Moesson Magazine  |  March 2019




It was almost past lunch time: 2:30 p.m. in Malabar Tea Plantation, Pangalengan, West Java, 1550 meter high above sea level. On the damp ground fully shaded and surrounded by high tall trees, two women and a boy sat on a mat, opened their lunch box and started to eat their meals. It seemed perfectly normal like a family picnic in the woods, but to me who was there, it was something unusual as they did it in front of an old tomb with burnt joss sticks put ahead of them. From behind the tomb, an old man, the caretaker, came to me and whispered in my ear: “They’re coming for a ritual of talking to Meneer Bosscha.”

Like those who believe in the power of someone’s intercession, this family was attracted by the charm of Karel Albert Rudolf Bosscha, a Dutch man who became the director of the plantation in 1896. They came far from Jakarta to his tomb to look for miracle cures. “People come to this tomb for different purposes,” said Pak Upir, short for Uus Supriyatna, the caretaker. “Meneer Bosscha, for them, is an intercessor who can delivers their prayers to the almighty. They come to ask for health, wealth, or romance,” he added.

I was completely speechless and wondered how could this man be worshipped like as if he was a holy man. Pak Upir then took me closer to the tomb which was shaped like a small circular mausoleum roofed with concrete dome and fenced with iron. As we both stood in front of it, he told me, “I have taken care of this tomb since 1968. Like most workers here, I believe that the ghost of Meneer Bosscha still wander in this plantation to watch us.”

He pointed his finger to a bench outside the fence and said, “Meneer Bosscha was a noble and generous man. I see him every morning around nine o’clock sit on that bench and read newspaper. After that, he will ride his horse and wander around the plantation to inspect the workers. In the afternoon, he will reach the top of Gunung Nini, a small hill in the middle of the plantation, where he takes a break in a gazebo while enjoying the view of the plantation from above.”

I didn’t really buy his ghost story, yet, I wanted to know how the plantation looked like from the top of Gunung Nini. So I walked up to the hill, through the vast tea plantation, and breathed in the cold mountain air. As I reached the gazebo, I looked down and see the whole area of Malabar tea plantation. The view was absolutely spectacular. As far as I could see, everything was green and the tea plants looked like a huge carpet with the path lines as the pattern. There, I met Pak Endang, a worker who took care of the gazebo. We were engaged in a conversation about, again, the ghost of Bosscha. He said that he had seen the sightings of the ghost riding a horse to the top of the hill. “He didn’t smile nor look back at me. He just went straight from below to here,” he said. Normally, I would be terrified and got goose bumps to hear a ghost story. But this one made me curious and want to hear even more about Bosscha.

Back at home in Jakarta, I made a small research and found that Bosscha was born in The Hague in 1865 from a well respected family. His father, Johannes Bosscha, Jr was a physicist and professor at the military academy in Breda before becoming a director of the polytechnic school in Delft. His mother, Paulina Emilia, came from the family of Kerkhoven who was known for their tea empire with vast plantations spreading across West Java. To this point, I could see that through his mother, Bosscha was connected with the Indies.

That connection would later bring him to the colony in 1887 where he stayed with his uncle, Eduard Julius Kerkhoven, for the first six months in Sinagar Tea Plantation, Sukabumi, before following his geologist brother, Jan Bosscha, on a gold expedition in Borneo until 1892. He then returned to his uncle to establish and run a telephone company in West Java while learning about how to cultivate tea. The highlight of his life occurred in 1896 when he was appointed the director of Malabar Tea Plantation by his uncle. Steadily, under his administration, the plantation generated millions of guilders of profit. It was said that by the end of the First World War, he had become one of Java’s richest and most powerful man.

Long before I came to his tomb, I had known Bosscha as a philanthropist and Dutch entrepreneur who made large contribution to the city of Bandung, 52 kilometer north of Pangalengan. He donated his wealth to found school, hospital, science laboratory, university, and the most remarkable one, an observatory in Lembang which now becomes an observatory with the biggest astronomical telescope in Indonesia.

Unlike what has been embedded in the thoughts of many Indonesian about Dutch planters, where they are often pictured as cruel colonists abusing and exploiting their labors, Bosscha was very generous toward his workers. In 1901, when the rate of illiteracy among the natives were high, he founded a free of charge school for the workers’ children to let them learn how to read and write. Amazingly, the school lasts until today and has been transformed into a state owned elementary school of Malabar. Its original building which is made of timber and woven bamboo has been partially burnt down, and the remain now functions as a museum. He also built hundreds of wooden houses for his workers within the plantation.

