Special Collections

Originally a 13th century manuscript, the text was found important enough that it was printed so early after the invention of book printing, even in several editions. It is one of the most attractive illustrated natural history books of the incunable period. The woodcuts represent husbandry scenes, many plants, animals, falconry, hunting, and other country pursuits. The book is digitally available.

This famous nursery catalogue was published in 1637. It is a manuscript with tulips and a small number of other flowers. It was published at the peak of the tulipomania, a period in the Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed. It is digitally available. 

The manuscript contains 54 gouaches of tulips, followed by 12 added drawings of tulips, some by [Pieter] Holsteijn the Younger and Pieter Schagen, 7 watercolours of carnations and 2 drawings of other flowers.

For most tulips, names are written at the bottom of the illustration with the same paint. For some tulips, names are indicated by a riddle, a drawing or a rebus. Later on the weight and the prices for which the bulbs were sold was added with a more modern pen. The weight of each bulb is given in 'aasen', an aas being 0,048 gram. Prices are given in guilders. Small bulbs were sold by the 500 or 1000 aasen. 17 tulips have the same prices and weight mentioned as some of those on the list of the auction at February 5th in Alkmaar for the orphans of Wouter Bartelmiesz. Winckel. The most expensive one, the Viseroij, was sold for Dfl 3,000 and Dfl 4,200. Fifteen or twenty times a year salary of a schooled craftsman then. This book was part of the Krelage Collection.

Citation to the tulip book

Verzameling van een meenigte tulipaanen, naar het leven geteekend met hunne naamen, en swaarte der bollen, zoo als die publicq verkogt zijn, te Haarlem in den jaare A. 1637, door P. Cos, bloemist te Haarlem. - Haarlem : [s.n.], 1637. - 75 pl.

Maria Sibylla Merian was entomologist and botanical artist. She was the first to study South-American insects, as well as some amphibians and reptiles. Her book 'Recueil de plantes des Indes, pirate edition', published approx. 1700, became a great success. It is digitally available.

The 'Receuil de plantes des Indes' is a rare pirate edition of 'Over de voortteelling en wonderbaerlyke veranderingen der Surinaamsche insecten' which was published in Paris around 1765. 

The original plates were used under a new title, focusing on the plants only. It contains only the illustrations made by Maria Sibylla Merian and engraved by P. Sluijter, J. Mulder and D. Stoopendaal. 

The 72 hand-coloured prints depict the life cycle of insects with the flowers and fruits on which they thrive. 

The famous artist and entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) left Amsterdam in 1699 with her daughter to study insects and their metamorphoses in Suriname.

In 1940, the well known Dutch garden designer L.A. Springer left a large collection containing his library, his herbarium, designs, old prints, photographs and other documentary materials on gardens and garden architecture to Wageningen University.

700 Books

Leonard Antony Springer was landscape and garden architect and dendrologist. (Amsterdam 24-1-1855 - Haarlem 28-9-1940) who donated his comprehensive collection to the 'Landbouwhogeschool' in Wageningen.
The Springer collection contains over 700 books. The oldest book in the collection is a work on horticulture by P. Lauremberg, dating from 1632. Besides books on landscape architecture and garden history of the Netherlands and abroad there are books on ornamental planting and architecture. This collection contains a lot of relatively modern books (20th century) but as a whole it is unique in its topic, even for Europe.
The herbarium of Springer became part of the Herbarium Vadense, which was known as the Herbarium, the Wageningen branch of the Nationaal Herbarium Nederland. The Wageningen Herbarium moved in 2013 to the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden.

Database TUiN

The designs and documentation collected by Springer was the start of TUiN (Garden Architecture Archives of the Netherlands). In this database you can find Springer's designs and the documentation he gathered about Dutch gardens and garden history.

Part of the Krelage library was donated to Wageningen University in 1916. The collection of 1300 books and journals on horticulture and botany reflects the speciality of the famous Krelage nursery and their broader interests: bulbs, ornamental plants, plant breeding and botany.

The origin of the collection

The Krelage nursery was founded by grandfather E.H. Krelage (1786-1855) in Haarlem in 1811. The nursery was well known national and international for their flower bulbs, lilies and dahlia's. They gained more than 800 medals at world exhibitions and horticultural shows and delivered at many royal courts. Among the many new hybrids they've cultivated are the famous Darwin tulips. The Krelage collection was started in the middle of the nineteenth century by nurseryman Jacob Heinrich Krelage (1824-1901) at Haarlem and continued by his son Dr. Ernst Heinrich Krelage (1869-1956). The Krelage family also started a collection of nursery catalogues which was donated to Wageningen University & Research Library (Landbouwhogeschool). This part of the Krelage library that was donated is now called the Krelage Collection. The most rare and oldest parts of the Krelage library were sold at an auction in 1948. WUR Library also bought some botanical herbals and a collection of tulipomania pamphlets. The most precious book is a unique manuscript nursery catalogue, the Tulip Book of P. Cos.

