103 ms·

The Battle Line at Louvain

143 points by chmaynard 2y ago

chmaynard 2y ago
Final sentence: To this day, the burning of the library in Louvain remains a battle line, which we should be weary [sic] to ever cross again, for as Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) so eloquently once stated, “where they burn books, they will also burn people”.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nerdponx 2y ago
  The wary/weary mixup is so strange to me, especially because it seems relatively new (last 5-10 years at most).
  - pavlov 2y ago
    It’s not that strange? The words are homophones and both express a reticent emotional state.
    - robin_reala 2y ago
      Where in the world are you that weary and wary are homophones? Genuinely interested, I can’t think of a dialect where that’s the case.
      - Majestic121 2y ago
        As a non-native speaker, 'to be wary' is not really in my vocabulary, while 'to be weary' seems much more common, and both sound pretty close to each other even if there is a difference even with my accent, so I could see myself making the mistake. It looks similar to than/then, but than/then is much more jarring to me for some reason.
      - pavlov 2y ago
        They are not homophones? I’m not a native speaker and I’ve simply always assumed they are. I lived in London and the US for many years, but these are not common words in speech so I never got corrected. I guess that must mean “wear” and “weary” have a different pronunciation for “ea”. This vowel digraph remains my eternal nemesis… Ever since I learned as a child that “bear” doesn’t rhyme with “fear” and found myself faced with the overwhelming realization that I will never speak this language 100% correctly, no matter how much effort I put into reading and writing.
        marssaxman 2y ago
        > I guess that must mean “wear” and “weary” have a different pronunciation for “ea”. Indeed so! "Wear" and "ware" are homophones, having the same vowel sound as "wary". "Weary", on the other hand, rhymes with "cheery" or "dreary". > I will never speak this language 100% correctly I am a middle-aged native speaker, an avid lifelong reader with a love for the language, and I still occasionally discover that I am mispronouncing words I have known for years.
        harimau777 2y ago
        I pronounce weary with a long e sound and wairy with a vowel sound between long and short a (similar to "air"). To me they are very similar and rhyme but not identical.
        hermitcrab 2y ago
        Native Enlish speaker here (from the UK). I feel so sorry for anyone learning English as a foreign language - it's a mess!
    - mannykannot 2y ago
      While they do both often express a reticent emotional state, the cause of that state is different: for 'weary', it is exhaustion from past events, while for 'wary', the concern is to avoid undesirable events in the future. There is arguably some overlap where someone is being wary because they are weary of similar situations turning out badly all too often in the past.
  - LgWoodenBadger 2y ago
    It’s similar to dominant/dominate and should’ve/should of. People these days…
  - blacksqr 2y ago
    My wife started using the word this way about 20 years ago, I also heard it on TV ads at the time. I always assumed it was a confused fusion of "wary" and "leery".
    - nerdponx 2y ago
      I always assumed it was just a misspelling of "wary" by analogy to "wear". You're telling me that people actually say "weary" when they mean "wary"? That's very different from what I thought.
      - blacksqr 2y ago
        > people actually say "weary" when they mean "wary"? Yes, that's my experience.
trgn 2y ago
On the flipside. American universities supported a rebuild of the library and today still it is one of the most magnificent libraries you will see anywhere in the world.
net01 2y ago
Now we need an article about KULouvian splitting with UCLouvain and building a new town and university from scratch in less than 3 years, a true engineering marvel. Related that library was split into 2 because of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-was-the-leuven-library-divided https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-was-the-leuven-li...
- whynotmaybe 2y ago
  You also need to learn that the Flemish wanted so much to get rid of the French only classes that in 1916 they created a Dutch speaking university... with the help of the German that destroyed Leuven the year before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Bissing_university https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Bissing_university
richardmuhn 2y ago
[flagged]
- seszett 2y ago
  But do you lend books?
AlexanderDhoore 2y ago
Leuven. It's a Dutch speaking town. The university is KU Leuven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KU_Leuven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KU_Leuven
- Yeul 2y ago
  It is now. Belgian history is the true definition of insanity. There were Belgians who were quite happy to see this university go up in flames.
  - toolslive 2y ago
    It (Leuven) has always been a Dutch speaking town. Well, the majority of the population that is. The administration (city, university) started using French at some point (19th century - mid 20th century).
    - toolslive 2y ago
      clarification: used french in the 19th-century until mid 20th century. Anyway, the fact that the university was still giving some courses in French in 1968 in what was officially a Flemish University caused the "Leuven Vlaams" student riots. I live in Leuven and you can clearly see that in the middle ages, they spoke dutch here. The switch to French and back is visible in the street names (because often they carry all 3 names). A funny example: The "grasmusstraat" (now) was "Rue Erasmus" in the 19th century and "grasmusstroike" in the middle ges. Apparently the French civil servants didn't know that a grasmus is a little bird and renamed it after a famous alumnus.
