De Mille’s importance to us here is that he epitomizes for that time what an American celebrity was. Yet, the reality is that he was a Flemish American. This of course speaks to the issues of assimilation and self-identity (I have not seen any article or statement where De Mille publicly acknowledged his Flemish roots). Be that as it may, DeMille is a direct descendant of Flemish emigrants. The important point here, of course, is that DeMille’s genealogy speaks to the unacknowledged presence (and prominence) of Flemish Americans.

Permit me then to offer to you, on this anniversary of his passing, an abrdiged and edited reprinting of the Flemish origins of the DeMilles (edited by me for style but content primarily excerpted from Louis P. de Boer’s “Pre-American Notes on Old New Netherland Families,” from The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey, Volume III/1928).

Anthony deMil/DeMille (1625-1689) is the first of his family name to reside in America.[i] He is a direct ancestor in the male line of Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959). The De Milles belonged to the colony of Flemish refugees which had established itself at Haarlem after 1577, just after that city had freed itself from Spanish control.[ii] The Flemish colony at Haarlem had grown as a result of immigration, by numbers of settlers, either directly from Flanders, or from Flemish refugee colonies in England and Germany.[iii]

The persecutions of dissenters [such as the Pilgrims, who of course fled England for the Netherlands in 1607] by the British King James I caused many Flemings to flee England and relocate in Haarlem. Even at that time this was remarked upon. In the Haarlem city archives there is a thin booklet called [translated into English] “An Account of the Flemings who have come to the city of Haarlem in the year 1612”.[iv]

Nor are the Germans unique in this regard. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the English, Scotch, Irish, Portuguese, Italians, and even the Russians accepted and assimilated Flemish immigrants during the five hundred years of the early modern period (e.g., 1100-1600). Nor did the waves of Flemish emigrants to the diaspora end in 1600, as regular readers of this blog are well aware.

The below post is culled from a monograph entitled “Dutch and Flemish Colonization in Mediaeval Germany” by James Westfall Thompson. As the author states, few people today realize “The profoundly organic and heterogeneous nature of medieval society” [i] While Thompson’s article was published nearly a century ago, I am unaware of any subsequent scholarship that has supplanted it. Thus it stands here as a marker to place yet another aspect of the Flemish contribution in proper context.

What I hope to do in this post (besides offering access to a difficult to find piece of research) is to suggest that still other ethnic pools have been watered with Flemish DNA. So in some small measure, the accomplishments of other ethnicities in America are also a tribute to the contributions made by the Flemish diaspora.

One final note: While I have not altered the content, I felt compelled, in order to make the text more legible, to render JFT’s original turgid prose into something smoother and more fluid. Thus this is heavily edited and the footnotes are included for the original source of each paragraph.

The rural population of Europe in the Middle Ages was probably more nomadic than society today. Mass migrations frequently succeeded one another over the years. The driving force for these (and of course many such mass relocations) was often economic distress.[ii]

Dutch and Flemish immigrants from the Low Countries played an important part in the settlement of medieval Germany. The emigration of the peasantry of modern Holland and Belgium in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and their settlement in numerous, scattered colonies throughout Germany was due to the simultaneous impact of expulsive forces at home and the attraction of new, virgin land.[iii]

Flanders in particular was a source of emigration. Medieval Flanders held the honor of being the most densely populated region of medieval Western Europe.[iv] Numerous serfs exploited the rich, alluvial soil. Nowhere else in Europe were religious settlements more thickly clustered than in Flanders.[v]

The chief source of our information for the history of these Low Countries colonies is documentary. Of the chronicles, Helmold's Chronica Slavorum is by far the most valuable.[vi]

Both feudal and ecclesiastical governments promoted and ruled Dutch and Flemish colonies in medieval Germany. In the rivalry between the two forms, the religious form won out over that promoted by the secular nobles. And among the religious orders, the Cistercian Order’s approach to recruiting colonists from the Low Countries was superior to all others.[vii]

Albrecht the Bear, for example, preferred the agency of others in promoting Netherlandic colonization of his territories to direct efforts by himself. Albrecht’s favorite agencies were the religious orders of the Cistercians and the Praemonstratensians.[viii]

