A Critical Perspective

Introduction

August Vermeylen (1872-1945)

One can say that up until August Vermeylen – Socialist Flamingant, art historian, literary critic, and as of 1901 also professor at the Free University of Brussels – the Flemish Movement was characterized by a middle-class mentality. This was the thesis Vermeylen put forward in his stirring article “Critique of the Flemish Movement” (1896). A friend and former fellow-student of de Raet, Vermeylen was part of the literary generation of >Van Nu en Straks – an avant-garde periodical set up in 1893, which was known for its revolutionary-anarchist ideas and its interest in social matters. Albeit extremely critical of his fellow-supporters of the Flemish cause, the essay broke new ground, formulating a new, original approach to the Flemish Question. Four short extracts follow, starting with a critique of ´romantic love of the people´. >If you want to read a short biographical note on August Vermeylen click here.

Fragment 1

“The basis of the Flemish Movement is the desire for independence of a ‘race’, which has a sense of solidarity. I do not exactly mean a group a people of the same origin, but rather people who are bound to one another by language and common customs. […] The word ‘race’ is all too often an abstraction amongst supporters of the Flemish cause. […] [The multi-coloured, continuously varying multiplicity of mankind] does not allow us to talk about ‘race’ as if it was a closely circumscribed and uniform entity nor to suppose it is the living realization of an absolute concept. […] Of those around me, I have affection for things which are similar to me or make me more complete; if I go beyond that, I would lapse into ‘principles’ – something I would rather be spared. […]

I should not attach so much importance to a theoretical – ´schematic´ – love of the ´race´ [which is rather widespread among supporters of the Flemish Movement], if it presented no other dangers than unacceptable boasting and the spewing of clichés. But it turns straight away into racial hatred. It is characteristic of theoretical love that, in general, it can express itself only negatively in reality […].

[Racial hatred] is extremely artificial in our people, as I have frequently found out. And most Flamingant leaders themselves do not, when it comes to it, have that loathing of France and affection for Germany which sometimes looms large in their speeches. With only a few exceptions, they live on good terms with everyone, they even more contacts with the South than with the East and would rather talk to a Parisian than to a Prussian. But as soon as they think of themselves as representatives of the ‘people’, the ‘principles’ begin to come to the surface and then the scum of racial hatred can be skimmed from the columns of the Flamingant papers. I willingly admit that it was more or less unavoidable in the romantic period of the Movement. The question is whether we should continue along this road much longer; whether we are going to go on flinging the heroes of past ages at one another´s heads much longer; whether we are going to go on disparaging other peoples in the most petty manner possible in order to prove that we have always been greater. […]
Let us reject all theoretical praise or blame. We are strong enough to allow all external influences to operate and to incorporate all that is real into our flesh and blood. If you fear that we are too weak, then make a positive effort to the matter, make the people great and sound and free, without in the process cutting it off from all the rich life which comes from the South. Intellectually, we have a tremendous amount to thank France for, and we want to be in intellectual contact with France as well as with England or any other people. Let us open our house to all corners – that is stil the best way to remain who we are. We shall not make our people any greater by engendering hatred against a great people.”

On Flemish nationalism

Flemish Lion

In the extract, Vermeylen reproaches supporters of the Flemish Movement for theorising about the Flemish ‘race’. He believed Flamingants elevated something that, for him, was real and recognizable (“a group a people who are bound to one another by language and common customs”) to an abstract entity. In his opinion, words such as ‘the people’ or ‘the race’ are all too often a simplication and generalization of a complex reality. In essence, what Vermeylen deplored was the use of concepts which were estranged from life and practice. The influence of Romanticism and the Flemish literary movement is clearly discernible in this theorising about ´the people´. But Vermeylen´s main criticism is directed against another consequence of this tendency to abstract terms such as ‘the people’ or ‘the race’, namely ´racial hatred´ or a petty loathing of other peoples.

Question 1
Judging from the extract, how would you characterize Flemish nationalism in this period?

>Click here for an answer.

Symbols, celebrations and grand public speeches played a role in imbuing the concept of ´the Flemish people´ with meaning. Symbols such as the Flemish Lion, a Flemish national hymn and holiday and mass public meetings of Flamingant associations became common currency in this period. Language in particular was seen, also by Vermeylen, as the main mark of distinction of ´the Flemings´ – the primacy of language as a marker is characteristic of many examples of ethnic nationalism. Also helping to create the self-image of Flemings, Flamingant historiography and especially the writing of stories about “the heroes of past ages” promoted the notion of a people sharing a common heritage.

Question 2
What did Vermeylen propose instead of artificially aroused, jingoistic loathing of other peoples?

>Click here for an answer.

