Willem Anthony Engelbrecht

Willem . Engelbrecht
Willem Anthony Engelbrecht (before 1874)
Born	(1839-02-10)February 10, 1839 Batavia, Dutch East Indies
Died	October 28, 1921(1921-10-28) (aged 82) The Hague
Nationality	Dutch
Occupation	Jurist
Known for	Ethical politics (Ethical politics (Dutch East Indies))

Willem Anthony Engelbrecht, also Willem Anthonie Engelbrecht (*Batavia, now Jakarta, 10 February 1839, +The Hague, 28 October 1921) was an important Dutch jurist and one of the forerunners of the so-called "Dutch Ethical Policy" in the Dutch East Indies.

Life

Dr. Willem Anthony Engelbrecht was born in Batavia on 10 February 1839 as the second son of the Dutch naval officer and main administrator of the Dutch Royal Navy in the Dutch Indies (present Indonesia), Frederick Cornelis Engelbrecht (1804–1869) and Johanna Nons (1813–1894) in a family of 9 children (5 boys and 4 girls). All children got a good education and most of them became administrators in the Dutch Indies or married administrators of the Dutch Indies.

Engelbrecht did his military services as 2nd Lieutenant in the colonial army in the Southern and Eastern Department of Borneo. After his military services Engelbrecht studied in Leiden, where he was promoted 14 January 1862 to doctor utriusque juris on a thesis on colonial laws. His formidable juridical knowledge determined his further career in the Dutch Indies (see below). He married twice and had 7 children (see below). Engelbrecht retired in 1897 and went back to the Netherlands. He died in the age of 82 years in The Hague, 28 October 1921.

Career

Engelbrecht was one of the forerunners of the later ethical policy which eventually led to the independency of Indonesia. He formed his opinion as son of an important colonial administrator as early as being student at the University of Leiden. He stated his ideas that the Dutch indies should be considered to be a state in its own right, although subordinated to the Netherlands, explicitly in his Ph.D. thesis (Leiden 1862) against the general opinion expressed by the jurist H.A. Blume (1858) that the Dutch Indies were just a subordinated colony.

After his studies he became a servant in the colonial administration. In 1862 he became a member of the Council of Justice at Semarang, in 1886 he was appointed to its President, a function he occupied till 1891. In that year he was appointed Director of the Department of Justice in the Dutch Indies. In this function he worked actively on the formation of the Dutch Indies as a state within the colonial empire of the Netherlands. For this reason he was assigned in 1891 by the Governor-General C. Pijnacker-Hordijk with the task to make a draft of a Governmental regulation, a task he finished within the nearly uncredibly short time of only one month.

In 1893 he became a member of the so-called Raad van Nederlandsch-Indië (Council of the Dutch Indies), practically the government of the colony. In this body he was as Director of the Department of Justice responsible for justice. In 1897 he was retired on his own request. Nevertheless, he stayed active in the question of organising law in the Dutch Indies. His drafts led to an entire reorganisation of the Dutch Indies laws in 1900. Then Engelbrecht undertook the task to publish this codification. It was published in the Nederlandsch-Indisch Wetboek in 1907 that rightly may be considered to be Engelbrecht's opus majus. The code was several times re-edited and published in bigger and more complete editions. It was also the basis of the first legal code of the independent Republic of Indonesia in 1945.

Willem A. Engelbrecht with his family, The Hague, 1905

Family

Engelbrecht married twice. With his first wife, Maria Annetta Emilie Canter Visscher (1839–1865), with whom he married in The Hague, 1862, he had one son, Mr. Johannes Frederik Engelbrecht (1863–1911), who became a member of Supreme Court of the Dutch Indies. The other 6 children were from his second marriage Arhem, 1877, with Berendina Margaretha Pepfenhauser (1855–1946). Two of them died at an early age. The other were: Adolphine Henriette Engelbrecht (1878–1936), Willem Bernard Engelbrecht (1881–1955), Nisette Cornelie Engelbrecht (1882–1971) and Edwin Marie Louis Engelbrecht (1887–1960). The first son, Willem B. Engelbrecht, became a Dutch diplomat, the second, Edwin M.L. Engelbrecht, a lawyer.

Main publications

• W.A. Engelbrecht, Artikel 2 Reglement op het beleid der Regering van Nederlandsch-Indië, in verband met artikel 107, Regeringsreglement van Nederlandsch-Indië, en de Nederlandsche wetgeving op het Nederlanderschap. Leiden: Hazenberg 1862, 118p. (Diss. University of Leiden)
• W.A. Engelbrecht, De Nederlandsch-Indische Wetboeken: de Grondwet voor het Koningrijk der Nederlanden, het Reglement op het beleid der Regering van Nederlandsch-Indië en andere wetten, wettelijke verordeningen en besluiten, met verwijzing naar de op elk artikel betrekking hebbende Nederlandsch-Indische, Nederlandsche en Fransche wetsbepalingen, Semarang: A. Bisschop 1890 (over 20 editions, latest edition in Bahassa Indonesian: Jakarta: Ichtiar Baru-Van Hoeve 1989)

Literature

• D.G. Stibbe & C. Spat, Engelbrecht (Mr. Willem Anthonie), in: Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië vol. 5, 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff 1927, p. 148.
• E.M.L. Engelbrecht, Engelbrecht, in: Nederland's Patriciaat 's-Gravenhage: Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie 46 (1960), pp. 94–100.
• G.J. Resink, Conflictenrecht van de Nederlandsch-Indische staat in internationaal-rechtelijke zetting, in: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 115 (1959), no. 1, pp. 1–39