Bart Jungmann

Wise merchant fighting for spiritual enlightenment

Born on Bloemgracht 15, married at Bloemgracht 17, private address: Bloemgracht 19, work address: Bloemgracht 31-35.

Joost Ruben Ritman flew in all directions to obtain riches and wisdom, but his remarkable life is defined by this enchanting canal in Amsterdam. Air traffic made him a millionaire, his unique collection of books gave him fame, but above all Joost Ritman is an Amsterdammer. A well groomed and courteous Amsterdammer in a pinstripe suit, his Amsterdam roots are nevertheless unmistakable when he pronounces the English word skyline as ´skeiline´.

© Joost v.d. Broek

Amsterdam to him is above all the Jordaan area and the Westerkerk tower in particular. Ritman considers the Wester to be the magnetic needle of the city, perhaps even the entire world. Near the period room where he receives his visitors on Bloemgracht 31 and takes them back to the Golden Age he had a skylight installed, so that the eye of the magnetic needle can even touch the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica. This is the place where life and work of Joost Ritman, who turned 65 on Friday, come together.

His collection consists of some 20,000 spiritual manuscripts and printed books, going back mainly on the traditions of the first centuries of Christianity, testifying to their wide range of meaning. The core of the collection lies in the religious-philosophical treatises of the Egyptian mystery figure Hermes Trismegistus, who to Ritman is the primary source of the Western cultural tradition.

Less than a year ago the Dutch State acquired a cross section of Ritman’s library (also known as BPH) for the sum of almost 19 million euro’s. The acquisition is more or less symbolical, because the works will remain in the BPH in the Bloemstraat. Last month Joost Ritman returned the gesture by acquiring the Huis met de Hoofden on the Keizersgracht. This building, one of the most authentic memorials to the Golden Age in Amsterdam, is the site where Ritman wishes to create a platform allowing Amsterdam to rediscover its 17th-century identity. Amsterdam at the time was the cosmopolis in which various cultures reinforced each other in ´a melting-pot of spirituality´, as he himself denotes the lasting significance of Amsterdam.

Ritman regards the Huis met de Hoofden as the imperial crown to his work. After having built up a renowned collection and making it accessible according to the standards of modern scholarship, it is now time to benefit the community. Ritman feels the time has come for a new Renaissance, a Renaissance which will emerge out of that melting-pot as it did in the Golden Age. This rebirth needs to be induced on Keizersgracht 123. ´The founders of this city put something in motion which we are still profiting from. It is time that we are once again aware of this achievement.´

As a child Joost Ritman was already fascinated by the city’s scale and the grandeur of the canal area – a term which loses all of its modern-day disdainful connotation when he pronounces it. On the Bloemgracht and its immediate vicinity he saw the artistic and scholarly past of Amsterdam reflected. This is where the Blaeus, father and son, mapped the entire world, where Rembrandt left his footprints.

The flowering of this 17th-century Amsterdam has always been a source of inspiration for Joost Ritman. When asked whether he wasn’t born too late, he answers with great decisiveness ´I’ ve returned.´ Former politician Aad Nuis: ´He talks in these terms, as if he actually did meet Rembrandt on one of the bridges of the Bloemgracht.´

Joost Ritman is the son of a dealer in liquid soaps and cleansing agents. His parents were Rosicrucians, a secret brotherhood with an individual view of Christianity, according to which each man must find salvation within himself. He was 16 years old when he entered his father’s company and at the age of 23 he was in charge of the company, De Ster (The Star), together with his brothers Teun and Job. Creativity and commercial instinct ran strongest in Joost Ritman, and so he was appointed director. Under his guidance De Ster would become a multimillion guilders company. Liquid soap was replaced by disposable products and the family business as a result turned ´plastic into gold´, as Nuis puts it.

In the 1970s Joost Ritman foresaw the importance of air traffic, then the means of transport of a few million people, but now a few billion. It made De Ster the market leader in fortifying the inner man high in the sky. Ritman: ´Our concept was like Pandora’s box. Everybody tried to imitate it, but nobody got even close to the original.´ Most of his capital he invested in books and works of art. Between 1976 and 1992, Ritman spent some 100 million euro’s and, as would appear later, with great know-how and insight. To compare: all the Dutch museums put together in that period could not even approach that sum.

