User:Virtualiter/Arnoldus Johannes Cornelius Krafft

(DR. Rev. A.J.C. KRAFFT) Arnoldus Johannes Cornelius Krafft (* September 22, 1892 on Curaçao; + January 8, 1964 in Hilversum) was a theologian, historian and geographer.

Family
His parents were the businessman Theodor Ferdinand Wilhelm Krafft and Rudolphine Henriette Wilhelmina Josina van de Laar. His grandfather was Pieter Theodorus Krafft (1821–1886) from Deventer. His siblings include: Pieter Theodorus Spencer, Andries Martinus van de Laar, Andre Martin Paul Chretien, Adolf Johan.

He was married to:
 * Cornelia Jacoba Redoch
 * Maria Jacoba Levina de Beaufort, widow of Bernardus van der Veen
 * Geert Spanjaard

Career
He became a student at the Hendrik School there and then attended the Hogereburgerschool in The Hague and was trained as a missionary teacher. He obtained the main diploma, the diploma in agriculture and ethnology, and later the doctorate in literature and philosophy. He studied in Utrecht, Leiden and Amsterdam; the well-known pedagogue of the Vrije Universiteit Prof. Dr. J. Waterink was his supervisor. His dissertation "Coöperatie in Indie" was published in 1929 and was sold out within a few months.

Krafft became a mission teacher at the Netherlands Missionary Society in North Sulawesi and later director of a mission school in East Java (Modjowarno); then teacher at the Christian and Government Lyceum, the training school and the main course in Bandung. When the decision was made to establish a secondary school for native civil servants (Mosvia) in Bandung, he became teacher and boarding school director of this institution and later deputy director. He also looked after the youth church of the Indian Church.

During the Second World War he was appointed acting pastor of North Bandung by the Synodal Board of the Protestant Churches in Indonesia. His stay in the Japanese camps lasted from August 1942 to December 1945, when he returned to the Netherlands on the first voyage of the "Oranje".

During his time in Indonesia, Krafft was editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine De Christelijke Onderwijs and publisher of Het Protestants Weekblad.

Curaçao beckons
As early as September 1946 he became a teacher at the General Secondary School, later known as Stuyvesant College.

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Wilhelmina's reign in 1947, it was decided to publish a commemorative book of the Netherlands Antilles. Krafft became first secretary of the editorial committee and was tasked with compiling the official commemorative book "Orange and the Six Caribbean Pearls / Oranje en de zes Caraïbische Parelen". (In 1949 a record book of the same name with English text was published.) During the printing, for which Krafft spent some time in the Netherlands, he returned to the West in September 1948, where he was the first librarian in Aruba and laid the foundation for the rich library that this island has today.

“The History and the Old Families of the Netherlands Antilles” is his second major work: On the title page of this “History and Old Families” the author calls himself “Secretary of the Foundation: ‘The Encyclopedia of the Netherlands Antilles’. However, the work was stopped prematurely.

He created a road map of Curaçao. The map with the plantations and country houses was the result of days of field work and archive studies. This was followed in 1956 by the completion of the Atlas of the Netherlands Antilles.

He lived on Curaçao and wrote several articles for the stock exchange and newsletter as well as for the Amigoe di Curaçao. In the Netherlands he published in the Nederlands Zendingsblad, the Journal for Economic and Social Geography and in East and West, among others.