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Nationalism in the Low Countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Hans Kohn
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Extract

The age of nationalism offers us many examples which prove that affinities in descent or language have no influence on the formation of modern nations or on their political ideas. Switzerland is only one of several Germanic lands which developed a nationalism resembling much more closely that of England rather than that of Germany. The case of the Low Countries is similar. Both were until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries politically and historically a part of the German Empire. Both grew into separate nations in border regions where Germanic and Latin civilizations have met since the beginning of European history. Both gained their national character by a process of intellectual and political emancipation from Germany. The Dutch historian, Jan Huizinga, affirmed in Berlin at the beginning of 1933 in a lecture on the Netherlands as mediator between Western and Central Europe that “Our whole history as a people and a state is, with a few exceptions, Western European history. Our relations with the West have conditioned our independence as a people and as a state. Be it as friends, be it as enemies, France and England were our teachers. The Netherlands have significance and a meaningful place only as a territory oriented toward the West.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 1957 , pp. 155 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1957

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References

1 See Kohn, Hans, Nationalism and Liberty. The Swiss Example (New York, 1956).Google Scholar

2 Huizinga, , Verzamelde Werken, Vol. II (Haarlem, 1948), p. 25.Google Scholar

3 Renier, J. G., The Criterion of Dutch Nationhood (London, 1946), p. 20Google Scholar. An opposite opinion stressing the fundamental importance of language and adopting thereby the folk concept of Herder and Arndt to the Netherlands, was voiced by Geyl, Pieter, De Groot Nederlandsche Gedachte: Historische en Politieke Beschowringen (Haarlem, 1925)Google Scholar. See also his Holland and Belgium, their Common History and their Relations (Leyden, 1920).Google Scholar

4 See Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (New York, 1944); p. 139 and p. 479.Google Scholar

5 Motley, John Lothrop, The Rise of the Dutch Republic (New York, 1898), Vol. I, p. 14Google Scholar. Motley, (1814–1877)Google Scholar first published the book in 1856.

6 Vlekke, B. H. M., Evolution of the Dutch Nation (New York, 1945), p. 69.Google Scholar

7 Boon, Hendrik Nicolas in The Netherlands, ed. by Landheer, Bartholomew (Berkeley, 1943), p. 64.Google Scholar

8 Geyl, , Holland and Belgium, op. cit., p. 43Google Scholar. “En 1830, les deux peuples étaient plus loin de s'entendre qu'ils ne l'avaient jamais été. Aucune pénétration de l'un a l'autre. L'accord des idées était encore plus rare entre eux que les mariages.” Pirenne, H., Histoire de Belgique (Brussels, 1926), Vol. VI, p. 355.Google Scholar

9 Quoted in Pirenne, H., Histoire de Belgique, VI, 300.Google Scholar

10 Pirenne, , op. cit., p. 412 f.Google Scholar

11 See The Idea of Nationalism, p. 483 fGoogle Scholar. French became predominant in the Low Countries under Habsburg rule, naturally, without any political or nationalist intention of “Frenchifying” them. The first Flemish protest for the rights of Flemish against French, a very lonely voice, was raised by a lawyer of Brussels, Verley, in 1788, under the rule of the Habsburgs.

12 See Bährens, Kurt, Die Flamische Bewegung, Europäisches Problem oder innerbelgische Frage (Berlin, 1935), pp. 11, 12, 31, 40, 59, 112.Google Scholar

13 See on Kurth, , Neuray, Fernand, Une grande figure nationale: Godefroid Kurth (Brussels, 1931)Google Scholar. In 1899 Kurth edited in Arlon Deutsch-Belgien. Organ des deutschen Vereins zur Hebung Pflege der Muttersprache im deutschredenden Belgien. His most important work for Belgian nationalism was La Nationalité Belge of which a first edition appeared in 1913 and a third in 1930. The passage from Pirenne is from his Histoire de Belgique, Vol. V (1921), p. xi f.Google Scholar

