Willem Frederik Wertheim

Willem Frederik (Wim) Wertheim (St. Petersburg, November 16, 1907 – Wageningen, November 3, 1998) was a Dutch lawyer, non-Western sociologist, and professor of non-Western sociology at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. He specialized in Southeast Asia, often applying Marxist explanations.

Life and work
Coming from a wealthy background, the lawyer Wertheim started his career in the Dutch East Indies, from 1936 as a professor at the Batavia Law School. During this period his aversion to Dutch-Indonesian 'apartheid' and his understanding of Indonesian nationalism grew. When the conquest of the colony by Japan was an accomplished fact (March 1942), he was interned. Back in the Netherlands, Wertheim was professor of non-Western sociology at the Municipal University of Amsterdam from 1946 to 1972.

In this capacity he criticized not only Western and especially Dutch colonialism, but also the anti-communist dictatorship of Suharto. However, he saw the grim party dictatorship of Chinese communism primarily as a liberation movement, even when more became known in the West about the millions of victims of Mao's rule, especially during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Chinese Cultural Revolution ( 1966-1976). Wertheim's 'study trips' to the People's Republic never involved free research, nor did he master the language, so he had to rely on what communist officials wanted to say to him.[1] Wertheim has therefore been called 'the primus inter pares among the Dutch fellow-travellers' (first among the political followers). Only in the last years of his life did he reluctantly acknowledge the downside of Maoist politics.

Wertheim is one of the few Western intellectuals to have developed a general theory of revolutions. He elaborated this mainly in his scientific magnum opus, The Long March of Emancipation (an adaptation of Evolution and Revolution). However, this theory has had virtually no influence outside the Dutch language area. Wertheim has also made many contributions to the sociology of Indonesia (the former Dutch East Indies).

Wertheim has been a source of inspiration for anti-capitalist oriented sociologists from non-Western, especially Southeast Asian countries, such as Jan Breman and Gerrit Huizer. A Wertheim Foundation and an annual Wertheim lecture keep the name and commitment of this controversial personality alive. A major biography is still pending.

Chess player and chess composer of endgame studies

He was interned in Japanese prison camps from 1942 until 1945. In 1946, he became professor at the University of Amsterdam. His chair came to include non - western sociology and East and Southeast Asian history.

As a chess player his greatest success was a positive score during the Olympiad at the Hague in 1928. He started to solve and compose chess problems and endgame studies at an early age. Occasionally he composed endgame studies. It was a pastime in a Japanese isolation cell.

Source: Website arves.org by Peter Boll