Meppel (Drents: Möppelt) is a municipality and city in the extreme southwest of the Dutch province of Drenthe. On August 1, 2020, the municipality had 34,125 inhabitants (source: CBS), of which more than 28,000 live in the city of Meppel itself. The municipal area is 58 km². This makes Meppel the smallest municipality in Drenthe.
Meppel was already mentioned in a charter in 1141, but
at that time it was no more than a group of farms. In 1422 Meppel
was separated from Kolderveen as an independent cherry game and then
they were allowed to build a church. This Grote or Mariakerk is
still there, although much has changed over the centuries. At the
time, the place was nothing more than a village. Meppel flourished
in the 16th century because of the peat excavations in the Northern
Netherlands; the city was an important transit port because of the
connection with the Drentsche Hoofdvaart and the Hoogeveense Vaart
on the one side and the Meppelerdiep on the other. The Zuiderzee
could be reached at Zwartsluis via the Meppelerdiep. Peat was
exported along this road from all over Drenthe to the west of the
country.
In the 17th and 18th centuries many inland skippers
settled in the town, which had been granted city rights by the
Drenthe drost in 1644 and now has more than a thousand inhabitants.
In 1809, Meppel received city rights again from Louis Napoleon. On
November 5, 1815, Meppel received its own city regulations from King
William I.
The waters that run through the center of Meppel
are called canals. Partly because of the names Heerengracht,
Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, the city is also sometimes called
the Mokum of the North. Meppel is also compared to Amsterdam for
other reasons. For example, there have been links between the two
cities for centuries and the Jewish community was richly represented
in Meppel before World War II. Street names like Synagogue Street
are a reminder of that time. The above canals are all along the old
route of the Hoogeveense Vaart and the Beilerstroom through the
center of Meppel. In the twentieth century, some canals that ran
straight through the center of the city were filled in. Some
drawbridges have also been replaced by fixed bridges. Since then it
has become impossible to enter Drenthe through Meppel, partly due to
the narrowing of the Hoogeveense Vaart in 2005 near the Oosterboer.
In 2008, part of the Gasgracht, up to Prinsenplein in the center,
was dug open again. A folding bridge over the Gasgracht has been
built near the old "Tipbrug". This bridge is built after the example
of the Tipbrug and is called "Prinsenbrug". There are plans to
re-open more canals.
During the Second World War, almost all
Jewish residents of Meppel were transported by the German occupier
to the concentration camps and died there. Of the 250 Meppel Jews,
232 perished and only 18 returned.
In 2007 Meppel became a
Millennium Municipality.
Meppel has an active historical
association, the Oud Meppel Foundation.
Meppeler mosquito
The inhabitants of Meppel are also called "Meppeler mosquitoes" or
mosquito sprayers, after a folk tale that is known about several
places in the world. The story goes that one night some residents
thought the church tower was on fire, because a cloud of smoke hung
around the Meppeler tower, but it turned out to be a swarm of
fireflies or mosquitoes. A statue of this folk tale, by Aart van den
IJssel, was placed in Meppel in 1971.
The coat of arms of
Meppel
The history of the city can be read in the coat of arms of
Meppel: the three clover leaves symbolize the pasture land around
Meppel; the three black rectangles represent peat and represent the
peat quarries and the peat trade; the ten silver tokens in the red
border represent the ten sacks of grain that the village of Meppel
paid from 1422 to the church of Kolderveen (next to Nijeveen, a
village that borders Meppel).