Cultural Policy

Making a Case for Multatuli
The Dutch-Flemish Centre for Europe in Brussels

In the heart of Brussels, behind the Muntschouwburg opera house on the corner of Leopoldstraat and Prinsenstraat, an impressive building is undergoing renovation. It has already received a generous coat of paint. Next to the building is a vacant piece of building land. In Spring 2002 Bert Anciaux, the then Minister of Culture, purchased the building on behalf of the Flemish Community; and since then the neighbouring piece of land has also been acquired. The intention is that this building will become the ‘Nederlands-Vlaams centrum voor Europa in Brussel’

(Dutch-Flemish Centre for Europe in Brussels). The centre will be opened in autumn 2004, during the Dutch presidency of the EU. The new building is due to be completed twelve months later. Where did this idea first come from?

In 1981 De Brakke Grond opened in Amsterdam, providing a Flemish cultural centre in the Dutch capital (see TLC 9: pp. 265-266). The intervening years have seen it become a spearhead of and springboard for Flemish art and culture in the Netherlands and a meeting place for many different groups of people. Right from the start, the intention was that the Netherlands would set up a corresponding Dutch centre in Brussels, but nothing ever came of it. There were still sporadic calls for such a centre to be set up; however, Dutch diplomats and government ministers were extremely nervous of venturing into the hornets' nest of community issues in Belgium and Brussels.

In 1991, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of De Brakke Grond, Hedy d'Ancona, then Dutch State Secretary for Culture, stated that the Netherlands would provide money for the furnishings, if Flanders would provide a building. By then ideas had changed and it had been decided that the house in Brussels should not be a Dutch centre, but a Dutch-Flemish one, focusing on the international community. In Ghent in 1999, at the conference of the Commission for the Flanders-Netherlands Cultural Agreement (Commissie Cultureel Verdrag Vlaanderen-Nederland, or CVN), calls were again made for the project to be carried out. Rick van der Ploeg, the then Dutch State Secretary for Culture, and Bert Anciaux, the Flemish Minister of Culture, both spoke in favour of the idea, but they had different opinions as to the aims of the project. Van der Ploeg envisaged it as a discussion forum similar to De Balie in Amsterdam: a place where European artists, intellectuals and politicians could come together, a place for building bridges between different European cultures, and between people born in Europe and those born elsewhere. This was clearly a departure from the original intentions. Anciaux placed more emphasis on the common language, Dutch, and thought it important that the Netherlands and Flanders should have a presence in Brussels, the only multilingual city in Europe where Dutch has official status.

As there were few concrete developments, at the beginning of 2001 the Commission for the Flanders-Netherlands Cultural Agreement decided to set up a steering committee which was to report back to the ministers before the end of the year. This report clarified one or two issues and allowed some decisions to be made. It called for a building in the heart of Brussels and for a centre with three main tasks: to act as a place for reflection, debates and as a meeting-place; to provide information and services; and to showcase relevant projects. The Netherlands and Flanders should act as hosts and lead the debate, to which other countries and cultural communities would make an active contribution. The centre should provide various groups with information about the Dutch language and the culture of Flanders and the Netherlands. It should also act as a platform for authors, opinion-makers and policy-makers, and present publications and artists from all disciplines. Flanders should provide the building; the Netherlands would cover two-thirds of the running costs and staff costs, with Flanders paying the remaining third. The centre must act as a point of contact and information and have sufficient public space and refreshment facilities. It must be easily accessible and have a particular focus on young people and disadvantaged communities. These were the guidelines of the well-balanced report.

In November 2003, the Prime Ministers of Flanders and the Netherlands confirmed the commitment previously entered into by the Flemish Minister of Culture and the Dutch Secretary of State for Culture. An official investigator was brought in to review the state of affairs and to fine tune the CVN's report. Work on the centre is now under way. However, some issues still need to be addressed.

In case anyone still doubts it: the latest theatre of linguistic conflict is Europe. So it makes perfect sense for the Dutch-speaking regions to establish a centre in the capital of Europe, which is also the capital of Flanders and of Belgium, where Dutch can be used as a matter of course and where the visitor may also be addressed in other languages, at least in French and English, and possibly in German.

And here we shall need to use some common sense. There are two groups in Brussels that are particularly hard to reach: immigrants from outside Europe and Eurocrats. The latter are often more interested in their golf clubs and restaurants and re-

main shut away in their cosy little ‘ghettos’, possibly making an exception for the Muntschouwburg opera house. The ‘great European cultural debate’ remains a pipe dream. Nietzsche defined a nation as people who speak the same language and read the same newspapers. As yet, there are still no real European newspapers and therefore no real forum for European public opinion. Most intellectuals continue to operate within the geographical area where their own language is spoken and within their own national borders. If the nation is a never-ending conversation, as the historian Ernst Kossmann (see pp. 271-273) once said, then the question remains as to which language should be used for this conversation. But we should not become dispirited. We must get to work. The new centre will have to bring its activities closely into line with existing initiatives and institutions (including the CVN; the Taalunie; the Brussels-based literary organisation Het Beschrijf and Passa Porta, the literature house it has recently set up) and establish joint projects. To this end, it is important that the centre should be included in the network of existing foreign cultural institutes in Brussels (Consortium of National European Cultural Institutes in Belgium: CICEB). The manager of the centre will need to be familiar with Dutch and Flemish culture, obviously, but he will also require diplomatic skills and a thorough knowledge of all that is entailed in working in Brussels, Belgium and Europe.

The centre also needs a name, and this is certainly not an unimportant issue. When it comes to cultural institutes, Goethe is the name of choice for the Germans; the Spanish have Cervantes; and there is the Maison Descartes in Amsterdam. So, you clearly need a name with that certain something. Erasmus has been used too often, and he already has centres in Anderlecht and Jakarta named after him. I suggest that the centre in Brussels should be named Multatuli. A recent poll of members of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (Society of Dutch Literature), named Eduard Douwes Dekker (pen-name Multatuli) as the greatest Dutch writer of all time. He wrote Max Havelaar, his masterpiece about the exploitation of the Javanese in the Dutch colony of Indonesia, at a boarding house called Au Prince Belge on Bergstraat in Brussels, a stone's throw from Leopoldstraat. ‘Multatuli’ sounds exotic, being Latin for ‘I have borne, endured, suffered much’, and so should not offend anyone in the linguistically sensitive Babel that is Brussels. It is certainly head and shoulders above the competition. The name ‘Multatuli’, as in ‘I'm going to a concert at the Multatuli’, stands a good chance of becoming second nature, just like ‘Felix Meritis’ and ‘Artis’ in Amsterdam. Who remembers now that ‘Felix Meritis’, the name of the European centre for arts and sciences in Amsterdam, means ‘happy through merits’, or that ‘Artis’, the name of Amsterdam's zoo, comes from the expression ‘Natura artis magistra’ (‘Nature is the teacher of the arts’)?

And at the entrance should be hung the words of Willem Elsschot: ‘Multatuli was a true Prometheus of the Dutch-speaking regions. Rejected by all those in power, he was forced to earn his daily bread in exile, but, without losing heart, he held high the torch of nonconformism and rebellion. Out of his ashes all modern Dutch literature arose. It is our sacred duty to worship him.’ Voilà. Such a man is worthy to stand alongside Goethe, Cervantes and Descartes.

 

Luc Devoldere

Translated by Laura Watkinson