Kamiel van Baelen

Kamiel van Baelen (born August 15, 1915 in Turnhout ; † April 11, 1945 in Dachau ) was a Flemish writer who paid for his (practical) resistance work against the fascist occupation at the age of 29 with his life.

After studying at the small seminar in Mechelen , Baelen first worked as a teacher in Antwerp , then as a private teacher in Lausanne . He made his narrative debut in 1937 with a children's book. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he returned to his (northern Belgian) hometown Turnhout and took part in the resistance without giving up writing. Although his fictional characters struggle with the old conflict between matter and spirit in their search for happiness, the devout Christian Baelen prefers symbols, discourse and cinematic cuts, with which he approaches the experimental prose of the post-war period. His work remains a fragment. Arrested in 1944, he was taken to Dachau, where he died shortly before the end of the war. In Turnhout a street is named after Baelen.

Works

• Brammetje knapt het op (Brammetje recovers), children's book, 1937
• De oude symphonie van ons hart (The old symphony of the heart), novel, 1943
• Een Mensch op den weg (A man on the street), novel, 1944
• Broken melody , unfinished novel, 1946
• Zes poems in handwriting , 1980
• Volledig werk (complete edition in two volumes), 1981

literature

• Ureel Lode: Kamiel van Baelen , 1958
• Jean Weisgerber: Aspecten van de Vlaamse roman, 1927-1960. Amsterdam 1976
• GJ van Bork: Baelen, Kamiel van (February 2002). In: Schrijvers en Dichters. Biographyënproject I. Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren, accessed on January 3, 2017
• Hugo Brems: Altijd weer vogels the nests begin. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur van 1945 - 2006. Amsterdam 2009