Few weeks ago, on my re-visiting the plantation, I found myself in front of the tomb again, stood shoulder to shoulder with a group of history enthusiast cyclists having ridden miles away from Bandung in a tour to honor Bosscha. Standing in front of them, the leader told the group that shortly after being awarded as an honorary citizen of the city of Bandung for all his merits and contributions in a grand ceremony in1928, Bosscha passed away in Malabar. It was said that he became seriously ill after accidentally falling from his horse. The open wound on his leg was infected with tetanus. What was so interesting about Bosscha that awed me and the cyclists was that he could speak fluently in the local traditional language of Sundanese. That totally made sense, considering that nearly all his workers were of that ethnic group.

In the following morning, it was drizzling in the plantation. Nearly all the tea plants were covered with thin mist due to the cold weather. I drove slowly to the last thing I need to see in order to trace the footstep of Bosscha before leaving the plantation for home, which was his house. It was a single storey tropical house surrounded with garden and built with chimney. I was allowed to enter the house and look around by Pak Ujang, the caretaker. I marveled at its interior as everything was neatly set the way it had been when Bosscha was still alive. I was mostly attracted with an old piano which, along with the rattan chair, was well preserved, but somehow gave me the feeling of creepy and loneliness. I felt like his soul was still there in that house playing the piano with his fingers. Maybe I exaggerated the situation as I was completely alone inside that old house, just like Bosscha in the past who decided not to get married for his entire life, however I decided to walk out through the back door. Outside the house, Pak Ujang smiled at me. He seemed to understand what just happened to me, and yet again, enthusiastically told another ghost story of Bosscha which, this time, took place at this old house.

Despite my being rational and not seriously taking all the ghost stories of Bosscha, I realized that even though this man had passed away long since ninety years earlier, he still alive in the heart and mind of many people, especially those who live in Malabar Plantation. I guessed it was because of his kind and loving heart, and generosity, or maybe, as was told by Pak Upir, the caretaker of the tomb on the other day, because his last wish before he died was to stay forever in Malabar, the land he loved very much. It was a wish that had come true until today.

Imagine, The Story of Dutch Indo  |  2018









Somewhere in 2002, while visiting the old Dutch cemetery in Bandung, I found a nearly abandoned tombstone overgrown with scrub and weed. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that it was the tombstone of Professor Charles Prosper Wolff Schoemaker, a prominent architect that I had for so long admired.

Back then, as an architecture student, I was fascinated with all his works, particularly the ones in Bandung, a city where he had designed so many buildings before the World War Two broke out. Those buildings had become priceless heritages that helped Bandung find its identity as the city of Art Deco.

Of all his works in Bandung that I have visited, I would say that Villa Isola was the most sophisticated one. Located higher than the city of Bandung, on the side of the road connecting Bandung with Lembang, the building was designed with strong Art Deco style as a private residence for a wealthy Eurasian man named Dominique Willem Berretty in 1930s. Not only did he design the building, but also the landscape. All were set harmoniously on a piece of land located in the northern part of the city.

I came to see the building for the very first time in the year of 2000. Standing right in front of it, I was amazed by how Schoemaker perfectly combined the western modern technology with Javanese mythology. I would say that east meet west in Villa Isola.

In the following year, I took a conservation class and made a small research on Schoemaker’s works in Indonesia. I learned that the professor had been very much inspired by ancient Hindu temples and shrines he had found in Java. He tried to apply the philosophy of the temples to his works. In many cases, he even put the head of Batara Kala, a deity figure from Hindu Mythology which could be found in every ancient Hindu temple in Java, at the entrance of his buildings.

Java is a volcanic island where mountains become sacred subjects. In the past, when the island was dominated by Hindu kingdoms, all temples and shrines were built facing volcanic mountains nearby. They believed that the gods resided up in the summits. All those ancient temples can still be found in Central and East Java.

In West Java, where Villa Isola was erected, there was no sacred mountains. However, Schoemaker insisted that the building built according to ancient Hindu philosophy. The only volcanic mountain in Bandung was Mount Tangkuban Perahu in the north, so he precisely put the building in an imaginary cosmic axis that spanned from south to north with the front façade facing the mountain.

In the north side of the building, he designed a beautiful garden with fountains and a marble statue. All were beautifully put in one axis line. This was something else I learned about his works. He loved symmetrical. In the south side where the ground was lower than in the north, he created a bigger garden with a pond in the center. Standing at this south garden, I could look down far at the city of Bandung.

