Peace reigns in old Dutch cemeteries
By Ida Indawati Khouw
Jakartans bored with conventional recreational spots such as Ancol Dreamland in North Jakarta and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah in East Jakarta may want to consider Dutch cemeteries as an alternative. This is the 28th article in a series on old and protected buildings and sites in Jakarta.
JAKARTA (JP): Jakarta residents often complain about the city's lack of public parks and places to relax, but most residents overlook Dutch cemeteries, which may be the perfect solution to these gripes.
There are at least three Dutch cemeteries in the city -- the oldest one is located on Jl. Tanah Abang I in Central Jakarta, and has been turned into the open-air Museum of Memorial Stone Park. The other two cemeteries contain the graves of war victims and are located in Menteng Pulo in South Jakarta and Ancol in North Jakarta.
The cemeteries offer beautiful views of huge "gardens", and the atmosphere at these sites is anything but frightening.
Although it is not managed as well as the other two, the most beautiful Dutch cemetery in Jakarta is located in Tanah Abang, where, according to local guide Wilfred Situmorang, no corpses remain.
"Almost all of the corpses were dug up and moved to other places when the city administration decided to use the site for a museum in 1975," he said.
He said at the time of the decision, the cemetery had become an abandoned field with grass covering the beautifully sculpted tombstones.
The graveyard was built in 1795 because the Dutch cemeteries in downtown Batavia (as Jakarta was previously known) had been demolished or were overcrowded.
Tanah Abang was considered a remote spot at the time the corpses were transported from downtown to the new cemetery by boat on Krukut River.
Historian Adolf Heuken, in his book Historical Sites of Jakarta, quoted an 1825 report that hearses from hospitals transported corpses to Tanah Abang twice daily.
"The mortality rate was significantly high in Batavia at the beginning of the 19th century due to deteriorating health conditions in the city .... Government officials and businesspeople died often and new personnel were installed immediately. Sometimes people could hardly remember a well-known person who had died just a few years earlier," according to the book.
Tradition
In Batavia, graves were located in kerkhof, or churchyards, according to Western tradition. It is from the word kerkhof that some Indonesians now refer to Dutch cemeteries as kerkof or kerkop.
"People wanted to be buried near the church building, which is considered to be closer to the House of God. Usually, only prominent figures were buried inside the church, while others were buried in the yard," Heuken said.
He said that when several old churches in downtown Batavia were demolished at the beginning of the 19th century, some gravestones were brought to the new Tanah Abang cemetery and "some of these stones were inserted into the cemetery's outer wall, while others were placed within the yard".
That is why some of the stones found in the cemetery date from long before the cemetery was built in 1795.
The city administration "saved" the old cemetery by converting it into a museum, where people could enjoy the gravestones made from quality marble and crafted into romantic angels, Gothic turrets and sleeping children, bringing to mind the old cemeteries of Europe.
Some of the memorial stones were not made from stone but steel, like the monument of Catholic priest H. van der Grinten, which is in the shape of a small "castle" with four turrets on top.
It was also in the Tanah Abang cemetery that the bodies of famous figures once laid, including several Dutch governor- generals, high-ranking Dutch military officers, the founder of the famous STOVIA medical school H.F. Roll, the richest landlord in Batavia Jonathan Michiels and archeologist W.F. Stutterheim, who researched several archeological sites in Indonesia.
The headstones of several non-Dutch people can also be found here, including that of Olivia Marrianne Raffles, the first wife of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British national who was one of the British East Indies governor-generals and the founder of Singapore. Also located in the cemetery is the gravestone of American Edwin Rich Connell, who was born in Brooklyn in 1861 and died at the age of 27.
The tombstones found in the cemetery come is a dazzling variety of shapes and forms, such as the figure of a mourning woman with her face turned downward. Another depicts a weeping woman lying prostrate.
Most of the headstones portray male or female angels. There are also "unique" forms, like cups covered by clothes, harps or even skulls.
"Probably, the shape of the stones represented the deceased favorite things during their lives," said Wilfred Situmorang.
Because the graveyard was being used as a Christian cemetery until the early 1970s, several prominent Indonesians were buried there, including student activist Soe Hok Gie and the famous artist of the 1930s Miss Riboet.
Sukarno's coffin
The coffins of founding president Sukarno and vice president Mohammad Hatta were also placed there for a time.
The Dutch cemeteries at Menteng Pulo and Ancol are not decorated with beautifully carved gravestones, but simple crosses and headstones for non-Christians buried there.
The cemeteries for war victims could, actually, serve as an example for the city's burial agency, which hopes to make public cemeteries in the capital not only burial sites, but also green and scenic areas.
The Menteng Pulo Ereveld (field of honor) for victims of World War II is the most famous of seven war cemeteries in Java, all under the auspices of the Netherlands War Graves Foundation (OGS) in Indonesia. The Menteng Pulo cemetery's main attraction is its beautiful chapel and columbarium.
It is comes as somewhat of a surprise to enter this solemn and peaceful "prairie", which is in stark contrast to the surrounding crowded neighborhoods and the hectic and polluted Jakarta.
The 3.5-hectare cemetery has 4,400 crosses and headstones, a chapel with an "East-meets-West" architectural style, a columbarium of 754 urns containing the ashes of Dutch military internees who were executed in Japan and several gazebos, all of which are well tended.
"The graveyard is open for everybody even if they have no relationship with the deceased," said the director of OGS in Indonesia, Nanno Nommensen.
A leaflet published by the foundation says the cemetery was inaugurated by Lt. Gen. S.H. Spoor, the then commander general of the Dutch East Indies, on Dec. 8, 1947. In his inauguration address, Spoor said the graveyard was open to people of all races, religions, descendants and positions.
That is why, besides Dutch nationals, Indonesians, Chinese and other nationalities can be found here.
"Indonesians who were buried here were mostly soldiers of the KNIL (Royal Dutch Army)," said Nommensen.
There is some bitterness behind the Ancol war graveyard, which was opened on Sept. 4, 1946, as it was built on the site where thousands of people were shot or beheaded by Japanese colonial troops.
"We don't know how many people were executed at that time, but at present there are 2,000 graves, some of which are mass graves," Nommensen said.
Japan began to colonize Indonesia in 1942 by cleansing the country of Dutch and Allied soldiers.
According to the book Sejarah Indonesia Modern (History of Modern Indonesia), there were 170,000 internees throughout the country at that time, including Dutch and Allied soldiers and civilians.