14 The pamphlet “Die Frage über die Niederlande und die Rheinlande” was reprinted in Arndt, E. M., Schriften für und an seine lieben Deutschen, Vol. III (Leipzig, 1845), pp. 67–130Google Scholar. Also reprinted, pp. 131–140, is the pamphlet “Belgien und was daren hdngt” (1834)Google Scholar. The three main themes of Arndt's writings are: 1) hatred against the French; 2) insistence that language forms the only natural frontier for states, except that he claims that Bohemia and Moravia in spite of their several million Slav inhabitants must belong to Germany because they are surrounded by German lands (pp. 92–94), a theory officially adopted by Hitler in 1939 and by Danilevsky and other Pan-Slavs regarding the Magyars and the Rumanians; 3) the conviction that small states like Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands can only thrive as parts of a united, mighty Germany and without it have no raison d'être.

Arndt is especially bitter against Switzerland (pp. 212–214); he calls for a war against France which would establish a definite German border at Antwerp; and he is convinced that in a future European war, the neutrality of Belgium will not be respected by that side which feels itself strong enough to be the aggressor (p. 179), a prediction which came true in 1914.

15 Willems, J. F. in Messager des sciences et des arts de la Belgique, Vol. I (Ghent, 1833), p. 329.Google Scholar

16 Grimm, , Reinhart Fuchs (Berlin, 1834), p. clvi.Google Scholar

17 See Hoffman, 's Mein Leben, Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen, 6 vols. (Hanover, 1868) Vol. III, pp. 20, 107Google Scholar: Vol. V, p. 248; Vol. VI, p. 133. Many of his scholarly works about Belgium were collected in his Horae Belgicae, 12 vols. (Hanover, 1836–1862)Google Scholar. In 1872 Hoffman went so far as to call upon “the men of Flanders” to combat the French: “You men of Flanders, what are you waiting for? Do not bear any longer the despicable yoke! … You men of Flanders, one thing alone is necessary: to fight to the death against the French.”

18 The best history of the Flemish movement is by Clough, Shepard B., A History of the Flemish Movement in Belgium, a Study in Nationalism (New York, 1930)Google Scholar, with a full bibliography. See also Gijsen, Marnix (J. A. Geris), De Literatuur in Zuid-Nederland Sedert 1830 (Antwerp, 1951)Google Scholar; Nothomb, Pierre, Étapes du Nationalisme Belge (Brussels, 1918)Google Scholar; de Burlet, Charles, L'Unité Nationale et la Question Linguistique dans L'Histoire de Belgique (Brussels, 1935)Google Scholar; Pesch, Ludwig, Volk und Nation in der Geistesgeschichte Belgiens (Berlin, 1941)Google Scholar; Picard, Leo, Geschiedenis van de vlaamsche en groot nederlandsche beweging, Vol. I (carrying the story to the 1850's), (Antwerp, 1937)Google Scholar; Otto, Helmut, Die flämischen und holländischen Nationalbewegungen (Leipzig, 1936)Google Scholar; Lamberty, Max, Philosophie der vlaamsche beweging en der overige stroomingen in Belgie, 2nd ed. (Bruges, 1938)Google Scholar; Lissens, R. F., De Vlaamse Letterkinde van 1780 tot heden (Brussels, 1954).Google Scholar

19 Arndt, E. M., Ein Lebensbild in Briefen, ed. by Meisner, Heinrich and Geerds, Robert (Berlin, 1898), No. 338 fGoogle Scholar. Some Flemish and Dutch extremists proclaimed the unity of the Low-German or Dietsch from the English Channel to the Russian border. The Low German (Plattdeutsch) literature, then developed by Reuter, Fritz (1810–1874)Google Scholar and Groth, Klaus (1819–1899)Google Scholar, whose poem “Moderspraak” was set to music by Peter Benoit, was closely followed. In Hansen, Belgium C. J. (1833–1910)Google Scholar and the poet Pol de Mont (1857–1931) supported this Dietsche beweging. Extremism was strong among students, as it was generally outside Western Europe. The Dietsche Studenten Verbond and the Dietsche Bond, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, followed a Great Netherland program.

