Eise Eisinga and his Godchild: the Planetarium Zuylenburgh

摘要

What jokingly started as a challenging bet has become a reality: since May 2009 the Netherlands are enriched by a new planetarium. It is completely handmade, took two years and three persons to construct and it is attached to the ceiling of a room in the country estate Zuylenburgh in Oud-Zuilen near Utrecht (see Cover Illustration). It is based on the Eise Eisinga planetarium in Franeker in the Dutch province of Friesland, built in the years 1774-1780. Though Eisinga is included in the canon of the fifty most important personalities in Dutch history and though his planetarium will soon be included on UNESCO's World Heritage list, outside of the Netherlands his name is not widely known Even for most Dutch he is only a name, and though he got involved in the turbulent politics that brought about the demise of the 200-year old Dutch confederated Republic and the start of the unitary Dutch state, his role in it was very local. So who was he and what makes his planetarium so special that it inspired the building of new one?