additional information

In 1924 Farwerck was involved in yet another activity, a foundation to spread the ideas of Emile Coué (1857-1926). “King of the subconciousness” Coué himself came to Hilversum to speak. Farwerck, chairman of the new foundation, also spoke at that gathering.

I’m not yet 100% sure about the events that led to this foundation. A respondent (see below this text) mentions the name of Josephina Simonis, but I haven’t ran into that name anywhere in the information that I gathered. Then again, looking for her specific name, she does appear to have advertised for having a Coué method practice. In one of them, she names herself a student of Coué.

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.

After having had a look at the ‘Nehalennia crew‘ to see what kind of people Farwerck worked with for his periodical, I thought to jump back in time. An under-lighted aspect of Farwerck is his interest in archaeology and local history, but he has been very active in these fields for many years. Some light can possibly be shed when we have a look at the foundation of the Museum Het Gooi en Omstreken, since Farwerck did not live in a vacuum. “Het Gooi” is the area where Farwerck lived. The museum was named after that area and its surroundings (“omstreken”). The short name of the museum was “Goois Museum”. The museum still exists, but is nowadays called Museum Hilversum.

Franz’ brother, Carl Wilhelm, or Willy, is frustrating to investigate. He followed his brother on several adventures, but remained so much in Franz’ shadow that he is hardly ever mentioned.

In “Farwerck by his writings” I say:

The publishing house is “Thule” which, in his biography, I list as his own publishing house. That is quite obvious, because Thule has Farwerck’s home address, but at one time another address on the other end of Hilversum, the place where he used to live, is mentioned. I also noticed an advertorial for one of these books, saying that the book can be obtained from the publisher, using the feminine version of the word! So why, and to whom, did he temporarily move his publishing house? That is something I have not yet figured out.

Here is what I figured out so far.

On the hunt for new images I found a few interesting things. I found the first photo of Farwerck not in his function at the NSB known to me. On that photo Franz is sided by his father and I happened to also run into a good photo of his father.

What I also found, was a newspaper advertorial for gramophone records with recordings of speeches from the 1934 gathering of the NSB.

The first issue of Nehalennia (April 1956) names the following editors:

Mr. L. Boer, Dr. F.C. Bursch, Ir. F. de Fremery, Dr. F.S. Sixma Baron van Heemstra and Dr. F. Wiersma-Verschaffelt. From the second issue, another name was added: Jkvr. Henriette van Lennep.
This group remains the same for all six years of publication.

Since Farwerck was probably the main editor (his address is the initial editors address) and the publishing house used his address, let us call them ‘his team’. What can we find out about them?

From his two 1953 books (see bibliography) Farwerck started to refer to “Sammlung Thule”. When I first encountered these references I tried to look up what this “Thule Collection” may be, but I couldn’t find much. This became much easier.

I am always on the hunt for new leads on Farwerck and so I once again bumped into the name “Jos. Raemaekers”. I connect the name to a writer with similar subjects as Farwerck (from folklore to esotericism), but never really looked into the man. Then I was rereading Bouwsteenen a Masonic periodical that also published texts by Farwerck and my eye fell on two texts of Raemaekers in a volume from 1928. One is called “Kinderspelen” (‘children’s games’), the other “Citroen” (‘lemon’). Especially the first is quite Farwerck-like. Many, many details, going from folklore to mythology and he even mentions guilds. Could Raemaekers be a/the inspiration for Farwerck?