Robert Jan Verbelen

Robert Jan Verbelen, 1965

Robert Peter Jan Verbelen (born April 25, 1911 in Flanders , Leuven , Belgium , † October 28, 1990 in Vienna ) was a Belgian-Austrian commander of the Flemish General SS and deputy to the fascist leader Léon Degrelle . After the war he worked as a writer.

Life

Verbelen was the son of a Belgian police commissioner. Verbelen's brother was a leader in the White Brigade resistance movement . When the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV) was founded, Robert Verbelen joined and became Gauleiter of Leuven . He also worked as a part-time journalist and became chairman of the Flemish Football Association.

After the German occupation, he was one of the first to join the Flemish General SS, and he became a leading employee of the SD. In 1947 he was sentenced to death in absentia for being responsible for the murder of 101 Belgians.

However, he had fled to Germany as early as 1944. From there he went on to Vienna, where he worked under a false name for the American intelligence service and as an informant for the Austrian state police. In 1959 he was granted Austrian citizenship for his work and he now lived under his real name again,

In April 1962, the Simon Wiesenthal Center forwarded information about him to the public prosecutor. He was arrested immediately. Belgium applied for his extradition. Verbelen successfully referred to his Austrian citizenship and so he had to answer before an Austrian court in November 1965. He was defended by Marcel Brauns . The court found him guilty of several offenses, but acquitted him because he had acted on orders. The Supreme Court withdrew the acquittal, but he never had to appear in court again.

He then lived undisturbed in Austria and wrote regularly in right-wing extremist publications. He also wrote crime and detective novels.

Works

• Mister Incognito, Wolfsberg, 1966
• Mister Incognito, Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1967
• Le hibou appelle à minuit, Paris, Presses de la Cité, 1968
• The moon will cry, Wenen, 1969
• The owl calls at midnight, Wenen, 1970
• The nun and the partisan, Oldendorf, 1973
• The monkey on the gallows, 1973
• The revolution can wait, agent war in Spain 1974
• Even giants can stagger, Klosterneuburg, 1978
• The devil plays chess, Wenen, 1980
• The Steel Fist: Resistance in the Soviet Union, 1980
• Fridolin, the Flemish Don Quixote, Wenen, 1982
• Flandren's dream of the Reich, 1983 (under the pseudonym R. Russelberg)
• Death has soft hands
• God has slit eyes

literature

• Frank Seberechts: Robert Verbelen. In: Nieuwe encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Bewegungsing, Tielt, 1998, blz. 3184.
• Alexander JOCQUÉ, De plaats van Robert Verbelen in de geschiedenis van de Vlaamse Bewegungsing, in: Wetenschappelijke Tijdingen, 2012, blz. 201-232.

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Jan Verbelen in the catalog of the German National Library