The Cistercian monasteries, as suggested, were the most active promoters of Netherlandic colonization.[ix] Having been but recently established, this religious order found little place for itself in older Germany, where enormous areas of land had been for centuries in the hands of the Benedictines and Cluniacs. In response, the Cistercians were compelled to found their houses in the New East of Germany just being opened, where land was still cheap and could be acquired for virtually nothing.[x]

The Low Countries claimed the great historic abbeys – such as St. Bavon in Ghent, St. Martin in Utrecht….St. Omer, St. Quentin, St. Bertin, and St. Riquier. These religious shelters formed clustered communities of artisans, craftsmen, and petty tradesmen. Skilled workers dwelled in separate "quarters" around the monastery walls, while in scattered villages, serfs worked on the abbey lands. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries these religious settlements had grown into more or less independent towns.[xi]

Why Leave Flanders?

The difficult lot of the Netherlandic peasant was often made worse by the vicious commercial policy of some of the nobles. Heavy taxation on production, distribution, and consumption impoverished the peasants. More critically, it discouraged or even ruined small business enterprises.[xiii]

Industrial coercion was another factor that provoked emigration. Nowhere in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the development of industry and town population greater than in Flanders. If the burghers secured freedom of work and measurable political rights they stayed; if coercion against the peasants succeeded, the Flemish peasants sought to migrate.”[xiv]

An additional factor which induced emigration in the Middle Ages, and perhaps the most serious of all influences, was famine. The occurrence of famine was not always due to adverse weather conditions…. famine was often engendered, at least locally, by other causes, such as feudal war or exhaustive taxation. For example, in Flanders famine occurred four times in the eleventh century, nine times in the twelfth, and twice in the thirteenth. There is most certainly a connection between these hunger conditions and the huge emigration which took place from Flanders in the twelfth century.[xv]

The peasant who saw, after years’ of hard labor tilling the soil, diking small poulders, etc. that his little farmstead was destroyed, his crops ruined, and his livestock lost, had no heart left to begin the struggle all over again in such a land.[xvi]“Propter caristiam colono fugiente, plurimi vici deserti remansere, reads a chronicle. In such a situation, peasants were often forced to slaughter livestock for lack of fodder and simply to survive. When these resources were consumed nothing but flight remained as their recourse.[xvii]

A flood of November 18, 1421, at the mouth of the Waal River, destroyed no less than seventy-two hamlets. To the Frisian and Flemish peasantry, which in the eleventh and twelfth centuries suffered under a horrible combination of adverse conditions, Lower Germany beckoned invitingly. Thousands of these Netherlanders trekked eastward seeking to found new homes for themselves and to find economic and political freedom in a land where the population was sparse, the land cheap, and little or no capital necessary to begin anew.[xviii]

An echo of the hope of the medieval Low Country emigrants to German lands is captured in the text of an old Flemish ballad:

“Naer Oostland willen wy ryden,

Naer Oostland willen wy mee,

Al over die groene heiden,

Frisch over die heiden.

Daer isser een betere stee

Als wy binnen

Oostland komen

Al onder dat hooge huis,

Daer worden wy binnen gelaten,

Frisch over die heiden;

Zy heeten ons willekom zyn.”[xix]

The real "rush" of settlers out of Friesland and Flanders into North Germany began early in the twelfth century. From the time of Henry the Fowler, under the lee of the battle line, the frontier of colonial settlement advanced, conquering the stubborn soil and the no less stubborn resistance of the Wends (much like the advancing of the America “West” against the aboriginals). By the Franconian epoch, Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and the Thuringian Reichsland were studded with German settlements.[xx]

The Flemish and the Frisian pioneer did not come into these regions until the locals were expelled. This meant the subjugation or expulsion of the Wendish peoples by fire and sword. This was accomplished by the Saxons through two centuries of almost unremitting warfare. Usually the preliminary work of settlement was done by German colonists. The Flemish and Dutch followed afterwards.[xxi]

