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From a Berleburg baptismal register to a Dutch royal house: that is the story of tonight.

Hans Meijer’s father was born in 1914. In 1943 he married in Amsterdam, in the Oude Lutherse Kerk. These were times of survival, just as generations before him had survived wars or fled from them.

He was entered into a Lutheran marriage register in Amsterdam. He was unaware that his ancestor Eberhard Dulcken had been recorded in the Berleburg marriage and baptism register from 16 March 1664 onwards, just as he was unaware of his grandparents, whom he had never known due to their early deaths. After his Reformed great-grandmother, Alida Dulcken, married the Lutheran Johan George Meijer, they lived and worked in a rather special place on the outskirts of the city. My father spent his childhood nearby. Their smithy was located at the time on the site where the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam now stands.

When his only son built a harpsichord in 1972, an instrument completely unfamiliar to him, he provided antique chisels and planes and forged the tuning pins: round pins with a flattened end. He could not have known that his ancestors were the Reformed harpsichord makers Dulcken, who were among one of the first builders of the fortepiano in the Low Countries. (See also Andries Veltman)

Only in 2020, through the digitization of the marriage and baptismal registers, did Hans discover that he carries the DNA of the Dulckens and of Lehr, mayor of Berleburg.

Thanks to the Lutheran and Reformed baptismal registers, we now know how this line runs: from Johannes Dülcken, baptized in Elberfeld in 1591, through ministers and organists such as Eberhard and George Ludwig Dülcken, born here in Berleburg in 1679, to the famous instrument makers Johannes Daniel and Johannes Lodewijk I Dulcken.

Johannes Lodewijk I experimented with the harpsichord mechanism. He replaced the jacks, which pluck the strings, with small hammers that strike them. Thus the fortepiano was born: an instrument that could play both loud and soft. Near the end of his life he became royal instrument maker to Louis XVI, whose wife Marie Antoinette played the piano.

It is there in black and white in the marriage register of the Church of Our Lady in Munich. On 27 December 1799, the marriage was validated of Ludovicus Dülken, electoral court instrument maker, non-Catholic, legitimate son of Ludovicus Dülken, “royal French instrument maker”, and his wife Anna, both deceased. He married Sophia Lebrun, legitimate daughter of Ludovicus Lebrun, electoral court musician, and his wife Francisca, also deceased. The witnesses were Theobald Marchand, electoral theatre director, and Franz Danzi, electoral Kapellmeister. It took place in a forbidden season, with dispensation from the banns.

Johannes Lodewijk II had become court instrument maker to Elector Karl Theodor in Munich at the age of eighteen. His bride, the pianist Sophie Lebrun, was the daughter of Francisca Danzi, the famous soprano who sang at the opening of La Scala in Milan under Salieri, and later in London in the operas of Johann Christian Bach. Francisca died young. Sophie grew up with her uncle Franz Danzi and her foster mother Margaretha Marchand, who had herself been trained by Leopold Mozart and lived in his home for two years.
Their daughters, Louise and Fanny, became famous pianists. Louise became court pianist in Stuttgart and teacher to the princesses. So the future Queen of the Netherlands, Sophie of Württemberg, received piano lessons from a Dulcken.
From a Berleburg baptismal register to a Dutch royal house: that is the story of tonight.


