Charles Rogier

Charles Rogier

Rogier leads the Liège Freikorps (painting by Soubre, 1878)

Charles Rogier (also Karel Rogier ) (born August 16, 1800 in Saint-Quentin , † May 27, 1885 in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode ) was a liberal Belgian politician and prime minister.

Rogier came from northern France but received his education in Liège . After studying law, he became a journalist and published the opposition Lettres d'un bourgeois de Saint-Martin . During the revolutionary events in 1830 that led to Belgium's independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands , he hurried to Brussels with 300 armed volunteers and took part in the street fight there. He belonged to the provisional government and was a member of the National Congress. In June 1831 he became governor of Antwerp and from 1832 to 1834 Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of Belgium for the first time.

After he had to resign from the Ministry because of a dispute with the Republican Alexandre Gendebien , he was again Governor of Antwerp from 1834 to 1840 and Minister of Public Works from 1840 to 1841. He was then a member of the Second Chamber as a Member of Parliament for Antwerp and distinguished himself as a spokesman for the liberal opposition.

The elections in 1847 radically changed Belgian political life. The Liberals won the election with an absolute majority and established a homogeneous government. Rogier, once again prime minister and interior minister, was now operating a policy based entirely on a party program, even if the conservative wing was very influential. The first railway line on the European mainland between Mechelen and Brussels goes back to Rogiers' initiative , he opened the world port of Antwerp by lifting the Scheldt tariff .

When unrest broke out in Belgium in the revolutionary year of 1848 and the country's future was threatened, he managed to contain the economic crisis, unemployment and a famine and to calm the situation relatively. In the fall of 1852 he resigned because he had the demand of Napoleon III. to censor the press, and since then he has worked exclusively in Brussels until he took over the Ministry of the Interior again on November 9, 1857. On October 26, 1861, he exchanged the interior department for the Foreign Office and again took over the presidency of the cabinet until he retired on January 3, 1868.

Rogier is one of the founders of the Belgian state and the liberal party, helped formulate fundamental rights and decisively determined Belgian politics for several decades. On the other hand, his policy in the service of the wealthy bourgeoisie and v. a. seen the preference of the French-speaking Walloons . As Prime Minister in 1832 he had stated: “It is necessary that all civil and military offices go exclusively to Walloons and Luxembourgers so that the Flemings are temporarily excluded from the advantages of such offices and are obliged to learn French. In this way the Germanic element will gradually be destroyed ”. Because of this position, Rogier is still often quoted today in the Flemish-Walloon conflict . Nevertheless, as foreign minister, he defended Belgian independence from France under Napoleon III. and even strove for a renewed merger in a confederative state with the Netherlands. During this phase, in 1860, he composed the version of the national anthem La Brabançonne , which is common today , in which the violent attacks against the Netherlands in the earlier version were greatly mitigated.

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