For the land into which they came, the Fleming and the Frisian were singularly well adapted. In the high feudal age Lower Germany along the coast of the North Sea and the Baltic was an almost uninterrupted series of marshes and fens. Owing to the sluggish flow of the rivers across the flat plain and the deep indentation of estuaries like the mouths of the Weser and the Elbe, these swamplands sometimes extended a considerable distance inland. Mecklenburg and Pomerania were dotted with lakes. Even in the interior there was much bog land.[xxii]

The first Germans into these regions had naturally avoided these places and appropriated for themselves the best of the tilled soil of the conquered Wends. Naturally those with first dibs tended to be the elites (clergy and the nobility). When almost all of this land had been occupied, German settlers, wherever possible, chose their lots from the remaining high ground or else cleared forested areas for new tillage.[xxiii]

Before the twelfth century arrival of the Dutch and Flemish into Germany, the swamps and marshes, if used at all, were used only for pasturage. The simple fact is that the German peasantry before the Flemish-Dutch immigration knew little or nothing of the process of making such bottom lands arable. The German feudal princes and prelates who imported Netherlanders (Flemish/Dutch/Frisians) by the hundreds knew of their familiarity in swamp reclamation. Nor was this specialized information: since Roman times dike-building and artificial drainage had been practiced in Flanders.[xxiv]

Two domestic (German) ‘pull’ factors aided the reception of Netherlanders with these skills. Constant warfare had ravaged the local population. Secondly, the great landed estates (whether of nobles or clergy) rendered these uncultivated tracts valuable (if tilled). Netherlanders from the coast were accustomed to deep plowings in heavy soils.[xxv]

Within the space of a hundred years (e.g., by the 1250s) the lower Weser, the whole valley of the Elbe from Meissen to Hamburg, the marshes of the Havel, the bottom lands of the Mulde, the Black and the White Elster, the banks of the Oder below Breslau, together with its affluents like the Netze, were peopled with these Dutch and Flemish settlers. Place names of localities of Flemish origin like Flemsdorf[xxix], Flemingsthal, Vlammingen, are the most lasting legacy. A glance at a modern map of Germany hints at these legacies.[xxx]

The methods of colonization varied between the extremes of the individual pioneer settler and the migration and settlement of various groups of colonists. While the migratory bands were united by ties of kith and kin, the size of the migrations were varied and could be great or small. For the most part, though, these colonists came in small numbers to Germany. But it was real colonization: the simultaneous co-operative migration of blocks of people, who took their cattle and household effects with them and left nothing behind (and no intention to return to) their Low Country homelands.[xxxi]

Such was the manner in which the earliest recorded settlement of Netherlanders in Germany. In the year 1106 a band of Flemings and Frisians settled in the marshes of the Weser near Bremen.[xxxii] Curiously, only some of these colonists were settlers from Flanders and Frisia. Many were descendants of the Flemish and the Frisians – but really second and third generation Germans.[xxxiii]

At some point in the unrecorded past, small bands of Flemings and Frisians had settled together. Their descendants then (together with some Netherlands-born Flemings and Frisians) banded together to become settlers in this new locale. Such was the inevitable process of assimilation that the Netherlandic strain tended to thin out with each succeeding generation as the newcomers intermarried with their German neighbors, or with what remained of the original Wendish population.[xxxiv]

Dutch and Flemish colonies in medieval Germany, as might be expected, were more numerous in the areas of Germany closest to their points of origin. Thus the marsh lands of the lower Weser were the earliest place of settlement; then next the lower and middle Elbe and its tributaries; and then finally the Oder region. Lesser traces of Netherlander settlements are also found in Galicia, in Austria, and in the Carpathian Mountains.[xxxv]

The Flemish settlements near Waldheim and Altenburg (where even now there is a municipality named Flemmingen) and the Dutch and Flemish (qui et Flamingi) colony near Koesen were certainly established there well before 1140. That is, these colonies existed before the foundation of the Cistercian abbey of Pforte. This is exceptional for the reason that the Netherlanders in this area had settled in a mountainous and forested region instead of near a river plain.[xxxvi]