- whynotmaybe 2y ago
  Yes, it is, but you can't rewrite history. It was internationaly called Louvain before the international recognition for Leuven only camed after the events of 1968. That's why the “Louvain shall be our battle cry” became a popular march in Britain. [1] And why it was called so in Australia. [2]. I guess that's why most of the English articles about Leuven includes the French name. 1. https://theo.kuleuven.be/apps/press/ecsi/belgian-culture-and-sports/ https://theo.kuleuven.be/apps/press/ecsi/belgian-culture-and... 2. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15533652 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15533652.
sgt101 2y ago
Very interesting to note that Oxford wasn't extensively bombed in ww2 despite being a manufacturing hub. I wonder what role this incident had in that choice.
- paganel 2y ago
  Take that with a huge grain of salt, but I've read recently that Hitler was thinking of making Oxford Britain's capital if the German invasion would have successfully happened, so because of that he didn't bomb it. I cannot remember the exact sources for that. On firmer ground when it comes to sources, I'm now reading E. H. Carr's Conditions of Peace [1] (written in 1942, so during WW2) and at some point he was also suggesting moving UK's capital from London further to the North, he was thinking somewhere in Midlands, if I remember right. It turns out that even back then some of the British people were fully aware of London's negative pull caused by its oversize. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditions_of_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditions_of_Peace
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  Kyoto may have been saved from the atom bomb because the US secretary of war had his honeymoon there: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33755182 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33755182
Aeolun 2y ago
It’s really jarring reading about a place I know and having it’s name inexplicably changed to French. Why?
- burkaman 2y ago
  It seems like a lot of primary sources for this article used the French name. Even if it was incorrect, maybe that was how it was commonly referred to outside of Belgium at the time? - https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1502002700 https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1502002700 - https://www.hi.uni-stuttgart.de/wgt/ww-one/Start/Weissbluten/Technology_and_Science/pdf/ww1_ger_08_06_04_reply.pdf https://www.hi.uni-stuttgart.de/wgt/ww-one/Start/Weissbluten... - https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25122278.pdf?acceptTC=true https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25122278.pdf?acceptTC=true
  - Insanity 2y ago
    Belgium was in an odd state of bilingualism at the time. While the people of the area would speak Flemish (“Dutch”), those in positions of power and education institutions would use French as the Lingua Franca. I was born in Leuven and lived there for 30 years of my life - it would be pretty odd to see contemporary references as “Louvain” by those local to it.
- elric 2y ago
  Because you don't know the place or its history as well as you seem to think you do. Flamingantism is a scourge upon Belgium. Louvain is fine in English. Much like ruuban is the correct form in Japanese. There's a whole article full of interesting historical context. Yet you comment on the perceived (and incorrect, thus imagined) slight against your mother tongue. This is a good example of why Belgium is such a hot mess. We'd rather spend time bickering about irrelevant nonsense than in addressing real problems.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > Flamingantism is a scourge upon Belgium. From your perspective maybe? From my perspective I don’t understand why they need to make everything half french, especially in an ostensibly Dutch speaking part of the country. It’s not like we use an alternative french name for Amsterdam.
eadmund 2y ago
> Louvain (“Leuven”) The correct name of the city is Leuven: it is a Flemish city, not a Wallonian one. Using French names for Flemish cities is just wrong.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago
  These are called exonyms and there's nothing wrong with them. The Italian city of Firenze is anglicized as Florence. The anglicized Jesus Christ is latinized as Iesus Christus, hellenized as Iesous Christos, aramaicized as Yeshua Mshiha. People do this all the time with tons of words and especially with proper nouns. It's completely normal and okay.
  - eadmund 2y ago
    I love exonyms when they are native. As you note, the English name for the Italian city is Florence (so too the proper English words are Turkey, Kiev and Peking, not Turkiye, Kyiv or Beijing). I see no reason at all to use the French name for a Flemish city when writing in English. When writing in French, sure.
    - seszett 2y ago
      But Florence is the French name of that city. Or Rome. I don't really understand the difference with Louvain.
    - readthenotes1 2y ago
      What was it called in 1914?
      - hyperman1 2y ago
        Both. Belgium is multi-lingual (NL,FR,DE), so most cities and bigger towns have 2 or 3 names. In fact, today, most streets in Brussels have 2 names. So do a lot of big local companies Most local inhabitants would have called it Leuven, as it is a Flemish city. The rich people at that time, both inside and outside the city, heavily promoted French, and pushed only the French names in politics and international communication. Even today, this is a very touchy subject.
highcountess 2y ago
[flagged]
fvdessen 2y ago
