Flor Grammens

Flor(imond) Grammens (born Bellem 13 April 1899: died Deinze, 28 March 1985) was a Belgian politician and Flemish activist.

A shared concern over the bilingualism in Ronse brought Gramens into contact with like minded Flemish nationalists, notably Leo Vindevogel and with a former chairman of the Davidsfonds called Arthur Boon.

At the request of van Boon, in 1926 Grammens gave a lecture to the Davidsfonds Congress on the subject of the language situation in Ronse and the surrounding district.

In 1929 and 1930 he again undertook study tours along the length of the language frontier, now accompanied by August de Schryver who at this time was a parliamentary deputy for the Eeklo-Gent region and who would go on to play a leading part in national Belgian politics for more than three decades.

Legislation promoted chiefly by francophone Wallonia had in 1921 replaced a widespread official bilingualism with a public monolingualism linked to place.

This was intended to preserve the French language in southern Belgium at a time when migration from the Dutch-speaking north was tending to increase Flemish cultural and linguistic representation in the francophone south.

From the Flemish side, Grammens campaigned to make Flanders monolingual, which endorsed the principal that public language use should be determined by where you lived rather than by individual preference.

In February 1937 he switched his concentration to municipalities in the Flemish heartland which had no substantial francophone minority and which therefore, under the provisions of the language law, should be monolingual.

In January 1938 students stormed the prison in Belgium's oldest town, Tongeren, in an attempt to free Grammens from an incarceration.