Penelehhistory.com: Surabaya (22/8/24) – Peneleh as a Living Library in a European cemetery Peneleh Surabaya dissects important tombs. At that time, the people buried there played a big role.
There are 10 graves of important people which are under a project being carried out by the community in Surabaya, Begandring Soerabaia, and the community in the Netherlands, TiMe Amsterdam. One of these important people was Gottfried Joseph Julius Schmutzer. At the Schmutzer family cemetery there were other family members.
Based on the inscription stone, there are family members, i.e:
Gottfried Joseph Julius Schmutzer, birth date / death date: 1 April 1847 – 8 May 1902, Place of birth: Prague, at that time Austria, place of death: Surabaya, Nationality at date of birth/time of death: Dutch, Profession: Sugar planter.
Elise Franciska Wilhelmine Schmutzer, born Karthaus, Birth date / death date: 20 juli 1852 – 27 November 1912, Place of birth: Surabaya, Place of death: Yogyakarta.
Eduard Ignatz Wilhelm Marie Schmutzer, Birth date / death date: 8 October 1887 – 23 June 1905, Place of birth: Semarang, Place of death: Surabaya, Nationality at date of birth/time of death: Dutch.
The Schmutzer’s History
Gottfried Schmutzer grew up in Prague, capital of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), which was then part of the Austrian Empire, the great Habsburg Empire.
Schmutzer was one of the many European entrepreneurs who tried their luck in Surabaya, a rapidly growing port and trading city in Southeast Asia. In 1879 he married the Dutch Elise Karthaus, born in Surabaya. She had been widowed for just a year. From her late husband Stefanus Berends she had inherited his sugar plantation, Gondang Lipuro near Bantul, 20 km southwest of Yogyakarta.
Gottfried Schmutzer took over, with good results. He was naturalized as a Dutch citizen and, in addition to being an entrepreneur, was vice-consul in the Dutch East Indies for Sweden and Norway. Gottfried and Elise had four children, a daughter and three sons.
Gottfried Schmutzer was a successful colonial entrepreneur, but two sons surpassed their father in this regard. The eldest in particular, Jos Schmutzer, developed a versatile career and made a name for himself in a scientific and political sense.
Josef (Jos) Ignaz Julius Marie Schmutzer (1882-1946) and Julius Robert Anton Marie Schmutzer (1884-1954) graduated from high school in Surabaya. Both went to Europe to study, including at the Technical College in Delft and the Suikerschool in Amsterdam, the Dutch institute for sugar cultivation. Between 1910 and 1912 both returned to the Dutch East Indies to continue their family’s sugar plantation.
Their father, like their younger brother Eduard, had now died and was buried at Peneleh. Sister Elise Anna Maria Antonia (1881-1958) left for the Netherlands for good in 1902.
The Schmutzer brothers were technically well-versed and successful entrepreneurs. Between 1912 and 1918 they expanded the plantation from 300 to 600 hectares and modernized the factory with the latest machines. From 1920 onwards they introduced a new irrigation system, which made the sugar plantation even more profitable, but which the indigenous population could also use for their rice cultivation.
The Schmutzers were also convinced Catholics, socially committed and actively committed to the mission in the Netherlands East Indies. During their studies in Delft, Jos and Julius had become proponents of the Catholic social movement, inspired by the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (On New Things) by Pope Leo XIII from 1891.
They applied these ideas to Gondang Lipuro, which became the first plantation where a collective labor agreement was concluded with the employees. Together with their wives, the Schmutzers developed various social initiatives, such as a girls’ boarding school, an outpatient clinic (later hospital), and artistic activities.
Jos Schmutzer had developed in contemporary theology, spirituality, philosophy and Western and Eastern art. His initiative to build a church in Ganjuran, near Gondang Lipuro, is very special. This Sacred Heart Church (Gereja Hati Kudus Tuan Jesus), built in 1924 by architect J. Th van Oyen, connects the Catholic faith with Javanese-Hinduism. Both in architectural style, decoration and in the execution of the liturgy.
Jos Schmutzer was politically active as well. He was chairman of the Indian Catholic Party (IKP) and the Catholic Volksraad (People’s Council) faction. He was critical of Indonesian nationalism. He understood this desire but felt that the Indies were part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. But the interests of the empire in Europe should not be put in the foreground. Schmutzer fought for social politics and a just policy.
In 1930, Jos Schmutzer returned to the Netherlands, where he was appointed professor of crystallography, mineralogy and petrology at the University of Utrecht. He was a philosophical scholar who wrote on numerous subjects ranging from his scientific field of expertise, the relationship between science and Catholicism, Indonesian social issues, sugar cane technology and geology, to indigenous religious art.
Schmutzer was also an important man in the Boy Scout movement and worked to help refugees from Germany during the Second World War. He was arrested by the Nazis as a traitor, imprisoned in the infamous Oranje Hotel in Scheveningen, interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and from there transferred as an ‘Dutch East Indies hostage’ to Buchenwald concentration camp.
After a gruesome period, he ended up in the camp and former monastery in Sint Michielsgestel, managed to flee from there, went into hiding and finally ended up with the Dutch government in exile in London. He was appointed Minister of Overseas Territories in the Gerbrandy III cabinet. After the liberation, Jos Schmutzer resumed his position as professor in Utrecht, but not long afterwards, in 1946, he died there.
In 1934 his brother Julius and his family returned to the Netherlands. Julius lived and worked in Nijmegen where he passed away in 1954.
During the 1947-1949 independence war, the company, the sugar factory and the homes of the Schmutzer family on the Gondang Lipuro plantation were destroyed. Thec hurch, the school, the hospital were spared. (TiMe amsterdam/nng)