My great grandfather was the vice rector of the university at the time, as an historian he took the initiative to covertly collect evidence of all the nazi crimes, evidence which was used in the nuremberg trials. But more interestingly, there was a nationalist movement in Belgium at the the time, and a debate on which language to use at the university. The international language (french) or the local language (flemish). He was of the opinion that both had their place, which put him in opposition to the nationalists. Since he was one of the founders of the flemish literature movement, and the prime expert on flemish history he was hard to attack directly by the nationalists. So they denounced him to the gestapo, hoping they would get rid of him while keeping their hands clean. Fortunately for me it didn’t work, as the nazis were also reliant on his academic work for their pan-germanic narrative and refused to attack him directly as well. Nowadays we see as well western nationalist movements with ambivalent support for murderous regimes such as Russia, and I think this support comes in no small part from the idea that those regimes can be used to do the dirty work that they are too cowardly to do themselves
- atemerev 2y ago
  To do — how? by invading their countries and establishing a police state? That’s a little too much even for so called “nationalists”. I think it’s just plain old bribery and propaganda. As a Russian who emigrated a long time ago for political reasons, signed countless anti-Kremlin petitions, and sent money to support Ukraine and her people, I am scared how many people support this regime for reasons unknown. I don’t know any other possible reason except selling one’s soul for money.
  - fvdessen 2y ago
    The flemish nationalists supported the nazis long before they invaded. I don’t think Russia will invade the USA any time soon, but it can invade other countries and throw liberals out of windows over there, normalizing the practice and diminishing the power of liberalism worldwide
    - markvdb 2y ago
PeterStuer 2y ago
The library was rebuilt with American aid. If you walk around the building today you will see all the plaques of contributing institutions embedded in the walls. In August of 1914, during World War I, Leuven was looted by German troops. In the night of the 25th to 26th of August, they set fire to a large part of the city, effectively destroying about half of it. The Germans set fire to the 14th century University Hall and its library wing. The University library burned, and with it about 300,000 books, about 1000 incunabula and a huge collection of manuscripts, including the University’s founding bull from 1425. The Germans had aimed to punish Leuven after alleging the presence of snipers in the city. They claimed that the sacking of Leuven was a fair reprisal. Their ‘punisment’ of Leuven destroyed more than 1000 buildings and cost more than 200 lives. When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, soon after the restoration of Leuven’s new library, Belgium found itself neutral once again. After the retreat of the British and with German forces entering the city, on the 17th of May 1940 the new University library was set aflame after an artillery barrage. Molten glass from the above floors flowed into the cellars, past the steel doors, and destroyed the collections. The entire building was gutted. Not even twelve years after its opening, the new University library was reduced to rubble and its collections were ravaged once more. The occupying forces accused the British of having set the library ablaze on purpose to allow them to later blame the Germans. No access to the ruin or objective investigations were allowed. Joseph Goebbels, German propaganda minister, paid the ruined library a visit to push the German version of events. At the Nuremberg tribunal it was found that the library burned after German artillery had struck it. Only 21,000 of the original 900,000 pieces in the library collection were left. Hundreds of manuscripts (including some that had survived the 1914 fire) and everything from before 1501 was destroyed. https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/research/america-europefund/aef-library-brochure-online-06-2023.pdf https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/research/america-europefund/aef...
firebot 2y ago
“Where they burn books, they will also burn people” — Heinrich Heine
- burnt-resistor 2y ago
  Every library in Texas should have this inscribed in granite above it.
thiscatis 2y ago
The correct name of this city is Leuven.
- kgwgk 2y ago
  The World Health Organization thinks it’s Louvain - or at least it thought so in 2004. https://eucliduniversity.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/who_style-guide1.pdf https://eucliduniversity.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/who_...
- numerobis 2y ago
  This is the name of the city today, but this has not always been the case. In the past, Leuven was a bilingual city, and to many of the people who lived there, the city was known as Louvain.
- gillesjacobs 2y ago
  Tis Leive, sis
numbers_guy 2y ago
The situation in 2024 is much more confusing. Because it seems to me that the political side that styles itself to be against the far-right, is also very much in favour of curtailing free speech and reigning in internet platforms where people share news and political opinions. So who is burning the books? Everyone? I'm so confused.
- _zagj 2y ago
  It's pretty simple. Right-wingers want to control what information their minor children are exposed to, especially at school. Left-wingers want to control what information adults are exposed to (e.g., deplatforming wrongthink).
gillesjacobs 2y ago
My great grandparents had a friend die in this fire. Then they and their kids had to go through it again 26 years later.
stellalo 2y ago
To be precise (because I was confused initially): the building being shown in pictures is the current “main hall” of KU Leuven in Naamsestraat (second picture), nearby Oudemarkt (first picture), and not the university library in Ladeuzeplein.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

