Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden. Deel 117

Summaries

Put upon then pushed out. The employment conditions of civil servants working in Louis-Napoleon's State Secretariat.

King Louis-Napoleon moved the entire government apparatus on a number of occasions. However, the public bodies continued to be administered in a centralized, efficient and productive manner, despite all the reorganizations and being relocated within The Hague in 1806, and to Utrecht in 1807 and Amsterdam in 1808. The staff were loyal but very aware of their own position. The office premises were dignified and austerely furnished. The rules and regulations laid great emphasis upon orderliness and being available at all times. When Louis-Napoleon left, a French administration came into effect from 1 January 1811 and most civil servants were dismissed.

Annelien de Dijn, ‘In keeping with our customs and traditions.’ The first Belgian constitution (1815-1830) in its intellectual context.

In 1830, the National Assembly, Belgium's constitutional assembly, did not attempt to create the best possible constitution for the new state, but rather to draw up a constitution that would take the existing order into account on the one hand and that would be best suited to Belgian customs and traditions on the other. The works of Montesquieu played an important role in inspiring this ‘pragmatic conservatism’. Many concrete arguments were drawn from his ‘Esprit des lois’ during the debates about the monarchy as well as those about the senate. Therefore, indirectly, the debates in the National Congress also serve to illustrate the enormous influence that ‘Esprit des lois’ had on political thinking during the Restoration period.

Raf de Bont, ‘Impudent scholars have fondled his naked body.’ The discourse on genius, madness and degeneracy in Belgium around 1900.

In the late nineteenth century two publications on the subject of ‘genius’ provoked a storm of controversy. The first, by Cesare Lombroso entitled ‘L'uomo di genio’ (1888), emphasized the various links between genius and madness. The second, by Max Nordau entitled ‘Entartung’ (1892), set out to prove that a large number of well-known artists of the time were in fact pseudo-geniuses and degenerates. In response to these publications a debate got under way among Belgian artists and scientists concerning the relationship between genius, madness and degeneracy. Most of those taking part in the debate opted to separate the notion of genius from the other two concepts. This way, ‘the man of genius’ could preserve his ‘übermensch’ status throughout the debates. This does not mean that one uniform concept of genius prevailed. In fact, the way it was defined in practice left ample room to project the prevailing values of various subgroups in society.