In 2025, we celebrate the 700th anniversary of Enschede’s city rights. We will do this with a major theatrical spectacle at four locations in the middle of the city. It will be a story about textile history, about rich and poor and about the hero of the Catholic workers: Alphons Ariëns. Enschede has a special history. Because of the textile industry, Enschede grew explosively and in 1915 even more than twenty percent of the Gross National Product came from Twente. The economic boom also had a downside: working conditions for workers were poor. They worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. The poorest lived in small houses in the neighborhood of “Crimea. For many Enschedeans, the long-gone neighborhood of Crimea still symbolizes the hopeless poverty in the slums of the early last century. Fortunately, the people received support from the priest Alphons Ariëns, who laid the foundation for the Catholic labor movement in Enschede. Ariëns became the hero of the Catholic workers in the social struggle between increasingly wealthy textile barons and the poor workers. In “Ariëns” we tell the story of Alphons Ariëns, of rich and poor, of love and resistance. ‘Ariëns’ is the story of Enschede.
