Gunther W. Holtorf still putting Jakarta on the map

By David Eyerly

JAKARTA (JP): Gunther W. Holtorf is a man who knows his way around. The 64-year-old German is familiar with much of the world, living overseas much of his life and spending the last 10 years traveling around the globe in a four-wheel drive Mercedes wagon.

But no matter how well he knows the rest of the world, it is just a passing acquaintance compared to his intimate relationship with Jakarta, a city Holtorf says he can navigate blindfolded.

It's an exaggeration, but all the same it gives one pause because if anyone could navigate Jakarta blindfolded, with all its confusion and chaos, it would be Holtorf.

For the unassuming Holtorf is the man responsible for the Jakarta-Jabotabek Street Atlas and Names Index, the 12th edition of which appeared in stores this week. This latest edition is an impressive 385 pages of detailed maps and useful information covering all of Greater Jakarta, far from the modest folded city map Holtorf first introduced in 1977. But then Jakarta itself was much more modest in those days.

"We lived basically without electricity. We basically lived without telephones, not to talk about faxes and all the other things. Maps were not available. A foreigner was blindfolded here in Jakarta. He knew this road I have to take to the center and to return back home, but he didn't have a clue of the layout of the city," Holtorf says of life in Jakarta when he arrived here in 1973 as the general manager of German airline Lufthansa.

When Holtorf would invite friends to his house in Kemang in those days, he would have to sketch a small map on the back of the invitations to help people find their way.

"Friends asked me, 'Why don't you do it properly, why don't you compile a map of Jakarta because we all are suffering,'" says Holtorf.

And from such modest beginnings sprang his first city map, targeted mainly at the foreign community that found itself a bit at sea in Jakarta.

Holtorf contacted the local government and obtained the blueprints of old Dutch base maps of Jakarta, which he used as a basic tool to physically survey the city.

"I took a piece of paper and went into a certain area and drove around that area and collected all the data I could physically absorb, and by that means updated the existing, outdated so-called base maps.

"That took me about three years. I did that in the morning hours. I started at 5:30, six in the morning until about nine. At that time traffic was a fraction of today; today it would be impossible to do. And I did it over the weekends, I did it in the evening hours. I spent my entire spare time over a period of three years doing this.

"And by that means I collected all the data to be able to compile and draw up the first map, that means data you would normally be able to obtain from the land and survey office .... I had to put together, in a Mickey Mouse operation, all the little details, including names, that was the most important point because there still is no government source where you can obtain a street name list. The postal authority, for compiling their post codes uses this atlas to get their names."

Holtorf seems slightly embarrassed as he recalls presenting a copy of the map to then city governor Ali Sadikin in 1977 on the occasion of Jakarta's 450th anniversary, and being honored with a plaque for his work.

"But it was a very, very big event, that single sheet of paper. Everybody was so proud finally to have a basic map of Jakarta."

That single sheet of paper expanded along with Jakarta, which outgrew the folded city map in 1992, when the first street atlas edition was introduced.

While Holtorf's maps are no longer the only ones available, they remain, he notes, the only original maps of the city. "There are about 15 to 20 maps that have been published and they are all, without exception, pilfered copies of my old maps .... All the maps, all the color schemes, the details and so on, all the names, the way I spelled them and abbreviated them, it is 100 percent copied."

He takes a philosophical approach to this issue, preferring to look on the positive side. "I always say that since Indonesia is the largest white spot cartographically on earth ... the fact that I started out with that city map certainly stimulated other parties over the years to copy that map and also stimulated people to do something similar for Surabaya, Bandung, Semarang and so on, and these maps are on the way now. I'm not unhappy about the fact, should I say it that way, I'm not unhappy that I could help Indonesia a bit in this field."

World's best cartography

That is the claim made on the cover of the latest edition of the street atlas, the first since 1997 when the economic crisis put a temporary halt to Holtorf's work.

While difficult, if not impossible to verify, this atlas certainly comes loaded with user-friendly features. And just a quick glance at the atlas shows that it is easier to read and use than your usual atlas, with its jumbles of lines and illegible street names.

This is good news for everyone, Indonesians and foreigners alike, who find themselves at a frequent loss for how to get from Point A to Point B in Greater Jakarta, which has grown so large that there are some areas your average resident, Indonesian and foreigner alike, has only vaguely heard of.

One might assume that with the success of the atlas and Holtorf in the middle of his world tour, his involvement in the new atlas would be limited to putting his name on the cover and coming to Jakarta to promote it. That would be an incorrect assumption. Much like with the first map, Holtorf is still out there in his car driving around the city collecting data by himself.

"There is no name, no line entry, no street entry in this atlas which I have not checked and seen personally."

Holtorf will leave Indonesia at the end of the month, go get his Mercedes, which is parked in New Jersey, and continue on his journey -- to Canada, Central America, South America. But he will be back at the end of 2002 or the beginning of 2003, probably driving around Greater Jakarta with pen and paper, collecting data on what buildings have gone up, what new housing settlements have appeared, what street names have changed.

Because, as Holtorf says, "People need good maps."