Marthe Boël

Marthe Boël (born Marthe de Kerchove de Denterghem on July 3, 1877 in Gent ; died on January 18, 1956 in Brussels ) was a Belgian suffragette and resistance fighter .

Life

She was the third daughter of the Belgian Senator Oswald de Kerchove de Denterghem and his wife Maria, née Lippens. Her family, who came from the old nobility, was liberal. After studying in Ghent (at the institute founded by her grandfather) and in Paris , she graduated with a brevet supérieur in 1895 and married the steel manufacturer, liberal politician and Baron Pol Clovis Boël in 1898 . Corresponding to her rank, she was active in charity events and founded a women's circle, which positioned itself politically liberal.

Through her father she came into contact with the Belgian women's movement and met Hélène Goblet d'Alviella and Jane Brigode , among others . During the First World War , Boël helped as a nurse and joined a resistance group around Brigode. For this engagement, she and her husband were arrested in October 1916 and detained near Siegburg . She had a lifelong friendship with fellow prisoner Marie de Croÿ . When her state of health no longer permitted her imprisonment, she was exchanged for the wife of the German East Africa Governor Heinrich Schnee in 1917 and spent the rest of the war in Gstaad , Switzerland .

About Brigode Boël was introduced into the Liberal Party , in which she participated in 1919 in the women's commission under Paul-Émile Janson . As a war hero, she was granted the right to vote, which most women were denied. Disappointed, she and Brigode founded a women's union in Brussels and held a women's conference in the city. In 1921 she became a member of the Belgian National Council for Women, the Belgian umbrella organization for women's associations (CNFB) organized in the International Women's Council (ICW), which was founded in 1904 by Marie Popelin . In 1923 Boël and Brigode founded a liberal-minded women's association, of which Boël became its first president.

In 1935 Boël succeeded Marguerite Van de Wiele as the new President of the CNFB; in the following year, 1936, she was elected the new President of the ICW in Dubrovnik ; she replaced the long-time ICW President Ishbel Maria Hamilton-Gordon . This also made her the contact person for the League of Nations , where she became President of the Commission for Issues of Women's Emancipation. She resigned all offices not linked to the ICW or the League of Nations in order to be able to concentrate fully on this work. However, with the occupation of Belgium in World War II , this work was disrupted; from May 1940 to May 1945 all official ICW business was taken over by Renée Girod in Switzerland.

Her husband died in 1941 on the shared property near Brussels. Boël made the house available as space for the Université libre de Bruxelles , but avoided active participation in the resistance. Boël resigned from chairmanship of the ICW in 1947 and was made honorary chairman. In 1949, she turned down an offered seat in the Belgian Senate, citing her age. In 1952 she spoke for the last time on a larger public stage in Athens ; in the same year she rejected after the re-election also the position as CNFB chairman and handed over this office to Magdeleine Leroy.

In 1966 her daughter Marie-Anne, married Maya Janssen, also held a leading position in the CNFB: she organized the admission of women from the Flemish part of Belgium to the organization, which was shared for this purpose.

literature

• Marthe Boël, 1920-1950. Trente ans d'activité féminine. Extrait de discours et de messages , Paris-Brussels 1950, A l'enseigne du Chat qui pêche.
• Marthe Boël, Christiane Duchène: Le féminisme en Belgique 1892-1914 , Brussels 1955, Editions du Conseil national des femmes belges.
• Suzanne van Rokeghem, Jacqueline Aubenas, Jeanne Vercheval-Vervoort: Des femmes dans l'histoire en Belgique, depuis 1830 , Brussels 2006, ISBN 2-87415-523-3 , p. 111 f. ( Digitized version )

Web link

• Liberaalarchief: Boels CV