143 points by chmaynard 2y ago

Final sentence: To this day, the burning of the library in Louvain remains a battle line, which we should be weary [sic] to ever cross again, for as Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) so eloquently once stated, “where they burn books, they will also burn people”.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nerdponx 2y ago
The wary/weary mixup is so strange to me, especially because it seems relatively new (last 5-10 years at most).
- pavlov 2y ago
  It’s not that strange? The words are homophones and both express a reticent emotional state.
  - robin_reala 2y ago
    Where in the world are you that weary and wary are homophones? Genuinely interested, I can’t think of a dialect where that’s the case.
    - Majestic121 2y ago
      As a non-native speaker, 'to be wary' is not really in my vocabulary, while 'to be weary' seems much more common, and both sound pretty close to each other even if there is a difference even with my accent, so I could see myself making the mistake. It looks similar to than/then, but than/then is much more jarring to me for some reason.
    - pavlov 2y ago
      They are not homophones? I’m not a native speaker and I’ve simply always assumed they are. I lived in London and the US for many years, but these are not common words in speech so I never got corrected. I guess that must mean “wear” and “weary” have a different pronunciation for “ea”. This vowel digraph remains my eternal nemesis… Ever since I learned as a child that “bear” doesn’t rhyme with “fear” and found myself faced with the overwhelming realization that I will never speak this language 100% correctly, no matter how much effort I put into reading and writing.
      - marssaxman 2y ago
        > I guess that must mean “wear” and “weary” have a different pronunciation for “ea”. Indeed so! "Wear" and "ware" are homophones, having the same vowel sound as "wary". "Weary", on the other hand, rhymes with "cheery" or "dreary". > I will never speak this language 100% correctly I am a middle-aged native speaker, an avid lifelong reader with a love for the language, and I still occasionally discover that I am mispronouncing words I have known for years.
      - harimau777 2y ago
        I pronounce weary with a long e sound and wairy with a vowel sound between long and short a (similar to "air"). To me they are very similar and rhyme but not identical.
      - hermitcrab 2y ago
        Native Enlish speaker here (from the UK). I feel so sorry for anyone learning English as a foreign language - it's a mess!
  - mannykannot 2y ago
    While they do both often express a reticent emotional state, the cause of that state is different: for 'weary', it is exhaustion from past events, while for 'wary', the concern is to avoid undesirable events in the future. There is arguably some overlap where someone is being wary because they are weary of similar situations turning out badly all too often in the past.
- LgWoodenBadger 2y ago
  It’s similar to dominant/dominate and should’ve/should of. People these days…
- blacksqr 2y ago
  My wife started using the word this way about 20 years ago, I also heard it on TV ads at the time. I always assumed it was a confused fusion of "wary" and "leery".
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    I always assumed it was just a misspelling of "wary" by analogy to "wear". You're telling me that people actually say "weary" when they mean "wary"? That's very different from what I thought.
    - blacksqr 2y ago
      > people actually say "weary" when they mean "wary"? Yes, that's my experience.

