Pim Mulier

Early life

Willem Johan Herman Mulier was born on 10 March 1865 in the Frisian town of Witmarsum, into a well-to-do family. His father, Tjepke Mulier, served as the last grietman in 1850–51 and as mayor of Wûnseradiel from 1851 until 1867. Mulier preferred to pronounce his surname in French (Muljee), as his ancestors, called Oste des Muliers, came from the Roubaix area of France near Lille in 1570, with family records tracing back to 1319. An ancestor, Jan Mulier, fought alongside Louis I, Prince of Condé, in the 16th-century French Wars of Religion.

The family lived at Aylva State in Witmarsum until Mulier was two, then moved to Haarlem after his father failed to be re-elected as mayor. In 1869, his father founded the IJsclub Haarlem and that winter instructed his servant and housekeeper to put four-year-old Pim on skates in a ditch to train speed skating with his older brother Pieter and a house boy. Mulier became an all-around athlete, practicing football, skating, running, cycling, tennis, cricket, and bandy.

He attended the gymnasium in Haarlem, then was sent to a college at Ramsgate in England to complete his studies. He later graduated from a trade school in Lübeck and worked in the timber trade in Scandinavia, also traveling through Russia for a plant bulb grower. During this time he learned several languages. In Sweden, he learned to hunt with the Sámi and to ski, improving some of their best ski times.

Mulier was the youngest of five children, two of whom died in infancy. He and his siblings worked as draftsmen and attended art schools; his sister Eldina became a respected artist. Mulier trained in painting and drawing under Ferdinand Oldewelt and later made illustrations for Eigen Haard and Elsevier, with subjects including landscape, portrait, history, and cityscape.

Sporting career

Pim Mulier first encountered football while studying at Ramsgate in England, becoming one of the best youth players at the college. Upon returning to Haarlem in 1879, he taught his friends the rules of football. On 15 September of that year, at age 14 years and 185 days, he co-founded Haarlemsche Football Club (HFC) with peers, the oldest football club still in existence in the Netherlands. Mulier found a meadow in the Koekamp and wrote to the mayor for permission to use it; after negotiations, the mayor granted permission, calling it a 'wrestling arena for Pim Mulier and his companions' because the club initially played rugby rules, switching to English football rules from 1883.

The field was uneven with trees in the middle. In 1886 he organized the first football match within German borders. Mulier became the club's leader, addressed as 'meneer' (sir) by his fellows, and later served as honorary president and patron. On 10 April 1894, he became the first Koninklijke HFC player to appear for the unofficial Netherlands national team, scoring twice in a 4–3 win against Maidstone FC.

He earned a second cap for the bondselftal in 1895. Besides football and speed skating, Mulier played tennis, track and field, bandy, billiards, cricket, and hunting, and was a lover of fishing.

Journalism

In 1888, Pim Mulier helped start the sports magazine Het Sportblad and served as its first editor. Backed by thirty clubs, the publication was a modern outlet he used not for self-promotion but to push for organized sport at the administrative level, specifically to rally support for a new national sports body. That effort paid off in 1889 with the founding of the Dutch Football and Athletics Association, and Het Sportblad later became that organization's official journal.

Mulier also wrote three influential sports books in the 1890s: Wintersport (1893), Athletiek en Voetbal (1894), and CricketWinter sports (1897). His second book showed his passion for both athletics and football. Around 1900, he independently drafted ideas for a freshwater fisheries law and submitted a sketch to Director-General of Agriculture Cornelis Jacob Sickesz, who worked Mulier’s concepts into new legislation. Mulier then published a book on fish farming and conservation in 1900.

Thanks to his comfortable background, he held only one paying job in his life: in 1899 he moved to the Dutch East Indies, where he was editor-in-chief of the Deli Courant for nearly six years. Soon after arriving, he co-founded the multicultural soccer club Sportclub Sumatra's Oostkust with two Dutch plantation workers. He wrote about labor conditions in Sumatra and the measures needed to control and develop the region. Though a sharp journalist and skilled illustrator who drew many of his own pictures, Mulier hated being interviewed, which is why little is known about his personal life.

Legacy

Mulier received many honors for his work in sports, including honorary memberships and presidencies in football, athletics, skating, handball, and cricket. He was made a knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 1940, named an honorary citizen of Wonseradeel in 1950, and was among the first to receive a Silver Carnation from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. A gilded plaster bust on a bronze statue of him stands in his birthplace, Witmarsum, created by Frank M. Zeilstra for the 1986 centennial of the Keatsferiening Pim Mulier.

His 150th birthday in 2015 sparked sports events from March 10 in Haarlem through November. The Elfstedentocht winner gets the Pim Mulier exchange prize. A hospital health company in Arnhem bears his name. The Pim Mulier Foundation, focused on workplace vitality, launched in 1985 at Papendal, and the Mulier Instituut, a social science research center, opened in Utrecht in 2002.