Dutch journalist, French teacher, interpreter, painter, caricaturist and columnist for the NRC newspaper.
Charles Albert Cocheret was the youngest child of the Wallonian French teacher Pierre Louis Cocheret (19 March 1834, Amsterdam – 6 May 1911, Rotterdam and Jeanne Cornelie Marie Gunningh (25 January 1836, Amsterdam – 1 April 1884, Rotterdam). They married 30 October 1863 in Epe and got nine children. Three of his eight siblings died before he was born.
After he more or less finished the HBS school, he studied French in Paris and Brussels and got the so called teacher MO-A degree of the School for Letters in Den Haag. He needed the diploma, but he was basically an autodidact. On 6 May 1910 he married in Rotterdam Caroline Rosa Elisabeth Lelijveld (16 February 1884, Rotterdam – 26 March 1978, Rotterdam), an him very supporting pianist and music pedagogue. He also studied under Herman Mees at the the Rotterdam Art academy, but no source can give the relevant dates.
His first important job was for the businessman dr. A. G. Kröller, the husband of Helene Kröller-Müller, both well known art collectors. As he spoke fluently the diplomatic language French, he became consul general for Romania. Kröller, then one of the richest persons in the Netherlands, helped him to get a job as a teacher French at “Nederlandsche Handels Hoogeschool” (1913-1957), a forerunner high school that merged in 1957 with the Erasmus University.
In the twenties Kröller’s imperium collapsed, and Charles Albert Cocheret became free lance publicist, amateur historian, French translator and interpreter and book illustrator. He wrote lighthearted “Schetsboeken”, now called columns, for the serious NRC business paper. They were bundled in 1936 under the name “Poppenkast” (puppet show). In 1941 he published “Zoo kende ik de Maasstad” (How I knew the Maas city) with pictures of Rotterdam before the bombing of 14 May 1940 1h30 PM. He was a fan of Sparta, and made caricatures of the football players. As an amateur historian he wrote books about his city: “De Rotterdamsche Zeevaartschool, 1833-1933” (1933), “Openbare vermakelijkheden. Een Rotterdamse tijdsbeeld 1875-1925” (1925) and ‘Sparta!’ Een Rotterdamse voetbalclub, 1888-1963 in 1963.
On “lintjesdag” 29 April 1954 he was honoured as Knight in the the Order of Oranje-Nassau.
As a poet he published in 1956 “Roteroditjes en datjes. Een bundel Rotterdamse poëzy (met permissie)”. Note that the “met permissie” paraphrases the down to earth Butler Joost of Oliver B. Bumble, the strip hero of Marten Toonder in the NRC.
He died 31 July 1974 in Rotterdam.
Personal
His chart has five personal planets and the ascendant in Virgo.
His biographer, the jurist W. F. Lichtenauer described him as a not that ambitious hard worker, unconventional, multi-talented, artistic and sensitive. He was born in a Wallonian church family, but at young age left the church. He liked group sports like football, diversity, and distraction, but disliked academic scholarship and routine jobs. He became an autodidact. What is most notable, was his seemingly total lack of personal ambition. Though he wrote the portraits of “Famous people from Rotterdam”, sketched Rotterdam life and persons in illustrated works, the Dutch Wiki had yet (22-9-2014) no page of him. He became a person that worked in the background or a kind of “Schattenmann”, but that nevertheless coupled “eruditie .. aan pit, waardigheid aan zwier” (erudition to energy, dignity to French panache) and worked with heart and soul to heal his burned city Rotterdam.
Or to say with Janduz: “Under the beams of a full moon, a man and a woman pluck medicinal flowers near a river meandering through the field.”