Piet Vermeylen (8 April 1904 in

Uccle Uccle () or Ukkel () is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. In common with all of Brussels' municipalities, it is legally bilingual (French–Dutch). It is generally considered an affluent area of the city an ...

– 30 December 1991 in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, also called Pierre Vermeylen by some Belgian French sources), was a Belgian lawyer, and

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

politician and minister. He was the son of the

Flemish Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...

politician

August Vermeylen August Vermeylen (12 May 1872, in Brussels – 10 January 1945, in Uccle) was a Belgian writer and literature critic. In 1893 he founded the literary journal ''Van Nu en Straks'' (''Of Today and Tomorrow''). He studied history at the Free Univers ...

Early life

In 1924, Piet was one of the founders of a Flemish study group at the Université libre de Bruxelles. In 1933, Vermeylen was one of the judges at the London Counter-trial of the Reichstag fire. In 1938, together with

Henri Storck Henri Storck (5 September 1907 – 17 September 1999) was a Belgian writer, filmmaker and documentarist. In 1933, he directed, with Joris Ivens, ''Misère au Borinage'', a film about the miners in the Borinage area. In 1938, with Andre Thirifays ...

and André Thirifays, he founded the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique.

Political career

After his father's death, Piet succeeded him in the Flemish socialist politics of

. Notwithstanding what German occupiers had done to his father, he vehemently protested the execution of Flemish collaborationist August Borms. From 1947 to 1949, he was Minister for Internal Affairs. He again became a minister for Internal affairs in 1954 and for four years had to defend the secularist school policies of the Liberal-Socialist coalition under Prime Minister

Achille Van Acker Achille Van Acker (8 April 1898 – 10 July 1975) was a Belgian politician who served three terms as the prime minister of Belgium between 1946 and 1958. A moderate from Flanders, Van Acker was a member of the Belgian Socialist Party (PSB–BSP) ...

in the face of Roman Catholic opposition, at one time controversially forbidding Belgian Radio to report on a large-scale demonstration against the new school laws proposed by Education minister Leo Collard. From 1961 to 1965 he was Belgian Justice minister under Théo Lefèvre. In 1961 he proposed the first law on

amnesty Amnesty (from the Ancient Greek ἀμνηστία, ''amnestia'', "forgetfulness, passing over") is defined as "A pardon extended by the government to a group or class of people, usually for a political offense; the act of a sovereign power offici ...

for those who had

collaborated Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

with

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

during the

second world war World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. In April 1964, after unsuccessfully trying to soften the wrath of many Belgian doctors over a speech by the Prime Minister and so preventing the ensuing notorious "doctors' strike", he lent his support to the civil mobilization of all hospital doctors and of doctors who were members of the Belgian reserve army. When in 1968, French-speaking socialist politicians in Brussels (led by Henri Simonet) arranged the Brussels party list to ensure Piet Vermeylen, Hendrik Fayat and other Flemish socialist politicians from Brussels, Halle and

Vilvoorde Vilvoorde (, french: Vilvorde ; historically known as ''Filford'' in English) is a Belgian municipality in the Flemish province of Flemish Brabant. The municipality comprises the city of Vilvoorde proper with its two outlying quarters of Koningslo ...

were virtually unelectable, Vermeylen took the unprecedented step of splitting the party and forming a rival Brussels Flemish Socialist Party, called "Red Lions". After his surprise re-election, he became the first Belgian Minister of Dutch Language Education in the new government, led by Christian Social Prime Minister

Gaston Eyskens Gaston François Marie, viscount Eyskens (1 April 1905 – 3 January 1988) was a Christian democratic politician and prime minister of Belgium. He was also an economist and member of the Belgian Christian Social Party (CVP-PSC). He served thr ...

. When armies of the

Warsaw pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist repub ...

invaded

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

in August 1968, Vermeylen, who was secretly visiting Brno as a simple tourist, barely managed to escape to

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. He stayed on as a minister until 1972, and soon after quit active politics. In 1984, he wrote an autobiography.

Bibliography

* "Een Gulzig Leven", Kritak, January 1984.

References

Vermeylenfonds history

External links

The doctors' strike in 1964

The Red Lions as the start of the split in the Belgian Socialist party
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vermeylen, Piet 1904 births 1991 deaths Belgian Ministers of State Belgian socialists Flemish lawyers People from Uccle