Equestrian Statue of Leopold II
Ruiterstandbeeld van Leopold II (Dutch)
Statue of King Leopold II
51°13′38″N 2°54′17″E / 51.22715°N 2.90466°E / 51.22715; 2.90466
LocationOstend, Belgium
DesignerAlfred Courtens
TypeEquestrian statue
Completion date1931 (1931)
Dedicated toKing Leopold II

The Equestrian Statue of Leopold II (Dutch: Ruiterstandbeeld van Leopold II) is a monument erected in Ostend, Belgium, in memory of King Leopold II, second King of the Belgians. It is located on the Royal Galleries by the beach.[1] The king was commemorated here as a benefactor of Ostend and the Belgian Congo. The inauguration was on 19 July 1931.[1]

Partly due to Leopold II's colonial regime, the monument is the subject of ongoing controversy and has been vandalised several times.[2][3][4][5]

History

During King Leopold II's reign, Thomas Vinçotte produced a portrait bust of the king, which is now in the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken.[6] Shortly after the king's death in 1909, plans started to honour him, as a benefactor of Ostend and the Belgian Congo.[6]

After the First World War, the city government started work on plans for a statue.[6] The sculptor Alfred Courtens was commissioned, together with his brother, the architect Antoine Courtens.[7][1] The City Council may have hoped to regain the dynasty as summer residents but after Leopold II's death, Ostend's status as a royal summer residence quickly crumbled.[6][7] On 22 September 1981, the statue was declared a protected monument.[7]

Description

The Equestrian Statue of Leopold II is known locally as De Drie Gapers ("The Three Gaps").[7][8] The middle of the three passages was made on the sea side.[9]

The monument has an important architectural part that roughly consists of a voluminous upright column, with two horizontal bases on the left and right.[9] This gives a form of a kind of double L monogram (two L's turned away from each other), the monogram that Leopold II often used.[9] On top in bronze, Leopold II sits in military uniform on horseback looking over the North Sea.[9]

At the bottom left a larger than life sculptural group, also in bronze, depicting Gratitude of the Congolese to Leopold II for freeing them from slavery among the Arabs.[9][1] On the right, a pendant, depicting Tribute of the Ostend fishing population.[1]

Controversy

Congo Free State

Map of the Congo Free State in 1892

Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State; a private project was undertaken on his behalf.[10] He used the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, an area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[10] At the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, the colonial nations of Europe authorised his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improve the lives of the native inhabitants.[10]

From the beginning, Leopold ignored these conditions and millions of Congolese inhabitants, including children, were mutilated and killed.[10] He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium during this period.[10] He donated the private buildings to the state before his death.[10]

Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the natives to harvest and process rubber.[10] Under his regime, millions of Congolese people died.[10]

Reports of deaths and abuse led to a major international scandal in the early 20th century, and Leopold was forced by the Belgian government to relinquish control of the colony to the civil administration in 1908.[10]

Vandalism

In 2004, the hand of one of the Grateful Congolese was sawed off, in protest against Leopold II's regime.

The monument has been vandalised in 2004 and 2020.[2][3][4][5] In 2004, an activist group, De Stoete Ostendenoare, symbolically cut off a bronze hand from one of the kneeling Congolese slaves who, as part of the Gratitude of the Congolese group in the monument, honours Leopold II.[1] This was a reference to how Congolese slaves' hands were cut off if they did not produce enough rubber during Leopold's colonial regime.[1] The activists were willing to give the hand back if a historically correct sign would be placed near the statue.[11]

The statue was vandalised again in 2020 as part of the global Black Lives Matter movement after the murder of George Floyd. A petition to remove such statues was started to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Congo's independence from Belgium on 30 June 2020.[2][3][4][5] On 9 June 2020, Ostend mayor Bart Tommelein said that the city council "takes the fight against racism very seriously" but "replacing or removing statues will not happen".[12]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "EQUESTRIAN STATUES". 6 April 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 Teri Schultz (5 June 2020). "Belgians Target Some Royal Monuments In Black Lives Matter Protest". NPR. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 "Al meer dan 16.000 handtekeningen voor petitie om standbeelden Leopold II uit Brussel weg te nemen, Tommelein wil beeld in Oostende niet verwijderen". Het Laatste Nieuws (in Dutch). 3 June 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 "Het Debat. Moeten standbeelden van Leopold II en andere bedenkelijke historische figuren verdwijnen uit het straatbeeld?". Het Laatste Nieuws (in Dutch). 6 June 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
  5. 1 2 3 Burno Struys (6 June 2020). "Dit zijn de organisatoren van de Belgische Black Lives Matter-betogingen". De Morgen (in Dutch). Retrieved 7 June 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Kempenaers, Jan (2019). Belgian Colonial Monuments. Roma Publications. ISBN 978-9492811509.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Hostyn, Norbert. Monumenten, beelden & gedenkplaten te Oostende: Het Leopold II-monument op de zeedijk. pp. 218–219.
  8. ↑ "De Drie Gapers Oostende". Bezienswaardigheden. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Silverman, Debora L. (2013). "Art Nouveau, Art of Darkness: African Lineages of Belgian Modernism, Part III". West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. 20 (1): 31. doi:10.1086/670975. JSTOR 10.1086/670975. S2CID 225085540.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Hochschild, Adam (1999). King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0618001903.
  11. ↑ Douglas De Coninck (11 August 2014). "Hoe Oostendse activisten met een afgehakte hand de puntjes op de i zetten". De Morgen (in Dutch). Retrieved 7 June 2020.
  12. ↑ "Campaign launched by a teenager to remove statues of Congo coloniser Leopold II gains pace in Belgium". Retrieved 9 June 2020.
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