In the second extract, Vermeylen criticizes the sentiment of Belgian patriotism rife within the Flemish Movement. He was of the opinion that the former is irreconcilable with a true Flemish national consciousness. Thus, the writer of the text provides an insight into yet another feature of ethnic nationalism, mentioned briefly in the first extract: the “desire for independence” of a people.

Fragment 2

“It is not simply that there has been a misconception as to what forms the basis of the Flemish Movement, it has not been rationally thought through, either. The type of society that corresponds with a race is the nation. Thus the Flemish Movement defends the principle of a monolingual nationhood, but many are at the same time…patriotic […].

[P]atriotism is the opposite [of the principle of nationhood]: the attachment to a patch of soil possessed by a single master and clearly delimited on a map by politicians. It is this form of patriotic twaddle – artificially inflated by governments – which required someone from Alsace to love France before 1870 and Germany after the war; caused Nice and Savoy to change their patriotic allegiance three times in a century and the Ionic Islands four times; which requires the contemporary Pole to risk his life either Prussia or for Russia or for Austria – and demands that we should be devoted to…Belgium!

The leaders of the Flemish Movement are caught between this patriotic chimera and national feeling. Everything they demand leads to the replacement of the existing kingdom by a confederation of states – no one can doubt that – and they cannot do otherwise if they wish to follow their principles. […] But why do they not ask straight out for Belgium to be split up, why does that not appear anywhere in their manifestoes? […]

It is no use looking for a courageous stand on this thorny issue from most of the leaders of the Movement or from all those who have more or less close connections with the State. These people are cautious, they do not want to ‘exaggerate’…I am not going to argue with those people, I am addressing myself to the vast majority of those who are resolutely pro-Flemish, who are not afraid to draw the conclusions which follow from their ideas, and who accept that a ´nation´ defines itself and has the right to an independent existence. These people cannot therefore accept that the fate of whole populations should depend on wars, on the chance outcome of a battle, on decrees promulgated by diplomats; they know that as long as there is a state authority which depends on armies, the ´rights´ of a nation are threatened. They must reject either their principle of nationhood or the existence of the present-day great powers.”

On Belgian patriotism

Helleputte and Albert I, caricature dealing
with the Equality Law (1910).
>For information on the figures
represented and for an English translation
of the caption please click here.
>To enlarge the illustration please click here.

For Vermeylen, the great powers in 19th-century Europe were the creation of politicians and love of one´s country or patriotism – words he only uses with reference to those states – was an artificially inflated sentiment. According to him, patriotism, in this sense, cannot be squared with a true national consciousness because a country´s frontiers have to coincide with the territory a people inhabits. In the extract, he notes how in reality the latter was often not the case. Often more than one people lived in one country (e.g. contemporary Germany also counted among its inhabitants French Alsaciens and Poles); often one people lived in more than one country (e.g. the Polish people´s land was split up between Germany, Russia and Austria). The right of a people to “an independent existence” or, using a modern word, the right to seld-determination is also a characteristic of ethnic nationalism.

Vermeylen distanced himself from the leaders of the Flemish Movement because they did not arrive at the same conclusion as him. Two comments need to be made about Vermeylen´s accusation. Firstly, the Flemish Movement´s position on language legislation around 1900 was more ambivalent than he cared to admit in this article. It is true that an official status of monolingualism for Flanders was increasingly laid on the table as the solution to Belgium’s language question, but there was also an alternative strategy which entailed the imposition of bilingualism on Belgium as a whole. In this scenario, the existence of bilingual officials and bilingual public services would not be restricted to Flanders only, but would be extended nationwide, to Wallonia and to the national level – in a sense, the Equality Law of 1898 provided a taste of this concept. A second comment to be made is that, apparently, a majority of Flamingants were able to combine, without too many problems, their Flemish consciousness with a love for the Belgian fatherland. Only a few individuals devoted themselves to the cause of self-government for Flanders. What we have here therefore is a milder form of ethnic nationalism and can best be labelled as ´subnationalism´; not Flemish but Flemish-Belgian nationalism.

The turn of the century saw a new wave of Belgian “patriotic twaddle”, to use Vermeylen´s words, very much coloured by the ideas of >Edmond Picard and the historian >Henri Pirenne. This was a new, more aggressive form of Belgian nationalism, which was associated with Catholicism, loyalty to the monarchy, economic and colonial expansie (Congo!) and was driven by the francophone Belgian Establishment (King, political elite, high finance, episcopacy,…). It is important to add that this Belgian nationalism also opposed language legislation designed to protect the place of Dutch in public life. Faced with a more militant Flemish Movement, Belgian nationalists made great play with old and new arguments to maintain the French language as the overarching, national language and the “binding agent” of Belgium, with Dutch accepted only as a second-class language. For the Establishment, Dutch was not up to par as a language of culture and Flanders had to be and remain officially bilingual – the Establishment was to change their views only very gradually in the course of the 1930s.

