Mulder, Gerard
Gerard Willem Mulder (1908-1990), Dutch forester and soldier (private collection)
When the young Geert (Gerard) Willem Mulder (Velp 1908), who had just received his high school diploma, registered for the study Tropical Forestry at the Wageningen Landbouw Hogeschool, he often must have dreamed of a life in the tropics. It didn’t take long before this dream came true: in 1937, only shortly after he finished his study in Wageningen, the young engineer set sail for the Dutch East Indies, where he was appointed as forester for the Dutch Forestry Department. By then he was already married to the Dutch Catharina ‘Tincky’ de Klark. On 18 September 1941 their daughter Marieke was born.
When the war broke out Geert was called up for the KNIL and was stationed as 1st Lieutenant at the Depot of Mobile Artillery in Tjimahi. Geert then was 34 years old. On 8 March 1942, the day of the Dutch capitulation, Geert was taken prisoner-of-war and, after several swarms over the islands, was sent to the notorious Birma Siam Railway. But due to illness his journey ended on Singapore, where he was taken to the hospital of Changi POW-camp.
It is likely that Geert met Henk Brouwer in the Changi-hospital, since Brouwer spent several months there himself. But they surely met somewhere in the camp, since Henk Brouwer painted Geert Mulders portrait on 20 October 1943.
Shortly after the war Geert regained contact with his wife and daughter, who had spent the war in a civil camp. The three of them went back to the Netherlands in June 1946. But Geert started longing for the tropics again and only one year later he set sail to the Dutch East Indies for the second time, this time appointed as chief forester, charged with the reconstruction of the forest management in Medan. 18 September 1950 his son Jaap was born, one and a half year later his daughter Jacobien.
In August 1952 Geert and his family returned to the Netherlands for good. Geert fulfilled several jobs at Staatsbosbeheer, for instance as forestry consultant and chief engineer-director of Staatsbosbeheer in the province of Gelderland. He also was a teacher at the Higher and Secondary school of Forestry and Culturetechniques. Geert died 15 May 1990 at the age of 81.
In October 2025, no less than 35 years after Geert’s death, his daughter Jacobien discovered the portrait that Henk Brouwer had made of her father in a box filled with old documents. In all his post-war life Geert had hardly ever told his family about his experiences during the war. He kept these memories to himself, just as he did with the portrait, that he had carefully stored in an envelope with ‘Important papers’.
Thanks to Geert’s granddaughter Nienke van der Linden, who found us on this website and sent us a copy of her grandfather’s portrait.
