Flor Grammens

Grammens was the son of a former police adjutant. In 1910 the family, including his father's two daughters, relocated the short distance to Aalter. Grammens attended the (then francophone) St Vincent College in Eeklo. Later, during the First World War, he attended the "Normal school" at Sint-Niklaas, from where he graduated in 1919 with a teaching diploma. He obtained a teaching position in Kortrijk, relocating to nearby Ronse which at this time was still a bilingual town.

He participated actively in the Davidsfonds at this time. This was an organisation dedicated to the promotion of the church, the Dutch language and Flemish identity. 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. This turned out to be the first of many lecture appearances that he would make in Flanders.

In 1927 Grammens undertook a walking tour along the full length of Belgium's east–west language frontier, researching the language situations in the places through which he travelled. In 1929 he started setting up local language action groups along the length of the language frontier, himself leading their discussions. 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. Starting in 1930, he headed up campaigning meetings, concentrating on the places on the Flemish side of the language frontier. His campaigning proved influential, and 1932 saw new legislation affecting language use in education and government, while protecting the status of any minority language used by at least 30% of a local population. A provision in the legislation (which would be revoked effective 1962 by the Eyskens government) provided for a language census every ten years which a municipality could use to mandate a change from French to Dutch (or vice versa) as its official language where there was a shift in the preferred language of the majority of the local population. Language legislation in respect of the courts followed in 1935.

After the 1932 law had been introduced, Grammens introduced the "Taalgrenswacht" a monthly publication intended to inform people about the new arrangements. During the incumbency (between 1936 and 1937) of Interior Minister De Schrijver a commission was established, chaired by another national politician, Limburg born Camille Huysmans, to perform the necessary preparatory work for the official establishment of the language frontier. However, the politicians were focused on tying to secure national economic revival at this time and the Language Law commission's progress was, at best, slow, persuading Grammens to campaign more spectacularly for the timely implementation of the Language Laws.

From January 1937 Grammens started personally to over-write French language government communications, such as street signs. The first of these ventures took place in Edingen, a Flemish frontier municipality in Hainut Province. Grammens concentrated his campaign on municipalities where the linguistic mix of the population required special provision to be made for minority language speakers representing more than 30% of the total population. These were, in practice, mostly located near to the Franco-Flemish language frontier, and are the municipalities which today are recognised as "Faciliteitengemeente", (Municipalities with language facilities). In 1937 the Language Law required government communications here such as road signs to be written in both French and Dutch, but at this time the road signs in these places were written only in French, which traditionally had been the language of the ruling class throughout Belgium, but which was the first language of the wider population only in the south.