trgn 2y ago

On the flipside. American universities supported a rebuild of the library and today still it is one of the most magnificent libraries you will see anywhere in the world.

net01 2y ago

Now we need an article about KULouvian splitting with UCLouvain and building a new town and university from scratch in less than 3 years, a true engineering marvel. Related that library was split into 2 because of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-was-the-leuven-library-divided https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-was-the-leuven-li...

whynotmaybe 2y ago
You also need to learn that the Flemish wanted so much to get rid of the French only classes that in 1916 they created a Dutch speaking university... with the help of the German that destroyed Leuven the year before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Bissing_university https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Bissing_university

richardmuhn 2y ago

[flagged]

seszett 2y ago
But do you lend books?

AlexanderDhoore 2y ago

Leuven. It's a Dutch speaking town. The university is KU Leuven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KU_Leuven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KU_Leuven

Yeul 2y ago
It is now. Belgian history is the true definition of insanity. There were Belgians who were quite happy to see this university go up in flames.
- toolslive 2y ago
  It (Leuven) has always been a Dutch speaking town. Well, the majority of the population that is. The administration (city, university) started using French at some point (19th century - mid 20th century).
  - toolslive 2y ago
    clarification: used french in the 19th-century until mid 20th century. Anyway, the fact that the university was still giving some courses in French in 1968 in what was officially a Flemish University caused the "Leuven Vlaams" student riots. I live in Leuven and you can clearly see that in the middle ages, they spoke dutch here. The switch to French and back is visible in the street names (because often they carry all 3 names). A funny example: The "grasmusstraat" (now) was "Rue Erasmus" in the 19th century and "grasmusstroike" in the middle ges. Apparently the French civil servants didn't know that a grasmus is a little bird and renamed it after a famous alumnus.
whynotmaybe 2y ago
Yes, it is, but you can't rewrite history. It was internationaly called Louvain before the international recognition for Leuven only camed after the events of 1968. That's why the “Louvain shall be our battle cry” became a popular march in Britain. [1] And why it was called so in Australia. [2]. I guess that's why most of the English articles about Leuven includes the French name. 1. https://theo.kuleuven.be/apps/press/ecsi/belgian-culture-and-sports/ https://theo.kuleuven.be/apps/press/ecsi/belgian-culture-and... 2. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15533652 https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15533652.

sgt101 2y ago

Very interesting to note that Oxford wasn't extensively bombed in ww2 despite being a manufacturing hub. I wonder what role this incident had in that choice.

paganel 2y ago
Take that with a huge grain of salt, but I've read recently that Hitler was thinking of making Oxford Britain's capital if the German invasion would have successfully happened, so because of that he didn't bomb it. I cannot remember the exact sources for that. On firmer ground when it comes to sources, I'm now reading E. H. Carr's Conditions of Peace [1] (written in 1942, so during WW2) and at some point he was also suggesting moving UK's capital from London further to the North, he was thinking somewhere in Midlands, if I remember right. It turns out that even back then some of the British people were fully aware of London's negative pull caused by its oversize. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditions_of_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditions_of_Peace
hermitcrab 2y ago
Kyoto may have been saved from the atom bomb because the US secretary of war had his honeymoon there: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33755182 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33755182

