Auguste Borms

Frans Daels and August Borms ( IJzerbedevaart , August 1941)

August (e) Borms (born April 14, 1878 in Sint-Niklaas , † April 12, 1946 in Etterbeek ) was a Belgian Flemish nationalist and collaborator with the German occupying forces in the First and Second World Wars .

Life

Initially, Borms worked as a high school teacher. In both the First and in the Second World War , he worked with the German occupying forces. In December 1917 he and the Raad van Vlaanderen, who had just been constituted by him, proclaimed the "political independence" of Flanders, i.e. the secession of the part of Belgium, according to German instructions. On September 7, 1919, he was sentenced to death by a Belgian court . After the intervention of a clergyman who was close to the German Foreign Office , the papal nuncio Eugenio Pacelli intervened and wrote a letter to the Belgian authorities presenting Borms as an idealist and arguing in which Pacelli whose frequent visits to Germany during the war would have served this purpose to visit Flemish prisoners and not to discuss cooperation with the Germans. Borms is a staunch Catholic who never attacked the Church, which should be noted in a Catholic country like Belgium. As a result of this and other campaigns, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Despite his imprisonment, Borms was still active in politics and was instrumental in the Flemish establishment of the front movement and the front party . Together with his close ally, Cyriel Verschaeve , he was the leader of the current within this group that saw future cooperation with Germany as the best way to live up to Flemish ambitions. In 1926 he was offered a pardon, which he refused because it contained the clause that he had to cease his political activities. In 1929 he was released as part of an amnesty for Flemish nationalists. In 1946 he was finally sentenced to death again as a collaborator and executed .

He became a "martyr for generations of subsequent Flemish extreme nationalists", an awkward reminder for others and an embarrassing reminder for some of illiberal threads in Belgium's complex political legacy. "

Individual evidence

1. ^ William M. Downs, Political Extremism in Democracies. Combating Intolerance, New York / London 2012, p. 87.
2. ^ Robrecht Boudens, Two Cardinals: John Henry Newman, Désiré Joseph Mercier , Peeters Publishers, 1995, pp. 287–288.
3. ↑ Herman Van Goethem, Belgium and the Monarchy: From National Independence to National Disintegration , Asp / Vubpress / Upa, 2011, p. 151
4. ^ William M. Downs, Political Extremism in Democracies. Combating Intolerance, New York / London 2012, p. 87.
5. ^ William M. Downs, Political Extremism in Democracies. Combating Intolerance, New York / London 2012, p. 87.

literature

• Laurence van Ypersele: Belgium in the "Grande Guerre" , in: APuZ B 29-30 (2004), p. 27f.