Nostalgic Nederlands Indië 1936-1939

This album from Java and Sumatra contains photographs by my father Martin G. Rutten.  He collected them in print albums now residing with my brother Kees W. Rutten, who scanned them using the captions as file names.  The original higher-resolution scans can be requested from him (<slokkert apestaart-symbol xs4all.nl>) or from me.

My father (biography in Dutch,  inaugurele rede) was a geologist, as was his father Louis M.R. Rutten (biography in Dutch) before him and is Kees after him.  He was born in Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies, returned there as oil-company geologist during the late 1930s, and then took these photographs.

One of the photographs shows my mother, Titia W. Rutten-Kooistra, close to the summit of the Semeru, the highest volcano on Java.  Much later she wrote a short essay "Een hemels gerecht" about this expedition.  This essay and similar ones became part of a biographic novel "Zuurkool met spek" by my sister Wietske S. Rutten (<wietske apestaart-symbol ns.sympatico.ca>).   Rietje and I tried to climb Semeru in 2000 but were not allowed on the summit cone beyond Ranu Kumbolo.  That lake remains as beautiful as it appears on my father's photographs.  My photograph of it became the cover of "Zuurkool met spek".