The caravans are again in the winter storage after a summer full of camping pleasure. Every year thousands of Dutch people go out with their caravan. Some stay in their own province, others drive completely to Spain. But we may owe such a house on wheels to a Hoogevener in love.
In the 1940s Jan Kip runs a successful bodywork company in Hoogeveen. But then he falls in love with Johanna de Roos from Amsterdam. How they met is not entirely clear, but that it soon became a big mik. We are talking about 1946, just after the war. The distance between Hoogeveen and Amsterdam? About 150 kilometers. A long way at that time. But Jan Kip could not be caught for a hole. He commissioned his employee to ter Stege to build a love nest on wheels.
“My father said,” Then I will immediately build two, “says Otto ter Stege. “One for his boss to use and one for renting.” The toolbox with which Mr. Ter Stege built the caravan has donated his son to the company in Hoogeveen. He is showing off in their museum on the upper floor of the company.
In the years after the war, having a caravan was a real luxury. Peter Hagenus of the Hoogeveen company tells Ineke all about it in this episode of Expeditie Nederland. And also about that budding love between Jan Kip and his Johanna. “She got on the train in Amsterdam, hung the caravan behind the car and picked her up somewhere on a station. Together they drove to the Veluwe, where they secretly stayed for a few nights.” Spending the night unmarried together at that time, that wasn’t really possible.
But while the love between Jan and Johanna is flourishing, the caravan company is also flourishing. Klaas Klunder has been working for the Hoogeveen company for more than 40 years. And his father used to build caravans there. We recall memories with him and ask him if the Kip’s staff knew why their boss always set off with that caravan.
In 1947 Jan married his Johanna. They get a daughter Anne Sophie, who goes on a journey, and later also as a model in the brochures. The love fairy tale of Jan and Johanna ends in 1980 when Jan dies at the age of 76 years. The family sells the shares in the company and withdraws. Johanna is 92 when she dies in 2001. And their daughter Anne Sophie no longer lives either.
But the love between Jan and Johanna is not forgotten. At the time, he designed a logo with a caravan wheel, a small chicken and a rose. And you still see that logo on the caravan.