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Nederlanders welkom

Omdat er al jaren een (weinig informatieve) Nederlandse Wikipedia was over Farwerck en er andere boeken en artikelen in het Nederlands verschenen en omdat de man natuurlijk zelf ook in het Nederlands schreef, had ik vanaf het begin het idee dat ik over Farwerck wilde schrijven in het Engels om ook niet Nederlands sprekende mensen kennis te laten maken met de man. Vanaf 2019 was deze website dus volledig in het Engels. Ik ben altijd erg tevreden geweest over het online publiceren. Ik loop nog regelmatig tegen nieuwe informatie en een website is zo bijgewerkt. Toch ontstond in februari 2023 het idee om eens te kijken naar de mogelijkheid om de informatie ook in boekvorm aan te bieden. Daar wilde ik dan wel een Nederlandse versie van, want ik verwacht niet dat een Engelstalig boek over een onbekende Nederlander heel goed zal verkopen, terwijl het me in de jaren duidelijk is geworden dat er in het Nederlands taalgebied toch best wel mensen interesse hebben in de man Farwerck en zijn werk. Zo gezegd, zo gedaan. Ik heb diverse teksten van de website naar Word gekopieerd, er wat structuur in proberen te krijgen, herlezen en herschreven en daarna helemaal opnieuw vertaald… Read More »Nederlanders welkom

Farwerck books

I have been asked why I didn’t publish a book about Farwerck several times. The biography isn’t all that long, so it would be a very little book. Also there is still information I’m hunting for. When I find something new, I can easily edit the website, but I can’t edit a book as easily. Still, at some point it dawned on my that I wanted to look at the possibilities. Should it come to a book, I had a few wishes. I want to have control, so not somebody looking over my shoulder saying: “I would do it this way.” Also I wanted it to be printing on demand. There are a several good points about printing on demand. First, I don’t have to pre fund the printing of books that may never be sold. Second, there are no books printed which are not sold, so no waste. Third, it is easier to edit a book should that be needed. Possible fourth, in a big company, the copies printed could even be printed as close to the buyer as possible, so less shipping is needed. Last, but certainly not least, I wanted the book to be available in print… Read More »Farwerck books

Wernerlaan

Here we have a letterhead of a letter of Farwerck to Le Droit Humain just before he passed away. Look at the address! I updated the text about Wernerlaan 41.

Small thing and more homework

Checking if any new material was added to newspaper archives I found two things. One is a newspaper article with a photo that shows Kees-Jan Farwerck, one of the sons of Willy Farwerck and Johanna Borrius. The other finding is somewhat related, because it seems to imply that “Mrs. Farwerck” may not be Kees-Jan’s wife Theodore Hoolboom. I’ve updated the “one generation further“, added a little text to “Who was Mrs. Farwerck?” and added the text “Beethovenlaan 11“.

House(s)

I found a bit of more information about the villa, de neighbouring school and probably even about the coach house. The texts about these are updated.

New source and smaller things

I found a text in a periodical that I didn’t know. Yet another place where Farwerck has published. Recently I ran into a person named “Wick Farwerck”. Curious who this might be, it turned out to be a short name for Willem Arnaud Farwerck, a son of Carl Wilhelm Farwerck (whose own short name was Willy). I tried to see if I could find out what schools Farwerck went to. Not much luck so far. I did slightly edit the biography with a “youth” header as I also ran into a listing of him being test for military service (Franz positive, his brother negative). I have not found out if he actually served, but I think not as he was too busy with his (and his fathers) businesses. I’ve transcribed and translated one more text.

Small things

Yesterday I got a small pile of books. I already had them, but wanted to prevent them from getting lost. I noticed that one of the books looks different from the version that I already had: The one on the right is the new one. Initially I thought the hard cover had been taken off, but the back has the title as well. Besides, the titles are different. The brown book has a soft cover, hardly thicker than the sheets, but it appears to be a another edition in which a strange typo of the original cover was corrected. The font is slightly different. This book isn’t too easy to find, but I had never ran into the ‘second edition’ before at all.

New and edited

Yesterday I was lucky. Every now and then I look around a bit to see if any new information was added somewhere. When searching the digital archives at Delpher my eye soon feel on magazine titles that weren’t familiar to me. They were the monthly magazines of the Dutch Rotary Club. There proved to me many, so I tried scanning them to see what information about Farwerck would be there. This resulted in another text about the Rotary Club. There was not groundbreaking new information, but we do get to learn the man a little better again and he mentions having been abroad a few times. There is also irony in information that becomes available over time. For a long, long time I have been trying to prove if Farwerck was a member of the Theosophical Society or not. I finally succeeded a few months back due to a very lucky shot when I ran into old American Theosophical magazines online. In my search of yesterday I found two Dutch magazines of the Theosophical Society which simply state him as leading the Hilversum lodge. I edited the Theosophy article somewhat. A funny finding was a sports magazine in which Farwerck… Read More »New and edited

Additions to website

When rereading things to see if anything needed updating, I realised that some time after I started this website, I had short bios of some people around Farwerck and short texts specifically about some subject. These were mostly because I had discovered new things, but I didn’t do the same for information that I already had in the biography when this website was launched. Yet, some people and subjects deserve a little more attention, so I started to add some texts. For starters: August Heyting; Stephan Schlesinger; Anne Kerdijk; Mixed gender Freemasonry (in the Netherlands); Henri van Ginkel.

Digging into Farwerck’s final years

Earlier I wrote about Farwerck’s house where he no longer lived when he died. Did he move in with the widow of his brother and her son at Wernerlaan 41 which is close to where he lived himself? Or did he move somewhere else? And what did he do with all his possessions, such as his massive library? When you’ve lived in a villa for decades, you’re bound to have a lot of possessions. You don’t just add that to the belongings of the person whose house you move into? But then, Farwerck’s library was only auctioned two years after he passed away, so where was that library between 1967 and 1971 and when, how and to whom was it sold? These questions remain open, but looking for answers did make me have to rewrite my text about the house Caecilia and add another one about the Wernerlaan. Click on the links above.