Jef Van de Wiele
Fredegardus Jacobus Josephus "Jef" Van de Wiele (* July 20, 1903 in Bruges ; † September 4, 1979 ibid) was a Flemish nationalist with a National Socialist orientation, activist of the Flemish movement and later a member of the SS. He was a staunch supporter of a "Greater Germanic Reichs ”, which should also include Flanders .
Life
Jef Van de Wiele was the son of August Van de Wiele, a mayor of Deurne ( Antwerp province ).
Before he even started teaching, he wrote novels. After graduating , he received his doctorate in philosophy and philology in 1936 and became a teacher. In the same year he, an activist of the Flemish Movement , became editor-in-chief of the magazine De Vlag of the "Dietsch-Vlaamsche Arbeidsgemeenschap" (also "De Vlag"), which he founded in 1936 and which had split off from the Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (VNV), although this too A Groot-Nederlands Dietsland without parties and unions, instead with a cross-class national community sought. De Vlag represented the National Socialist policy in Belgium as a close ally, which is why it received massive support from the German side. In addition to being the editor-in-chief, Van de Wiele also organized the Flemish-German Culture Days.
After the beginning of the Second World War , the activities of “De Vlag” were temporarily stopped by the Belgian government. Since the German occupation of Belgium (May 1940), the organization - collaborating with the German military administration - was able to operate again.
Since the beginning of the war against the Soviet Union in 1941, Van de Wiele and other De Vlag supporters propagated joining the "Germanic Division" of the Waffen SS and serving on the Eastern Front. He himself had joined her and had the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer.
When Western Allied troops were advancing rapidly towards Belgium at the end of August 1944, Van de Wiele called on his supporters to flee to Germany. Together with 15,000 other Flemings, he became a member of the Vlaamsche Landsleiding (Flemish Landing), a National Socialist-oriented Flemish “government in exile” for a “ Reichsgau Flanders ”. After the war ended, he first went into hiding in Germany. In December 1945 a Belgian court sentenced him to death in absentia. In May 1946 he was arrested and extradited to Belgium. In November 1946, the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1963. At first he worked in Belgium as a translator for a German company. He later moved to the Netherlands . In his final years he returned to Belgium; he died on September 4, 1979 in Bruges .
Fonts
- Flanders will live. Steenlandt Verlag, Brussels 1944.
Individual evidence
- ^ Paul Huybrechts, Hugo's holy vuur. De intieme biography van de jonge Hugo Schiltz, Antwerp 2009.
- ^ Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hans Umbreit, The German Empire and the Second World War. Organization and mobilization of the German sphere of influence, Stuttgart 1988, p. 335.
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Schlamp: Flemish Nazis on the run. Hitler's Belgian guests. In: Der Spiegel, December 6, 2014.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Van de Wiele, Jef |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Van de Wiele, Fredegardus Jacobus Josephus (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Flemish nationalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 20, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bruges |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th September 1979 |
| Place of death | Bruges |