Kurt van Es

A guideline in 20,000 books

He was practically brought up with spirituality in his parental home. After having made his fortune producing and selling plastic tableware, it was therefore only natural that Joost Ritman (64) would begin building a spiritual empire. His enterprise resulted in the largest library in the world in the field of Hermetic philosophy, a library situated in the heart of a city which according to him has always played a pioneering role. 'We are in the middle of a New Renaissance, and Amsterdam is one of the major cities in that process.'

He picks a little brown volume from one of the bookshelves lining the wall. 'This is a book by Jacob Böhme, one of the greatest thinkers of Europe, early seventeenth century. It is one of only three copies that have been preserved, and it was printed in Amsterdam. Incidentally it was the Amsterdam publisher, Abraham Willemszoon van Beyerland, who lived in the Warmoesstraat, who was instrumental in securing the heritage of Jacob Böhme.'

Joost Ritman carefully leafs through the book. 'To be given this book was like was a bolt of lightning. All of a sudden I grasped the quintessence of this city.' That singular moment took place now more than forty years ago. The little volume was a present from his mother for his 23rd birthday. Already before, he had been thinking of building a collection of his own which was to contain old books written by philosophers and mystics, but once the lightning had struck, he could not be stopped.

Born and bred in the Jordaan, Ritman already felt he was an Amsterdammer through and through and now that feeling acquired an extra dimension. 'This city was a melting pot in the seventeenth century. After the Catholic institution had dominated the religious and political climate of the country for a long time, we began to taste freedom of religion. What I call: the freedom of human conscience.'

That it was precisely in Amsterdam where Böhme's work was secured, is no coincidence. 'Amsterdam was a haven for independent thought in Europe. The city has played a major role in unfolding a new world view.'

It is Ritman's avowed mission to operate in that tradition. With the 20,000 books brought together by him in his Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica on the Bloemstraat, he has built the largest library in the world in 'the field where religion and philosophy meet', as he puts it.

The Böhme volume is replaced on the shelf and Ritman walks to a low bookcase which, like a rectangular island, is placed in the middle of the room. He takes a beautiful volume out of a dark blue cassette: 'This is an edition of Plato', the editio princeps of the Opera. 'It contains one of the most influential texts on the immortality of the soul.' The work was printed in 1488. 'Here we have the most important work of Giordano Bruno, the Italian priest and nature philosopher who was burnt at the stake in 1600.'

Bruno laid the foundation for our modern understanding of the universe, yet his theory on nature as a divine force made him a heretic and caused his death. 'His works are hard to find, but I managed to obtain this copy at a Munich auction.'

On the spacious library floor where Ritman likes to receive his guests, he is almost literally surrounded by his treasures, having the oldest works around him. 'This library holds the eyewitness accounts of spiritual pioneers, who were often persecuted, tortured and killed because they found themselves in confrontation with the established order.' The windows near the seats overlook the Bloemstraat. Ritman points to a row of buildings across the street. 'That is where my family still carries on the firm. My father started the business there in 1936, selling liquid soap.'

'My father was an Amsterdammer born and bred and so am I. I was born close to here on the Bloemgracht. As a child I would often plunge into the canal. I have always felt at home here and I have never left from here.'

Ritman was sixteen when he joined his father's company. 'I never went to University. But I did travel a lot and I still do.'

Travelling, and his fascination for 'movement and a wide range of action' took him to the field of aviation. 'In the seventies there were on average a hundred million air passengers a year, now there are 1,6 billion travellers annually. Already early on I foresaw the opportunities presented by air travel.

What the alchemists, widely represented in his library, never managed to accomplish – finding the philosopher's stone able to transmute base metals into gold – Ritman in his own way did achieve: the plastics which he manufactured in Belgium turned out to be a huge success: everyone who has been on board a plane is familiar with the plastic tableware on which meals are served. 'I became the director of my own company at the age of 28. A small family business with an initial turnover of about a million guilders.' A figure which rose to a yearly 400-500 million guilders in the heyday of air travel.

He inherited from his father not only a keen business instinct but also his love of freethinkers and spirituality. 'My father was a Rosicrucian. I was as it were brought up on Rosicrucianism.' Joost Ritman therefore also turned to the originally seventeenth-century Christian movement, which does not expect to find salvation at the hands of a redeemer, but seeks it instead by obtaining insight into man's nature. According to this vision, knowledge of higher things can be found in man himself, whose spirit contains a divine spark.

That vision is also to be found in many contemporary spiritual currents which arose in the New Age. Ritman thinks these movements generally do not sustain a connection with their ancient roots. 'New Age is a spirituality without a core.' Whereas the core, the essence, is what binds the printed books and manuscripts he brought together in his library.