The First Flemish Colonies in Germany

The earliest record of Netherlandish settlement in Germany is found in the Bremisches Urkundenbuch in the year 1062. At this time a small group of these immigrants was settled in the moors along the left bank of the Weser near the great archbishopric of Adalbert. Unfortunately, immediately subsequent waves of Netherlandic immigration to the area were stalled. The fall of Archbishop Adalbert and the plundering of his bishopric lands (by the Billunger) especially in the context of broader anarchy throughout Germany at this time (e.g., the revolt by the Saxons against the reign of Emperor Henry IV ) probably deterred further immigration for decades.[xxxvii]

Things rapidly changed, however, soon after the century mark (the year 1100) was turned. In 1106, Adalbert’s successor, Archbishop Frederick of Hamburg-Bremen, energetically revived his predecessor's policy. Frederick granted "certain lands which are uncultivated, swampy, and useless" to his own people to persons "who are called Hollanders." These settlers were apparently refugees, for the charter recites that they came to the archbishop and "earnestly begged" for leave to settle on the moors. The prelate, "considering that their settlement would be profitable," granted their request.[xxxviii]

The Flemish and Dutch settlers brought their own architecture styles with them in many cases. While doubtless the original "shack" might have been rudely built of logs, the permanent edifice was often of homemade brick made out of the local clay, with timber travesses and, of course, timbered superstructure. The floors too were brick; peat, with which the Netherlander was familiar, but which the German peasant had no knowledge of, was rarely used in construction. Instead, it was used as fuel to be burned in the fireplace”[xxxix]

The lots these settlers received were divided into rectangular blocks measuring 720 "royal" rods in length and 30 in width. The settlers were to pay one penny (denarius) annually for each hide or holding, to give every eleventh sheaf of grain, every tenth lamb, every tenth goat, every tenth goose, and a tenth of the honey and flax for tithes, besides a penny for each colt and a farthing (obolus) for each calf on St. Martin's Day. A tithe of these tithes was set aside by the archbishop for the support of the parish churches, and each priest was to have one hide of land.[xl]

One of the primary inducements always offered to these settlers was exemption from the exasperating and multiple manorial obligations which burdened them in the homeland to such a degree that these grievances were a real cause of emigration.[xli]

In the nature of things these imported judicial institutions were assimilated in course of time with those of the German population among whom these Dutch and Flemish incomers settled…. the statutes of the Flemminger Sociedt in Bitterfeld were in vogue as late as the eighteenth century, and remains of them are still traceable in this locality.[xlii]

The Netherlandic refugee settlers established some precedents. They agreed to pay every year two marks for every one hundred hides for the privilege of retaining their own law and holding their own courts for the settlement of all their differences in secular matters. This they asked "because they feared they would suffer from the injustice of foreign judges." But the archbishop's court was to remain as the ultimate court of appeal.[xliii]

The success of this lucky experiment must have been immediate. For shortly afterwards Bishop Udo of Hildesheim established his own colony of Flemings at Eschershausen, west of the Harz Mountains and Dietrich of Halberstadt undertook the settlement of the lowlands between the Bode and the Ocker rivers with another batch of Netherlanders.[xliv]

By 1108 (only two years after the refugees requested lands) the promotion of Dutch and Flemish immigration for the redemption of swamp land became an organized effort of the clergy and lay nobles of Lower Germany. In that year (1108) the Archbishop of Magdeburg, the bishops of Merseburg, Naumburg, Meissen, Brandenburg, and the Counts Otto (of ?), Wicbert (of ? ), Ludwig (of ? ), ‘and all the greater and lesser lords of eastern Saxony’ united in a joint circular petition. Their appeal was sent to the Archbishop of Cologne, the bishops of Aachen and Liege, the Duke of Lower Lorraine, Robert, Count of Flanders, and others, urging them to encourage the emigration of their surplus and hungry population into Lower Germany. Modern readers are struck by the letter’s similarity to land-promotion schemes today.[xlv]

We do not know what the immediate effect of this effort was. But we do know that by the middle of the 12^th century Flemish and Frisian immigration into North Germany was in full swing. Of the German nobles at this time Adolph of Holstein was the most active in this effort. ‘In 1143,’ says the historian Helmold, ‘because the land was sparsely peopled, Count Adolph sent messengers into all the regions roundabout, even into Flanders and Holland, Utrecht, Westphalia, and Frisia, to proclaim that all who were in want of land might come with their families and receive the best of soil, a spacious country rich in crops, abounding in fish and flesh, and of exceeding good pasturage’.[xlvi]

