House with the Heads

The Big Bang in the Low Countries

Femke Halsema opens exhibition The House with the Heads – A Monument to Free Thinking at the Embassy of the Free Mind

On March 20th, the Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema will open the exhibition The House with the Heads – A Monument to Free Thinking at the Embassy of the Free Mind (EFM), located in the House with the Heads at Keizersgracht 123. At the opening, Halsema will receive the first copy of the publication The House with the Heads – A Monument to Free Thinking. A Big Bang in the Low Countries. With this event, the Embassy of the Free Mind builds a bridge between the history of free thought in Amsterdam and today’s social debate on freedom.

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The exhibition lays bare the foundations of Amsterdam’s celebrated tradition of tolerance. Relevant books, documents, and visual materials illustrate how Amsterdam became a place of refuge in the 17th century for people from all over Europe. Jews, Protestants, mystics, and freethinkers found a safe haven here. Philosophers such as Coornhert and Comenius fought for freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, human rights, and peace. Books that were banned elsewhere rolled off the presses here. Exchanges between philosophers, scientists, and spiritual movements created a vibrant intellectual climate in which a thinker such as Spinoza could develop his groundbreaking ideas, and in which Europe’s first female student, Anna Maria van Schurman, felt at home. In this respect, Amsterdam can be regarded as a textbook example of how a society that opens itself to the new and the unknown can flourish culturally, economically, and scientifically.

Within this intellectual landscape, the House with the Heads (now home to the Embassy of the Free Mind) played an important role. In the 17th century this monumental canal house was home to the De Geers, a merchant family who were patrons to the freethinkers of their time. Philosophers, writers, and free spirits found space here for debate, regardless of their background.

‘The House with the Heads is a unique 17th-century monument where, some four-hundred years ago, a kindred collection was assembled: one that did justice to the tradition of tolerance and religious freedom that characterizes Amsterdam.’

- Ernst W. Veen, former director of De Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, founder and former director of the Hermitage Amsterdam

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Special Loans

In addition to 16th- and 17th-century prints from its own collection, the exhibition features special loans. Stadsbibliotek Norrköping in Sweden is making several books available that once belonged to the De Geer family, including a long-lost original manuscript by Jan Amos Comenius. Other objects come from the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Allard Pierson, the university libraries of Leiden and Utrecht, the Royal Library in The Hague, as well as from several private lenders.

‘In addition to Jewish books, hermetic and other free-thinking texts were also printed in 17th-century Amsterdam. The influence of this book production on Western thought and on the development of Amsterdam as a center of free thinking can hardly be overstated.’‍

- Emile Schrijver, General Director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, Professor of the History of the Jewish Book, University of Amsterdam

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Publication The House with the Heads – A Monument to Free Thinking. A Big Bang in the Low Countries

‘Amsterdam, fair star among cities, radiant pearl of the Netherlands, wonder and pride of Europe.’‍

- Jan Amos Comenius

With this exhibition and publication, the Embassy of the Free Mind not only connects history with contemporary social issues, but also crowns forty years of research conducted by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (BPH) into often hidden and forgotten philosophical and spiritual currents in Europe. For this reason, the book also includes a history of the BPH, as well as an overview of research themes and the publications that have emerged from them.

This exhibition and the accompanying publication were made possible in part with the support of the Iona Foundation and the Hendrik Muller Fund.