A chronicle of Hacquartstraat tells the history of the Amsterdam elite

A single street can encapsulate the history of an entire era. Such a street is Amsterdam's Beethovenstraat, the subject of Frank van Kolfschooten's book "The Queen of the South ." This book is reprinted every few years because the author continually makes new discoveries about the eventful lives of the residents of the large apartments and the shop owners.

Another delightful street book, with numerous facts about the designers and builders, as well as the residents of the houses, from tenants to owners, is "De Hacquartstraat: Memories of Good and Evil in Oud-Zuid" by anthropologist John Kleinen, who himself lives on this chic Amsterdam street of thirty-two houses.

As an admirer of the row of twelve houses with black-and-white tiles in their concrete facades by architect Philip Warners, I often walk there. If only because these houses, built in 1923 for the upper echelons of the capital's bourgeoisie, give me the feeling of being in a cosmopolitan city like Berlin, where, as a German-Jewish woman once told me, everything is bigger and better .

Like an insider, Kleinen takes you through each house, immersing you in the lives of its inhabitants. They ranged from merchants and bankers to diplomats, lawyers, doctors, engineers, students, and shady entrepreneurs.

Kleinen uses several biographical dictionaries as a starting point for his research. This allows him to create a cross-section of the people who lived on the street between 1923 and 1940 and, as far as possible, to recount their histories. This way, half of the Dutch elite is included, such as the later Ministers of Foreign Affairs Johan Willem Beyen and Joseph Luns. The latter had once bet with his friends that he would marry a noblewoman. That woman was Lia van Heemstra, daughter of a banker, who lived on Hacquartstraat. Since the young Luns wanted to become a diplomat, and such a position required earning a living, his in-laws' family fortune was very welcome. A second cousin of Lia van Heemstra was also spotted on the street: Audrey Hepburn.

The political developments of the interwar period are inextricably linked to Amsterdam Oud-Zuid. From the very beginning, Hacquartstraat had a considerable number of Jewish residents, including Arnold Kahn, owner of the fashion house Hirsch & Cie. After 1933, a procession of German-Jewish refugees joined them. During the German occupation, their homes were expropriated and sold by shady notaries. What Kleinen recounts about these criminal practices and the lenient post-war punishment for them is the most interesting part of his book.

Also highly recommended is his account of the family of coffee and tea merchant Schöffer. Due to declining income from his business, he and his wife began renting out rooms in their large house at Hacquartstraat 6 in 1928. Initially, their boarders were Olympic athletes and girls of good descent, later young artists and musicians. During the occupation, the house was a center of resistance activities and people in hiding. The Schöffers' guest complaint book would become a fascinating war chronicle for John Kleinen. What a single street can tell you.