Aeolun 2y ago

It’s really jarring reading about a place I know and having it’s name inexplicably changed to French. Why?

burkaman 2y ago
It seems like a lot of primary sources for this article used the French name. Even if it was incorrect, maybe that was how it was commonly referred to outside of Belgium at the time? - https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1502002700 https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1502002700 - https://www.hi.uni-stuttgart.de/wgt/ww-one/Start/Weissbluten/Technology_and_Science/pdf/ww1_ger_08_06_04_reply.pdf https://www.hi.uni-stuttgart.de/wgt/ww-one/Start/Weissbluten... - https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25122278.pdf?acceptTC=true https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25122278.pdf?acceptTC=true
- Insanity 2y ago
  Belgium was in an odd state of bilingualism at the time. While the people of the area would speak Flemish (“Dutch”), those in positions of power and education institutions would use French as the Lingua Franca. I was born in Leuven and lived there for 30 years of my life - it would be pretty odd to see contemporary references as “Louvain” by those local to it.
elric 2y ago
Because you don't know the place or its history as well as you seem to think you do. Flamingantism is a scourge upon Belgium. Louvain is fine in English. Much like ruuban is the correct form in Japanese. There's a whole article full of interesting historical context. Yet you comment on the perceived (and incorrect, thus imagined) slight against your mother tongue. This is a good example of why Belgium is such a hot mess. We'd rather spend time bickering about irrelevant nonsense than in addressing real problems.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  > Flamingantism is a scourge upon Belgium. From your perspective maybe? From my perspective I don’t understand why they need to make everything half french, especially in an ostensibly Dutch speaking part of the country. It’s not like we use an alternative french name for Amsterdam.

eadmund 2y ago

> Louvain (“Leuven”) The correct name of the city is Leuven: it is a Flemish city, not a Wallonian one. Using French names for Flemish cities is just wrong.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago
These are called exonyms and there's nothing wrong with them. The Italian city of Firenze is anglicized as Florence. The anglicized Jesus Christ is latinized as Iesus Christus, hellenized as Iesous Christos, aramaicized as Yeshua Mshiha. People do this all the time with tons of words and especially with proper nouns. It's completely normal and okay.
- eadmund 2y ago
  I love exonyms when they are native. As you note, the English name for the Italian city is Florence (so too the proper English words are Turkey, Kiev and Peking, not Turkiye, Kyiv or Beijing). I see no reason at all to use the French name for a Flemish city when writing in English. When writing in French, sure.
  - seszett 2y ago
    But Florence is the French name of that city. Or Rome. I don't really understand the difference with Louvain.
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    What was it called in 1914?
    - hyperman1 2y ago
      Both. Belgium is multi-lingual (NL,FR,DE), so most cities and bigger towns have 2 or 3 names. In fact, today, most streets in Brussels have 2 names. So do a lot of big local companies Most local inhabitants would have called it Leuven, as it is a Flemish city. The rich people at that time, both inside and outside the city, heavily promoted French, and pushed only the French names in politics and international communication. Even today, this is a very touchy subject.

highcountess 2y ago

[flagged]

fvdessen 2y ago

My great grandfather was the vice rector of the university at the time, as an historian he took the initiative to covertly collect evidence of all the nazi crimes, evidence which was used in the nuremberg trials. But more interestingly, there was a nationalist movement in Belgium at the the time, and a debate on which language to use at the university. The international language (french) or the local language (flemish). He was of the opinion that both had their place, which put him in opposition to the nationalists. Since he was one of the founders of the flemish literature movement, and the prime expert on flemish history he was hard to attack directly by the nationalists. So they denounced him to the gestapo, hoping they would get rid of him while keeping their hands clean. Fortunately for me it didn’t work, as the nazis were also reliant on his academic work for their pan-germanic narrative and refused to attack him directly as well. Nowadays we see as well western nationalist movements with ambivalent support for murderous regimes such as Russia, and I think this support comes in no small part from the idea that those regimes can be used to do the dirty work that they are too cowardly to do themselves

