started to adopt the idea that museums could fulfil such a public role in the 1870s, but that
does not mean this idea was not circulated and taken very seriously by others in the
Netherlands before. Examples underscoring this include Johannes Bosscha sr.’s speech held
before the members of the Hollandsche Maatschappij voor Fraaie Kunsten en Wetenschappen
in 1840, or the plans for a national museum - referred to as Museum Willem I - that were
devised in 1863 but never materialised. What’s more, Victor de Stuers, who was pivotal in
ensuring the Dutch government became actively involved in the preservation of its nation’s
heritage as from the 1870s, was clearly deeply impressed by what he experienced at the South
Kensington Museum. That museum, in turn, can be seen as the epitome of the cultural values
espoused by Prince Albert and Henry Cole.
The second point is that such cultural values clearly affected and helped shape Teylers
Museum. Certainly by the end of the 19th century their impact is clearly discernible at this
privately owned institution. Whether this was the result of conscious efforts or more the
outcome of a series of chance developments is difficult to tell on the basis of the available
source material — ultimately, however, that is actually of secondary importance. What is far
more important is that by the end of the 19th century Teylers Museum had assumed the mantle
of a publicly accessible place of “high culture”, where visitors were required to behave
adequately and which had alsoH this is the crucial point — been designed to attract as many
visitors as possible. This last point is so important because it is above all in this respect that
Teylers Museum as it was at the end of the 19th century, differed profoundly from Teylers
Museum as it was at the end of the 18th century. More specifically, the public role it was
assigned had changed: an aura of “high culture” had already surrounded Teylers Museum
during van Marum’s times and visitors had also been expected to behave appropriately during
this period of the Museum’s history; but during these times visitors could only obtain a ticket
to the Museum if either van Marum or one of the trustees of the Teyler Foundation obtained
the impression that they could be trusted to behave adequately upon entering the premises. By
1885 however, everyone could gain admission to the Museum, without following some sort of
rigorous prior screening process - only the inebriated would probably have been stopped at
the door. And even though visitors would in all likelihood have known what was expected
from them beforehand, it was only after these visitors had entered the museum premises that
they were actually given to understand that they were to be on their best behaviour. If
necessary, this point was driven home by the guards who were now “policing” the premises.
In this sense, too, a visit to Teylers Museum became educational.
The two points that have now been reiterated are so important because they are closely
connected to one of the fundamental questions that was at the heart of many of the formative
discussions of the 19th century - whether these discussions revolved around cultural, political
or economic matters: this is the question of how “public” was defined. What was “public” and
what was “private”? What was “the public”? Very often, this boiled down to the question of
what moral framework should be used to determine the rules of engagement in public. Put
differently, the question was what constituted good or appropriate behaviour in public and
who had the authority to define just that.
The increasing inadequacy and final dissolution of many early-modern structures that had
shaped society, such as the feudal system or the guild system, simply necessitated a
redefinition of every individual’s role within society as a whole. The French Revolution or the
democratic and nationalist uprisings of 1848 are just two prominent examples of the volatility
of social order at the dawn of modernity. Then, as the 19th century progressed, the “civilised,
bourgeois citizen” emerged as an ideal type that acquired a kind of role model function as to
how every individual was to behave in society — this of course also set the standards as to how
every individual was to behave in public. At the same time, citizenship itself was increasingly
defined as membership of a nation state.
Returning to Haarlem, what is striking is that the inherently private Teyler Foundation, rooted
in Haarlem’s Mennonite community, helped to engrain this ideal type of the “civilised,
bourgeois citizen” within Dutch society through its very own Teylers Museum. This is
particularly noteworthy because in most other cases in which museums assumed such a role
the government or some other type of public institution - e.g. a monarch claiming to act on
the behalf of his people - was intimately involved. In the Teyler Foundation’s case however,
the five trustees of the Teyler Foundation had absolute authority and their only restriction
with regard to the museum was that their decisions must never violate the terms of Pieter
Teyler’s last will and testament. So the only way in which they had to justify the policies they
laid out for Teylers Museum was that these policies should reflect the spirit of Pieter Teyler’s
will. In this sense at least, Teylers Museum was therefore a very private affair.
The relevant question is in how far there is something typically Dutch about the way the
inherently private Teyler Foundation exerted considerable influence (in relative terms) over
public life until well into the 20th century. The long tradition of de-centralised governance so
typical of the Netherlands was repeatedly referred to throughout this study. It also became
clear how liberal ideas determined all Dutch governments’ cultural policy up until the last
quarter of the 19l century. Clearly, “the state” was accorded a slightly different role in the
Netherlands than it was in other, neighbouring countries, and there was some sort of
consensus that the cultural realm should be built upon private initiative. So, in this sense at
least Teylers Museum or, more specifically, the fact that it was an inherently private affair
was not as idiosyncratic as it might at first seem.
But while the realisation that there was a long tradition of relying on private initiative and decentralised
governance in the Netherlands helps one come to terms with some of the
apparently unique features of Teylers Museum (particularly that it was privately owned),
reverting to these traditions ultimately only provides a partially satisfying explanation. The
real challenge is to go one step further and scrutinise these traditions themselves, i.e. to trace
their origins and explain why so much more importance was attached to them in the
Netherlands than in other countries.
This, in turn, leads back to the more general question of how public life - or rather the rules of
engagement in public - was defined. What, exactly, was the consensus as to every
individual’s role in Dutch society and how did this change as the 19th century unfolded? How
and why was this different in other countries? And, quite specifically, how did this affect and