The plan was already dormant, now I finally really wanted to take a look in Wortel en Merksplas. These villages in Belgium are located just across the border, they are the Flemish counterparts of Dutch villages such as Frederiksoord, Wilhelminaoord and Veenhuizen, all three former Colonies of Benevolence. There have been seven such colony villages in all, a private project set up in the early nineteenth century with royal support in an attempt to tackle urban poverty. Farms were built in remote, previously unexplored places where poor families could learn to farm and raise livestock.
At the same time, this would increase general prosperity, the initiators reasoned. Since Belgium was part of the United Netherlands between 1815 and 1830, two such colonies also ended up on the other side of the current border. Two hundred years ago, at the end of 1822, the first poor urban families moved to small farms in Wortel, each with 3.5 hectares of land.
Also read Mariët Meester’s earlier piece about Veenhuizen: ‘This place used to make me shiver’
Because I myself grew up as a ‘colony child’ in Veenhuizen, when this former Colony of Benevolence had become a closed prison village, the trip got off to a false start. I thought I knew just about everything and had assumed that Wortel and Merksplas would look something like the colonies I knew. As a result I couldn’t find them. Yes, the village of Wortel, I thought so, it looked just like most Flemish villages. But where were those farms now?
Immediately after the publication in 2013 I had the book Tramps read by Toon Horsten, himself a colony child from Wortel. Apparently I had filled in his words with images from my own brain, because after some searching I discovered that in Belgium, unlike in the Netherlands, village and colony do not form a unity. Carrot colony turned out to be several kilometers away. There it suddenly ended with the winding roads and I came home between the ‘dreams’, as country roads are called in Flanders. Just like in Veenhuizen, they were perpendicular to each other, with tall old trees on either side. The landscape with the pungent forest scent evoked a sense of awe in me. Unfortunately, there was nothing left of the farms, of which there were 129, because when ‘the Dutch flew out’ in 1830, the demolition of the newly built farms was immediately started.
Yet there is still something to see in Wortel colony. For example, there is a large, late nineteenth-century farmhouse that explains the title of Horsten’s book. Parallel to what the Dutch government did in Veenhuizen, the Belgian government at one point used Wortel colony to house groups of vagrants, homeless men who had started to wander. The entire area of 550 hectares became in fact one large care farm where an attempt was made to bring structure into their existence. After some time they would be able to manage independently in society again, was the assumption. In practice this was disappointing and many voluntarily returned to the safety of the colony.
Majestic oaks
A reception center of a nature organization has now been set up in the former farm. Other parts of the building are also used for purposes that have nothing to do with the Colonies of Benevolence, so I still felt somewhat disoriented. I knew that one of the Belgian colonies has recently been admitted to the World Heritage List of the UN organization Unesco, together with three Dutch colonies, wasn’t that Wortel? Suddenly I had doubts.
A little beyond the farm I saw a number of beautiful, more or less identical houses, as well as some neglected buildings. The most eye-catching was a huge white complex that was not in a flourishing state, the stucco was peeling from the facade. The complex was surrounded by a high double fence as is usually the case around prisons. I couldn’t find the name of this establishment anywhere, but signs pointed to two entrances and there were a few cars parked. Dried leaves piled up between the fence, behind which was a droll statue that was probably supposed to represent a tramp.
Full of questions I continued my way over straight lanes lined with majestic oaks. A turn signal pointed to an OCPP, an abbreviation with two Ps that may have meant something penitentiary. In the same direction there should also be a hotel-restaurant called Colonie 7, I knew that the colony of Merksplas was the seventh – and at the same time the last – to be set up in the United Netherlands.
White crosses
I had almost reached my destination when I saw a clearing in the dense forest area with scattered white crosses, a cemetery for the vagrants of the Merksplas colony. As I took a walk there, I understood that in Belgium it was not really something to be proud of when you found your final resting place in a colony, there were no names on the crosses. Each cross had a number, a small number had a metal plate with a date of birth and death. The last day of death was only in the year 2000, even that grave had no name.
