Show Notes
A Dutch Jesuit in wartime Java holds two philology books and a life’s work on microfilm five thousand miles away - what does staying cost him?
You pick the two books and stay - what does that cost you?
In this episode, we follow Petrus Josephus "Piet" Zoetmulder from Utrecht to Yogyakarta and through choices that tethered a life to a language. We trace the practical and moral decisions he made as his scholarship, citizenship, and survival became inseparable - what did he give up to keep building?
Person: Petrus Josephus Zoetmulder (Piet) Date: born January 1906; died July 1995 Location: Yogyakarta, Java (Indonesia) and Utrecht (Netherlands) Event: Japanese internment, shipwreck of colleague, Nazi occupation, revolutionary violence Topic: Old Javanese (Kawi) philology and a decades-long dictionary project
- He chose to settle and continue work in Java after doctoral study and service with the Jesuits rather than return to the Netherlands. - Interned by Japanese forces in 1942, he brought only two technical books: Juynboll’s Adiparwa and the Gericke & Roorda Javanese dictionary. - His dictionary project depended on microfilm holdings located at a university five thousand miles away, delaying completion for decades. - He renounced his original Dutch citizenship and lived the rest of his life as a member of the Indonesian community he had joined. - His doctoral work on Javanese Suluk literature (Pantheism and Monism) and lifelong scholarship were sustained through war, shipwreck, and imprisonment without abandoning the project.
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