Zwolle is the capital of the Dutch province of Overijssel. Zwolle is located on the Zwarte Water and the Overijsselse Vecht and is connected to the IJssel via the Zwolle-IJsselkanaal. The city is located in the IJsseldelta region. The municipality has 129,213 inhabitants (1 August 2020), making it the nineteenth municipality in the Netherlands. Zwolle has an area of 111.33 km².
Zwolle originated in the Middle Ages on
a sand ridge between the IJssel and the Overijsselse Vecht on the
river Aa. This was an elevated and habitable spot in the otherwise
swampy landscape. At the time, such a place was called a 'suol'. The
sand ridge is still visible due to the height differences in the
city. For example, the Sassenstraat is higher than the Grote
Kerkplein.
The oldest traces of habitation date from the
early Stone Age. Itinerant tribes then inhabited the cover sand
ridges. In some sources these tribes are also referred to as the
Isala people, after the Latin name of the IJssel.
During the
construction of Ittersumerbroek, a district of Zwolle-Zuid, in 1993,
ground traces of two pile circles from the Bronze Age were found.
These are also called the Woodhenge of Zwolle.
The oldest
written record, from 1040, refers to a parish church dedicated to
Saint Michael. In 1230, Zwolle received city rights from its
landowner, the Utrecht bishop Wilbrand van Oldenburg, as thanks for
helping to build a castle in Hardenberg. This in response to the
Battle of Ane.
During the city fire of 1324, deliberately lit
by robber knight Zweder van Voorst, the city almost completely went
up in flames. Nine buildings, including the chapel and refectory of
the Bethlehem Monastery, remained because they were built of stone.
After the fire, the city was rebuilt towards the west. The map still
shows a difference between the erratic street pattern in the eastern
part of the inner city, which dates from before the fire, and the
much more regular street pattern after the fire.
The Latin
school of Zwolle, the current Gymnasium Celeanum, gained great fame
under rector Johan Cele (1375-1415). Inspired by the Modern
Devotion, he put new spiritual, pedagogical and social insights into
practice. His educational reform would soon be imitated in schools,
especially in the Netherlands and Germany. In the fifteenth century,
the "Golden Age" of the city, the Modern Devotion, which was
initially started by Geert Grote in Deventer, extended from Zwolle
to a large part of Europe. At the beginning of this century it was
Thomas a Kempis, copyist and mystic, who after his school days in
Deventer went to live in a monastery on the Agnietenberg and became
a well-known source of inspiration for this movement. It is believed
that later Pope Adrian VI was taught at the Latin school in Zwolle
around 1470.
The Golden Age of Zwolle was also due to the
fact that in 1407 the city entered the Hanseatic League as a trading
city, presumably for the second time. Bishop Frederik van
Blankenheim put an end to the power of the guilds in the city
council (1413-1416) in the Lucienacht of 1416. In 1438 Zwolle
obtained staple rights from bishop Rudolf van Diepholt. The emperor
of the Holy Roman Empire confirmed the city rights of Zwolle in 1448
by including the city among the cities of the German Empire. At the
same time as Deventer and Kampen, Zwolle was recognized by Emperor
Maximilian I in 1495 as a Free Imperial City.
In August 1572 Zwolle was conquered by
Willem van den Bergh, a brother-in-law of William of Orange. But
after the murder of Zutphen on November 16 by the Spanish troops of
Don Frederik, the city surrendered voluntarily with several other
cities to prevent further bloodshed.
The States of Overijssel
initially did not participate in the Union of Utrecht, which was
intended as a military alliance against the advancing Spanish
troops. But when the stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe
and Overijssel - George van Lalaing - defected to Spain on March 3,
1580, the people of Zwolle made it clear that they did not want to
leave the revolt and no longer recognized the stadholder. One Lubert
Ulger unleashed an uprising in Zwolle, and on June 15 he managed to
defeat the Catholics and Spanish soldiers with a group of Calvinist
insurgents in a street fight in Diezerstraat. After mediation by
Willem van Oranje, Lalaing only got Groningen to the Spanish side,
and Overijssel and Drenthe joined the Union of Utrecht.
