Gerard Tichelman

Gerard Louwerens Tichelman ( Palembang , January 31 1893 - Haarlem , January 3 1962 ) was a Dutch colonial civil servant, self-made Indologist and museum curator .

Tichelman followed in Wageningen and Deventer training in tropical agriculture and was from 1913 to 1916 in the Dutch East Indies working on a plantation . He then worked until 1938 as a government official in theMoluccas , Borneo and Sumatra, after which he moved to the Netherlands. In Amsterdam he was because of his unblemished record of service in India at forty-five almost immediate use at the Colonial Institute, later the Royal Tropical Institute . He held several positions, including member of the Information Department, but Tichelman appeared to feel most at home as a member of the Tropical Museum, where he was eight years curator. He would continue working until his retirement in 1958 at the Royal Tropical Institute.

It succeeded the former official Tichelman to work rapidly and reach a professional level for the knowledge of the cultures of the Dutch East Indies, especially the material cultural expressions that were preserved by the Dutch ethnographic museums, studied and exhibited. He became nationally and internationally recognized expert, especially through his publications. Tichelman wrote an enormous oeuvre - articles and books - together and published in both Dutch and foreign journals. His subjects ranged from the future problems of the young Republic of Indonesia and the administrative division of Dutch New Guinea until the magical loaded priest attributes to the Batak, prehistoric rock corridors, and puzzles and old folk tales from Aceh . Small, fleeting sketches of anything and everything - Bolivia , Nigeria, the Easter , a time known Indian minister, resistance fighters in the Moluccas - he wrote in informal periodicals, such as Indian Leave Ganger and East and West, but also in daily and weeklies. He also wrote book reviews and lemma in Winkler Prins. Gerard Tichelman died at the age of sixty eight. His archive, 3.5 meters long, with many unpublished manuscripts, is administered by the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden .

Select bibliography [ edit ]

 * "Si gale gale, the Batak doodenpop ', in: Cultural Indies 1, 1939, p. 106-112
 * Visual art of Batak (with AJ Lorm). Leiden: EJ Brill, 1941
 * Magical signs and symbols of Indonesia (with WJ de Gruyter ). 'S Graveland: The Triangle, 1942
 * First Tropical Memorandum (LJ of Spirit). Deventer: W. van Hoeve, nd
 * Tropical second Memorandum (LJ of Spirit). Deventer: W. van Hoeve, 1943
 * New Guinean oerkunst (with WJ de Gruyter). Deventer: W. van Hoeve, 1944
 * Geuze Songbook 1940-1945 (MG Schenk). Amsterdam? : 1945?
 * New Guinea, the land of the future. Haarlem, 1948
 * Script of New Guinea. Schiedam, 1951
 * Indian Dutch. Amsterdam: Stichting IVIO, 1958 [AO-698 series]
 * Anthropological Aspects. Leiden: AW Sythoff, 1960 [The South Moluccas, Rebellious Province or State Occupied dl.6]