Equestrian Statue of Leopold II, Ostend

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]

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

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.[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]

  • Frontal view
    Frontal view
  • Monogram of King Leopold II
    Monogram of King Leopold II
  • Tribute of the Ostend fishing population
    Tribute of the Ostend fishing population

Controversy

Congo Free State
Main article: Atrocities in the 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
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Monument of Leopold II, Ostend.

References
  1. "EQUESTRIAN STATUES". 6 April 2016.
  2. Teri Schultz (5 June 2020). "Belgians Target Some Royal Monuments In Black Lives Matter Protest". NPR. Retrieved 7 June 2020.
  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. "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. 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. Kempenaers, Jan (2019). Belgian Colonial Monuments. Roma Publications. ISBN 978-9492811509.
  7. 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. 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. 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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