Koos van Os seminar 17 October 2002

Three hundred years ago the lives of Indonesians and Dutch met. Our Dutch ancestors, often under very hard circumstances, crossed the oceans and settled down in different parts of the world unknown to them. They sailed to America, Japan, China, the West and the East and discovered the most beautiful country of the world: Indonesia.

In 1888, our grandfather Adriaan van Os and his wife left for the former Dutch Indies. He was a teacher. In Batavia (now Djakarta) they had three children. The youngest one, Koos van Os (Jacobus Johannes) was born on 26 October 1894.

Around 1920 Koos van Os went to the Dutch Indies, which he always considered his motherland. On 7 December 1923 he married Jane Elisabeth Leonie Dom, Lizzy, in Yokjakarta. Lizzy's great-grandfather on father's side, Jacobus Dom, was born in Antwerp on 12 June 1752. He arrived in the East as a colonial soldier with the ship "De Harmonie in 1773. He was married to Srima van Medono, born in Yogjakarta. He died in 1810 in Yokjakarta where he was buried on the old cemetery behind the market. Lizzy's great-grandfather, a Portuguese named Pereira, traveled to Macao (China) where he married a Chinese woman, and finally landed in Surabaya. There, one of his sons (Lizzy's grandfather) founded the first ice factory.

Koos van Os died on 22nd February 1934 in Linggarjati and was buried in Cheribon. He was 39 years old.

As all papers and documents were lost during the Second World War and the Japanese occupation, much of what we know about my father was derived from a diary kept by Bob Bär (uncle of the in Holland generally known Mgr. R.Ph. Bär), proxy holder of my father's company Technisch Bureau J.J. van Os and the N.v. Algemene Industrieele Maatschappij (Algim), both in Cheribon.

From Bär's diary I quote the following text about Cheribon: " Cheribon is an important residence of the Province of West Java. It has almost 2 million inhabitants (1931) of whom approximately 3000 Europeans and 80.000 Chinese. The low lands in the northern part were known as one of the biggest rice areas of Java. It also had 10 sugar factories and a big methylated spirit factory for processing treacle, a waste product of the sugar industry.

The capital Cheribon (approximately 82,000 inhabitants of which 1,500 Europeans) housed among other things the big "Mestfabriek Java" where several wagonloads of cattle bones from all over Java were delivered every day to be processed to bone meal. With phosphates from the mineral-rich southern mountains, this factory produced chemical manure for the entire archipelago. A disadvantage was the stench. The factory was situated at the seaside but when the wind blew from the north the stench spread over large areas of the town.

In the center of Cheribon town there was the powerful B.A.T. (British American Tobacco Company), the largest cigarette factory of the Dutch Indies. Cheribon used to be an important seaport, mainly for the Hinterland, the densely populated eastern Preanger, Tjiamis, Tasikmalaja, Garout. Cheribon was situated between the two main towns on Java's northern coast, 250 km east of Batavia and 240 km west of Semarang. It had proper railway connections and roads in the four main directions.

The port itself like all ports on Java's north coast suffered silty deposits and sandbars and could only be reached by coasters. Large vessels had to anchor offshore, sheltered by the far protruding Cape Indramajoe, so high seas didn't affect offloading. The Tagalsch Prauwenveer provided a large fleet of loading prawns (looking like Rhine barges) for the transport of ship loads to the port and custom sheds."

A little bit further Bär describes his first acquaintance with Linggarjati: " The 'daily' arrived in Cheribon at 5 p.m., where I was collected by Koos van Os. We drove straight to Linggarjati, a mountain village some 35 km over Cheribon on the slopes of the Tjeremai, a 3078 m high volcano. The journey took about 45 minutes. There I met Van Os' family, his wife Lizzy and the two girls Cora and Joty (note of the author: at that time Wim hadn't been born yet). Van Os had bought a premises in Lingagarjati consisting of a house built on piles with a beautiful view and a large yard. He wanted to extend this house and change it into a big brick building. The construction plan was ready. The house would be extended by some meters all around. That couldn't be done at once, because the family would continue to live there. The extension was a great success."

About the company of Van Os Bär writes: "Then we went to the "Tegel- en Betonwarenfabriek Elenbaas" (tile- and concrete-making plant). Mr. Elenbaas had died recently and his widow had agreed with Van Os that the latter would take over the flourishing company adjacent to the house.

The tile-making factory had a young foreman working for her by the name of Katjong, who had been highly trained by Elenbaas. Katjong started to work for the company as a small boy. He was a born manager. He knew all the ins and outs of the job and guided his workers in a most efficient way. The company had 4 old manually operated tile-making presses of a French make which produced different excellent floor tiles. That they were excellent is proved by the following anecdote: the company received a very important order: the sultan of Kassepoehan was not satisfied with the state of the tile floor in one of his kratons (palaces). So our company was asked to lay the new floor for the entrance, part of the royal showpiece.

The tile- and concrete-making plant in Cheribon and the sawmill in Rembang were the first industrial enterprises of N.V. Algim. The Algim products were sold by the Technisch Bureau J.J. van Os, a commercial partnership in which both partners where liable.

The Technisch Bureau used to sell building materials, hinges and locks, sanitary equipment, pipes and tubes, and other products. For these building materials Van Os was the district agent of some reknown importers, like for instance W.J. Stokvis in Batavia and the Technical Bureau for offer and demand in Surabaya. Apart from that, Van Os was the district agent for Orenstein & Koppel, importers of narrow-gauge materials. Originally Van Os had been sent to the East-Indies by Orenstein & Koppel; he was an export on narrow-gauge materials. This agency was important because of the many sugar plants and agricultural companies in the area. So all together the Technisch Bureau sold a wide range of highly demanded products.

