De Wieger or Huize Wiegersma [1] is a former doctor's and artist's house in the village of Deurne in the province of Noord-Brabant, and has been used as a municipal museum since the seventies of the twentieth century.
History
Museum 'De Wieger'
Backside of De Wieger in 2007
De Wieger was built in 1922 to a design by architect Cor Roffelsen in a neo-renaissance style. The design built on the De Romein house, which was designed by the same architect nine years earlier. The client was Hendrik Wiegersma, who had come to live in Deurne in 1917 as a recently graduated doctor. It was built on the then connecting road between the basin of Deurne and the church village of Liessel, in the middle of the fields. The forest that Wiegersma planted around the Wieger himself was later central to the song The village by Wim Sonneveld. That song was written by Friso Wiegersma, partner of Sonneveld and fourth son of Hendrik Wiegersma. Friso was born in De Wieger. And along my father's garden path, I saw the tall trees stand beating on the trees around De Wieger.
In the early 1920s, Wiegersma became acquainted with Moissey Kogan and Otto van Rees. Convinced as these two artists were of the techniques of Wiegersma, he started a career as an artist. He also continued to practice the medical practice from De Wieger. During the interbellum period, De Wieger grew into a meeting place for artists. Sculptor Ossip Zadkine was a child there. Piet Wiegman and Constant Permeke were also regularly found there. He got the inspiration for Zadkine's image that symbolizes the devastated Rotterdam when he was traveling by train on the way to Wiegersma.
After the death of Wiegersma in 1969, the municipality of Deurne purchased the building in 1972 and converted it into a museum. It became the successor of the Het Dinghuis museum, the municipal museum that exhibited his collected art during Wiegersma's lifetime. Pieter Wiegersma, Hendrik's second son, became De Wieger's first director. He has been director of museum Het Dinghuis since 1965. In 1988 he retired as director.
The building has been on the National Monument List since 2001.