Hendrik Conscience is considered the pioneer of Dutch-language literature in Flanders, writing at a time when Belgium was dominated by the French language among the upper classes, in literature and government.
24 Facts About Hendrik Conscience
2.
Hendrik Conscience is best known for his romantic nationalist novel, The Lion of Flanders, inspired by the victory of a Flemish peasant militia over French knights at the 1302 Battle of the Golden Spurs during the Franco-Flemish War.
3.
Hendrik Conscience's mother was a Fleming, Cornelia Balieu, and was illiterate.
4.
Hendrik Conscience was an eccentric and he took up the business of buying and breaking-up worn-out vessels, which the port of Antwerp was full of after the peace.
5.
Hendrik Conscience's mother died in 1820, and the boy and his younger brother had no companion other than their grim and somewhat sinister father.
6.
In 1826 Pierre Hendrik Conscience married again, this time a widow much younger than himself, Anna Catherina Bogaerts.
7.
Hendrik Conscience had long before this developed a passion for reading, and reveled all day long among the ancient, torn and dusty tomes which passed through the garret of The Green Corner on their way to being destroyed.
8.
At the age of seventeen Hendrik Conscience left his father's house to become a tutor in Antwerp and to continue his studies, which were soon interrupted by the Belgian Revolution of 1830.
9.
Hendrik Conscience volunteered in the Belgian revolutionary army, served at Turnhout and fought the Dutch near Oostmalle, Geel, Lubbeek and Louvain.
10.
Hendrik Conscience considered writing in the Dutch language although at the time that language was believed to be unfit for literature as French was the language of the educated and the ruling class.
11.
Hendrik Conscience's poems written while he was a soldier, were all in French.
12.
Hendrik Conscience received no pension when he was discharged, and returning to his fathers house without a job, he made a conscious decision to write in Dutch.
13.
Hendrik Conscience's father thought it so vulgar of his son to write a book in Dutch that he evicted him, and the celebrated novelist of the future started for Antwerp, with a fortune which was strictly confined to two francs and a bundle of clothes.
14.
Hendrik Conscience's portrayal inspired De Vlaamse Leeuw, the long-time unofficial anthem of Flemish nationalists and only recently recognised officially as the anthem of Flanders.
15.
At a congress in Ghent in 1841, the writings of Hendrik Conscience were mentioned as the seed which was most likely to yield a crop of national literature.
16.
Accordingly, the patriotic party undertook to encourage their circulation, and each new contribution by Hendrik Conscience was welcomed as an honor to Belgium.
17.
In 1845 Hendrik Conscience was made a Knight of the Order of Leopold.
18.
In 1845 Conscience published a History of Belgium on request by King Leopold I He then returned to picturing Flemish home-life which would form the most valuable portion of his work.
19.
Hendrik Conscience was by now at the zenith of his genius, and Blind Rosa, Rikketikketak, The Poor Gentleman, and The Miser rank among the most important of the long list of his novels.
20.
Hendrik Conscience continued to produce novels with great regularity, his publications amounting to nearly eighty in number.
21.
Hendrik Conscience was by now the most eminent of Belgian writers.
22.
Hendrik Conscience's funeral was held nearby, at St Boniface's Church in Ixelles.
23.
Hendrik Conscience was buried at the Schoonselhof cemetery in Antwerp, his tomb a monument honoring the great writer.
24.
Subsequent developments in literary understanding, particularly the realism movement which emerged in Hendrik Conscience's lifetime, have meant that his work sometimes seems "outmoded and primitive" to modern readers.