Furthermore the first thing to be extended was the mining sector. The mountainous southern part of Cheribon was rich in minerals like for example phosphates, kaolin (porcelain earth), natural stone, etc, etc. This was also a sector in which Van Os was interested and in which he had gained quite a lot of experience.

On the second day of my employment I also met a number of important customers for building materials: the heads of the provincial department of transport and communication, the regency council and the public works department. Koos van Os knew them all personally and the reception was cordial everywhere.

Our new company had not made any supplies yet so there were no complaints either.

The expectation however was that the Technisch Bureau van Os might be competitive. The main competitors were Lindeteves Stokvis and Carl Schlieper, two big organizations which could offer all kinds of things but were mainly interested in big projects.

For such technical services the tailor-made products of the tile- and concrete-making plant were essential as well as it became apparent from two important projects in Cheribon. The Telecommunications Department wanted to replace all the overhead telephone lines which were a blot to the town, by a suitable underground telephone cable. Van Os offered an adequate and at the same time relatively cheap solution: to construct half-open ducts at a small depth which were to be covered with concrete slabs. That way the cable would be protected and at the same time it would be invisible and accessible for possible repair work.

A second big order came from the Public Works Department. The many open gutters and ditches were to be replaced by a proper sewage system. After an intensive prior examination our concrete department was selected to do the job. The sewage pipes were to be laid rather deep and therefore had to be strong. As there was no scientific institute to measure the required strength one had to improvise. 5 sewage pipes were placed next to each other and covered with a shelf wide enough to hold 5 meter long narrow-gauge rails. The required strength was determined by piling up rails on the shelf till the required strength was reached, i.e. till the pipes broke.

This test proved satisfactory and resulted in an order for our company for many kilometers of pipes. This project also made the company well-known both in the town and its surroundings.

Another product we offered were pipes with a diameter of 100 cm which were highly wanted for digging water wells which till then used to be a risky job because of the danger of the walls caving in. Other novelties were the time and money saving shaft rings and the 'septic tank' which put an end to the cesspool and all its disadvantages. An enormous improvement for the town which yielded us many grateful customers.

About our father's death Bär writes: "Koos van Os died from uremia in the Cheribon hospital. His death came as a bolt from the blue. He died so young that we never had a chance to ask him all the "whys" in his short life. Why did he settle in Indonesia? Why Indonesia? , etc. etc.

A young man emigrates to Asia, Indonesia. He looses his heart, not only to the new motherland but also to a young Indian girl. Also because of his love for Lizzy he decides to settle down instead of returning to Holland. He thereby broke with the political view in The Hague: "The Dutch-Indies were to be exploited, they were not to become a colony for people to settle down." Could it be that because of this view not only the emancipation of the Indonesian people but also of a large group of Dutch settlers in Indonesia and Euro-Asians was not only delayed for decennia but finally also led to the rejection of the Linggarjati agreement?

Koos van Os invested all his energy, his know-how and his opinion in his new homeland. He was a practical and pragmatic man. "That's enough talking, let's act" was his slogan. He constructed the first water supply system in Linggarjati, for which he used bamboo pipes, as well as the sewage system and telephone cable network in Cheribon.

Koos van Os invested all his energy, his know-how and his opinion in his new homeland. He was a practical and pragmatic man. "That's enough talking, let's act" was his slogan. He constructed the first water supply system in Linggarjati, for which he used bamboo pipes, as well as the sewage system and telephone cable network in Cheribon.

The problems to be solved in Cheribon with its millions of inhabitants, like those of other such cities (there are cities with 10 million inhabitants in Asia) are enormous. In the global world in which we live, these problems cannot be solved within territorial boundaries.

Linggarjati was not only a story about countries. It was a story about people. Sjahrir Schermerhorn, Lord Killearn, van Mook, all of them were visionaries, realistic people. They knew that the moment had come for the birth of the republic of Indonesia. Linggarjati will go into history as the cradle of a grand and beautiful country. A country with its own brilliant culture. A country about which every Indonesian should be able to say: " I am proud of Indonesia and I dedicate all my energy, talents and efforts to my home country".

Why is Linggarjati today, in the year 2002, still important? Due to modern media and technology the world has drastically changed since Lingagarjati. It has become smaller and more accessible. Prosperity and well-being cannot be limited to a small area like America and Europe. Money makes people go blind.

Outside the main industrialized countries, globalization did not bring integration and harmony, on the contrary, in most cases it brought a disastrous change, eleminating existing cultures, languages, old trades and visionary wisdom. Half of the 6000 nowadays spoken languages are not passed on to the children. Within 1 generation we witness the loss of the social, spiritual and intellectual inheritance of mankind. The globally oriented media have joined the world into one single life pattern. The maladjusted influence of the Western society is present in every village, in the slums, in every country and province, 24 hours a day. Baywatch is the most popular television program in New Guinea!

Linggarjati aims for democracy and pluralism. What we need in this 21st century is new sense of pluralism, a real global democracy in which unique cultures, whether they are big or small, are given the right of existence. We shall have to learn to live and learn together.

What we need is a global declaration of solidarity and mutual dependence.

May this seminar organized by Interfel be an initial impetus to such a new view for the 21st century. Then the spirit of Linggarjati will contribute its mite to the 21st century.

Joty ter Kulve-van Os

Welbergsweg 5

Ambt Delden