I - At the Court of Siegen

We take you back to the seventeenth century, to your own Berleburg and nearby Siegen — a time when strict Protestant faith, the sounds from the church pews, and the hidden sins of courtly life crossed paths in a unique, sometimes rather spicy way.
The first film fragment is Als Christen Bruyd, from the famous Dutch Valerius Gedenck-Clanck of 1626, performed here for soprano and three lutes. The Calvinism of the time placed strict demands on the liturgy — exuberant instrumental music was banned from church. Precisely because of this, domestic music-making flourished: devout, intimate, fervently religious.
It is no coincidence that we tell this story here in Berleburg. The man who gave voice to this Protestant faith was Eberhard Dülcken — born around 1633 in Elverfeldt, son of a surgeon who was himself also a rector. Eberhard attends the gymnasium in Bremen and, at just twenty-three, enrols in 1656 at the Reformed University of Duisburg. Two years later, on the 1st of November 1658, he takes up his post in Siegen: rector and pedagogiarch, for a hundred thalers a year. On top of that comes fifty thalers for playing the organ in the Nicolaikirche, and another fifty for managing the third pastoral post. One man, three offices — schoolmaster, organist, pastor.
These were eventful years for the organist Dülcken: it was during this very period that Johann Moritz of Nassau-Siegen elevated St Nicholas’ Church to the status of the main Protestant church of the town and of the Reformed part of the county. Whilst Dülcken headed the Latin school and played the organ, the Count used the church as a political and religious centre in a bitter struggle against his Catholic opponents. A striking example of this is the decision to have ‘Als Christi Bruyd was in den nood’ from Valerius’s Geusenliederbuch performed at the Lower Castle in Siegen — a musical protest that perfectly expressed both the oppression and the steadfastness of the Protestant faith in the town.
It was at this very court, under the watchful eye of the famous Johann Moritz, that the young Countess Wilhelmina Christina of Nassau-Siegen lived at that time. Outwardly, discipline and Protestant propriety reigned. Yet anyone who opens the secret diaries of the House of Orange discovers something quite different. Thanks to the diary of Governor Willem Frederik, we know that in June 1645, Prince William II of Orange was utterly smitten with the then sixteen-year-old Wilhelmina Christina — and completely abandoned his pious façade. Her horrified mother subsequently issued a strict ban: never again was she to be alone in a room with the young prince.
So whilst preachers and rectors such as Dülcken preached against the deadly sins from the pulpit and the organ of St Nicholas’ Church, behind the palace doors there was lively kissing and flirting.
In 1663, Eberhard left Siegen for Berleburg, where he became the senior pastor. On 16 May 1664, he personally established a new register of marriages and deaths there — the act of a man who brings order. He remained there until his death in 1699.

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II - Andreas Lehr of Wingeshausen

The parish registers of Wingeshausen record his birth, around 1593, as the son of Johannes Lehr and his wife, a member of the Lümmel family. A boy from Wingeshausen who moved to Berleburg.
There, Andreas built his career, step by step. First as Hospitalverwalter (1629, 1631), the administrator of the town hospital. Then as Keller (1649), the man in charge of the town’s treasury. In 1632 and again in 1642, he became a Gerichtsschöffe, a lay judge. In 1655, he became a Ratsherr, or councillor. And then, on four occasions: Bürgermeister. 1636. 1644. 1653. 1659. For almost three decades, Andreas Lehr, in increasingly senior roles, was at the heart of Berleburg’s town administration.
A position such as this naturally comes with an address. In that century, Berleburg consisted of two parts: the Oberstadt, situated directly below the castle on a narrow ridge, and the Unterstadt, built after the town fire of 1547. The town church of the time stood on what is now Goetheplatz — right next to the castle. As the administrator of this small market town, Andreas Lehr almost certainly lived in that same Oberstadt, within walking distance of both the church and the castle gate — and it was there, in that church on Goetheplatz, that his daughter’s wedding must also have taken place.
Andreas married twice. First to Margarete Sayn, who bore him four children before she died in 1642. Then, in the very same year, he marries Magdalene Gilsbach — they have nine children, including two sons who, like their father, become mayors: Daniel (1683–1713) and Georg Ludwig (1692), and, baptised on 14 February 1647, a daughter: Magdalene.
Seventeen years later, in 1664, a Maria Leehrin married Eberhard Dülcken in Berleburg — at that time inspector and senior pastor of the county, and until shortly before that rector, headmaster and organist in Siegen. This is presumably the same woman: Maria Magdalena by full name, referred to by her first name in one document and by her second in another.
For the wedding, a colleague from Siegen, Hermannus Richter, deputy headmaster of the local Latin grammar school, wrote a poem in five stanzas — the printed commemorative poem, which you are about to see, was published by Salomon Schadewitz in Marburg. From hearts bound together for eternity, pearls that shall never be lost,
to a couple who shall henceforth live ‘happily’. In the film, this poem is heard just as it was originally intended — set to music, soprano with lute accompaniment, whilst his name still appears beneath the final stanza: Sic applaudebat, Hermannus Richter.

