Now Antwerp has its first Dutch-born mayor in Els van Doesburg (Flemish nationalist N-VA) we examine the strong ties between Flanders’ largest city and its northern neighbours in the Netherlands. Historically, the city on the River Scheldt, as Antwerp is often referred to in Belgium, has always had particularly close ties with the Netherlands.
Antwerp is the Dutch-est city in the whole of Belgium. All the figures show this despite the love-hate relationship of the people of Antwerp, the so-called ‘sinjoren’, with their northern neighbours. The term sinjoor originated during the Spanish period, when the southern Netherlands was ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs and it is related to the Spanish word ‘señor’ or ‘sir’ in English. In Antwerp only people born in the city of Antwerp are considered to be ‘sinjoren’. But we are digressing… In 2024, over 7 million Dutch people visited the city as day trippers. Another million made an overnight stay. No other art city in Belgium welcomed more Dutch people. But not all the Dutch return home after their trip south of the border.
According to the most recent population figures, 20,590 Dutch people live in Antwerp out of a total population of 565,709. Twenty thousand is the entire population of many a Flemish town. The Dutch, often and usually greatly to their chagrin, and, it must be said, incorrectly, are regularly termed 'Hollanders' by the natives. By far they form the largest group of foreign residents in Antwerp, followed, at a distance, by Moroccans (11,700) and Ukrainians (10,642).
The new mayor of Antwerp Els van Doesburg (N-VA) is one of the Antwerp Dutch. Born in the Dutch town of Soest near Utrecht, she holds dual Belgian-Dutch nationality.
‘I lived in the Netherlands until I was 10 years old. Then I moved to Schilde, a real Dutch colony near Antwerp,’ Ms Van Doesburg says. ‘I went to school in Westmalle and later to university in Antwerp. After my studies, I stayed on in the city.’
Els Van Doesburg is the first Antwerp mayor born in the Netherlands. But historical ties with our northern neighbours are strong. There are Dutch palaces, Antwerpians who would like to see the Netherlands and Flanders reunited in one state, the so-called Orangists, Antwerp’s ties to the Wilhelmus, the Dutch national anthem and much more.
Dutch Salon on the Meir
The thousands of Dutch shoppers on the Meir, Antwerp’s pedestrianised high-street, will often not realise that the same shopping street is home to an historic Dutch salon. That you'll find in the Palace on the Meir, which was once owned by William I, king of the Netherlands, from 1815 to 1830. During those 15 years, after the fall of Napoleon, present-day Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg formed one state.
The ‘Hall of the 17 Provinces’ on the first floor depicts the glorious past of the dynasty of Orange, the Dutch royal house. The embellishments were added from 1829 onwards by order of King William I following a design by the Antwerp artist Matthieu van Bree.
The room features reliefs, ceiling paintings and medallions depicting William of Orange and important figures from the Dutch Golden Age. The decorated salon was to serve as a reception room for the guests of the Dutch royals in Antwerp.
The Dutch Salon was only completed in the summer of 1830, barely a month before the revolution that would lead to Belgian independence and secession from the Netherlands broke out. The hall was never to serve in the role for which it was designed.
At the time of the Belgian revolution, Dutch crown prince William (later William II) briefly stayed at the palace in Antwerp before fleeing to London.
The Dutch Salon miraculously survived the military skirmishes in the city. In October 1830, fighting between Belgian patriots and the Dutch army even reached the Meir.
The Dutch then proceeded to shell the city with cannons fired from ships on the River Scheldt and the now demolished Spanish citadel, in the South district of the city. The Dutch troops only left that foothold 2 years later after a 25-day siege by the French.
When in 1897 the French donated a monument to the people of Antwerp to celebrate the ‘Liberation from the Dutch’ thanks to the French, and to commemorate their fallen, the city council categorically refused to accept it. The monument that includes the inscription ‘Anvers’ i.e. Antwerp in French, has stood in Tournai (Hainaut Province) ever since. Antwerp's refusal was motivated by smouldering love for the north, i.e. the Netherlands: so called Orangism, whose supporters, the Orangists, wanted to see Belgium or at least Flanders reunited with the kingdom of the Netherlands.
Homesick for Holland
Antwerp was a city with many Orangist supporters after Belgium's independence in 1830. These were people who lamented the fact that Belgium had gained independence from the northern Netherlands. They wanted to stay part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Antwerp boasted a sizeable Orangist nobility that had sworn allegiance to King William I of the Netherlands, but it was the wealthy bourgeoisie in particular that engaged.
