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Glasfabriek Leerdam

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.

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Veneta

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?

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Emmastraat 58, Caecilia

Both Franz and his brother Willy were born in Amsterdam. In 1914 a part of the family moved to the Emmastraat 58 in Hilversum. Franz only moved there in 1916 after having lived in Rotterdam for a few years. Once in Hilversum, Farwerck had lived at the Emmastraat until he died. Or so I thought!

Nowadays there is no Emmastraat 58, the house is gone.

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Johanna Farwerck-Borrius (1901-1992)

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, see at the end of this text.

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National Archive

After the war, people who have been active in the Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (‘National Socialist Movement’, N.S.B.), have been investigated to see if they should be prosecuted. Farwerck was of course one of them.

One biography quotes from these files and it took me quite a while before I located them and then again some time before I managed to check them myself.

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Egbert Smedes

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?’).

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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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Jan Thierens

In one of his 1953 books, Farwerck thanked E.J.F. Thierens for his help. Thierens was Farwerck’s successor as Grand Commander of Le Droit Humain when Farwerck left to join the National Socialist Movement. Apparently, over two decades along the line, the two were still in contact. So who was this E.J.F. Thierens?

Thierens’ full names are Elie Johannes François, Jan in short. He was born in 1882, so he was a little older than Farwerck. Thierens died in 1967.

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Van Meerwijk

Van Meerwijk is a name that I often run into when I am looking for information about Farwerck. There was a couple Van Meerwijk. He was Joseph Leonard Corneille van Meerwijk (1873-1948), she Anna Petronella Verdonck (1886-1984). They married on September 11th 1918.

Joseph is mostly known as director of one of the biggest insurance companies in the Netherlands, Centraal Beheer (until 1937).

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