Thus, 360 years later, his applause for the mayor of Berleburg’s daughter still rings out.

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III - The Safe Haven of Weisel

In the autumn of 1704, a human drama unfolded on the high plateau above the Rhine. As a marriage and a birth almost coincided in the village of Weisel, a desperate journey across the river followed. It is the story of Pastor Georg Ludwig Dülcken, a mother left anonymous in the archives, and the fine line between life and death on the eve of a remarkable musical dynasty.
On October 13, 1704, Pastor Georg Ludwig Dülcken, originally from Berleburg, and his heavily pregnant bride were married in haste in Weisel. The ceremony was performed by the local minister, Pastor Johann Jakob Schramm (1645–1730), a highly respected man who had guided the congregation with great devotion for decades following a recommendation by Professor Johann Ludewig Fabricius.
The parsonage of Pastor Schramm and his wife Anna Catharina Lehr offered the couple a much-needed sanctuary. Traversing the steep slopes down to the Rhine was physically impossible for a woman on the verge of giving birth. The choice of Weisel was no coincidence: Anna Catharina Lehr was the biological aunt of the groom, Georg Ludwig Dülcken.
Just one day after the hurried wedding, on the evening of October 14 at nine o'clock, a son was born in the parsonage. Yet there was no time for celebration. The infant was extremely weak (“äußerst schwach”), and the mother remains shrouded in anonymity in official records—her maiden name is nowhere to be found.

A Desperate Journey to the Far Shore

Because the newborn was in acute danger, immediate action was taken. In utmost haste, a grueling descent began from the plateau, past Katz Castle, down to St. Goarshausen. From there, they crossed the Rhine to Sankt Goar, beneath the formidable walls of Rheinfels Fortress.
Upon reaching the other side, they sought immediate shelter and medical aid. They found it with hospital master Luther Daniel Maul at the property on Maulgasse—the building known today as Haus Maul. This three-story timber-framed house with its steep gabled roof dates back to the mid-sixteenth century and miraculously survived the devastating French destruction of the Nine Years' War in 1688.
In this house, which had been renovated in 1682 by hospital master Johann Henrich Maul, his son Luther Daniel Maul was overseeing hospital operations at the time. Whether the infant received direct medical care in the hospital alongside the emergency baptism remains uncertain from the sparse archival sources; the boundary between the hospital master's residence and medical care facilities was fluid at the time. What is certain, however, is that given the baby's critical condition, he was immediately brought into the house and received an emergency baptism.
The event was recorded in the church register with sobering yet poignant brevity:
“Den 14 8br [Oktober] des Abends um 9 Uhr ist im Hauß getaufft worden, Johann Daniel, Herrn Georg Ludwig Dülckens, Söhnlein. Gevatter ist gewesen Herr Luther Daniel Maul, Hospital-Meister. Ist im Noth-Fall geschehen, dann das Kindlein sehr schwach gewesen, wie die Amme sagte. Sind des Tags vorher copuliret worden zu Weissel. Das Kind ist in der Woch gestorben und ohne Pomp begraben.” (“On October 14, at 9 in the evening, Johann Daniel, little son of Mr. Georg Ludwig Dülcken, was baptized in the house. Godfather was Mr. Luther Daniel Maul, Hospital Master. It was done in emergency, as the little child was very weak, as the nurse said. They were married the day before in Weisel. The child died this week and was buried without ceremony.”)
Neither medical assistance nor the swift baptism could save the child's life. Within a week, little Johann Daniel passed away. He was buried quietly, without pomp or grandeur.

