“A city without old buildings is like a man without a memory,” a prolific writer about Jakarta’s heritage, Adolf Heuken, once said. His death at age 90 in Jakarta on Thursday evening is considered by many to be a great loss for the city once named Batavia.

The German-born Jesuit — also known among friends and colleagues as Father Heuken — rose to prominence as a key figure in the contemporary recognition of culturally and historically significant buildings and monuments in the capital city.

Initially writing about spirituality and Catholicism shortly after he moved to Indonesia in the early 1960s, Heuken gradually became intrigued by the historical value inherent in old, often dilapidated buildings scattered across the country, including in Jakarta.

He would later dedicate himself to the tall task of visiting these overlooked sites, collecting information and meeting with the right people who could help him shed light on the city’s past incarnations.

These concrete reminders of days gone by, leftovers of the country’s long colonial history, would become the subject of Heuken’s seminal books, most notably History of Catholic Churches in Indonesia (1971), Historical Sites of Jakarta (1982) and The Original Sources of Jakarta History, vol. I-III (1999).

Educated in philosophy and theology, his works spread across several fields of study such as moral education and Christian spirituality. Not to mention he also authored German-Indonesian and Indonesian-German dictionaries.

In an interview with The Jakarta Post in 2002, he said if all his works were arranged in a line it would reached three meters in length.

Historical Sites of Jakarta, in particular, went on to serve as a foundational text on Jakarta’s oft-forgotten heritage, offering a glimpse into the city’s dynamic past to understand its present state.

Heuken’s wealth of knowledge regarding the city’s history made him the go-to expert on the subject for decades until his untimely passing.

Jakarta Restoration Team (TSP) chairman and cultural heritage expert Bambang Eryudhawan, who knew Heuken professionally, said the late pastor was “conservative in spirit, yet progressive in ideas”.

“Conservative because he kept looking back to the past, but also progressive because he used the lessons of the past as a blueprint for the future,” Bambang told The Jakarta Post via phone on Friday. 

He said Heuken understood the many layers of the capital’s complicated past better than any of his contemporaries. Furthermore, he said Heuken’s books, including Historical Sites of Jakarta, were written with such accessible prose and clarity that they appealed to seasoned historians and laypeople alike.

“To this day, Historical Sites remains highly influential among the public and academia. It is widely regarded as the definitive benchmark for academic writing on the history of Jakarta,” Bambang said, adding that the local administration had regularly consulted Heuken’s body of work when it came to city restoration.

Reza Tuasikal, a photographer who took pictures of the city’s old buildings for Historical Sites of Jakarta, said he knew Heuken personally as “an adventurous soul whose mind never seemed to stop producing ideas.” 

Indonesian Architecture Documentation Center (PDAI) executive director Febriyanti Suryaningsih said Heuken had left a lasting legacy, especially in the field of city restoration.

“Father Heuken did us a big favor. He helped us secure the first PDAI office at Patal Senayan, Central Jakarta. The building had originally served as a pastor’s office,” she said.

A public mass was held at Kolese Kanisius in Menteng, Central Jakarta, on Friday afternoon, followed by a funeral at Girisonta, Semarang regency, Central Java, on Saturday afternoon.

Heuken was born in Coesfeld, Germany, on Jul. 17, 1929, as the oldest of eight children of Franz and Clara Heuken. He was ordained as a Jesuit pastor in 1961.

Three years later, he worked as a lecturer in Yogyakarta. In 1963, he moved to Jakarta and lived at a home at No. 37, Jl. Mohamad Yamin in Menteng, which is also the address of the publisher Cipta Loka Caraka he founded that focused on moral education.

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