Perhaps these appeals bore fruit. But whatever enthusiasm the Netherlanders may have had was likely dampened by rumours of war. The fierce racial and religious war which is known as the Wendish Crusade, broke out in 1147. It quickly devastated the whole eastern frontier of Saxon Germany from Magdeburg to Holstein. The newly established Flemish and Frisian settlements were threatened as a result.[xlvii]

Fortunately the Wends, while they hated the Saxons, did not equate the Flemish and Dutch newcomers with their traditional German enemies. Netherlandic enclaves, which could not have resisted even if they had so dared, were spared by the marauding Wends. What destruction did befall the colony was attributed to the hostility of their Holstein neighbors, who were jealous of the industriousness of the Netherlandic settlers and hated them as ‘foreigners’.[xlviii]

The ultimate effect of the Wendish Crusade was to open large tracts of border land to occupation which hitherto had been precariously held by the Slavs. From 1147 another wave of Dutch and Flemish settlers followed hard upon on early influx of Westphalian colonists. These settlers swarmed into the territory east of the Elbe, along both the lower and the middle course of the river.[xlix]

One might think that these humble laborers who settled where others would not go and hardly competed at all with the German would have been welcomed by him. But this was not the case. Helmold relates that the Holsteiners, not without reason, were suspected of burning down the villages of Flemish and Dutch settlers during the Wendish crusade ‘on account of their hatred of these immigrants’ who the Holsteiners called ‘Rustri’.[l]

No lord of North Germany was more active in promoting the colonization and settlement of these Dutch and Flemish immigrants than Albrecht the Bear of Brandenburg. In this policy he was ably assisted by the local bishops, especially Archbishop Wichmann of Magdeburg.[li]

The incoming Flemish and Dutch settlers had a natural aptitude for this kind of labor…. The charter of Bishop Gerung aplauded the ‘strong men of Flanders’ (strenuos viros ex Flandrensi) who redeemed the vast swamps around Meissen. Besides ditching, diking, and draining, these Netherlanders materially helped the country by constructing roads. Curiously, they also seemed to have accepted the responsibility for the extermination of snakes.[liv]

However, Wichmann was not the originator in thus settling these colonies along the upper Elbe. Already in 1154 Bishop Gerung of Meissen had established a group of them at Kiihren near Wurzen. But Wichmann was the greatest promoter of these enterprises, more so even than Albrecht the Bear himself. The details of the history of the settlement of these Dutch and Flemish colonies by Albrecht and Wichmann may be traced in the Urkunde:[lv]

“As the Slavs gradually disappeared [due to attacks of the Germans], [Margraeve Albrecht the Bear] sent to Utrecht and the regions of the [lower] Rhine, as well as to those peoples who live near the ocean and suffer the violence of the sea, namely, Hollanders, Zealanders, and Flemings, and brought a great multitude of them and caused them to dwell in the towns and villages of the Slavs. He greatly furthered the immigration of settlers into the bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg, because the churches multiplied there and the value of the tithes greatly increase”[lvi]

In 1159 Abbot Arnold of Ballenstadt purchased two localities "formerly possessed by the Slavs" from the Margrave. He then sold holdings in them to ‘certain Flemings who had petitioned permission to occupy them and to preserve their own law.’[lvii]

Adolph of Holstein was the earliest of the lay nobles of Germany to introduce Dutch and Flemish colonization in Saxony. Adolph was followed by Henry the Lion, whose intelligent rule owes more to Adolph's example than his biographers have admitted. Henry the Lion introduced these Dutch and Flemish settlers as a way of retaining control over territory. Since Henry the Lion is credited with founding the cities of Munich and Lubeck, it is possible (and even likely) that these cities owe their initial settlement to Dutch, Flemish, and Frisian immigrants.[lviii]