atemerev 2y ago
To do — how? by invading their countries and establishing a police state? That’s a little too much even for so called “nationalists”. I think it’s just plain old bribery and propaganda. As a Russian who emigrated a long time ago for political reasons, signed countless anti-Kremlin petitions, and sent money to support Ukraine and her people, I am scared how many people support this regime for reasons unknown. I don’t know any other possible reason except selling one’s soul for money.
- fvdessen 2y ago
  The flemish nationalists supported the nazis long before they invaded. I don’t think Russia will invade the USA any time soon, but it can invade other countries and throw liberals out of windows over there, normalizing the practice and diminishing the power of liberalism worldwide
  - markvdb 2y ago

PeterStuer 2y ago

The library was rebuilt with American aid. If you walk around the building today you will see all the plaques of contributing institutions embedded in the walls. In August of 1914, during World War I, Leuven was looted by German troops. In the night of the 25th to 26th of August, they set fire to a large part of the city, effectively destroying about half of it. The Germans set fire to the 14th century University Hall and its library wing. The University library burned, and with it about 300,000 books, about 1000 incunabula and a huge collection of manuscripts, including the University’s founding bull from 1425. The Germans had aimed to punish Leuven after alleging the presence of snipers in the city. They claimed that the sacking of Leuven was a fair reprisal. Their ‘punisment’ of Leuven destroyed more than 1000 buildings and cost more than 200 lives. When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, soon after the restoration of Leuven’s new library, Belgium found itself neutral once again. After the retreat of the British and with German forces entering the city, on the 17th of May 1940 the new University library was set aflame after an artillery barrage. Molten glass from the above floors flowed into the cellars, past the steel doors, and destroyed the collections. The entire building was gutted. Not even twelve years after its opening, the new University library was reduced to rubble and its collections were ravaged once more. The occupying forces accused the British of having set the library ablaze on purpose to allow them to later blame the Germans. No access to the ruin or objective investigations were allowed. Joseph Goebbels, German propaganda minister, paid the ruined library a visit to push the German version of events. At the Nuremberg tribunal it was found that the library burned after German artillery had struck it. Only 21,000 of the original 900,000 pieces in the library collection were left. Hundreds of manuscripts (including some that had survived the 1914 fire) and everything from before 1501 was destroyed. https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/research/america-europefund/aef-library-brochure-online-06-2023.pdf https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs/research/america-europefund/aef...

firebot 2y ago

“Where they burn books, they will also burn people” — Heinrich Heine

burnt-resistor 2y ago
Every library in Texas should have this inscribed in granite above it.

thiscatis 2y ago

The correct name of this city is Leuven.

kgwgk 2y ago
The World Health Organization thinks it’s Louvain - or at least it thought so in 2004. https://eucliduniversity.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/who_style-guide1.pdf https://eucliduniversity.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/who_...
numerobis 2y ago
This is the name of the city today, but this has not always been the case. In the past, Leuven was a bilingual city, and to many of the people who lived there, the city was known as Louvain.
gillesjacobs 2y ago
Tis Leive, sis

numbers_guy 2y ago

The situation in 2024 is much more confusing. Because it seems to me that the political side that styles itself to be against the far-right, is also very much in favour of curtailing free speech and reigning in internet platforms where people share news and political opinions. So who is burning the books? Everyone? I'm so confused.

_zagj 2y ago
It's pretty simple. Right-wingers want to control what information their minor children are exposed to, especially at school. Left-wingers want to control what information adults are exposed to (e.g., deplatforming wrongthink).

gillesjacobs 2y ago

My great grandparents had a friend die in this fire. Then they and their kids had to go through it again 26 years later.

stellalo 2y ago

To be precise (because I was confused initially): the building being shown in pictures is the current “main hall” of KU Leuven in Naamsestraat (second picture), nearby Oudemarkt (first picture), and not the university library in Ladeuzeplein.

deleted 2y ago

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