A name became a verb

‘Sent from 2,200 opzoomerstreets in Rotterdam. Thank you all.” That was the headline of a full-page story at the beginning of this year The Havenloods, the widely read free door-to-door newspaper. All Rotterdammers know what zoom up means, but beyond?

It is a cheerful story, a good example of social innovation. In 1989 the impoverishment of the Opzoomerstraat in the New West was so serious that the municipality was called in. Together they felt that the street needed a major makeover. A sum was promised and from then on the street was swept, extra lighting was installed, tiles were removed from the sidewalk and flowers and shrubs were planted. You could see the origin of the inhabitants by the plants. Tagetes next to pumpkins, geraniums next to coriander, and roses next to red peppers.

Now it is common, but at the time it was very special. There was a lot of attention from the foreign press and the other major cities. It was called ‘zooming in’, which sounds very sunny. For me it has always been synonymous with brightening up. The goal is now much more: climate change, neighborly help, street parties, and ‘look after the lonely person we rarely see’.

Since I have been a member of the street names committee for years (the nicest committee ever) I also found it a bit sad for CWH Opzoomer that his name had become a verb. It’s even included in Our language. I appointed myself chairman of the Speurwerk Foundation and found remarkable facts. Mr Opzoomer (1821-1892) was a lawyer, philosopher, logician and theologian. He was professor of philosophy and later rector magnificus in Utrecht. A conference room in the university bears his name. But he was also criticized at the time. That he wrote way too much. That he was not at all such an amiable modest man, as he pretended to be in his books. In a portrait that Jozef Israëls painted of him, he looks dead tired of thinking and he has a long gray beard.

In short, he was not off the streets.

Nearby, in the Delfshaven district, is a street called the Wallisweg. Named after his daughter, Adele Opzoomer. Wallis is her pseudonym. She had a lot of talent. In 1875, when she was 22 years old, she already wrote a masterpiece in German about Johan de Witt.

Adele had a turbulent life. At the age of 32, she married Hungarian Gesa, a theology student ten years her junior, and left for Hungary. In 1920 she fled the disrupted regime in Hungary to the Netherlands, with her husband and grandson. But what a drama, during the flight her suitcase with family documents and many new manuscripts was stolen.

She settled in Rotterdam and received 500 guilders from the Support Fund of the Association of Literature Scientists to get to work. But the loss of her manuscripts crippled her workforce.

In 1925 Adele died poor and lonely in a retirement home and she was buried in Crooswijk cemetery, grave number 3166. The Literature Museum honored her in 2015 with an exhibition of her work, as one of the great writers of the 19th century. Through thick fog I cycle to the Wallisweg. On the wall hangs a poem of hers, heavy, and sad is the text. The last line is: ‘not a word, not a step, just silence and night’.

Amsterdam has also honored her. In 1953 a street was named after her in Slotervaart. It’s called the Adele Opzoomerstraat. Her pseudonym was not used.

Two streets in two cities with two different names of the same person.

But do they also zoom in on the capital?