These were often, in turn, part of larger defense structures, which could be as long as 80 kilometers.įor many years, the focus of heritage was at the level of the object. Dikes and roads, were protected by stellingen, small-scale military lines. The Netherlands in particular used water defensively, building moats to protect castles and using bodies of water for city fortifications (which featured planted ramparts–massive earthen bodies overgrown with grass and trees).
The account presented here may aid in such an effort.įor centuries, it was the duty of the military to protect cities, regions, and even nations against foreign attacks by using characteristics of the landscape such as water, groundworks, soil, and planting to build defense systems. Further work might profitably address future energy challenges in terms of both objects and landscapes. This chapter discusses how the built military objects were part of large defense lines, as well as how the New Dutch Waterline was transformed at regional and local levels from 1980 on.
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And policy and professional attention have shifted from object-oriented heritage preservation into development and heritage on a large scale.
The main axiom of this influential memo was “renewal through development.” Its overarching idea was that heritage should relate to spatial intervention and, for that matter, become a leading factor in it. The revitalization of the New Dutch Waterline was first proposed as a pilot project in the Belvedere Memorandum (Feddes 1999), a national interdepartmental policy document which linked heritage to new spatial developments and planning. The integration of strategies inherent in this approach is consistent with current Dutch heritage policy, which holds regional identity to be vitally important to the local and national economy and tourism (Ministerie van OCW 2017). Almost invisible to an uninformed observer, these landscapes had a military autograph that revitalization made visible in narratives of regional identity. The revitalization of properties, and objects such as bunkers and fortresses, as heritage at the scale of the landscape, rather than as individual items was new to the Netherlands. The name New Dutch Waterline (Nieuwe Hollandse Waterlinie) was introduced and has been used in national and international literature, although in recent years, it has sometimes also been rendered as the New Hollandic Waterline. Although the Dutch military past can be regarded as controversial (Verschuure-Stuip 2017), the New Dutch Waterline (NWD) has generally been held in public favor. Keywordsīecause these transformed structures have been so popular, this modernization is referred to as the renaissance of military heritage in the Netherlands (Hannema 2014). Finally, it addresses how understanding water heritage can help to tackle the imminent challenge of climate change at the scale of the landscape. It also indicates how addressing these different scales can help in future spatial challenges. This chapter shows the importance of understanding and intervening in defense heritage as landscape–as well as individual objects. The project undertook not only to revitalize individual fortresses, but to enhance regional identity and tourism, a new scale in heritage debates. Throughout the effort, it was critical to success to have different actors understand and promote it as a heritage landscape of national importance.
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At the same time, the work on the New Dutch Waterline changed a nationally driven project became a series of local interventions. Starting in 1980, new methods of revitalization combined preservation, renewal, and narrative approaches.
The redevelopment of the New Dutch Waterline, also known as the New Hollandic Waterline, was crucial to a change in public appreciation of Dutch military heritage and its connection to landscape design.
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