The illustration shown here is an anonymous caricature, dating from 1910, dealing with the practical consequences of the Equality Law. It provides some graphic insight into the way in which the King and the country´s leading classes perceived the advance of Dutch in Belgian public life. The caricature features the Minister of Railways offering King Albert I a “Flemish” railway guide – in accordance with the Equality Law, these guides had to be published both in French and in Dutch. The idea of treating Dutch on an equal footing with French was seen as an insult and a waste of public revenue. “Flemish” was not a standardized language, nor a language of culture or science, nor did it add anything to Belgium´s international prestige. On the contrary, the advance of “Flemish” threatened to give the country an image of a primitive, non-Western nation.
Vermeylen did not only disapprove of the Flemish Movement´s compromise with the Belgian States, but he also hit out at its short-sighted focus on language questions and language legislation, as we will show in the third extract.

Fragment 3

“The Flemish Movement wishes to enable the Flemish people to develop fully and to realize all its potential. One of the most important requirements is without doubt the development through its own language, the symbol of Flemish identity. That is why the language question is so important. But the use of Flemish is a means, not an end. The solution of the language question is not the end of the Flemish Movement. In order to bring all his hidden powers to expression, the Fleming has need of something very different. To remain for the moment purely at the material level: what can he achieve as long as he has to slave away for twelve hours a day in contaminated atmosphere in order to make others rich, as long as he endures poverty, with all the disease and moral degeneration which that word implies? Who dares to speak of healthy growth and full development, when thousands of women are forced to sell their bodies on the street or to wither away with their anaemic brood in a factory for the price of a crust of bread? If it were not in order that those who are dull of wit should become ‘a little more human’, as the people say, then the crusade for ‘Flemish in Flanders’ would be of little importance. Or is there anyone who would consider the task accomplished when finally the Flemish people are governed, robbed and perhaps even roughed up a bit in Flemish? The Flemish Movement must not be simply a linguistic movement but a social struggle in the broadest sense of the word. […]

When it comes to the interests of the Flemish people, one hardly sees beyond the interests of one´s language. Little by little one adopts a frame of mind which exclusively considers the language question and which tackles all matters from just one perspective. […] As a result, Flamingants defend all state institutions which hamper the development of the people, provided those institutions respect Flemish language rights. Those who are ‘Fleming above all else’, ultimately, no longer debate whether an institution is good or bad: the institution has to become Flemish – that is as far as they go. They will probably claim that they do go further but that, for the time being, all people of good will have to come together to solve the language question then and there, over and above all other questions, which are pushed into the background.”

On the Flemish Movement & the Social Question

Vermeylen points to the confusion of means and ends among Flamingants: for him, the use of the vernacular is only a means, not an end. Whether it be education policy, judicial questions, colonial politics, military matters or social problems – the political question of the age – supporters of the Flemish Movement approached political issues first from a linguistic perspective, according to Vermeylen. His criticism was not without truth: as regards social policy, many Flamingants were of the opinion that social inequalities would be redressed through further language legislation and the Dutchification of education in particular. The anti-Establishment strain within the Flemish Movement – its critical stance towards the upper layers of the bourgeosie, the political leaders and the higher clergy – generally came down to criticism of the Establishment´s hostility vis-à-vis the Dutch language. Even the ideas of a ‘cultural Flamingant’ of the stature of Lodewijk de Raet – someone who had a much keener eye for the economic laws determining the exisiting social structures in Flanders – bore the mark of the (liberal-democratic) middle-class mentality of the period.
Socialists tended to view the Flemish Movement as elitist, conservative and clerical. For most of them, the Flemish Question was a problem of secondary importance, one that would solve itself once all structural inequalities in society were eliminated. Moreover, the Flemish Question only served to create hostility between Flemish and Walloon workers. Although the >Belgian Workers´ Party (BWP) voted collectively in favour of the Equality Law, its position of the Flemish Question was one of pragmatic charitableness. More than once the leadership of the Socialist Party – a party which until 1900 won all its parliamentary seats in Walloon constituencies – demonstrated that they were no different from the rest of the political elite in taking the supremacy of the French language in Belgium as given.

The 1900s witnessed the birth of a Socialist brand of Flamingantism which, without reservation, considered the switch to Dutch in Flemish public life as one of the preconditions for a more equal society. Tellingly, it was in that decade that Socialists gained their first parliamentary representatives in Flemish constituencies. For prominent Flamingant Socialists such as Vermeylen and the Antwerp MP >Camille Huysmans, the Flemish linguistic conflict was part of a wider class conflict, the fight of the working class against the bourgeoisie.

The last extract will show, more explicitly than in earlier extracts, that Vermeylen was concerned not just with the emancipation of the Flemings as a group – the focus of our attention so far – but also with the individual emancipation of Flemings.

