Pupil Archive
Pupil Archive ‘Oranje-Nassau Gesticht’
In the period of 1893 to about 1945 an archive was maintained containing the information of children entrusted to the orphanage. This archive consists of four parts:
The 'Klapper'. This is one book. Within it are all the children, listed alphabetically, who entered the orphanage in the above mentioned period. Every child has a number which refers to a page in a 'stamboek'. If a child is not mentioned in the 'Klapper' they were almost certainly not admitted to the orphanage. The archive will therefore also not have any other information.
The 23 'stamboeken' called 'Inkomende kinderen' (Incoming Children). Contained in these books are the most important personal data of each child such as name, first name, date of birth, name of the father and mother (if known), date of admission to the orphanage, and occasionally other details such as date of baptism, reason for admission, or school results. The 'stamboeken' have a total of 5331 pages, so formally no more than this many children were registered. Sometimes children were registered twice because they were readmitted to the orphanage after having previously left.
A few 'stamboeken' called 'Uitgaande kinderen' (Outgoing Children). These books contain a concise list of reasons for why a child has left the orphanage.
'Dossiers'. Unfortunately not all of the children's dossiers have been preserved. It is not impossible that many former students have taken their dossiers from the orphanage before or after the war. The dossiers that have been preserved frequently contain numerous additional details such as requests by residents or pastors to adopt children or requests for reports, letters from the pupils, equal status to Europeans, etc.
This student archive has been put on film in 2005 and is therefore more easily accessible This set of films, including the original of the archive, was gifted by our organisation and the Yayasan Pa van der Steur in Jakarta to the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, KITLV) in Leiden. The archive is currently housed in the University Library of the University of Leiden. It is possible to visit the archive. For more information, please contact specialcollections@library.leidenuniv.nl