vom 17. Bis zum frühen 20. Jahrhundert” in: Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen, Jochen Oltmer (Hrsg.), Enzyklopädie Migration in Europa. Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Paderborn, München, Wien, Zürich: Schöhning/ Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007), pp. 770-772.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, “Karrieren lippischer Ziegler: Das Beispiel Delfzijl 1855” , in: Lippische Mitteilungen aus Geschichte und Landeskunde, 76. Band (2007), pp. 63-80.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, “Lippe Brickmakers in Central, Western, and Northern Europe from the 17th to the Early 20th Century” in: Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen, Jochen Oltmer (eds.) The encyclopedia of migration and minorities in Europe. From the 17th century to the present (New York etc: CUP, 2011), pp. 558-560.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, “Labour mediation among seasonal workers, in particular the Lippe brick makers 1650-1900”, in: Sigrid Wadauer, Thomas Buchner, Alexander Mejstrik (eds.)  History of Labour Intermediation. Institutions and Individual Ways of Finding Employment (19th and 20th centuries) (New York etc. : Berghahn, 2015), pp. 335-367.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, “Die lippischen Ziegler um 1800. Ein Gruppenporträt“, in Bettina Joergens, Jan Lucassen (Eds.) Saisonale Arbeitsmigration in der Geschichte: die lippischen Ziegler (Detmold Veröffentlichungen des Landesarchivs Nordrhein-Westfalen 68, 2017), pp. 73-88.

Piet Lourens, Jan Lucassen, “Lippisch-Hessische Zieglerbeziehungen im 19. Jahrhundert”, Hessische Heimat 70:3 (2020), pp. 30-35.

Data bases: 

Voor de Lipper steenbakkers: https://datasets.iisg.amsterdam/dataverse/lippe

Een digitale publicatie van de dataset van de gilden is in voorbereiding.

De dataset van inwoneraantallen van steden is onder revisie (vgl. https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/1008613.