From Tragedy to Craftsmanship: Wingeshausen 1706

The loss of their firstborn cast a dark shadow over the young family, but the story of the Dülcken family did not end in Sankt Goar. Two years later, in 1706, the family of Pastor Georg Ludwig Dülcken welcomed another son in Wingeshausen. He was given the exact same name as his deceased brother: Johannes Daniel.


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IV - Georg Ludwig and the organ

In Wingeshausen, Georg Ludwig Dülcken is not only a minister. He also proves to be a true expert on the organ. In 1724 he commissions the first organ for the church, from the organ builder Johann Caspar Kirchner. In October of that same year, together with the organist Johann Conrad Diehl of Netphen, he is called to Heinsberg to examine an organ there and identify its defects. Only someone regarded as an expert receives such a task.
But he is more than a client and an inspector. In 1823 the then pastor of Wingeshausen writes that the organ was fitted with cast pipes in 1733 by a Dülcken, while a carpenter from Becker-Haus made the woodwork. The pastor names Eberhard, but Eberhard had already died in 1699. He must therefore mean Georg Ludwig. The minister casts the pipes of his own organ himself.
That is remarkable: a pastor who understands metal, sound and the building of an instrument. His son Johannes Daniel grows up in this house. It is an important prelude to the man who would later become one of the greatest harpsichord makers of his age in Antwerp.






V - A Marriage in the Shadow of War — Sankt Goar, Advent 1733


On 17 December 1733, in the middle of Advent, Johann Daniel Dülcken and Susanna Maria Knöpffel signed the marriage register of the Evangelical congregation of Sankt Goar. It was an unusual time to marry — in Lutheran and Reformed tradition, Advent was a season of quiet reflection, not the customary time for weddings. Set against the events of that autumn, the timing looks anything but accidental.


A fortress on the front line

Sankt Goar and the fortress of Rheinfels had for generations occupied a sensitive position: the Empire's border against France. Barely two months before the wedding, on 10 October 1733, the War of the Polish Succession had broken out — a conflict ostensibly about the Polish throne, but fought largely in the Rhineland. French forces besieged Kehl and occupied the Duchy of Lorraine; a year later, in 1734, Hesse-Kassel troops would occupy Rheinfels itself with imperial permission, fearing that same French threat.
For the Knöpffel family, this was no abstract news. Susanna's father, Johann Conrad Knöpffel, had served until his death as Proviant-Commissair (provisions commissioner) and Stift-Kellner at St Goar/ Rheinfels — a role that existed precisely because a fortress needed supplying, war or no war. A looming war meant more work, more demand, more relevance for that trade.
For Susanna's husband-to-be, the opposite was true. Johann Daniel Dülcken, son of the pastor of Wingeshausen, built harpsichords — instruments for well-off households in peacetime, not goods anyone looked twice at once troops began moving through the Rhine valley. A looming war was, for him, not an opportunity but a reason to leave.


Marrying in order to flee


A wedding during Advent — outside the customary season, weeks after war broke out — fits a couple in a hurry. Marriage settled not only affection but assets: it made a joint departure possible, with the blessing and the papers a young household needed to establish itself elsewhere.
And leave they did. A few years later, Daniel turns up in Maastricht, where he and Susanna ran a shop called "Het Gulde Cruijs" on the Munt — officially a grocer's/grain trade, though the inventory drawn up after the bankruptcy shows a broader stock: barrels, boxes, oil casks, casks of tobacco, and even two stringless violins and a trumpet. She, daughter of a fortress supply officer, had traded her father's world for a shop of her own — one whose assortment was not entirely unlike the provisioning trade she had grown up around. It would be an understatement to call this an obvious step, and it did not end well. In 1737 Daniel borrowed money from the mayor's widow; debts mounted, and around the turn of 1737/38 the family left Maastricht, abandoning much of their household goods. The Maastricht magistrate declared the estate "desolate" and appointed a trustee; letters from creditors pursued Daniel as late as 1740.