In 2007, four years after graduating from college, I traveled to Bandung and intentionally revisited this magnificent building. This time I didn’t come for its architecture. I came for the story behind it. I sat on a stone bench on the park at the north side of the building and let my mind fly back far to one Sunday morning in March 1933 where the very first stone was laid in the beginning of the construction.

It was a huge ceremony attended by many well respected figures like the mayor of Bandung, few members of Dutch East Indies parliament, the president director of Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij, the director of Post Telegraaf en Telefoondienst, the army commanders, editor in chief of several magazines, the Italian consul in Batavia, the regent of Bandung, and many more. Their presence showed us how important Dominique Willem Berrety was.

Born in Java from an Italian father and a Javanese mother in November 1890, Berretty became a successful entrepreneur at such a young age. He started his early career as an employee at Post Telegraaf en Telefoondienst (Post Telegraph and Telephone Service) of Dutch East Indies where he learned a lot about telegraph, shortly after finishing his secondary school.

As an ambitious young man, he pursued a more challenging career by working as an editor in some newspapers and ended up with Java Bode, a very popular daily newspaper published in the colony. He was so successful he was sent to several foreign countries for assignments before the World War One.

The year of 1917 became the most crucial year in Berretty’s life as he got a loan to found a news agency which he named ANETA, an abbreviation for Algemeen Nieuws en Telegraaf Agentschap. This news agency would later made him both famous and notorious, and for sure, wealthy and a media tycoon.

Known as an energetic man who focused mostly on wealth and power, Berrety spent about five hundred thousand guilders to build Villa Isola in 1933. It was such an enormous amount of money spent within the hard years of global great depression.

Deploying about seven hundreds workers, the construction of Villa Isola took only about nine months until it was ready to be occupied. On one Saturday evening in December 1933, Berretty held a house warming party, and of course it was very festive and attended by well respected guests, including the brilliant architect, C.P.W. Schoemaker.

At eight o’ clock that night, the guests were taken on tour around the interior of the house. They were impressed with how the architect work on the space. Every detail and ornament seemed to be carefully selected. It could be said that Villa Isola was few steps ahead for its time. It was modern, sophisticated, and yet built with local ancient philosophy.

Rumor had it that Berretty was close to his downfall by the time he occupied the villa. Some people said that his news agency was under attack as it had irritated many journalists and politicians for its monopoly on news, including the Governor General Bonifacius Cornelis De Jong who saw him as a thread for the Dutch East Indies and suspected that he had been a spy for the Japan.

Whether it was true or not, in the late of 1934, almost a year after he occupied the villa, Berretty flew to Europe to seek a solution for his financial problem. It was sad that he never had the chance to see his beautiful villa ever again. His plane was crashed in December that year near the border of Iraq and Syria. His body was then buried at a British cemetery in Baghdad.

The mystery of his sudden death remains unsolved until today. The official news said that the plane was struck by thunder, buy many people didn’t buy it. They believed there was a conspiracy to eliminate this guy, and that accusation went to Governor General De Jong whose daughter was in a relationship with Berretty.

Apparently, Berretty’s good looking and charming personalities had attracted many women. Within the year of 1918 – 1934, Berretty married six times and had four children out of those marriages. His secret affair with the governor general’s daughter had brought him to classified information that he would pass on to the Japanese who had been interested to seize the colony from the Dutch for its rich natural resources.

Suddenly, I woke up, back to my full consciousness, and found my self standing on the roof top of Villa Isola. There, miles away in the north I could see the majestic Mount Tangkuban Perahu. She hadn’t changed a little bit since Berretty came here for the first time. Then I turned around to the south where I could see the city of Bandung down there. She had changed a lot since the Dutch left its colony. I wondered if the tomb of Professor Schoemaker remained abandoned then. So I sped my car heading to the old Dutch cemetery in the city.

Thanks to the increasing of awareness in preserving cultural heritages, the tomb of the professor was then in a much better condition. I stood for few minutes in front of it, said some prayers, and thanked him for his remarkable contributions to the city of Bandung.

Before leaving the cemetery, I whispered a question whether or not the rumor about Berretty was true. I heard nothing but the sound of wind. May be I should have stopped wondering and left that a mystery. It was a mystery buried down under with Berretty, a man who once said “Mi isolo e vivo,” an Italian phrase for “I isolate myself and I am alive.” And that’s where the name of Villa Isola came from.