On Friday, the Jesuit Fathers will leave monastery Berchmanianum after ninety years, to make room for its new life as the university's Academia building. The Fathers will move to a new building in Brakkenstein.

After the last people moved on Friday, the foundation board will have a meeting in one of the monastery halls. This is a symbol for the transition: after a thorough redecoration, the university will move into the building in 2018, and use it as its Academia building, for the housing of the university board and the supporting services. ‘You never know what you will find during a redecoration’, says monastery policy officer Remy Ramaekers. ‘There will be some asbestos here and there.’

The movers move their trolleys and pack boxes. ‘This is the biggest job’, says one of them, while he points at pastor Herman Peters’ room. Sitting on his bed, Peters, who has lived in the monastery for fifteen years, looks at how the movers carefully pack his collection of religious sculptures.

Rich history
Peters is one of the sixty inhabitants who move to a new nursing home, a little further in the neighbourhood Brakkenstein. Berchmanianum has been the home of the Fathers Jesuits in The Netherlands since 1929, the last decades as nursing home. Peters says he doesn’t find the move that difficult. ‘I get a bigger room, my sculptures fit better there.’

Secretary and telephonist Marlies Fraaije, who has worked at Berchmanianum for 22 years, finds the move more difficult. She is going through a ‘nostalgic week’, thinking about the beautiful summer days ‘on which the sunlight shines through the stained glass windows so beautifully.’ Fraaije: ’this is a unique building with a very rich history, you don’t know how much would come out if the stones could speak.’

The atmosphere will stay, though. ‘It is a National Monument’, says Ramaekers. ‘We can’t change much on the outside of the building.’ The metamorphosis on the inside will be more radical, because more than hundred university employees will come and work there. Ramaekers is ‘very curious’ about the outcome of the redecoration, which will take until 2018. ‘I will definitely come back to see it.’