Research Ulrike Burki

Abstract

During the First World War (1914-1918), German authorities rolled out a propaganda strategy in occupied Belgium. In an effort to disrupt the Belgian state, they systematically angled for the sympathy of the Flemish part of the Belgian population. Leaning on the notion of Germanic kinship and a profound cultural relationship, the occupying forces presented themselves as a "Brudervolk" assisting the Flemish community to liberate themselves from "francophone oppression". While these efforts may at first have seemed hopelessly contrived – by sowing death and destruction in "poor little Belgium" the occupier had raised much angry blood – eventually the so-called Flamenpolitik did have a major impact on the Flemish movement (Vlaamse Beweging). Influenced by "flamenpolitical" propaganda, radical flamingant groups succumbed to the temptations of a full-fledged nationalism oriented toward autonomous political institutions and with separatist overtones. Whereas various aspects of this Flamenpolitik have already been examined, up until now very little attention has been paid to the remarkable number of German translations of Flemish literature that appeared in this crucial period. By investigating these translations as a form of "cultural transfer," this project will uncover how the German translation policy created support for the consolidation and spread of the "Flamenpolitik" and thus ultimately contributed to the reshaping of the political landscape in Belgium after the war.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Absillis Kevin
• Fellow: Burki Ulrike

Research team(s)

• Institute for the Study of Literature in the Low Countries (ISLN)

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Growing Up Urban is the first in-depth research project devoted to literary constructions of the city in Dutch-language children's books published in Belgium in the early decades of the 20th century, as well as to the contextual, cultural historical factors that informed such constructions. The project analyses 40 urban children's novels, i.e. children's books set in cities that engage with city life, published by the leading, Antwerp-based firm L. Opdebeek in the period 1900-1940. This is a time when European cities were developing and modernizing rapidly and the urban child became a prime focus of societal and cultural engineering for various ideological movements. Inspired by the state of the art, foreign examples and preliminary findings, the project hypothesizes that L. Opdebeek's children's books actively engaged with the city and urban life in Flanders in positive, though complex, ways, and that they used the city to explore discourses of belonging, including questions of Belgian and Flemish identity. It investigates this hypothesis and related research questions through close reading the primary works and contextualizing them in archival material that sheds light on their creators, production, marketing and reception. Growing Up Urban thus sheds light on the entanglement of children's literature with urban discourses and transformative processes of urban modernity in early 20th-century Belgium. It uncovers a body of understudied Flemish books, authors and illustrators and contributes to a better understanding of the role that children's literature played in the Flemish movement. In answering to these research goals, the project calls into question the supposed anti-urbanism among contemporaneous Dutch-speaking Belgians and reassesses the Flemish movement's complex relationship with the nation state of Belgium, modernity and the city, as well as with childhood. Growing Up Urban strengthens existing interdisciplinary research between three research groups at the Faculty of Arts, as well as with prominent external partners in heritage and literature.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Joosen Vanessa
• Co-promoter: Absillis Kevin
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja
• Fellow: Burki Ulrike
• Fellow: Ledegen Louise

Research team(s)

• Antwerp Centre for Digital humanities and literary Criticism (ACDC)

Project type(s)

• Research Project