Brooklyn Saves Breukelen?

The Brooklyn Paper goes Dutch! Three reporters from The Brooklyn Paper explored the roots of their borough in its ancestral home: Breukelen. But their fact-finding mission took a turn for the worst when they discovered Breukelen is to be merged with two other cities, thereby losing its name. ‘SAVE BREUKELEN! Our ancestral home is facing extinction!’, a breaking news headline reads on the paper’s website.

NY400 spoke to The Brooklyn Paper editor-in-chief Gersh Kuntzman about his trip: ‘Brooklyn has such a deep relation with Holland. We wanted to connect with Holland and Breukelen, and there’s no better way for hard-bitten reporters like myself and my team than just go to the place and talk to its people, to truly be the Brooklyn Bridge between the two countries.’ They went all out; the paper even changed its name to 'The Breukelen Paper'.

The Brooklyn Paper in Amsterdam. Photo: The Brooklyn Paper

While his fellow reporters were exploring Amsterdam’s biking culture, Kuntzman traveled to nearby Breukelen where he soon found out about Breukelen’s terrible fate.

‘Our trip to Breukelen started out as a simple attempt to reconnect with the Dutch town that gave Brooklyn its name, its tolerant values and its democratic traditions’, Kuntzman writes in The Brooklyn Paper. ‘But then we discovered the terrifying news: Breukelen is about to be merged — under orders from the Dutch government— with two neighboring towns. The new town would have an entirely different, non-Breukelen, name. The town that gave our borough its name is about to be formally wiped off the map. An independent Breukelen — from which Brooklyn gets much of its values, spirit and its love of herring — will soon be no longer…’

The Brooklyn Paper editor-in-chief met with Breukelen Mayor Ger Mik, who led him on a bike tour around the town, complete with a stop at the ‘original Brooklyn Bridge’. Mik even invited the reporter to sleep at his home. A gracious gesture, according to Kuntzman. ‘I awoke to the sounds of Breukelen’s first lady, Madeleine Mik, preparing what appeared to be an eight-course breakfast.'

Gersh Kuntzman and Mayor Geer Mik. Photo: Gerard Prakke/VAR Nieuwsblad

But even Mayor Mik is powerless to stop the merging of Breukelen with the two other cities; Maarssen and the ‘loathsome Loenen’, in Kuntzman’s words.  ‘Our desperation is understandable, given our reading of Brooklyn’s own bitter history. Though larger and superior to its neighbor, Manhattan, Brooklyn agreed in 1898 to merge with what was then called New-York, to form a unified New York City.’ (Still called “the Mistake of ’98”)

He continues his piece with satirical wit that ‘this newspaper has long ignored the temptation to inject itself into international issues, but the dissolution of Breukelen’s independent government is not merely an issue of local Dutch politics. It is an international outrage that will not stand.Unlike Mik, we answer to a higher authority than the Dutch crown; we answer to Brooklyn. And without an independent Breukelen on the other side of the globe, our boroughs name loses its very meaning.’

When asked how the Brooklyn community feels about Breukelen’s disappearance, Kuntzman refers to the comments to his article on the Brooklyn Paper’s website. (There are none.) Kuntzman: ‘I can state the silent majority of Brooklynites is against it. I for one don’t want to live through the shame of ’09, as we have come to call it’. Kuntzman then declares with great determination: ‘we will take on the bureaucrats in The Hague!’

'WE ARE IN HOLLAND!' Watch the Brooklyn Paper's podcast about their arrival in Amsterdam:

RELATES FEATURES:
-Marty Markowitz on the Brooklyn-Breukelen connection
-New York City strengthens its ties with the Dutch
-Brooklyn Revealed

RELATED NY400 BLOG:
No Sleep til Breukelen by Danielle Latzman.

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