Charles Rogier
Charles Rogier ( Ndl Karel Rogier ) ( born August 16, 1800 Saint- Quentin, † May 27, 1885 in Saint- Josse- ten-Noode ) was a Belgian liberal statesman and Prime Minister.
Rogier came from northern France, but received his education in Liege. After studying law, he became a journalist and published the Lettres d'un bourgeois oppositional de Saint -Martin. During the revolutionary events in 1830 that led to Belgian independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, he rushed with 300 armed volunteers to Brussels and participated here at street fighting. He was a member of the provisional government and was a deputy in the National Congress. In June 1831 he became governor in Antwerp and from 1832 to 1834 for the first time Prime Minister and Interior Minister of Belgium at the same time.
After he was forced to resign from the ministry because of a dispute with the Republicans Alexandre Gendebein, he was from 1834 to 1840 again governor of Antwerp and from 1840 to 1841 Minister of Public Works. He then worked as a deputy member of the Second Chamber of Antwerp and did here emerged as the spokesman of the liberal opposition.
The elections in 1847 changed the political life of Belgium from scratch. The Liberals won the election with an absolute majority and represent a homogeneous government. Rogier, again Prime Minister and Interior Minister, now pursued a policy that was based entirely on a party program, even if the conservative wing but had very strong influence. On the initiative Rogiers the first railway line goes back to the European continent between Mechelen and Brussels, the international port of Antwerp, he opened by lifting the Scheldt duty.
As in the revolutionary year 1848 in Belgium riots broke out and the country's future was threatened, he managed to successfully curb the economic crisis, unemployment and famine and to calm the situation relative. In the fall of 1852 he resigned because he did not meet the requirement of Napoleon III. In censoring the press, and has since worked exclusively parliament in Brussels, on November 9, 1857 until he once again took over the Interior Ministry. On 26 October 1861 he reversed the Interior Ministry with the Foreign Office and again took over the Presidency of the Cabinet, until he resigned entirely to retire January 3, 1868.
Rogier one of the founders of the Belgian State and the Liberal Party, has mitformuliert the fundamental right and the Belgian policy determined several decades prevail. Negative, however, his policy in the service of the wealthy bourgeoisie and esp. the favor of the French-speaking Walloons is seen. So he had set 1832 as Prime Minister: "It is necessary that all civil and military offices go exclusively to Walloons and Luxembourg, so that the Flemish are provisionally excluded from the benefits of such offices and are obliged to learn French. In this way, the Germanic element will gradually be destroyed. " Due to this position Rogier is still frequently cited in the Flemish- Walloon conflict. Nevertheless he defended as Foreign Minister, the Belgian independence from France under Napoleon III. and desired at this time to even a renewed merger in a confederal state with the Netherlands. In this phase, he wrote in 1860 the now common version of the national anthem La Brabançonne where the fierce invective against the Netherlands the previous version have been greatly mitigated.