Origins

Since 1994, Wageningen University & Research (WUR) Library has housed a collection of aerial photographs taken by the Allied Air Forces, also known as the RAF collection. The photos were mainly taken between September 1944 and May 1945 during the liberation of the Netherlands. The collection came from the Dutch Institute of Soil Mapping in Wageningen (StiBoKa, later Staring Centrum, Alterra, now Wageningen Environmental Research). This institute received the collection after World War II to use it as a source of information for producing soil maps. Because of the relevance of the pictures for research on land use, the collection was donated in 1994 to the Library.

The collection contains 94,257 photos, taken with different cameras, at different heights and from different angles, mainly vertical, but some were taken obliquely.

Some of the photos are distorted due to hazardous conditions during the reconnaissance flights, and the hasty photographic production and intensive use. The photographs were taken by RAF pilots who flew in small airplanes like Spitfires and Mosquitos in sorties (flights) of several runs of tens of photos. Within a run, the photos overlap 60% so that they can offer 3D images when studied with a stereoscopic viewer.

Source: Een blik op bezet Nederland : luchtfoto's van de geallieerden. Door G. Staal en R.P.G.A. Voskuil. Wageningen : Studium Generale Landbouwhogeschool, 1980.

What can you see?

Events in the Netherlands during World War II

During World War II the Netherlands were occupied by Nazi Germany. From the start to the finish these aerial photographs show traces of:

• Dutch and German defence lines like the Grebbelinie
• bombarded cities such as Rotterdam with vacant building plots in the centre
• bombarded landing strips, bridges, railways and harbours
• newly or rebuild places
• defence structures during the occupation by the Germans such as the Atlantik Wall, bunkers, tank ditches and trenches,
• macabre places such as concentration camps like Vught and Westerbork
• and finally traces from the Allied actions during the liberation in 1944-'45, such as inundations, crashed airplanes, Operation Market Garden and even more bombarded places

Needless to state that the original photographs themselves are worth studying as an unique war relict. The images are also frequently used to trace unexploded bombs and ammunition and other potential risk areas for new urban and infrastructural planning and development.

Changes of topographical features and land use in the 20th century

Detailed mapping in the Netherlands in the twentieth century was mainly done for the topographical map on a scale of 1:25,000. And at the end of the nineteenth century, a series of 776 sheets started in the so-called Bonne-projection. They were no longer renewed after 1937. A new series - with a different projection - started much later, in the early 1950s of the 20th century. These aerial photographs form a very detailed and unique source of topographical information for the period between 1937 and the late 1950s. And a lot more can be seen from these photographs than from the generated generalised maps.
The photographs were taken at a crucial tipping point in urban, rural and infrastructural development of the Netherlands. Cities and villages grew steadily but started to grow tremendously after World War II due to building in a larger scale because of demographic growth and wealth. Land consolidation and reclamation changed the scale of land plots and use. New uses, such as nature reserves and recreation, appeared. Infrastructural needs were expanding as well.

Archaeological and historic traces in the Dutch landscape over a long period of time

The deposits from different kinds of soils from the beginning of the Dutch multi-river delta can be studied from aerial photographs. Soil and geomorphological maps have been made with the use of these photographs. The differences in soil also cause different land uses and parcelling in early agriculture
Because of the high groundwater level due to broken dikes and inundations, prehistoric features are also visible, which are actually beneath the surface of the meadows. Differences in vegetation and water saturation are shown in grayscale structures. Thus showing old land uses and settlements left from prehistoric times onwards, such as Celtic fields (small agricultural plots), Hanseatic roads, fortified places and country estates.

Facts and figures

The collection comprises of 94,257 photographs made by the Allied Air Force or commonly referred to as Royal Air Force (RAF), flying over the Netherlands. The flight dates range from 14 April 1943 until 18 June 1947. Most photographs are taken from September 1944 until May 1945. The photographs are taken within a series or run in which the photographs are overlapping each other for 60% to allow 3D viewing.
Usually there are two runs of photographs taken together: the 3000 series (port) and the 4000 series (starboard). Photograph number 3001 borders 4001, but there's no overlap between them. The scale of the photographs varies for each flight from 1 : 5,000 to 1 : 73,500, the common is 1: 7,600 to 18,000. The collection consists of two kinds of photographs:

• normal-sized, vertical photographs (size 17,8 x 21,8 cm): collection numbers 1-354, 357-358 and 454-458 ; scale 1:7.600 till 1:18.800 (ca. 91.000 photographs).
• small photographs, either oblique from low heights or vertical from great heights (size 12,5 x 12,8 cm): collection number 500-573; no scale relevant or scale approximately 1:57.000 (ca. 3.250 photographs).
• Note that the numbers 355-356, 359-446 and 453 are missing in our collection. They might be at the Dutch Land Registry Office, the Kadaster at Zwolle.