On the occasion of the Stynen 2018 project, the Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) conducted five interviews with family members, colleagues and clients of Léon Stynen that give us a unique insight into the architect’s life and work.

You will find a brief summary of each interview below. If you would like to access the full interview, please complete the request form.

• Herman Van der Wee
• Anne Stynen
• Lucien Jacques Baucher
• Paul Meekels
• Constantin Brodzki

The cultural heritage of design consists not only of sketches, models, photographs or correspondence of designers. With design, there is also a strong interplay between explicit knowledge and unconscious knowledge, knowledge that may be passed on but which usually does not receive written expression. That is why the Flemish Architecture Institute conducted interviews with designers, policy-makers and craftspeople.

For each of the seven interviews, you will find a short summary and brief biographical information of the interviewee on the website. If you would like to consult the full interview, please fill in the request form.

• Leonce Dekeijse
• José Vanderlinden
• Luc en Katrien Mestdagh
• Achiel Pauwels
• Moniek Bucquoye
• Lieven Daenens
• Johan Valcke

The Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi), as part of the project Fifty years of urban planning law, conducted eight interviews with key witnesses of urban planning development and handling of landscape during the past half century.

For each of the eight interviews, you will find a short summary and brief biographical information of the interviewee on the site of the Flemish Architecture Institute.

• Jef Van den Broeck
• Herman Baeyens
• Bob Cools
• Georges Allaert
• Herman Rosseau
• Louis Albrechts
• Evert Lagrou
• Karel Debaere en Bert Vanbelle

In 2017, the museum started the fieldworker project. Field workers are people with a refugee history and/or migration background. During this project, they conducted interviews with people with a refugee story.

The field workers were close to the interviewee. They spoke his/her home language and knew the region or the home country of their interlocutor.

You don’t just become a fieldworker. We organised an intensive training in heritage methodologies and interview techniques. Our fieldworkers – Wendy Abusabal Sanchez, Andres Lübbert, Sanaa El Fekri, Wendy Kegels, Diana Dimbueni, Polina Gerelchuk, Samer Jadallah, Ursula Jaramillo, Samuel Pinillos, Vida Razavi – collected more than 30 inspiring refugee stories. The stories are now part of the museum collection. They are also the basis of a number of small and large productions, exhibitions and activities that we organise in cooperation with external partners.

redstarline.be/veldwerk

Fieldwork project on behalf of Red Star Line Museum (within the framework of Specially Unknown EU project)

speciallyunknown.eu

‘The 32nd day’, a film that one of the fieldworkers, Andrés Lübbert, made for the project. Andrés is the son of cameraman Jorge Lübbert, who fled Chile in the late 1970s. Father Jorge made a ‘silent’ film about this event in which he tried to cope with his traumas. Son Andrés made the film again, in today’s Antwerp.

Both films are played side by side in split screen mode, alternated with images from conflict zones shot by Jorge as a cameraman, and testimonies from the fieldworkers’ project. In this way, the present and the past are interwoven to form a result of a multigenerational trauma, and a hard and uncomfortable reflection on the emotional ballast of ‘the refugee’. At the same time, the film is a pamphlet about art as a means to overcome the traumas.

José Gotovitch was born in 1940. A Belgian historian, he graduated in history from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) where he later taught contemporary history for many years. His doctoral thesis, which he defended in 1988, focused on the Belgian communists from 1939 to 1944. José Gotovitch joined the Centre for Research and Historical Studies of the Second World War in 1967 (later CegeSoma). He became its director from 1988 to 2005. He was also the scientific director of the Centre des archives communistes de Belgique (CARCOB) for several years.

José Gotovitch worked mainly on communism in Belgium but also on the Communist International in Moscow. He also examined the history of the Second World War from a social and prosopographical perspective. The nearly 400 interviews he conducted from 1970 to the end of the 1990s thus focused largely on communism in Belgium (P.C.B.), but also on resistance networks during the Second World War, as well as collaboration (Rex, flamingantism). Among others, he interviewed many politicians, ministers, Belgian and foreign secretaries general. Following these interviews, he published numerous books and articles, including L’An 1940 ; Du rouge au tricolore ; Du communisme et des communistes en Belgique : approches critiques ; L’Europe des communistes : identités politiques européennes ; La Seconde Guerre mondiale en Belgique : orientation archivistique ; Les occupations allemandes en Belgique, etc.

Jean Dujardin holds a degree in diplomatic sciences from the University of Liège. Upon graduation in 1964, he entered the National Centre for the History of the Two World Wars and the C.R.E.H.S.S.G.M. when it was founded in 1968. In 1986, at the age of 49, he died of an illness.

