Penelehhistory.com: Surabaya (10/6/24) – The Schmutzer, the family who founded the first ethical politics in the Dutch East Indies. They were Julius Schmutzer and Joseph Schmutzer who managed the Gondang Lipuro sugar factory, Jogjakarta. Schmutzer Grave is in Peneleh.
The European Peneleh cemetery is actually where these ethnic political figures rest forever and have become “citizens of Surabaya” who inhabit the Peneleh European cemetery.
It is said to be the Peneleh European Cemetery because those who rest there forever are Europeans. Not only Dutch people. Indeed, the number of people of Dutch blood buried in Peneleh is more dominant.
The names of these European people can be recognized through their beautiful and majestic tombstones and gravestones. There are also simple ones. One of them is Schmutzer. A typical German family name. So who is Schmutzer?
Schmutzer was a family of sugar entrepreneurs who first laid the foundations for respecting labor rights in the Dutch East Indies. They eliminated the exploitation of the working class, which was unpopular in the eyes of colonial capitalism at that time.
The Schmutzer family is Julius Robert Anton Maria Schmutzer and Joseph Ignatius Julius Maria Schmutzer. They showed respect for workers by eliminating exploitation of the working class when the two of them managed the Gondanglipuro family sugar factory in Yogyakarta at the end of the 19th century.
A number of records say that the two of them were the first to practice decent workers’ rights. The workers’ wages are higher than those of other sugar factory workers. The working hours, union rights, holiday rights and leave that are now commonly met, started from the sugar factory environment that was managed.
Influence of Religion
It seems that the Schmutzer brothers’ efforts to respect their workers were driven by their religious beliefs.
On May 15, 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued the edict “Rerum Novarum” (revolutionary change) concerning the Rights and Obligations of Capital and Labor. Based on the belief that emerged from Pope Leo XIII’s proclamation, they began to practice it in the factory managed by the Schmutzer family.
When Pope Leo’s call appeared, Schmutzer’s two children (Julius Robert Anton Maria Schmutzer and Joseph Ignatius Julius Maria Schmutzer) were studying in the Netherlands. At that time, in the Netherlands the retribution movement, ethical politics, was starting to become popular.
Then when school was finished, they returned to the Dutch East Indies and practiced this religious spirit directly in their factories.
The Gondanglipuro sugar factory in Yogyakarta was originally opened by the couple Stefanus Barends and Ellis Francisca Wilhelmina Karthous on September 1 1862.
However, in 1876 Stefanus Barends died. In 1880 Ellis remarried Gottfried Schmutzer. From the marriage of Ellis Francisca Wilhelmina Karthous and Gottfried Schmutzer, Ellis Anna Maria Antonia Schmutzer (1881), Josef Ignatius Julius Maria Schmutzer (1882), Julius Robert Anton Maria Schmutzer (1884) and Eduard Wilhelmina Maria Schmutzer (1887) were born.
In the Peneleh European Cemetery in Surabaya, it turned out that the graves of Gottfried Schmutzer, Ellis Schmutzer and their youngest brother Edward were found in one grave. There is no record of where the names of the two brothers who were the founders of workers’ welfare were buried.
It is thought that Gottfried Schmutzer’s presence in Surabaya was related to the sugar industry because at that time (starting from 1832) the sugar industry had already started to grow, specifically in Gubeng.
According to the tracer of the history of sugar factories in East Java, Agung Widyanjaya, in the current administrative area of the city of Surabaya, there used to be 9 sugar factories. Starting with a sugar factory in Gubeng (1832) then followed by sugar factories such as the Ketabang Sugar Factory, PG Bagong, PG Ngagel, PG Darmo, PG Dadoengan, PG Ketintang, PG Karah and PG Petemon.
It could be that Surabaya has a lot of workers because, for one thing, the sugar industry sector is a center for practicing ethical politics which has been introduced and practiced by his two children at PG Gondanglipuro, Yogyakarta. Unfortunately the graves of his two children: Julius Robert Anton Maria Schmutzer and Joseph Ignatius Julius Maria Schmutzer were not found in the Peneleh cemetery.
Here there are only Gottfried Schmutzer, Ellis Schmutzer (wife) and Eduard Wilhelmina’s youngest sister Maria Schmutzer (youngest) in one grave. (nan)