Fragment 4

“It is from the legislative powers above all that [the Flamingant] expects the realization of his wishes, and that is what he expends the better part of his energies on. He drafts innumerable petitions and all too often electoral campaigning forms the background to what he says and writes to disseminate his views. In relation to the tremendous will-power that is brought into play, the results seem meagre in the extreme. When we do gain anything it is always by the purest accident, and we have enough experience to know how little we get thrown to us. A pro-Flemish Bill only ever gets through if it is to the advantage of one or other of the political parties, and in this way our Movement is taken over by politics. […] In our Parliament the Flemish Movement must always remain subordinate to the interests of a political party and there is no hope whatsoever of a single genuinely pro-Flemish law ever being passed. […] Even those laws which are relatively good were passed only under the pressure of unrest outside Parliament, when the clamour of the populace penetrated the walls of the debating chamber and the ‘representatives’ grew pale. […] One or two supporters of the Flemish cause – some Christian-Democrats, for example – already realize that the ultimate aim of the Flemish Movement cannot be achieved by law and the zurest and most straightforward action is still the inner shaking-up of minds. But the parliamentary system seems to them to be the most suitable method to use. […]

In all our papers one can read an endless list of complaints – the pro-Flemish laws are barely complied with. […] The education law of 1883 is nowadays less observed than a few years ago, which is inevitable, as long as only a small number of citizens understand why the law is just. Those who do not understand, cannot be compelled. […] However, when every Flemish father will demand that his child be educated in Flemish; when every teacher will consider this natural; when pupils themselves will have their language be respected and abandon the French-language schools, then one will be faced with a reality, not a ‘principle’. As long as most Flemings don´t rebel, of their own accord, against all state institutions that are not Flemish, a law will necessarily remain powerless and later on a law will be unnecessary because they don´t understand and didn´t demand any such law. Stirring up the minds of people of all classes, outside of any politics, arousing their conscience, teaching how everyone must themselves work against everything which impedes their growth and take what they need – that is the only form of propaganda which has moral worth.”

“Unrest outside Parliament”

Vermeylen expressed the frustrations of new generation of Flamingants regarding the lack of compliance with language laws and, more generally, the latter´s lack of purpose – the general drift of the language legislation of this age was one of bilingualism instead of monolingualism for Flanders. Government and party leaders from the Catholic camp, which was in power uninterruptedly between 1884 and 1914, as well as the higher clergy adopted an increasingly reticent position as more fundamental linguistic demands were being tabled. A turning-point in this respect was the Equality Law of 1898. Clearly, as long as universal plural suffrage was in force (that is, until 1918), the francophone, upper-middle class leadership of the Catholic party was firmly seated in the saddle and managed to keep in check internal pressure groups representing Flamingants or Catholic workers or Catholic farmers. This is why the struggle to extend the provisions of the language law of 1883 (on state-run secondary education) to the much more numerous private Catholic secondaries, was to drag on until 1910. One of the consequences was that only then the campaign for the conversion of the University of Gent to Dutch got in full swing.
Vermeylen spoke very slightingly of the way in which the Flemish Movement had become dependent on legislation and considered parliamentary action the most suitable method. According to him, the Flemish Movement had degenerated into a political movement, which meant that it would always be subordinate to the interests of a political party. Vermeylen reserved a much more important role for extra-parliamentary protest instead of lobbying within the existing parties – a strategy which bore fruit for the first time in connection with the Equality Law. However, most Flemings, in his opinion, remained passive. We have already noted more than once that the Flemish Movement´s message found its most receptive audience among the middle classes. Vermeylen emphasized the significance of self-education and emancipating oneself from the authority of ´non-Flemish´ state institutions. What Vermeylen wanted Flemings to have, was an independent, critical spirit which was not going to be lead or mislead by anyone. The idea that Flemings ought to dedicate themselves more to their own intellectual development – something they would only be able to do through the medium of the Dutch language – was not a novel idea but part of a long-standing Catholic Flamingant tradition. It is this latter tradition that will be the subject of the next section.

Reading comprehension questions

1. Vermeylen moulded a brand of Flamingantism that broke with its (petty-)bourgeois past. Explain.

>Click here for an answer.

2. How would you explain the affection for Germany which sometimes surfaced in Flamingant speeches?

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3. Why is it better to use the term Flemish-Belgian nationalism instead of Flemish nationalism to refer to the national consciousness of supporters of the Flemish Movement?

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4. How do you explain the distrust of the Flemish Movement within Belgian Socialism?

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5. Why did Vermeylen call on Flamingants to devote themselves much more to propaganda, protest and self-education?

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>To find out more about Catholic Flamingantism at the turn of the century please click here.