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Veenhuizen is a village with around 800 inhabitants in the province of Drenthe in the Netherlands. In the early 19th century, a reform housing colony (called Society of Humanitarianism) for the poor and homeless was established in Veenhuizen. In the late 19th century, the complex was turned into a penal colony. The National Prison Museum is located here.
The Society (Maatschappij van Weldadigheid) was a Dutch private organization set up in 1818 by general Johannes van den Bosch to help poor families, mostly from the big cities, improve their lot in the aftermath of the Napoleonic French occupation by granting them farming land. He petitioned William I of the Netherlands for its formation and bought uncultivated land in Drenthe for the poor to exploit.
Other similar colonies were Wilhelminaoord and Frederiksoord in the Netherlands, and Wortel in Belgium. As the colonies’ small farms yielded insufficient revenues, the Society of Benevolence sought other sources of revenue, contracting with the State to settle orphans, soon followed by beggars and vagrants, leading to the creation of “unfree” colonies, such as Veenhuizen, with large dormitory type structures and larger centralized farms for them to work under the supervision of guards. The colonies were designed as panoptic settlements along orthogonal lines. They feature residential buildings, farm houses, churches and other communal facilities. At their peak in the mid-19th century, over 11,000 people lived in such colonies in the Netherlands. In Belgium their number peaked at 6,000 in 1910.
The three colonies in Netherlands and Wortel in Belgium were listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site of 'Colonies of Benevolence' in 2021.
The Jan Hus Memorial stands at one end of Old Town Square. The huge monument depicts victorious Hussite warriors and Protestants who were forced into exile 200 years after Hus, and a young mother who symbolises national rebirth. The monument was so large that the sculptor designed and built his own villa and studio where the work could be carried out. It was unveiled in 1915 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Jan Hus' martyrdom. The memorial was designed by Ladislav Šaloun and paid for solely by public donations.
Born in 1369, Hus became an influential religious thinker, philosopher, and reformer in Prague. He was a key predecessor to the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century. In his works he criticized religious moral decay of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, the Czech patriot Hus believed that mass should be given in the vernacular, or local language, rather than in Latin. He was inspired by the teachings of John Wycliffe.