Joost Ritman has always regarded money as the groundwork for a spiritual building. Money is only a means to arrive at inner perfection. His life revolves around the three principles of spark, flame and fire. All the philosophers of the past surrounding him on Bloemgracht 31 (often ending their lives by being burnt) enabled Ritman to ignite the divine core in himself. The spark turned into a flame and the flame became a fire. Yet he does not want his quest of the supernal world to be confused with modern esotericism such as New Age. ‘ Spirituality without a core´, he called it six years ago in NRC Handelsblad.

Joost Ritman likes to mirror himself in the image of the mercator sapiens, a wise merchant, another term going back to the 17th century when more was expected of the elite than simple monetary gain. He wishes to serve the community and do something in return for his city of birth. That is why his library is open to the public and steadily hosts exhibitions which are also shown abroad. That is why he made a contribution to the restoration of the Westerkerk tower, to the Rijksmuseum and to the Jewish community of Amsterdam.

It is also the driving force behind his plans for the Huis met de Hoofden. Nuis thinks it a very promising initiative. ´Talks about multi-cultural cohesion are often very superficial. This goes deeper and could be very interesting.´

In the early nineties Nuis, then State Secretary for Culture, supported Ritman when the latter’s imperium was under threat. The ING bank cut off his funds because Ritman was using business capital to expand his collections. ´This was a downright assault´, Jons Hensel asserts. Hensel, 55, is a cousin of Joost Ritman and as the eldest of the next generation he joined De Ster’s Executive Board in the 1980s after the death of Ritman’s brother Job.

Ritman had placed his own money and that of the firm with NMB bank. Its director, Scherpenhuijzen Rom, shared Ritman’s spiritual outlook. NMB bank, however, merged with another bank to form ING. The new Board insisted that Ritman should be ‘mercator’ and forgo the ‘ sapiens’ . A bitter conflict ensued with the ‘ money pouch animals´ (says Ritman) who ´hated his guts´ (says Nuis). The conflict ended with the selling of De Ster to a Swedish company. Ritman’ s artistic memorials to the Golden Age, including a number of etchings by Rembrandt, were auctioned in London. A great loss which, altogether in the spirit of his life’s philosophy, made him ‘ fabulously and heavenly rich’ .

The book collection was preserved thanks to the intercession of Nuis. Following the advice of people like Frits van Oostrom, university professor and author, the BPH was placed on the list coming under the Cultural Heritage Act. Nuis: ´You can think it’s all nonsense, but there was a variegated company of none too inconsequential people, such as Umberto Eco, coming to the defence of the BPH.´

Van Oostrom characterizes Ritman as a ´migrator´ possibly moving ‘on the challengeable side of scholarship´, but the cultural-historical significance of the BPH is self-evident. Van Oostrom: ‘The collection contains splendid items in a superb arrangement unrivalled in the world.´

Nuis continued to keep in touch with Ritman and came to his aid once more when Ritman received a staggering tax assessment the ownership of his book collection had been returned to him. ´He could not meet this demand and so I contacted Zalm (Finance Minister) and Van der Hoeven (Minister for Education). This led to the construction whereby the government purchased part of the collection, giving it in loan to the BPH at the same time. A sort of tax in kind.

In the Dutch newspaper Het Parool Joost Ritman described a meeting with Nuis the day after the murder on Theo van Gogh. ´I told him that in hard times we must rely on our inner selves and find the answers within us. The library can be an instrument in this process.´ Nuis: ´Ritman is a remarkable personality with an exceptional passion, also as a businessman. When you manage to recover all your old customers, you must possess outstanding qualities.´

The Ritman family has made a successful new start with their company Helios, with a turnover, says Jons Hensel, now heading towards 50 million euro’s. ´That’s so brilliant about Joost, that in spite of that blow he remained absolutely true to himself and to his principles.´ According to Hensel that attitude is being rewarded by the air lines. He has never experienced a client feeling awkward about his uncle’s exalted vision of life. ´On the contrary, it very much appeals to them.’

The family ties, too, have apparantly grown even closer through Rosicrucianism and Hermetism.Children and grandchildren contribute to Helios or the library on all levels. Ritman’s son Michael and his cousin Jons are on the executive board of Helios, his daughter Esther is the managing director of the BPH, but they are certainly not a clan, they feel.

Esther: ´We grew up in an obvious closeness and everyone was given room for self-fulfilment. We are not parochial. Everybody is part of the same process in his or her individual way. We don’t clock time’ .

Incidentally: in Greek mythology Helios stands for the sun god and he is master of the new dawn. Joost Ritman would like to state for the record that in comparison, all stars fade.

Translation of an article which appeared in De Volkskrant, 14 March 2006