Wealthy entrepreneurs watched in sorrow as Antwerp's economic position weakened in newly independent Belgium. Under the royal house of Orange, Antwerp had become the largest port in the Low Countries, but that did not last. After the revolution, the Netherlands prevented ships from reaching Antwerp from the North Sea via the River Scheldt. This was a sledgehammer blow for the port and a death sentence for the business activities of the bourgeoisie.
Those early Antwerp Orangists included the Antwerp bankers and business people of the Cogels Family. In 1841, John Cogels married Baroness Josephina Osy, who owned a lot of land in the Zurenborg district of the city.
Later, the Cogels-Osylei, a street full of elegant city palaces in revival architectural styles or art nouveau, would be built. Anyone today strolling down Antwerp's most prestigious street can still detect a hint of Orangism.
The fervour of Antwerp Orangists shortly after 1830 was motivated purely from economic concerns and had nothing to do with the Dutch language. In fact, many Antwerp Orangists were French-speaking. Only in the second half of the 19th century would the new Flemish movement embrace Orangism as part of a cultural reflex, a yearning for a union of all Dutch-speakers.
In 1905 during the celebrations to mark 75 years of an independent Belgium alternative festivities in Antwerp above all emphasised the union with the Netherlands. These were initiated by the Antwerp writer and proponent of the Flemish emancipation movement Theodoor Van Ryswyck.
Dutch textbooks in the city's schools
For many years already, education in Antwerp had been strongly oriented towards the Netherlands. ‘The textbooks came from the Netherlands and that was not only the case in the early days of Belgian independence, when many teachers had still been trained in the Netherlands. Even deep into the 19th century, Antwerp looked north for its teaching materials. Even in the interwar period of the 20th century, textbooks came from the Netherlands,’ says Els Witte, professor emeritus of Belgian History at the Brussels Free University, the VUB. She has published widely on Orangism and the birth of the young Belgian nation.
The founder of the municipal schools network in Antwerp was also an Orangist: Florent van Ertborn. At 33, he was a few years younger than the current mayor, Els van Doesburg, when he became mayor of Antwerp in 1817. Van Ertborn would remain in charge of city hall until 1828. It was during his time there that he introduced Dutch as the language of administration in Antwerp.
He opened the first city school in 1819 in the Bread Chapel on the Keizerstraat. The chapel cum school has since been demolished, but the statue of the Virgin Mary on the facade was saved. It still hangs in the Keizerstraat at the intersection with Prinsesstraat and forms a tangible reminder of Antwerp's first city school.
Van Ertborn refused to become the first mayor of Antwerp in independent Belgium after the 1830 elections. He was simply too loyal to the Dutch King William I, who he had served as chamberlain.
The name Van Ertborn still lives on in the street named after him in the Central Station district, where the UGC cinema is now located.
Belgian prime minister and Antwerp Orangist
One of the most outspoken Orangists in contemporary politics is also an Antwerp native: Belgian prime minister and titular Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA). In several interviews and speeches, Mr De Wever has defended the idea of a Greater Netherlands in which all Dutch-speakers would form one nation.
‘If only we were still one country,’ Mr De Wever said in 2021 when he welcomed today's Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte to Antwerp, when he was still Dutch prime minister. During the same speech, Mr De Wever mentioned that his wife also holds Dutch nationality. ‘So my children too are of Dutch origin,’ the current Belgian prime minister said.
Today, from his office in the Wetstraat 16 in Brussels, prime minister De Wever looks out on the Park of Brussels, the Warande. It’s the spot where the United Kingdom of the Netherlands ceased to exist de facto in 1830, when the Dutch armies lost their battle in the park against the Belgian revolutionaries and blew the retreat from the capital.
Was the Dutch national anthem written by an Antwerpian?
Every proud Antwerp native and self-respecting historian knows that Amsterdam's Golden Age of the 1600s was impossible without the many Antwerp expats, who had made their way north. They chose to flee from the city after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585 for economic, political or religious reasons.
The multitude of Antwerp influences would take us too far. But one story deserves our full attention: one Antwerp mayor is said to be the author of the lyrics to the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus. Those are big shoes for Els van Doesburg to fill!
Philip of Marnix, Lord of Saint-Aldegonde was Antwerp's external mayor from 1583 to 1585. He was a confidant of Dutch 'stadholder' or national leader William of Orange, who had appointed him to protect Antwerp from the Spanish army.
Philip of Marnix earlier served as William of Orange's secretary, for whom he also wrote numerous texts. For centuries, for instance, he was referred to as the author of the lyrics of the Wilhelmus that was later to become the Dutch national anthem.