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about Farwerck

Archaeology

This is a subject I want to have a better look at, but I’m still hunting for information. Here are some preliminary results.

Archaeology in the Netherlands officially ‘exists’ since 1818 when it became a study at the University of Leiden and the National Museum for Antiquities was founded in the same city. This didn’t immediately lead to a boom of archaeological investigations in the country though. In Farwerck’s time, especially after WWII, there was a growing number of amateur archaeologists and interested people who started to unite and to cooperate with the finally growing number of professional archaeologists. That is when things start to get interesting regarding Farwerck.

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Farwerck the photographer

In the biography I say that for a long time Farwerck travelled a lot for his work and he used the occasions to make photographs that later appeared in his books. Then I thought to see if he gives sources for his images to check if this is true. He does.

In his final work, Farwerck has two-and-a-half pages with sources for his images. This list contains book titles and then the numbers for the images that he used are mentioned. So you get for example: “Richard Beitl Deutsche Volkskunde, Berlin 1933: 49, 61” Yes I said two-and-a-half pages with such lines, so that are a lot of sources. One such line is for Farwerck himself. 15 Images out of 265 are photos shot by himself. A line up, two photos of “F. de Fremery, Hilversum” are mentioned.

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Esperanto

Here we have another interesting and elusive subject. In her book about the Dutch federation of Le Droit Humain, Ank Engel writes that Farwerck laboured for the cause of Esperanto. I have run into more references to Esperanto, so how exactly did Farwerck fit in that picture?

Esperanto is a language constructed from (mostly Indo-European) languages that is supposed to be easy to learn and hence become an international language. The Pole L.L. Zahendorf developed it in the late 19th century and in the first decades, it was quite successfull.

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Belief

In 1928, Reverend Van Duyl and carpet manufacturer Farwerck got to know each other closely. Not through religion, because Farwerck was not religiously active anywhere. On a spiritual level, he was completely and exclusively committed to (mixed-gender) freemasonry. (1)

Thus says Hans Hoogenboom (2). By now we know that this is not true. In 1921 Farwerck was active in the very spiritual Universal Sufism order. Also Farwerck was active in the Theosophical Society. Both are far more spiritual than the Masonic order that Farwerck was member of. In basis at least. Freemasonry is a system of symbolism that every member can interpret in his/her own way. Le Droit Humain in Farwerck’s time was very Theosophical (that could be how he got to know of mixed gender Freemasonry), but Farwerck joined the first ‘non-Theosophical’ lodge. Perhaps he did interpret the system ‘Theosophically’, but that is something I have no indications of.

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Theosophy

After long and hard searching it become more and more plausible that Farwerck had been involved in the Theosophical Society. As new sources became available, the suggestion became a fact.

By the time that Farwerck was active the Dutch branch of the Theosophical Society has been around for a while. There is information about these early days, but two decades down the line is less interesting and thus less well documented. Fortunately, something did happen around ‘Farwerck’s time’.

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Rotary

As we saw, Farwerck had certain social idea(l)s. It seems that the Rotary Club was perfect for him in this regard.

“Rotary International is an international service organization whose stated purpose is to bring together business and professional leaders in order to provide humanitarian service and to advance goodwill and peace around the world.”

Says Wikipedia (accessed 7/9/19) about Rotary International.

There we have Farwerck in a nutshell. A business leader who wants to “work for the fellow man” and has already done so in numerous workers’ committees. I totally understand how he saw opportunities when the first Rotary Clubs in the Netherlands were started in 1924 in Amsterdam and Utrecht.

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The question of the Jews

This is a difficult subject. Difficult in several ways. First it seems that writing about Farwerck and the Jewish question, there is only black or white. Some authors seem to want to try to prove that Farwerck was a radical antisemite, while others almost play down the notion.

The other reason is that Farwerck is not too clear about where he stood, at least, not clear enough for our own day and time.

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Social ideas

In the biography I quote Hans Hoogenboom (see first note there) who quotes the post-war investigation report of Polak in which Farwerck says:

In the Netherlands Masonry keeps away from all political interference and mainly occupies itself with spiritual matters. The idea that one has to work for the fellow man, which lives in Freemasonry, I hoped to be able to practice in the NSB. 

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Mureed Farwerck

Another underlighted aspect of Farwerck: he was member of the Universal Sufism order of Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1972).

In the biography of Khan I had found a reference to “de heer Farwerck” not knowing if this was Franz or his brother, I mentioned this in passing in the biography. There is a Dutch website about the order, particularly in the Netherlands, which has some more information.

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