To pray. That was the only thing left. It was the last day of the year 1925 and heavy rain and thawing snow pushed the water level in the Meuse to record levels. The storm caused all that water to crash against the vulnerable dikes. The prayers were not answered. That New Year’s Eve, the dike at Overasselt broke through on the other side near Grave. A day later – on New Year’s Day 1926 – the dike at Cuijk collapsed.
From Nijmegen to Den Bosch it is one expanse of water. Miraculously, there are no deaths, but thousands of people become homeless. It was the direct reason for the canalization of the Maas between Grave and Den Bosch, which would make the river almost 20 kilometers shorter. And it helped: the flood of 1926, exactly one hundred years ago now, was the last major flood in this area.
Until then, flooding was part of normal life. The main characters in the Omroep Brabant podcast ‘Moord aan de Dijk’, Toon and Piet Verhoeven, knew all about this. The flood of 1880, which they experienced as children, made a particularly deep impression. 500 meters of dike between Oijen and Lithoijen were washed away.
Iceberg
It was often an anxious existence for dike residents such as Toon and Piet. It could become risky, especially in winter when it was freezing. Ice floes started to drift and blocked the river, preventing the water from flowing in any direction. A newspaper from that time describes how a kind of ice lump formed in the Meuse, 200 meters long, 140 meters wide and 5 meters thick. And even when it started to thaw, it took a long time before such an ‘iceberg’ disappeared.
Listen to the story about the murder of Toon and Piet below or look it up in your favorite podcast app.
After the flood in 1926, a drastic plan was devised to cut off ten sharp river bends between Grave and Den Bosch. The length of this part of the Meuse would thus be shortened from 56.5 kilometers to 37.5 kilometers. It was quite an intervention in the landscape. The village of Keent bij Grave was in Gelderland, but suddenly became part of Brabant. And the people of Brabant in the village of Alem near Maren-Kessel woke up one morning as Gelderlanders.
It was nice for the skippers, who reached their destination faster. But most importantly: the river would therefore be able to discharge 3,200 cubic meters of water per second instead of 1,200 cubic meters previously. To prevent the river from drying up in the summer, weirs were built in various places, including Grave and Lith.
The execution of the work coincided with the enormous economic crisis of the 1930s and high unemployment. The canalization of the Meuse will be the largest job creation project in the Netherlands. Thousands of unemployed people toil in the floodplains. With the shovel they dig out a new course for the river. The hourly wage for all that work in the sucking river clay: 30 cents per hour.
Robbery
A bend is also cut in front of Toon and Piet Verhoeven’s doorstep on the Oijense Benedendijk in Oijen. It is May 1934, and the elderly Verhoeven brothers are standing on the dike watching. The story goes around among the workers that the brothers are hiding money in their farm. It will lead to a controversial robbery murder that is described in detail in the podcast ‘Moord aan de Dijk’.
When the crossing at Oijen opens, it will be August 23, 1934. Toon Verhoeven will not live to see that, and Piet will also no longer live on the dike due to all the events. The brothers’ farm has been demolished.
But the Maas flows like never before. Everyone happy. Well… almost everyone. In the same year 1934, writer Antoon Coolen wrote his book ‘Dorp aan de Rivier’, which is set in Lith aan de Maas. He writes with bitter undertones:
‘There will come a day (…) when hands will guide the water of the river into a new bed (…) then the river will be straighter and shorter. My God, straighter and shorter…’
