Pieter Jansz

Pieter Jansz (September 25, 1820 - June 6, 1904) was the first Dutch Mennonite missionary in Indonesia. He arrived in Central Java in 1851 and began his missionary work. He encountered constraining influences from Islam throughout the area, recognizing the lack of religious freedom to become a Christian. He felt compelled to search for new methods in order to evangelize; in which he developed a theory that Christians should be evangelized in colonies, as a solution. He was also known for his ability to translate the Bible into various languages which allowed the Javanese people to have access to the Bible.

Pieter Jansz was born in Amsterdam on September 25, 1820. His theology was Protestant orthodoxy with a bias toward Pietist expressions. Within a three-month period in 1848, he lost both his father and his newlywed wife, Johanna Elisabeth van Ijzendoorn, through death. These tragedies affected him deeply and caused him to contemplate his future. As a result, he applied as a missionary candidate to the Doopsgezinde Zendungs-Vereeniging or the Dutch Mennonite Missionary Society (DMMS). He later remarried Jacoba Wilhelmina Frederica Schmilau (1830–1909) and they had ten children, of whom their son Pieter A. Jansz was a successor of his father in the missions field. Jansz was an elementary school teacher in Delft. During his years of teaching he published textbooks and didactic stories for children. In preparation for his missionary assignment Jansz received private tutoring at the Royal Academy of Delft in order to become acquainted with the Javanese and Malayan languages, as well as with the geography and ethnology of the Dutch Indies. The last years of his life (1902–1904) he spent at Kaju-Apu, at the home of his son-in-law, missionary Johann Fast, where he died 6 June 1904.

August 1851 Pieter Jansz and his wife Jacoba Wilhelmina Frederica Schmilau sailed to Jakarta to begin their missionary work. On November 15 they arrived as the first Mennonite missionaries of the Enlightenment period. Upon their arrival Jansz primary focus was to find an opening for a teacher rather than a missionary. As a teacher he would not be limited by the regulations the Dutch Indies government imposed on missionaries, especially in Java. Also the DMMS was convinced that education was the best way to raise the cultural and moral level of the native population and to make them receptive to the gospel. He worked as a private tutor in the area of Jepara, for a rich sugar plantation owner known as Margar Soekiazian (Wahan Markar Soekias), who was a Christian patrician of Armenian background. Jansz and Soekiazan began to collide because of their different views on Christianity, and Jansz was forced to leave. Later on he opened a school for the Javanese children but had very little success in evangelizing because he had no help; this resulted in him leaving the school and becoming a full-time missionary.

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