Hendrik Elias

Hendrik Elias (1942)

Hendrik Jozef Elias (born June 12, 1902 in Machelen , † February 2, 1973 in Ukkel ) was a Flemish historian, lawyer and nationalist. During the Second World War he was chairman of the Flemish National Association , which collaborated with the German occupation forces, and received the death penalty for it after the war , which was later converted into a life sentence. During his imprisonment he returned to his historical studies and after his release he published works on the history of Flemish nationalism.

Life

Elias was born the son of a postal worker and, following his school days in Vilvoorde, studied history at the Catholic University of Leuven , where he received his doctorate summa cum laude with a dissertation on Church and State in the southern Netherlands under Archduke Albrecht and Isabella . The wish to give a Flemish answer to the Belgian historiography of Henri Pirennes within an academic career, however, was not fulfilled due to the death of his sponsor Alfred Cauchie . Elias, Flemish activist and initiator of a call for the creation of his own Flemish historical school, was denied a chair. He became a teacher at the Athenea in Bruges and Ghent and received his doctorate in law from the University of Ghent in 1929 .

In 1930 Elias founded the Vlaamsch Nationale Volkspartij (Flemish National People's Party, VNVP), with which he wanted to bring together the fragmented Flemish nationalism on a federal and democratic basis. However, due to their too great ideological contrasts, this could only achieve modest success and in 1933 it merged into the right-wing Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (Flemish National Association, VNV) under Staf De Clercq . Elias advocated moderate federalism as a party ideology, which meant that he stood across the official party line, which tended towards a dietsen (Greater Dutch) and fascist direction. As a result, the party programs he wrote were often subject to changes and unification talks with the fascist Rexists and the Katholieke Vlaamsche Volkspartij , the Flemish branch of the Catholic Party , were thwarted. Elias was increasingly isolated in the party and stepped into the shadow of the more radical propaganda leader Reimond Tollenaere.

When Belgium was occupied by Germany during the Second World War and the VNV began to collaborate with the occupying power, Elias only played a small role in the party, even if he stood by it publicly. At the end of 1940 he was appointed mayor of Ghent by the German military administration . The death of Tollenaeres on the Eastern Front in 1942 and the death of Chairman De Clercq that same year brought Elias back to the fore. Pressed to chair by Victor Leemans and Gérard Romsée , he finally accepted it. Elias' attempt to have the VNV declared by the military administration to be the only authorized party in Flanders failed because, although it enjoyed the support of the military administration, it was in competition with the German-Flemish Working Group (DeVlag) under Jef Van de Wiele , which was supported by the SS was supported. At a meeting between Elias, Van de Wiele and Heinrich Himmler in the spring of 1944, he tried to convince Himmler to dissolve the DeVlag and advocated recognition of the Flemish people within a " Greater Germanic Empire " - a departure from the previous VNV goals Greater Dutch Empire. However, Himmler did not respond to this and warned the Flemish opponents to settle their differences. Incidentally, both Elias and Van de Wiele were authors of the Brussels newspaper during the German occupation .

During the liberation of Belgium by the Allies, Elias fled to Germany. Since he refused to work there with Van de Wiele, who had also fled, he was arrested by the Reich Security Main Office in a hotel in Kleinwalsertal . There Elias was arrested by French soldiers in May 1945 and taken to Brussels . He had been sentenced to death in absentia that year; the verdict was confirmed in 1947, an appeal on appeal in 1948 was dismissed. Three years later, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, from which Elias was released in 1959. In March 1960 he married Flora Moerman in the Belgian embassy in The Hague .

During his detention, Elias had reviewed books he read there and resumed his academic work. An unpublished manuscript from 1947, Geschiedenis van het nationaal gevoel in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (History of the National Feeling in the Southern Netherlands) formed the basis of Geschiedenis van de Vlaamse Gedachte, 1780–1914 (History of the Flemish Thought) , published between 1963 and 1965 . For this work, Elias received the Flemish Provinces Prize and the Frans-Van-Cauwelaert Prize, among others, and these awards led to numerous controversies. In 1969 Vijfentwintig jaar Vlaamse Bewegungsing followed , 1914–1939 (twenty-five years of the Flemish Movement). One last work, Het Vlaams-nationalisme in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Flemish Nationalism in World War II) was left unfinished. Elias wrote his memoirs in letters to one of his lawyers in 1945/46, which, along with other texts, formed the basis for the unpublished memorials en beschouwingen (1959–1961) (memoranda and reflections). In the last years of his life he worked to develop this into the more historically founded Het Vlaams-nationalisme in de Tweede Wereldoorlog , but Elias hesitated to publish it because he was unsure about a confrontation of the Flemish movement with earlier contradictions and the evolution of his views on collaboration was aware. His death eventually brought these plans to an end.

literature

• Biography in communications 31 of the Archief en Documentatiecentrum voor het Vlaams Nationalisme (ADVN) , 2011, pp. 4–8. (Dutch, PDF )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rolf Falter: De Bruxelles Zeitung (1940–1944) in: Historica Lovaniensia 137, Catholic University of Leuven (Institute for History), Leuven 1982, p. 69.
2. ^ Pieter Jan Verstraete: Trouw en Dietsch . Aspect, Soesterberg 2006, ISBN 90-5911-133-8 , p. 113.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hendrik Elias in the catalog of the German National Library