Ritman fully subscribes to the Renaissance ideal of the universal man – who rediscovers his own values by once again exploring the achievements of Antiquity – and the seventeenth-century ideal of the mercator sapiens, the merchant-savant. These ideals do not only urge him on to obtain insight, but also imbue him with a love of art.

It was because of his love of art that he put up money when the Rijksmuseum lacked the funds necessary to acquire a painting by Rembrandt, the portrait of Johannes Uyttenbogaert. And when the Westerkerk found it difficult to raise sufficient money for a much-needed restoration, he was also ready to help: 'Good neighbours do'.

All the time he was busy building his library, but it was not plain sailing all along. In 1993 everything threatened to collapse. ING Bank, a long-standing financial backer and even a furtherer of his cause, came under new management, which did not see any added value in all that ancient wisdom. The credits the bank had extended for his company, which was linked to his library, turned into huge debits.

ING even considered selling the library, estimated at the time at a value of around 150 million guilders. This plan was frustrated when the then Minister of State for Culture, Aad Nuis, declared the library to be protected cultural heritage. Still there was the danger that the auction of some 300 rare books, which Ritman had actually deposited in London for safe-keeping, would take place, but that threat too, passed.

Nevertheless it was not until late 1999 that the library was finally safeguarded - and at a high price. Ritman was forced to part with his company De Ster ('the star') - with which he had started out - and he also had to sell his monumental art collection: 122 etchings by Rembrandt and old masters, such as Ruysdael and Van Ostade, as well as his collection of seventeenth-century glass and silver, auctioned for a total of 40 million guilders.

'Of course it is a shame about that art collection, but you have to be prepared to make sacrifices', he says now. 'I am quite satisfied with the way in which we have put our affairs in order. My son has his own company here; not a star, but the sun, Helios, and he is once again working for the aviation business. To me the library has always been the most important thing, and it is safe now. We even came out stronger. Four years ago we acquired an extra new building, we have had major exhibitions in Florence, in Venice and in Moscow, every month our website on average attracts some two thousand visitors, and in January of this year we were elected 'Museum of the Month'.

The battle won for the library he compares to the struggle in his own city to protect the freedom of thought. For him it is significant that he was born on the Bloemgracht. 'This used to be the printers' canal: Blaeu, who produced the famous world atlases, lived here. And printing has always been one of the major activities of this city, also in the field of spirituality. Great thinkers and artists found freedom here. Rembrandt died on the Rozengracht, Descartes lived on the Westermarkt for a long time and Comenius lived on the Egelantiersgracht. To name a few.'

'Amsterdam has always been a city with hundreds of nationalities, a cosmopolitan city. Once again we are now a melting pot. The world has changed enormously in the past fifty years. There is movement everywhere but at the same time there is also a sense of growing numbness.'

'The day after the murder of Theo van Gogh, Aad Nuis came to visit me. He was shaken. I said to him then: this library holds the answer to what is now lacking in mankind, an inner guideline for action. To find the necessary beacon to steer yourself through difficult times we have to turn inwards, to the answers within ourselves, and the library bears witness to this.'

Ritman sees these turbulent times as a new rebirth.'We are in the middle of a new Renaissance. You can sense this everywhere. People are abandoning traditional patterns and established values. They want to find out everything for themselves. At the same time a large part of our society is too little aware of the true meaning of life.'

Which is? 'We don't know where we come from and none of us has ever received a postcard from the beyond, but ancient wisdom shows us how man is a micro-reflection of the larger cosmos, how everything connects and is linked. Man has the capability of inner perception. Everything which we may come to know within ourselves, offers answers to the how and the why of life. The energy filling the cosmos can also be perceived within yourself.'

'There is for instance a lot of talk now about Islam, but it is also a religion which places the spiritual life of man at the core of his existence. As with many changes, we are now confronted with major influences from outside, as a sort of shock therapy. This was the case when Byzantium fell in 1453, when Byzantine Christianity was driven from the East and found sanctuary in Italy. Now we are witnessing another such movement. Today's society is driven to excesses because there is no cohesion. It is a period of collapse, and the challenge is to establish a structure, an order within ourselves and to assume responsibility. A revolution is taking place, and Amsterdam is one of the major cities playing a role in this movement, as it has before.'

The printed books and manuscripts in his library, according to Ritman, offer a guideline in the 'process of fermentation'. He has not read them all himself, but he knows exactly what there is and what they stand for. 'There is nowhere else a library to be found which is dedicated to the inner path of man. When you visit the Library, you will see thousands of testimonies of people who have defended freedom. That heritage is associated with the city of Amsterdam in a very special way.'

And it will continue to do so, if it is up to Ritman. His daughter Esther succeeded him as director of the library. 'This library is here for hundreds of years to come.'

Translation of an interview by Kurt van Es which appeared in Het Parool, Tuesday 8 March 2005