I was thinking of the domestic colonies that have existed elsewhere, such as in Spain. Dictator Franco wanted to uplift the countryside and recruited residents for specially constructed ones pueblos de colonización. Usually these were poor people who had nowhere else to go because they had been in prison, for example. In the colonization villages they had to help dig reservoirs. A Spanish doctor who had her first job in such a village from 1981 told me that she chugged to her patients on a moped over unpaved roads. Sometimes shots were heard, and there was also a lot of drinking. One day she found a woman in bed with two small babies. She had given birth to her husband, it hadn’t even occurred to him to call in the doctor. But why did his wife have a high fever now?
The OCPP was indeed a training center for penitentiary staff. Beyond the building, the rest of the Merksplas colony soon loomed up. Here, too, was a large former farm, which not only housed hotel-restaurant Colonie 7, a visitor center was set up in the former pigsty. Many of my questions were answered there. It all started with a huge aerial photo on the floor, which illustrated how planned the two colonies were set up two hundred years ago. The area around it seemed to have developed much more organically.
There is more to see in the Merksplas colony than in the Wortel colony. From the beginning it was a forced colony, where people had to live together in a large institution and not in family farms. In 1911 Merksplas colony reached the highest number of residents ever, there were 5,291 people. With some respect they were called colons, settlers, just as in Veenhuizen the vagrants have always been called ‘nurses’. During my childhood years I saw the last ones, gnarled old men who were allowed to stay in our former colony even after the state pension had been introduced, so that they could basically live independently. The derogatory term ‘paupers’ has never been used in the entire history of Veenhuizen, it has only come into vogue in recent years.
When you look at the portrait photos of settlers in the Merksplas colony visitor center, you don’t see bad guys but unlucky people. You can turn the photos over, after which a text appears summarizing their life story. It turns out that quite a bit went wrong, just as things went wrong with those who nowadays have to stay in Merksplas colony and Wortel colony. The large white building I saw in Wortel Colony is indeed part of a prison, Merksplas Colony even has two huge detention centres. One houses ‘ordinary’ detainees, the other asylum seekers who have exhausted all legal remedies who have to leave Belgium, mostly men between the ages of 18 and 30.
Merksplas colony also has a prison museum. So far it is only open on Sunday afternoons, but not in winter as it is housed in the unheated basement rooms of a former chapel. We are working on a new accommodation, in a few years this colony will have a more professional museum in an outbuilding of the large farm. Some of the charm will then be lost, because now you are still being guided by volunteers who work in the prison of Merksplas or have worked there until recently.
After my first visit to both Belgian colonies, I quickly returned to explore these fascinating places further. Wortel colony also appears to have its own cemetery in the forest, many crosses have a nameplate there. The Vagrancy Act was not abolished in Belgium until 1993, when the inhabitants of both colonies had to leave from one day to the next. Here, too, some preferred to stay, so that some settlers still seem to be walking around among the detainees.
In Merksplas colony, you can experience the oppressive atmosphere that hangs there while walking on a path around the prison complex. Two Sundays a month there are guided tours of the colony, so I now know why only one of the six toilets in the former potato sheds has a door: it was for the guards. The five doorless ones were for the settlers who were employed as potato peelers. The guide also told about the chapel above the prison museum, which is, as it were, upside down, with the apse to the west. Architect Victor Besme considered the social aspect more important than the religious one, so he placed the entrance directly opposite the entrance to the vagrant institution and gave the chapel a curious row of skylights for better light.
Wonderful contrast
As in Veenhuizen, the staff in the Merksplas Colony and Wortel Colony lived in staff residences that differed according to rank, and also, as in Veenhuizen, some of these have been empty for far too long. The transition from justice property to world heritage is not easy in Belgium either, probably due to the fact that the Wortel colony has already been chosen by Unesco and the Merksplas colony has not yet been selected for the time being. According to experts, the floating system in Wortel colony is of greater integrity.
In both colonies there is a wonderful contrast between the grim contemporary reality and the romanticism attributed to the past. You are a tourist of poverty, your leisure time consists of watching other people’s lack of freedom. It is well known that the Belgian penitentiaries are not heavenly places, they are overcrowded.
During my second visit to the Merksplas colony, there was a camp on the lawns between the buildings for thousands of (prospective) leaders of the Chiro, the largest Flemish youth movement, which considers it important to play games together. The detention centers were teeming with beautiful, healthy twenty-somethings in khaki shorts and skirts, fooling around with each other. While experiencing a week that could be one of the happiest of their lives, their peers in the detention center for failed asylum seekers had to listen to the blaring party music without much reason to dance to it.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 19, 2022