Baudouin of Belgium

Baudouin was born in the Château du Stuyvenberg, near Laeken, Brussels, in Belgium, in 1930, the elder son and second child of Prince Leopold, the then Duke of Brabant, and his first wife, Astrid of Sweden. His father became King of the Belgians, as Leopold III, in 1934 and Prince Baudouin became Duke of Brabant. Baudouin's mother died in 1935 in an automobile accident.

Part of Leopold III's unpopularity was the result of a second marriage in 1941 to Mary Lilian Baels, an English-born Belgian commoner, later known as Princess de Réthy. More controversial had been Leopold's decision to surrender to Nazi Germany during the Second World War, when Belgium was invaded in 1940; many Belgians questioned his loyalties, but a commission of inquiry exonerated him of treason after the war. Though reinstated in a plebiscite, the controversy surrounding Leopold led to his abdication.

During the war, following D-Day the king was deported by command of Adolf Hitler to Hirschstein.

King Leopold III requested the Belgian Government and the Parliament to approve a law delegating his royal powers to his son, Prince Baudouin, who took the constitutional oath before the United Chambers of the Belgian Parliament as Prince Royal on 11 August 1950. He ascended the throne and became King of the Belgians upon taking the constitutional oath on 17 July 1951, one day following his father's abdication.

The Congolese called the young king Mwana Kitoko ("beautiful boy").

On 15 December 1960, Baudouin was married in Brussels to Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón. The King and Queen had no children; all of the Queen's five pregnancies ended in miscarriage.[4]

Baudouin and Fabiola with US President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon in May 1969.

During Baudouin's reign the colony of Belgian Congo became independent. During the parade following the last ceremonial inspection of the Force Publique, the royal sabre of the king was momentarily stolen by Ambroise Boimbo. The photograph, taken by Robert Lebeck, was widely published in world newspapers,[5][6] with some seeing the act as a humiliation for the king.[7] The next day the king attended the official reception; he gave a speech that received a blistering response by Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.[8]

Baudouin and French President Charles de Gaulle were the two prominent world leaders at the state funerals of both John F. Kennedy in November 1963 and his predecessor General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower in March 1969, as the head of state of Belgium.[9][10] At Kennedy's, he was accompanied by Paul-Henri Spaak, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and former three-time Prime Minister of Belgium. At Eisenhower's, he was accompanied by Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens.[11]

In 1976, on the 25th anniversary of Baudouin's accession, the King Baudouin Foundation was formed, with the aim of improving the living conditions of the Belgian people.

He was the 1,176th Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Spain, which was bestowed upon him in 1960, the 930th Knight of the Order of the Garter and also the last living knight of the Papal Supreme Order of Christ.[12][13]

Baudouin was a devout Roman Catholic. Through the influence of Leo Cardinal Suenens, Baudouin participated in the growing Renewal Movement and regularly went on pilgrimages to the French shrine of Paray-le-Monial.

In 1990, when a law submitted by Roger Lallemand and Lucienne Herman-Michielsens that liberalised Belgium's abortion laws was approved by Parliament, he refused to give Royal Assent to the bill. This was unprecedented; although Baudouin was de jure Belgium's chief executive, Royal Assent has long been a formality (as is the case in most constitutional and popular monarchies). However, due to his religious convictions, Baudouin asked the Government to declare him temporarily unable to reign so that he could avoid signing the measure into law.[14] The Government under Wilfried Martens complied with his request on 4 April 1990. According to the provisions of the Belgian Constitution, in the event the King is temporarily unable to reign, the Government as a whole fulfills the role of Head of State. All members of the Government signed the bill, and the next day (5 April 1990) the Government declared that Baudouin was capable of reigning again.

In 1960, Baudouin declared the Belgian colony of Congo independent. During the declaration of independence, Baudouin delivered a highly contested speech in which he celebrated the acts of the first Belgian owner of the Congo, King Leopold II, whom he described as "a genius". In the same event on the day of the independence, the first democratically elected prime minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, answered in a speech that was very critical for the Belgian regime. Lumumba mentioned the killing of many Congolese, the insults and humiliations and the slavery they suffered.

Lumumba's speech infuriated King Baudouin and started a harsh conflict between both men. After the independence of Congo, the rich province of Katanga set up a secession that received substantial military and financial support from the Belgian government and Belgian companies with business interests in this region. King Baudouin strengthened his relationships with the Katangese politician Moise Tshombé, whom he made a knight in the order of Leopold. In the meanwhile, the Belgian government as well as the CIA supported or organized themselves plans to murder Patrice Lumumba.

In early December 1960, Patrice Lumumba and two colleagues were imprisoned in military barracks about 150 kilometers from Leopoldville. They were underfed and mistreated, then released in mid-January 1961. Within hours Lumumba was again captured, relocated, beaten, and within hours executed by Congolese soldiers under Belgian command; a Belgian police officer cut up Lumumba’s body and dissolved the corpse in acid.[15]

In 2001, a parliamentary investigation set up by the Belgian government concluded that King Baudouin, amongst others, was informed of a murder plan set up by later dictator Joseph Mobutu and the Katangese rebel Moise Tshombé. Both men had agreed to the Belgian colonel Guy Weber to "neutralize Lumumba, if possible physically". The King, informed, did nothing more and this neglect was described as 'incriminating' by the parliamentary investigation, although there was no evidence found that the king ordered the set up of the plans.[15]

Baudouin reigned for 42 years. He died of heart failure on 31 July 1993 in the Villa Astrida in Motril, in the south of Spain.[16] Although in March 1992 the King had been operated on for a mitral valve prolapse in Paris, his death still came unexpectedly, and sent much of Belgium into a period of deep mourning. His death notably stopped the 1993 24 Hours of Spa sportscar race, which had reached the 15-hour mark when the news broke.

Within hours the Royal Palace gates and enclosure were covered with flowers that people brought spontaneously. A viewing of the body was held at the Royal Palace in central Brussels; 500,000 people (5% of the population) came to pay their respects. Many waited in line up to 14 hours in sweltering heat to see their King one last time. Along with other members of European royalty, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms attended the funeral (the only foreign state funeral ever attended by her in person as monarch). All European monarchs attended the service, as did Emperor Akihito of Japan. Non-royal guests such as EU President Jacques Delors, French President François Mitterrand, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, German President Richard von Weizsacker, Canadian Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn and former American President Gerald Ford were also present at the funeral.

King Baudouin was interred in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken, Brussels, Belgium. He was succeeded by his younger brother, who became King Albert II.

• 7 September 1930 – 17 February 1934: His Royal Highness Prince Baudouin of Belgium, Count of Hainaut
• 17 February 1934 – 17 July 1951: His Royal Highness The Duke of Brabant
• 17 July 1951 – 31 July 1993: His Majesty The King of the Belgians

• Kings of Belgium family tree
• Crown Council of Belgium
• Royal Trust
• Herman Liebaers (Marshal of the Royal Household)
• André Molitor (private secretary)
• Jacques van Ypersele de Strihou (private secretary)
• Pierre-Yves Monette (advisor)
• King Baudouin Ice Shelf, Antarctica

• Wilsford, David, ed. Political leaders of contemporary Western Europe: a biographical dictionary (Greenwood, 1995) pp 25–31.

• Official biography from the Belgian Royal Family website
• Newspaper clippings about Baudouin of Belgium in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW