HAARLEM LAKE (Dutch Harlemmer Meer), a commune of the province of North Holland, constituted by the law of the 16th of July 1855. It has an area of about 46,000 acres, and its population increased from 7237 in 1860 to 16,621 in 1900. As its name indicates, the commune was formerly a lake, which is said to have been a relic of a northern arm of the Rhine which passed through the district in the time of the Romans. In 1531 the Haarlemmer Meer had an area of 6430 acres, and in its vicinity were three smaller sheets of water—the Leidsche Meer or Leiden Lake, the Spiering Meer, and the Oude Meer or Old Lake, with a united area of about 7600 acres. The four lakes were formed into one by successive inundations, whole villages disappearing in the process, and by 1647 the new Haarlem Lake had an area of about 37,000 acres, which a century later had increased to over 42,000 acres. As early as 1643 Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater proposed to endike and drain the lake; and similar schemes, among which those of Nikolaas Samuel Cruquius in 1742 and of Baron van Lijnden van Hemmen in 1820 are worthy of special mention, were brought forward from time to time. But it was not till a furious hurricane in November 1836 drove the waters as far as the gates of Amsterdam, and another on Christmas Day sent them in the opposite direction to submerge the streets of Leiden, that the mind of the nation was seriously turned to the matter. In August 1837 the king appointed a royal commission of inquiry; the scheme proposed by the commission received the sanction of the Second Chamber in March 1839, and in the following May the work was begun. A canal was first dug round the lake for the reception of the water and the accommodation of the great traffic which had previously been carried on. This canal was 38 m. in length, 123-146 ft. wide, and 8 ft. deep, and the earth which was taken out of it was used to build a dike from 30 to 54 yds. broad containing the lake. The area enclosed by the canal was rather more than 70 sq. m., and the average depth of the lake 13 ft. 1½ in., and as the water had no natural outfall it was calculated that probably 1000 million tons would have to be raised by mechanical means. This amount was 200 million tons in excess of that actually discharged. Pumping by steam-engines began in 1848, and the lake was dry by the 1st of July 1852. At the first sale of the highest lands along the banks on the 16th of August 1853, about £28 per acre was paid; but the average price afterwards was less. The whole area of 42,096 acres recovered from the waters brought in 9,400,000 florins, or about £780,000, exactly covering the cost of the enterprise; so that the actual cost to the nation was only the amount of the interest on the capital, or about £368,000. The soil is of various kinds, loam, clay, sand and peat; most of it is sufficiently fertile, though in the lower portions there are barren patches where the scanty vegetation is covered with an ochreous deposit. Mineral springs occur containing a very high percentage (3.245 grams per litre) of common salt; and in 1893 a company was formed for working them. Corn, seeds, cattle, butter and cheese are the principal produce. The roads which traverse the commune are bordered by pleasant-looking farm-houses built after the various styles of Holland, Friesland or Brabant. Hoofddorp, Venneperdorp or Nieuw Vennep, Abbenes and the vicinities of the pumping-stations are the spots where the population has clustered most thickly. The first church was built in 1855; in 1877 there were seven. In 1854 the city of Leiden laid claim to the possession of the new territory, but the courts decided in favour of the nation.
HAASE, FRIEDRICH (1827- ), German actor, was born on the 1st of November 1827, in Berlin, the son of a valet to King Frederick William IV., who became his godfather. He was educated for the stage under Ludwig Tieck and made his first appearance in 1846 in Weimar, afterwards acting at Prague (1849-1851) and Karlsruhe (1852-1855). From 1860 to 1866 he played in St Petersburg, then was manager of the court theatre in Coburg, and in 1869 (and again in 1882-1883) visited the United States. He was manager of the Stadt Theater in Leipzig from 1870 to 1876, when he removed to Berlin, where he devoted his energies to the foundation and management of the Deutsches Theater. He finally retired from the stage in 1898. Haase’s aristocratic appearance and elegant manner fitted him specially to play high comedy parts. His chief rôles were those of Rocheferrier in the Partie Piquet; Richelieu; Savigny in Der feiner Diplomat, and der Fürst in Der geheime Agent. He is the author of Ungeschminkte Briefe and Was ich erlebte 1846-1898 (Berlin, 1898).
See Simon, Friedrich Haase (Berlin, 1898).
HAASE, FRIEDRICH GOTTLOB (1808-1867), German classical scholar, was born at Magdeburg on the 4th of January 1808. Having studied at Halle, Greifswald and Berlin, he obtained in 1834 an appointment at Schulpforta, from which he was suspended and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for identifying himself with the Burschenschaften (students’ associations). Having been released after serving one year of his sentence, he visited Paris, and on his return in 1840 he was appointed professor at Breslau, where he remained till his death on the 16th of August 1867. He was undoubtedly one of the most successful teachers of his day in Germany, and exercised great influence upon all his pupils.
He edited several classic authors: Xenophon (Λακεδαιμονίων πολιτεία, 1833); Thucydides (1840); Velleius Paterculus (1858); Seneca the philosopher (2nd ed., 1872, not yet superseded); and Tacitus (1855), the introduction to which is a masterpiece of Latinity. His Vorlesungen über lateinische Sprachwissenschaft was published after his death by F. A. Eckstein and H. Peter (1874-1880). See C Bursian, Geschichte der klassischen Philologie in Deutschland (1883); G. Fickert, Friderici Haasii memoria (1868), with a list of works; T. Oelsner in Rübezahl (Schlesische Provinzialblätter), vii. Heft 3 (Breslau, 1868).
HAAST, SIR JOHANN FRANZ JULIUS VON (1824-1887), German and British geologist, was born at Bonn on the 1st of May 1824. He received his early education partly in that town and partly in Cologne, and then entered the university at Bonn, where he made a special study of geology and mineralogy. In 1858 he started for New Zealand to report on the suitability of the colony for German emigrants. He then became acquainted with Dr von Hochstetter, and rendered assistance to him in the preliminary geological survey which von Hochstetter had undertaken. Afterwards Dr Haast accepted offers from the governments of Nelson and Canterbury to investigate the geology of those districts, and the results of his detailed labours greatly enriched our knowledge with regard to the rocky structure, the glacial phenomena and the economic products. He discovered gold and coal in Nelson, and he carried on important researches with reference to the occurrence of Dinornis and other extinct wingless birds (Moas). His Geology of the Provinces of Canterbury and Westland, N.Z., was published in 1879. He was the founder of the Canterbury museum at Christchurch, of which he became director, and which he endeavoured to render the finest collection in the southern hemisphere. He was surveyor-general of Canterbury from 1861 to 1871, and professor of geology at Canterbury College. He was elected F.R.S. in 1867; and he was knighted for his services at the time of the colonial exhibition in London in 1887. He died at Wellington, N.Z., on the 15th of August 1887.