During his career, Jean Dujardin’s objective was to make the history of the Second World War better known to the general public, particularly through educational dossiers and exhibitions.

He conducted 19 interviews between 1970 and 1984, mainly on “clandestine warfare” (intelligence services, press, radio). He was particularly interested in the intelligence networks “Luc”, Zero, BOUCLE and MILL. He also carried out an inventory of clandestine newspapers kept in Belgium. His death left his research on the Marc network and the functioning of Sûreté de l’Etat in London unfinished.

A graduate in Germanic languages and a licenced secondary school teacher in 1964, Gerlinda Swillen defended her doctoral thesis on “Born of War children” at the VUB in 2016. From 2009 to 2013, she was also spokesperson for the international BOW i.n. network. (Born Of War international network).

Oral testimonies are one of the main sources of Gerlinda Swillen’s research work on these children. Since 2008, she has interviewed several dozen witnesses. All of Gerlinda Swillen’s interviews were submitted in digital format to CegeSoma. Many photographs were attached to further complement the sound archive collection. These children born to Belgian mothers and German fathers were interviewed in French, Dutch or German. A large proportion of the interviewees wished to remain anonymous and the recordings are not yet freely accessible. A specific authorization must be granted by the interviewer.

Dirk Martin studied history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) where he defended his thesis on local political personnel during the interwar period. He was a scientific collaborator at CegeSoma from 1979 to 2016, holding various positions such as head of Archives, head of the Documentation Sector and Acting Director. He is also a member of several official management bodies and associations in the research sector. Notably, he was the Secretary of the Documentation Group of the Federal Scientific Establishments. He left CegeSoma after having been its director from September to December 2016.

Dirk Martin’s research areas were varied. His interests included Belgium’s foreign policy before, during and after the Second World War, communal policy of the interwar period, cultural policy under occupation and, more generally, sources relating to Belgium during the Second World War.

As part of his research, Dirk Martin conducted some fifty interviews between the 1980s and 2001, mostly in Dutch on a variety of themes, but mainly on collaboration and resistance in occupied Belgium. Several of his interviews address these issues at the local level in cities such as Ghent, Leuven and Antwerp. The result of his research on the subject has led to the publication of several key books including De Rijksuniversiteit Gent tijdens de bezetting 1940-1944. Leven put de vijand and Antwerp sous l’Occupation, 1940-1945.

Other interviews with Dirk Martin concern culture and the arts during the occupation (dance, music and literature), Belgians in Great Britain and the United States during the Second World War, propaganda and Belgian trade unionism abroad.

De Rijksuniversiteit Gent tijdens de bezetting 1940-1944 : leven met de vijand
Dirk Martin

Gepubliceerd in 1985 in Gent door Archief van de Rijksuniversiteit Gent

Antwerpen 1940-1945

Dirk Martin, Lieve Saerens

ISBN: 9789085422488 
augustus 2011 

An important figure in CegeSoma and present since its launch in 1969, Frans Selleslagh wrote a thesis on activism between 1914 and 1916. For many years, he devoted himself to collecting and filing documents relating to the second war period. His main research interests were Christian Youth Workers, compulsory work in Germany, and the Catholic Church. He also contributed greatly to the development of the Centre’s Images and Sounds section by developing an awareness of the importance of these formerly overlooked sources. He left CegeSoma in 2002 to retire. He then volunteered to contribute to the classification of the archives of the Archdiocese of Mechelen. In October 2008, he died of illness.

Although there is nothing more everyday than the lunch break, we still know little about it. Amsab-ISG is taking up the challenge of a project on lunch time in order to shed light on how working people used to spend their lunch break, both in the past and today.

Food … is not only a collection of products that can be used for statistical or nutritional studies. It is also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations and behavior. (Roland Barthes, 1975).

The project consists of making an inventory, recording and preserving the testimonies about meal times collected in the past and collecting and recording stories that fill the gaps in this heritage. Engaging podcasts open up the testimonies to the public. On a meta-level, this project focuses on both the potential and the problems of oral testimony in the collections of various heritage institutions. FARO is a partner in setting up a collegial group on this subject.

Partnerorganisations

• FARO
• Industriemuseum Gent
• Centrum Agrarische Geschiedenis Leuven
• Erfgoedcel Brussel van de Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie
• Kusterfgoed
• Riolenmuseum Brussel
• Werkplaats Immaterieel Erfgoed
• Archiefpunt
• Red Star Line