The turn in Antwerp


What failed in Maastricht succeeded in Antwerp. The young family — their son Johannes Lodewijk not yet three years old — arrived in poverty, but Daniel had carried all his harpsichord-making tools with him into the city. He joined the clandestine Reformed congregation, became an elder there in 1744, and at his workshop on the Hopland built the instruments that would make him one of the most celebrated harpsichord makers of the eighteenth century — a reputation that, according to his contemporary Charles Burney, was second only to the legendary Ruckers family.


A story in two tempos


What makes this episode so useful for the film is its contrast: a fortress arming itself just as a young couple slips away; a shop that fails while a craft endures; a debt that pursues a family until, in another city altogether, it finally finds success. The history of Rheinfels — the centuries-long dispute between the Rotenburg and Wanfried lines, the sovereignty of Hesse-Kassel, the recurring French threat — is not mere backdrop. It is the reason this marriage happened when it did, and why the daughter of a fortress provisions commissioner became, far from the Rhine, the founding mother of a dynasty of harpsichord makers.


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VI - Georg Ludwig - The second marriage

Georg Ludwig marries twice. About his first wife we know something striking. On 22 January 1736 she appears in Maastricht as a godparent at the baptism of her granddaughter Johanna Magdalena. Beside her stands the other grandmother, Regina Magdalena, widow of the St. Goar provisions commissary Knöpffel. Two families, joined by a marriage, at one baptism in Maastricht.
It is no coincidence that these two families meet here: several Dülcken brothers married Knöpffel sisters. They therefore probably made the journey from St. Goar to Maastricht together, as one large family seeking a new life elsewhere.
Yet we find her nowhere in the death register of Wingeshausen. She must therefore have died elsewhere soon afterwards, since by May 1737 Georg Ludwig is a widower. It seems likely that this happened on one of the long journeys between Maastricht and Wingeshausen, but this is not proven. We do not know her grave.
On 8 May 1737 Georg Ludwig marries again, and the record survives. By the grace of the lord, the couple is married in the castle without banns: "Herr Görg Ludwig Dülcken, widower and pastor at Wingeshausen" and "Jungfer Anna Catharina Musculus", the surviving legitimate daughter of the late Johannes Musculus, princely Hessian district magistrate at Wetter in the Upper Principality of Marburg.

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VII - Middle Rhine landscape on a harpsichord lid

In 1651, shortly after the Peace of Münster, the Utrecht artist Herman Saftleven (1609-1685) travelled up the Rhine. He went as far as Bingen and drew the Middle Rhine valley with its steep vineyards, rock faces and castles. He heightened the drama, and it appealed: the drawings were worked up into engravings and art books and passed through many hands.
Joost van den Vondel knew them too. In his poem in praise of Saftleven’s art book, he describes how, without leaving your room, you can quietly "stil den Ryn opstreven" – press up the Rhine from Utrecht and its Dom, between vineyards and trees. The Rhine landscape was thus a genre through which you travelled from home.
That makes it well suited to a harpsichord lid. A harpsichord stood mainly in the home; concerts existed too, but not as we know them today. The harpsichordist has no time to look at the lid, because he is playing. It is the listener who looks at it and drifts away during the music.
The harpsichord, built in Antwerp in 1745, is kept in the MIM in Brussels. Its lid was painted by Carolus Bigée of Mechelen, who signed it "C. Bigée F." The composition follows Saftleven. On the left stands a dark repoussoir with trees and figures, along which the eye is led diagonally to the right, towards meandering water, fishermen and bluish rocks in the distance.
It is possible that Johann Daniel Dulcken, who married in the area around Sankt Goar and Weisel, commissioned Bigée to paint precisely that landscape. But it remains a "perhaps", for three reasons:

1. There is no source for the commission. No contract, letter or bill in which Dulcken orders a Rhine landscape is known.

2. The landscape is not recognisable as Sankt Goar. Bigée worked from an idealising composition, not a topographically faithful view.

3. Bigée may have chosen it himself. Saftleven’s Rhine views were well known and popular, so a Rhine landscape need not mean more than that it was fashionable.