De Kolhoop

This house played a very important role in the history in the Postma's
Built in 1932/33, it was designed by son Klaas who was an architect. It was meant for his parents to live in,as the oldest son Jacob took over the hotel.

As you can see, it was a nice design, proving Klaas had talent.

De Kolhoop was built in times of global financial troubles, and this had its impact here too.
Because a customer could not fulfill his obligations to him, Klaas could not pay his own debts. Jacob and his wife Frieda came back from their honeymoon along the river Rhine, ready to take over business. Instead, a cold shower: the refurbishing of the hotel as well as the building of the Kolhoop was stopped, because invoices could not be paid. To get him out of trouble, the whole family had to support. It was spring, the busiest time of year came, but no personell could be hired due to lack of cash.

All members of the family gave a helping hand, and they were lucky too: it was a beautiful summer with lots of customers, providing lots of turnover, so by the end of the year the worst troubles were over again. Nevertheless, it had its financial impact over years to come.

The old folks Sjouke and Janna moved in with their youngest son  Bert and sister Frouwkje and both lived there for the rest of their respective lifes in 1943 and 1964.
A small tobaccostore was exploited in the round part to the right side till 1962, ran by  my grandma Janna.

In the afterwar years,  Jacob's children stayed in the house as their parents, having been collaborators in wartime, were kicked out of their house and detained. The kids, still very young(the youngest was 1,5 years old), found shelter in the Kolhoop at  grandmother Janna and aunt Frouwkje.
Until grandma and aunt were arrested as well and the kids were kicked out and left totally on their own.  In later years, the wrong of this practice was widely acknowledged, but traumatic harm to these children was done.
As grandmother was released later on(she hadn't done much wrong except  loving her nazi-sympathising son) these kids lived in the Kolhoop again and went to school in Emmen.

Also, Hennie's daughter stayed a lot with her grandparents in the 30-s before they went to the Indies. After they came back from there in 1946, she and her parents stayed there as they had no home of their own. When her parents returned later to the Dutch Indies, she also found a second home here with her grandma and aunt.

The two elder daughters of Joop lived in de Kolhoop too, mainly directly after they came back from South-America in 1957, and their new home in Warns wasn't organised  yet.
One of them had close contact with aunt Frouwkje and visited her often in the sixties, after grandma had died.
I myself, being their kid-brother, stayed, together with my dad, for a week in this house in 1970, after aunt Frouwkje had died on the 8th of january of that year.The house had to be cleared out and prepared for selling. He showed me a lot of Emmen then and told about his childhood.

It's fair to say a lot of the Postma-offspring, be it 2nd or 3rd generation, found a safe haven in this house, one time or the other, in the course of their turbulent lifes.
My sister told me she found it always an interesting design, being round on one side. I, for myself, remember the colourful stained glass windows, which you can see here from the outside. Nice.

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