Lode Craeybeckx
François Louis Ferdinand ( " Lode " ) Craeybeckx (* November 24, 1897 in Antwerp, † July 25, 1976 ) was a Flemish socialist politician.
Life and work
The son of a policeman was from 1925 to 1931, first as a journalist for the Volksgazet active. In 1932 he went to the Belgian Socialist Party ( BSP) in the local elections and was alderman of Deurne and a member of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, where he remained continuously until 1968. Meanwhile Craeybeckx was chosen as the successor of Camille Huysmans mayor of Antwerp on 1 January 1947 and held that office until his death. This Craeybeckx was almost 30 years in office the longest-serving mayor of Antwerp.
During his tenure Craeybeckx was responsible for numerous city formative projects, including the expansion of the port of Antwerp to the container port, the constructional development of the city, the creation of the Rijksuniversitair Centrum Antwerp, which was integrated into the new University of Antwerp in 2003, and the establishment of the museum for sculpture Middelburg. He took little account of historic structures and sacrificed for these projects, much of the partly still existing medieval houses.