‘Ein Querschnitt durch Flandern’. The ‘anti-Belgian’ image of Flanders in Friedrich Markus Huebner’s Flamisches Novellenbuch (1918)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In April 1918, the Leipzig publishing house Insel released its Flämisches Novellenbuch, curated by the literary translator and art critic, Friedrich Markus Huebner. This anthology of contemporary Flemish literature, which promised its readers a literary tour of ‘real-life’ Flanders, was part of a much larger number of translations sponsored by the German occupier during the First World War in Belgium. This article explores the image of Flanders that was propagated by Huebner in service of the German cultural propaganda, with a focus on its anti-Belgian undertones. Huebner’s selection of short stories seems to represent Flanders as a poor, unfulfilled and rural nation, systematically oppressed by the Belgian state. In this regard, the anthology seamlessly aligns itself with the rhetorical strategy deployed by the German occupation administration – a narrative that casted the Belgian state as the true oppressor, while positioning the Germans as loyal allies and benevolent protectors of the Flemings.