Category Archives: additional information

Another interesting character who somehow crossed the life of Farwerck.

As you can see on the right, Schors owned books previously owned by Farwerck. I know a few such example. Schors’ ex-libris says: “Librairie des Sciences Occultes, W.N. Schors” (‘library of occult sciences’) and his address in Amsterdam.

This is not the only connection between the two, Schors also published a book of Farwerck. That is to say, in 1976, so after Farwerck died, he republished Farwerck’s first book from 1927 with an alternative cover. Schors (re)published more books from the publishers Duwaer and Van Ginkel who published Farwerck’s debut.

Perhaps not the most interesting subject, but still a little.

Glassfactory “Leerdam” started as “Jeekel, Mijnssen & Co.” in 1875. “Leerdam” is not only the name of the factory, but also the place where the factory stood.

In 1912 the Theosophist Petrus Marinus Cochius (1874 – 1938) became director. Under Cochius the factory went more into an ‘artsy’ director which was fairly successful. Cochius had worked for the factory since 1895 and he was semi-director since 1903.

Economic difficulties caused Cochius to have disagreements with the members of the committee early 1930, but remained in his function for the better of the factory. The committee members were replaced in September 1930. Farwerck was appointed together with H. Hamming, W. Schermerhorn, H. v.d. Vegte and J.M.A. Wynaendts van Resandt. Other members were appointed too, one of them the Theosophist Erns Louis (Tenno) Selleger (1876-1967).

A few years later the situation had improved and Cochius was of the opinion that he had worked with the committe “in great harmony”. In November 1933 he found it safe to lay down his function and chairman of the committee Farwerck gave a little speech and transferring the function to Hamming.

In the post-war hearings Farwerck uses the Leerdam factory a few times as an example of how he tried to make working conditions more social. Leerdam indeed had the system called “arbeidersgemeenschap” (‘workers society’). Basically it meant that the factory was low on cash, so they had the workers buy shares to increase the funds. This was in May 1933. The shares would be “collective possession”.

Newspapers were positive about this novel and social movement. Not all employers were, they actually turned in salary for a piece of paper. In any case, in 1939 the stocks were “liquidated”, but I’m not sure that the employers got their benefit payment. That said, the factory had been taken merged into a larger company by then.

So here we can connect Farwerck to the Theosophists Cochius and Selleger, yet only from 1930. Also I haven’t found out until when Farwerck stayed in function. The only information I can find is from the 1930’ies.

I’ve said it a few times before, Farwerck’s brother Carl Wilhelm and his wife Johanna had three sons. One of them remains interesting, so I quickly looked at the three to see what would come up.

In 1912 (age 23) Farwerck started a carpet factory. Strangely enough, in 1911 the family Farwerck seems to have moved to Hilversum so that Farwerck senior could start a carpet factory! Can both things be correct?

Both Franz and his brother Willy were born in Amsterdam. The family moved to the Emmastraat 58 in Hilversum some time before 1914. Even though Franz is sometimes listed on other addresses (Rotterdam, Amsterdam, the second I can explain) he lived at the Emmastraat until he died. Or so I thought!

Nowadays there is no Emmastraat 58, the house is gone. I looked around a bit for what happened.

Referring to Carl Wilhelm Farwerck‘s wife, I realised that I never really looked at Johanna. I didn’t even have her years of birth and death present when I needed them. Time to change this.

It wasn’t too difficult to find out when Johanna lived. She was born in Amsterdam on 3 May 1901 and she passed away on 15 May 1992 in Hilversum. At the time she had children, grand children and grand grand children. Thus says the advertisement of her mourning, so at the end of this text.

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.

Quite by accident I ran into a possibly interesting person: Egbert Jacob Smedes. Smedes was born in 1889 in Assen, Netherlands and he passed away in 1975 in Haarlem, Netherlands. He was a teacher and clerk, “modern Humanist” and wrote several books.

When I was looking for something non-Farwerck related I ran into a fairly long article by Smedes in the Indisch Maçonniek Tijdschrift (‘Indian Masonic Periodical’) 1938/9. The text has the catching title Is Onze Loge een Directe Voorzetting van de Oud-Germaansche Gilde? (‘Is our lodge a direct continuation of the old-Germanic guild?’).

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.