During Parma's nine years, Zwolle was the only city not recaptured
by the Spaniards. During Maurits van Oranje's Ten Years, the city
was a military base from which Overijssel and Gelderland could be
recaptured. In the Republic of the Netherlands, Overijssel had no
real capital, the states consisted of representatives from Deventer,
Kampen, Zwolle and the Overijsselse Knighthood. The meetings took
place alternately in one of the three cities.
It was not until the French era that Zwolle received the status
of capital, first of the Department of the Oude IJssel, then of the
Department of Overijssel and, after the annexation by the First
French Empire, of the Department of Monden van de IJssel or
Bouches-de-l ' Yssel. After the departure of the French, Zwolle
became the capital of the province of Overijssel.
On July 7,
1837, the last Zwolle death sentence was carried out on the Grote
Markt by executioner Hendrikus Esman (executioner for Overijssel
1827-1845). Albert Wetterman from Wijhe was sentenced to this
sentence because of the murder of his wife Gerritdina Lankhorst.
Around 1870 the population of the city increased sharply. The
cause was mainly due to the acquisition of a railway station (1876).
The Company for the Exploitation of the State Railways also opened a
Central Workshop for the maintenance of the trains in 1870. Soon 600
people were employed here. A new district was developed outside the
city, Assendorp. Here, social housing was first applied in Zwolle.
The first houses were built between Weezenland and Bartjensstraat.
The Association for the Promotion of Factory and Trade Industry
built 20 houses, for which one guilder rent per week had to be paid.
Such a house consisted of a long corridor, two rooms and a poop
barrel outside. The tenants of the VFH department were later given
the opportunity to buy a house, these were the houses in the
Enkstraat, next to the Van Raalte timber trade. In 1878, 25 new
houses were built on the Bartjensstraat, these were for the workers
of the vinegar factory Heerkens Schaepman & Co. which was founded in
1807 on the spot where the Isala clinics (location Weezenlanden)
later stood.
Connecting to the railways, a city horse tram
was operated from 1885 by the Zwolsche Tramwegmaatschappij (ZTM) on
Cape track. In addition to a city line, it also operated a tram line
to Katerveer. The city tram was discontinued in 1919. Also on cape
track there is from 1914 the local tram line Zwolle - Blokzijl with
steam trams operation. This tram line was discontinued in 1934. Also
on cape track, the regional tram network of the Dedemsvaartsche
Stoomtramweg-Maatschappij gets a terminus in Zwolle near the Brink
in 1895. There it was possible to switch to the horse tram. After
the Second World War, the regional tram network was discontinued.
On May 28, 1932, the Zuiderzee was cut off from the North Sea,
so that Zwolle is no longer directly connected to the oceans.
In Zwolle, the road bridge and the railway bridge over
the IJssel were blown up on May 10, 1940. This also eliminated the
telephone connection with the Northern Netherlands, which ran via
these bridges. One of the three civil registry offices for Germans
was established in Zwolle. Zwolle also got one of the 57 employment
offices set up by the Germans.
Zwolle was given a so-called
'Jewish Council', founded by order of the Germans. During the Second
World War, 495 Jewish residents of Zwolle were taken away by the
occupying forces and killed in concentration camps. A Jewish couple
took their own lives with the Germans on their doorstep, and two
Jews were killed by the resistance in Hattem. People were also shot
at various places in the city who resisted the occupier in any way.
Various monuments in the city remind of this, such as the
Monument on Meppelerstraatweg and Monument on the Berkum shooting
range. In the Ter Pelkwijk Park is the War Memorial Zwolle that
should keep the memory awake of all people from Zwolle who died in
World War II as a result of acts of war. Zwolle was liberated by
Canadians on April 14, 1945. Leo Major (1921-2008) was one of the
first allied soldiers to enter the city and was almost independently
responsible for the withdrawal of the Germans, and is therefore
called "the liberator of Zwolle".