Between Ambon and Amsterdam

Tea at the side gallery

During the summer of 2001 the publicist and journalist Herman Keppy discovered two steamer trunks in a fully stacked room in the Dutch town of Alkmaar. The trunks contained the photo collection and personal papers of Wim Tehupeiory (1883-1946), who was active as a 'native doctor' in the 1920s in the then Netherlands Indies.

The contents of the trunks were useful as a source for Keppy in writing his historical novel Tussen Ambon en Amsterdam (Between Ambon and Amsterdam), published in 2004. He recently transferred this material to the IISH: it is comprised of more than 260 private and professional letters (1898-1946) and scores of folders containing files, including monthly reports of the Government Hospital in Blinjoe on the island of Banka (1910-1914), health reports and records of mine workers declared unfit to work at the tin mines on Banka (1910-1915), documents on the Vereeniging Ambonsch Studiefonds (1914-1921), and an extensive collection of photos.

About Wim Tehupeiory

Medan c. 1904

The Moluccan doctor Willem Karel (Wim of Empie) Tehupeiory was born in 1883 in Ema on the Moluccan island of Ambon in the Netherlands Indies. After completing the Ambon civilian school, Tehupeiory and his elder brother Johannes Everhardus (Nannie) received training to become native doctors (also called dokter djawa) at the School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen (Stovia) in Batavia. They graduated in 1902. Afterwards the nineteen-year-old Wim Tehupeiory worked as a doctor in the prison and the hospital of Medan and at the plantations in Deli to care for Javanese and Chinese coolies.

Lecture by Dr. H.F. Roll

In 1907, together with their sister Leentje Jacomina, who intended to study pharmacy, the brothers, as one of the first Indonesian students, left for the Netherlands to study medicine at the University of Amsterdam. One and a half years later, in December 1908, they completed their final examinations in medicine. Soon after graduation, Johannes Everhardus suddenly died at the age of twenty-six, following a fatal event in Utrecht. As the first Indonesian doctor, Wim Tehupeiory gave a lecture on the low pay of native doctors at a meeting of the Indisch Genootschap in Leiden, whose members included such prominent "ethical" personages as C. Th. van Deventer and J. H. Abendanon. During his medical studies in Amsterdam, Tehupeiory established the foundation of a union of native doctors in the Netherlands Indies. In July 1909 Wim married Anna Ommering, a Dutch woman; the couple had two children.

Dutch course, 1911

In 1909, after his return to the Netherlands Indies, Tehupeiory established an Ambonsch Studiefonds (Ambonese Study Grant Fund) to enable gifted Ambonese youngsters to study at universities in the Netherlands Indies or in the Netherlands. Wim Tehupeiory worked as a civil servant European doctor for Chinese mine workers at the tin mines of Banka (1910-1916). In July 1916 Tehupeiory and his family left for the Netherlands. In 1918 he became a member of the board of the cultural association Mudato to promote Ambonese interests. At the Colonial Education Congress in The Hague in 1919 he argued in favour of the establishment of a Netherlands Indies university, including a faculty of medicine through expansion of the Stovia Institute.

Wim and his family in Zandfoort

Moluccan Political Alliance

In 1922 his financial situation forced Tehupeiory to leave for the Netherlands Indies without his family; he worked as a ship's doctor on the cargo ship SS Rondo, which would pick up pilgrims who had been to Mecca in Jeddah. When he arrived in the Netherlands Indies, Tehupeiory began working as a general practitioner in Batavia. In addition to his busy practice, Tehupeiory was active in the Moluccan nationalist association Sarekat Ambon and in the Ambonese Study Grant Fund, and he was also a member of the Supervisory Commission of the Stovia. In 1928 he became co-founder of the Moluks Politiek Verbond (MPV, Moluccan Political Alliance).

He died in Djakarta in 1946.

Literature:

Harry A. Poeze, In het land van de overheerser, I. Indonesiërs in Nederland 1600-1950 (Dordrecht 1986), Call number: 34/5A fol
Herman Keppy, Tussen Ambon en Amsterdam (Schoorl 2004), Call number: 2004/6175