After all but the last remnants of the Obodrite confederacy were driven out of Mecklenburg in 1160, by a joint expedition of Henry and King Waldemar of Denmark, he imported hundreds of Netherlanders into the bottom lands around Mecklenburg and Ratzeburg. This policy continued for decades. However, at the end of the twelfth century there was a noticeable falling off in Dutch and Flemish immigration into Lower Germany. How far this decline was due to the fall of Henry the Lion in 1181, or to the growing prosperity of the Low Countries, which, as every scholar knows, reached a high degree of economic development at this time, is difficult to determine.[lix]

One factor in "slowing down" this immigration perhaps may be that, as the Weser and Elbe River marshes increasingly became settled, the next available tracts, in the basin of the Oder River, were too far away from the source of potential immigrants. The fact that the best marsh lands had by the year 1200 already been occupied certainly had some impact on potential immigrants.[lx]

While there still were territories that could be drained and cultivated, the remaining marshlands were so vast and difficult that they were beyond the capital and engineering capabilities of small Netherlandic peasant bands to undertake. Such enormous tracts of swamp as the Goldene Aue could only be successfully drained by an enterprise that could aggregate capital and other resources – such as religious orders like that of the Cistercians. Whatever the reasons, there are proportionally fewer examples of the establishment of Dutch or Flemish colonies in Lower Germany after 1180 than before that date.[lxi]

Netherlandic Settlers in Other Germanic Lands

In the thirteenth century Silesia and the territory of Lebus in farther Brandenburg, where the March touched the Oder (not the bottom lands of the Weser and the Elbe, nor lower Saxony and Mecklenburg) were the parts of Germany whither the tide of overflow population from the Low Countries directed itself. In Lebus, where the population still was heavily Slavonic (it was the ancient land of the Leubuzzi), the local ruling house was very active in attracting colonists from Flanders, Eastphalia, Hesse, and Thuringia. In the thirty-five years between 1204-1239 over 160,000 acres of waste or bottom land was redeemed by these immigrants.[lxii]

In lower Silesia, where the people were ethnically Polish, there was a great influx of Westphalian colonists during the reign of Boleslav the Tall and his son Conrad. Most of the Flemish immigrants who entered Silesia came into the country in the wake of the Westphalians. Zedlitz, a town west of the Oder River near Steinau, seems to have been one of these settlements, and Pogel near Wohlau certainly was a Flemish colony.[lxiii]

As to Dutch and Flemish immigration into Southwestern Germany, there is little recorded. Leopold VI of Austria in 1106 issued a charter bestowing certain rights and liberties upon ‘burgenses nostros qui apud nos Flacdrenses ntuncupatur in civitate nostra Wiena.' But the intensely mountainous nature of much of the Austrian and Hungarian lands repelled settlers who were used to a fen country. Consequently, there is little evidence of organized or group colonization by the Flemish or the Dutch in Southeastern Europe.[lxiv]

It is a noteworthy fact that these Dutch and Flemish immigrants, and especially the Flemish, were almost wholly rural peasants and not townspeople, even though Flemish towns by the twelfth century were already well developed. The effect that this diligent peasantry had upon the development of German rural regions, especially in reclamation of swamp lands, was significant.[lxv]

The historian Lamprecht has said that the greatest deed of the German people in the Middle Ages was their eastward expansion over, and colonization of, the Slavonic lands between the Elbe and the Oder rivers. Certainly most of this long and important labor was done by the Germans themselves. But a not inconsiderable portion of this achievement was due to the nameless Dutch and Flemish pioneers who left their low-lying homelands. Dwelling near the North Sea and subject to its violent capriciousness, the Netherlanders overcame that to redeem the marshes of the Weser, the Elbe, the Havel, the Oder, and even the Vistula.[lxvi]

In the process of making new lives for themselves and their families, the Flemish, Frisian, and Dutch settlers laid the foundations for a great land. Centuries later, as their descendants found Germany itself less hospitable – whether politically or economically – they fled again to a New World. Today, German Americans constitute the largest single ethnicity in the United States. Undoubtedly many carry DNA that originated in the “vlakke land”.Yet another example then of the Flemish contribution to the discovery and settlement of America.

Endnotes