20 See his Proza 1843–1873, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, Brussels, 1873), Vol II, p. 245.Google Scholar

21 Laveleye wrote the article “Encore la Question Flamande” in the Revue de Belgique (Brussels, 03 15, 1871)Google Scholar in answer to an article by two Flemish nationalists. Reprinted in Essais et Études, Vol. I (Ghent, 1894), pp. 134–143.Google Scholar

22 Clough, Shepard B., op. cit., p. 90Google Scholar. It is strange to read that the Flemish language is older than the Christian religion. Whether it is more individual depends on the interpretation of the term. If it is meant that the Flemish language, especially as it has been stressed in the age of nationalism, is a divisive element against the universalism of Christianity, the use of the word individual may be justified. If individual, however, means intimately connected with the innermost life, then the Catholic religion of the Flemish people has been most individual. Flemish nationalism was always a religious nationalism.

23 Destrée, , Wallons et Flamands: la querelle linguistique en Belgique (Paris, 1923), especially pp. 19, 83, 108–115.Google Scholar

24 The annexation of Belgium was one of the chief demands of the German extremists during World War I. It was coupled with the moral claim of liberating the Flemings from the French yoke. The Germans insisted that the relationship between the Flemish and the Germans was a family affair in which others had no right to interfere, a claim very similar to that raised in 1831 by the Russian poet Pushkin about the relationship between Russians and Poles.

Immediately before the war, a leading German historian, Lamprecht, Karl (1856–1915)Google Scholar, had appealed to Arndt's broader linguistic concept of the German fatherland as against the narrow limits of the Bismarckian Reich in his Deutsche Geschichte der jüngsten Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Vol. II (Berlin, 1913), p. 412Google Scholar. He not only welcomed the Germanization of Lorraine, but he was convinced of the growing unity between the German Swiss and the Germans (p. 406) and between the Dutch and the Germans—the Netherlanders finding, according to him, in the union with Germany protection for their colonial empire against the British (p. 409). Similarly, the Flemings would look in the future “even more than before” to the German heartland (Kernland).

25 Glough, Shepard B., op. cit., p. 194.Google Scholar

26 The statement with all the signatures is reproduced in Passelecq, Fernand, La Question flamande et l'Allemagne (Paris, 1917), pp. 182–189.Google Scholar

27 The Belgian bishops condemned extreme nationalism in a common declaration in 1925. This condemnation was repeated in 1929 by the Cardinal Archbishop of Malines, Van Roey. See Ecclesiastica, Archiv für zeitgenössische Kirchengeschichte (Freiburg, Switzerland, 1925), p. 402 fGoogle Scholar. and 1930, pp. 315–322.

28 On the extremist Flemish and Great Netherland agitation in Belgium during the Hitler regime in Germany, see Oszwald, Robert Paul, ed., Deutsch-Niederländische Symphonie (Lübeck, 1937)Google Scholar. Oszwald was an expert on the Flemish movement. He wrote “Zur Belgischen Frage. Der Nationalitätenkampf der Vlamen und Wallonen,” Preussische Jahrbücher, Vol. 156, no. 2 (05, 1914), pp. 214–245Google Scholar, and Flandern und Grosniederland (Marburg: Deutsche-Akademische Schriften, no. 23, 1928).Google Scholar

With much greater understanding of the Belgian reality the German Kurt Bährens wrote: “Der Staat Belgien beruht auf Vorstellungen, in denen das Volk keinen Platz findet. Der Staat ist eine rechtliche Konstruktion…. Es ist unleugbar, dass die Vergangenheit einer Schicksalsgemeinschaft den Boden bereitet hat. Belgien mit seiner Verfassung ist ein Rahmen, in den zwei Völker…. eingefugt wurden. Wenn auch der Rahmen mehrfach als drückend empfunden wurde, hat er sich noch stets als elastisch genug erwiesen, um die Volksenergien, die gegen ihn aufbegehrten, irgendwie abzufangen,” Die flamische Bewegung, op. cit., p. 59.Google Scholar

29 “De verwikkeling van Vereldoorlog II bracht de ondergang von de extremistische group met zich mee,” Winkler Prins Enciclopadie, 6th ed. (Amsterdam, 1951) Vol. X, p. 101 f.Google Scholar