Showing posts with label OFI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OFI. Show all posts

Monday, September 7, 2015

"Oh...Keboemen"


When clearing up my mother's belongings after her death (1984) in Switzerland, my fatherfound her camp diary and letters in a wooden box. This led him to document their experiences during and after the Japanese camps in the dutch colony from 1942 to 1946.


Father, Oscar, transcribing my mother's diary and letters from the camp, found in the wooden box; 1984.

But who was my father, who broke up his study of civil engineering in Delft to study the chemistry of oil and soap in Groningen and Berlin and who brought his Swiss wife in 1933 to Keboemen in the Dutch East Indies? Was he longing for the land of his childhood or was he sent by his rich father, director general of the "Nederlands-Indische Handelsbank" (NIHB) in Amsterdam?

Thirty years later (2013), my Swiss cousin, Catherine Marchand, transcribed the letters sent by my mother to her parents in Switzerland, as described in my previous blog, written in dutch: http://woldringh-naarden.blogspot.nl/2015/07/op-reis-naar-wo-ii.html

The weekly letters of my mother are written in french. The "Blog posthume" starts with a letter written on November 14th, 1932 from Laren (Holland) describing how she had to convince one of the directors (G.A.Dunlop) to let them go together to the Netherlands-Indies:
http://java1933.blogspot.nl/2015/06/larenhollande-14-novembre-1932-comment.html



In October 1933 they settle in their house in Keboemen:
http://java1933.blogspot.nl/2015/07/15-octobre-1933-keboemenkebumen-hotel.html

On December 11th, 1933 she writes to her father in Switzerland: "The next day Mr and Mrs Röhwer absolutely wanted to lead us to a large underground cave, a curiosity in the country. So starting at 7 am in the morning, we visited the cave and had breakfast at 9 am. Then, on the way back, we went to the coast. My dear! such a spectacle, no, I could not believe my eyes and could not realize that it was me who had the chance to see such a sight, coming from fairy tales. Heat at least 45°C, true, but what does that matter. First we walked through rice fields separated by bamboo forests, Papali, bamboo forests, so beautiful, so beautiful, then sand dunes from where we saw the sea at our feet.
Blue sea, blue sky, in the horizon mountains in a purple haze, almost out of sight a grey sand bank on which tidal waves of 2 meters high come to die, making clouds of white foam while flowing back. The tidal waves are very strong on the south coast and do not allow swimming. Throughout this landscape were natives fishing for crabs, shrimps and women with large, brightly colored jars for making salt. Oscar took pictures, but they are not yet ready."

Father's photograph of the south coast of Java.

On December 15th, 1933 she writes to her mother that for the first time she felt homesickness: "...a longing for the cold, the rain, the snow, the wet streets shining in the glow of street lamps, the shops in town decorated and illuminated. But it only lasted a short moment...."

Note: "Oh...Keboemen" refers to a sighing of my mother when she remembered the first happy years in the Netherlands-Indies.


The copra factory "Mexolie"
Copra is the dried meat of the coconut harvested from the coconut palm. These trees were in every kampong; the coconuts were collected and transported (by the Chineses) to the factory, where they were first split and dried before pressing out and extracting the oil.


The drying field of the Mexolie factory in Keboemen in 1933.

In the 1910's and1920's there were many oil factories combined into the "OFI" (N.V. Oliefabrieken Insulinde in Nederlands-Indië). In that period dr. Albert Jan Kluyver spent several years (1916-1919) on Java as scientific consultant; later he became head of the laboratory of OFI in Bandung. He then heavily critisized the manifacturing of by-products. (Back in Holland Kluyver became the 3rd professor - after Beijerinck and G. van Iterson - of the "Delft School of Microbiology", and famous for his contention about the "unity in biochemistry". During the war Kluyver offered a job to Mrs. Woutera van Iterson in Delft. She met there Jan B. le Poole, who had just built the first electron microscope in the Netherlands, the "EM100". Later, in 1952, she became head of the Laboratory of Electron Microscopy) at the University of Amsterdam, where she was my promotor in 1974.)




Cover of a book by dr. R.N.J. Kamerling, a study describing the decline of the "OFI".

On the level of management, the OFI was critisized in 1918 by a principal agent of the NIHB ("Nederlands-Indische Handelsbank) in Batavia, Conradus Woldringh (my grandfather). He warned that the administrators of OFI were incompetent and too autocratic (p.74 of the book of R.N.J. Kamerling about the OFI; T. Wever bv, Francker, 1982). Although the directors in Amsterdam were annoyed and told him to mind his own business, it appeared that he was right: In 1923 the OFI had to be liquidated which resulted in the foundation by the NIHB of "Mexolie" (Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Oliefabrieken). Conradus Woldringh went to Amsterdam where he became director from 1921 to 1935 (documented in the book of W.L. Korthals Altes, "Tussen cultures en kredieten", Amsterdam 2004). But he must have known how difficult the future of Mexolie in the dutch colony would be. Why then did he allow his eldest son, my father, to go to the factory in Keboemen? And what became of the factory in present-day Kebumen?