The Great War in Belgium and the Netherlands by Felicity Rash & Christophe Declercq

Author:Felicity Rash & Christophe Declercq
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

The legal and economic discourse underlying the creation of two Belgian states, as briefly described here, was complemented by an ethnic and cultural discourse conducted by philologists who saw themselves as the exclusive defenders of the oppressed Flemish people. Their paternalistic motives applied not only to the mistreatment of Flemish people by the Francophone elite (on an educational level, they had fewer schools and on an economic level, Flanders, which was more agricultural, was less developed than Wallonia), but they were also furthered by racial arguments (Flemish people belonged to “Deutschtum”, the Deutscher Stamm [line, tribe]). Accordingly, the philologist Conrad Borchling (1872–1946), professor in Hamburg who specialized in Niederdeutsch [Low German], suggested that Flanders, Brabant and Limburg would constitute an independent State (“selbständiger niederdeutschen Staatswesen”) with Antwerp as capital:Auf alle Fälle müsste dem Vlämischen Volke die Möglichkeit gewährleistet werden, seine germanische Eigenart unbehindert weiter auszubilden; es dürfte auch nicht etwa nun ein übermächtiger Druck der hochdeutschen Sprache an die Stelle der bisherigen Oberherrschaft des Französischen treten. (…). Ein selbständiger vlämischer Staat würde dabei besser noch als eine vlämische Provinz Deutschlands jener höheren Aufgabe dienen, aus der Mehrheit der germanischen Staaten den großen germanischen Bund erstehen zu lassen, der die Hoffnung unserer Zukunft ist. [The Flemish people must always be given the opportunity freely to develop their German character; High German should not be given a dominant position as has been the case with the French language. (…). An independent Flemish State would be better than a Flemish province of Germany in the service of Germany’s great undertaking, namely the foundation of a German confederation composed of the majority of German states: that is the hope for our future.] (Borchling 1914: 28)22

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