S. Kalff was a Dutch colonial-mission journalist and author whose sketch “Een trits Indische Pastoors” (“A trio of Indian pastors”), published in Koloniaal Missie Tijdschrift (Jaargang XII), is the principal biographical source for Pastoor H. C. Verbraak, the soldatenpastoor of Atjeh. The sketch is reproduced, with attribution, in the mission jubilee volume of 1934, and it preserves the most vivid and anecdote-rich account of Verbraak’s thirty-year chaplaincy on the Atjeh war-footing.
The “trits Indische Pastoors” sketch
Kalff’s sketch of Verbraak — introduced in the jubilee volume with the editorial note that the reader will welcome the opportunity to learn more of “this man of God” (Iets meer van dezen man Gods te vernemen, zal velen welkom zijn) — is described by the editor as “the interesting and gemoedelijke schets” (the interesting and gemoedelijke — “warm” or “genial” — sketch) of the soldatenpastoor. The sketch’s narrative voice is anecdotal, fond, and rich in quotation: it preserves the soldiers’ jokes about sauerkraut (zuurkool langs de geheele linie), the papaya-trees of the presbytery, the carafe of port beneath the portrait of the Pope, the field-altar improvised from gin-cases (“de poppekast is klaar!”), and the cholera-ward testimony of the medical officer Dr. N. Munk.
Method and sources
Kalff’s method, as it emerges from the sketch, is to compose a portrait from anecdote rather than from the official record. He draws on:
- The testimony of officers of the Netherlands-Indian Army who had known Verbraak in Atjeh (“Een officier van het O.I. leger, die hem op Atjeh leerde kennen, schreef…”).
- The testimony of the medical officer Dr. N. Munk on the cholera-ward at Panteh Perak.
- The testimony of Colonel J. F. D. Bruinsma on Verbraak’s disregard of the racial conventions of colonial transport.
- The reminiscences of soldiers, visitors, and companions preserved in the oral memory of the colonial mission.
The sketch is therefore a composite of oral-history testimonies, fixed in print by Kalff’s editorial labour, and it is the source of nearly all the anecdotal detail that survives of Verbraak’s personality.
Reproduction in the 1934 jubilee volume
The jubilee volume of 1934 reproduces Kalff’s sketch — possibly in condensed form — under the heading “Pastoor H. C. Verbraak,” with the editorial preface acknowledging Kalff as the author and Koloniaal Missie Tijdschrift Jaargang XII as the place of first publication. The sketch, as reproduced, supplies the structure of the Verbraak article in the present encyclopedia.
Significance
Kalff’s significance for the encyclopedia of Achehnese history is documentary. His sketch is the principal source for the biography of Pastoor H. C. Verbraak, and therefore for the documented Catholic presence on the Atjeh war-footing from 1874 to 1908. Without Kalff’s editorial labour — the gathering of officer testimony, the preservation of soldiers’ jokes, the citation of Dr. N. Munk’s cholera-ward memoir — the human texture of the Catholic chaplaincy of Atjeh would be irrecoverable. His sketch is also, more generally, a document of the genre of the colonial-mission biographical portrait, in which anecdote, oral testimony, and editorial affection combine to fix a clerical figure in the institutional memory of the colonial church.
See Also
- Aceh War
- J. F. D. Bruinsma
- N. Munk
- Pastoor H. C. Verbraak
- Panteh Perak
- Vierhonderd jaren missie in Nederlandsch Indië (1934)
- 1922
Source
Vierhonderd jaren missie in Nederlandsch-Indië, 1593–1934 (Batavia: Algemeen Comité van Voorbereiding tot de Feestelijke Herdenking van 400 jaar Missie in Ned.-Indië, [1934]), pp. 127–133, reproducing S. Kalff, “Een trits Indische Pastoors,” in Koloniaal Missie Tijdschrift, Jaargang XII.