NS
Vol 7 No 1-2 (December 2001)
The Muschart manuscript
by F G Brownell
TWENTY years ago, the Bureau of Heraldry was
fortunate enough to be able to purchase the manuscript of the Muschart
Collection of Netherlands coats of arms, which in index card form reposes in
the Central Bureau voor Genealogie, in
This manuscript is undoubtedly the
finest reference source to the coats of arms of Netherlanders, outside the
Because of
For this we must thank the late Cor
Pama himself a Netherlander by birth, and for many years a leading figure in
the South African heraldic fraternity. Apart from being the longest serving
member of the Heraldry Council, a body on which he sat from 1963-1990, he was
also a leading member of the Heraldry Society, from the time of his arrival in
The compilation of the Muschart
Collection was a labour of love, which spanned more than half a century.
Rudolphe Theodore Muschart (1873-1955) became enthralled by heraldry at the
very beginning of the 20th century, and remained true to this love for the
remainder of his life.
As Muschart explained in a letter
written in 1948, to the Jonkheer C C van Valkenburg (a member of the
management council of the Centraal Bureau voor Heraldiek from 1955 until his
death in 1984), he threw himself, heart and soul, into his study of and
research into heraldry, following a failed love affair at the age of 27. In his
love for heraldry, he found compensation for that other lost love.
Muschart was born on 23
September 1873 at Breda the son of an infantry officer who later rose to the rank of
lieutenant-general. He joined the Royal Netherlands Navy at the age of 16 and,
following training as an officer, was appointed a midshipman in 1893. He was
promoted to sub-lieutenant in 1897. After serving for some time in the Far East, he left the Navy in 1903. He found
that life as a young naval officer offered few challenges.
In December 1903, Muschart joined
the Rotterdam office of the Netherlands-American
Steamship Company as an Assistant Inspector and two years later became an
Inspector to the Holland-American Line, which he served until 1916. For the
following two years he served as inspector in the Netherlands Overseas Trust
Company, which was to suffer considerably from the German U-boat onslaught
during the First World War, and went into liquidation after the war.
By that stage, Muschart had already
investigated opportunities elsewhere and on 1 February 1919, was appointed Harbourmaster of
Rotterdam. His official title was “rijkshavermeester van de Rotterdamschen
Waterweg en van Rotterdam”. He occupied this post until his retirement
on 1 February 1930, following the reorganisation of
the Harbour Service in the Netherlands. He was then 54 years of age and
moved to Arnhem.
In 1947 Muscharts’s collection of
some 150 000 index cards reflecting the Netherlands “family” (personal) coats of arms
and attendant genealogical notes which he had collected over almost half a
century, were purchased by the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie. A condition of
the sale was, however, that the collection would remain with Muschart until his
death.
Although he initially used J B
Rietstap’s Armorial Général as a
source, Muschart undertook an enormous amount of research to discover and
record the provenance of the coats of arms, which he recorded. In most cases
giving valuable information as to whom had borne the arms and when they were
borne, together with the source of his information. His information is thus far
more comprehensive than that recorded by Rietstap. In 1912 Muschart became a
member of the genealogical and heraldic society De Nederlandsche Leeuw, which
provided him with access to another important source of research material.
During his time as harbourmaster of Rotterdam, Muschart’s onerous official duties
left him little time for extensive research. He nevertheless worked actively on
his collection and it is obvious that he was by then already compiling the
manuscript which he later hoped to publish. A considerable amount of the
material in this manuscript is written on the back of old tide charts of the
Rotterdam harbour, which he had cut up for this purpose. After moving to the
pleasant surroundings of Arnhem, he took up his research again with
enthusiasm, unhindered by the irritations of officialdom, which he had
previously suffered.
Although his collection survived
undamaged in the depot of the Rijksarchief in Arnhem, Muschart lost his beloved library
in the Battle of Arnhem in 1944. He retrieved his collection after the
termination of hostilities and was able to continue with this love of his life.
As the culmination of his heraldic activities, Muschart hoped to publish a “new
Rietstap” of the Netherlands coats of arms, which he had been
researching since the turn of the century.
It is not known when Muschart
commenced with the preparation of his manuscript, but certainly by 1944 he was
in discussion with the publisher A A M Stols, of The Hague. Production costs would have been
prohibitive and the discussions came to naught.
One can hardly imagine how much work
must have gone into its preparation, and Muschart’s disappointment, which he
expressed in a letter to Jonkheer E A van Beresteyn, then head of the
Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie, where he wrote: “Het spijt my heel erg, dat mijn levenswerk het levenslicht niet zal
mogen zien”.
After the war, Muschart revised and
rewrote the manuscript, which in its final form comprised no fewer than
14 248 pages. He completed this mammoth task on 20
November 1947.
Jonkheer van Beresteyn had
endeavoured to purchase the Manuscript for the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie
in 1946, and Jonkheer van Valkenburg tried again in 1955, but Muschart had
already arranged for it to pass to the genealogist and heraldist, Dr A R
Kleyn of Zeist, who had hopes of arranging for its publication.
Muschart died in Arnhem on 14
November 1955. Kleyn was unsuccessful in arranging for publication, but made additions to the
text. In this regard the manuscript is probably more comprehensive than the
original collection, held by the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague.
After Dr Kleyn’s death in 1979, the
manuscript passed to his widow who, apparently unsuccessful in finding a buyer
in the Netherlands, offered it to Cornelis Pama, an old friend,
and member of the Heraldry Council in South Africa. Pama, in turn, brought the
availability of the manuscript to the notice of the Bureau of Heraldry. As it
happened, there were funds available for the purchase of “cultural treasures”
on the budget of the South African Department of National Education, and the
manuscript was soon bought and shipped to South Africa.
Cor Pama mentioned to the writer
afterwards that there was considerable unhappiness in the Netherlands about the sale of the Muschart
manuscript to South Africa, and that there were attempts to
prevent its export, but that these were made too late. So it was that the
Bureau of Heraldry was able to acquire what is in essence a priceless
manuscript, which is consulted on a regular basis.
The Muschart Collection itself may
be consulted on microfiche in the reading room of the Centraal Bureau voor
Genealogie in The Hague, while the original cards are kept safely in
cabinets. The writer was able to view parts of the collection while on a visit
to the Centraal Bureau in 1984.
After Muschart’s death his
collection revealed that it was Marie Adriana Schout Velthuis who had declared
her love for him on 1 April 1900, but who in October of the same
year terminated their relationship “thereby leaving him always broken”. It is
fortunate that out of this lost love, there grew another, of far greater
permanence, which ultimately and unquestionably inspired the most significant
contribution to Netherlands heraldry in the 20th century.
Footnote:
Although Rudolphe Theodore Muschart was a
prolific correspondent, comparatively little had been published on his life and
work. Only in the year 2000
was this shortcoming addressed by Rob van Drie and A G van der Steur, in
an article titled “De liefde zij’t beginsel, de orde zij de grondslag an de
vooruitgang het doel”, which was published in the Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie, 2000, pp113 ff.
Although the words chosen as the
title of the article on Muschart cannot be found in the manuscript in the
Bureau of Heraldry, they are quoted in a letter by Muschart to Jonkheer van
Valkenburg dated 26 September 1948, as having been written in his own
hand, in the introduction to his “new Armorial”. The previous day, 25
September, would he wrote, have been the birthday of his great love. Although
he did not mention Maria Adriana by name, it is clear that her memory was still
an integral part of Muschart’s whole being, and the abiding inspiration for his
heraldic work.
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