A Companion to the Study of the Belgian American Educational Foundation 2 Contents 1 A Short Introduction to the BAEF 5 2 Archive Inventory 17 1 Personal files of Belgian Fellows in America . 18 2 Personal files of American Fellows in Belgium . 181 3 Personal files of Special Categories of Fellows . 227 4 Unsuccessful Belgian Candidates, Selection Committee and General Announcements . 250 5 Reports of Belgian and American Fellows . 251 6 The Commission for Relief in Belgium during the First World War . 254 7 The Administration Office during the Interwar . 257 8 Letters from New York to the BAEF Brussels office . 272 9 Letters from Brussels to BAEF New York Office . 277 10 University Summer School { Brussels Art Seminar { Belgian Art Seminar . 283 11 Relations with the University Foundation . 288 12 The Administration Office after the Second World War . 292 13 Archives of William Hallam Tuck . 307 14 Hoover Institutions . 308 15 The Administration Office (Third section) . 310 3 Bibliography 317 3 4 1 A Short Introduction to the BAEF Introduction In 2020, the Belgian American Educational Foundation { an organization which provides support for research, and academic and scientific collabora- tion between Belgium and the United States { will celebrate its hundredth anniversary. On the occasion of this special memorial, the board of directors have taken the chance to look over the first century of the Foundation's ex- istence and launch a significant research project looking into the institutions archival collection. This archival corpus encompasses documentation produced by the first three incarnations of the foundation. The first, the Commission for Relief in Belgium, was established in 1914 and continued its work up until 1920. On its dissolution, part of the remaining balance was used to establish the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation, which was then renamed the Belgian American Education Foundation in 1938. The Commission for Relief in Belgium was established during the First World War under the leadership of Herbert Hoover (1874 { 1964), and its primary task was to provide and channel food aid to Belgian civilian popu- lations. In Belgium, a civilian aid organization was also on track, steered by two industrialists, Donnie Heinneman (1872 { 1963) and Ernest Solvay (1838 { 1922). This organization, Le Comit´enational de Secours et d'Alimentation, soon came to be managed by Emile Francqui (1863 { 1935), a powerful busi- ness man and then director of the Soci´et´eG´en´erale de Belgique, Belgium's most important bank. The combined work and endeavors of these two as- sociations during the war turned Herbert Hoover and Emile Francqui into vital leaders by the end of the war, and the combined funds of the two in- 5 stitutions constituted a coveted financial windfall in a country in need of reconstruction.1 Hoover and Francqui wished to ensure that their activities could have a lasting legacy in the public domain, and they saw the CRB and the Comit´e national as the instruments of their ambition. Straightaway, these power- ful businessmen affirmed their wish to earmark part of the funds available for the creation of an institution commemorating their work during the war. Nevertheless, the two leaders didn't share the same vision of the public pur- pose and the profile of their target audience. Emile Francqui wished to foster access for underprivileged people to go to Belgian universities. By contrast Herbert Hoover, inspired by the model of the Oxford Rhodes Scholars which was established by the Rockefeller Foundation, devised an exchange project between Belgian and American universities aimed at an elite audience. After multiple discussions between representatives of the state and the university world a compromise was reached: some of the funds available would be in- jected directly into Belgian universities, whilst the rest would be used to create the Fondation Universitaire, based in Brussels, and the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation, based in New York.2 Dedicated to commemorating the work undertaken during the war, both organizations worked to promote and fund higher education in Belgium. Building on this Foundation, Hoover established his exchange programme which was geared towards revitalising the academic and scientific domain in Belgian universities by offering Belgian scholars contact with their American counterparts. In return, the programme offered young Americans the oppor- tunity to further their education or their research in Europe. As Kenneth Bertrams emphasizes, this exchange programme constituted the missing link between, on the one hand, the transfer of knowledge resulting from academic 1Bertrams, Kenneth, \De l'action humanitaire `ala recherche scientifique : La Commis- sion for Relief in Belgium et la cr´eationdu Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique en Belgique, 1914-1930", In Tourn`es,Ludovic (ed.), L'argent de l’influence : Les fonda- tions am´ericaines et leurs r´eseaux europ´eens, Paris, 2010, pp.45-63 ; Bertrams, Kenneth, \The Domestic Use of Belgian-American \Mutual Understanding": The Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation, 1920 -1940", In Journal of Transatlantic Stud- ies, 13:4, 2015, pp.326-343.; Bertrams, Kenneth, Une entreprise au coeur de l'histoire : Solvay, 1863 2013, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2013; Bertrams, Kenneth, \De l'initiative priv´ee la reconversion publique du \syst´emefrancquiste": Le F.N.R.S. et la coordination de la recherche scientifique en Belgique (1914-1950)", In Bertrams, Kenneth and al. (eds.), Pour une histoire de la politique scientifique en Europe (XIX´eme-XX´eme si´ecles), Brussels, 2007, pp.51-75; Ranieri, Liane, Emile Francqui ou l'intelligence cr´eatrice : 1863 - 1935, Gembloux, J. Duclot, 1985 ; Ranieri, Liane, Donnie Heinneman, patron de la Sofina : un destin singulier (1872 1963), Brussels, Racine, 2005. 2Bertrams, \The Domestic Use", p.329. 6 and scientific visits before the First World War and, on the other, the logic of cultural and scientific diplomacy, seen as a fundamental tool of foreign policy after the Second World War, and symbolized in particular by the Fulbright exchange programme.3 Consequently, the archival collections preserved on either side of the At- lantic have contributed to renewed research of topics including academic and scientific \ peregrinations", Belgo-American relations, the education of elites, university research, the history of Belgian universities, and above all the standardization of university professions, the sciences and the humanities and research over the course of the twentieth century. These collections are concomitant with the archives of institutions such as the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgian Academies and Belgian universities. Nev- ertheless, these various subjects cannot be studied solely through the prism of the archives preserved in Belgium. In order to fully understand the de- bates and issues surrounding the history of the institution it is necessary to draw on the interplay between the corpuses preserved both in Belgium and in the United States. Furthermore, in the context of this text, there is an emphasis on issues and debates linked to the preservation of documents related to the internal running of the Foundation. Indeed, the archives have a unique history in- nately tied to the historical and institutional sequencing of the foundation. Four specific sequences can be identified when studying the various archival corpuses, and these correspond, as a whole, to the key moments in the insti- tutions history. The first is the 1914 { 1920 period, that of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. The second, 1920 { 1964, is marked by the issue of Herbert Hoover's complete control of the archives and his desire to incorpo- rate them into an edifice commemorating his own work throughout the First World War. The third period, 1964 { 1977, symbolizes a time where the institution was marked by a certain \haziness", which, with the benefit of hindsight, can be seen as a period of transition personified by Clare Torrey (1890 { 1977) and L´eonFrankin (1907 { 1995). Finally, the fourth sequence is that of the presidency of Emile Boulpaep (1938 { ). The first Belgian to hold this position, he began his presidency in 1977, marking the start of a form of “pacification" of the institution which is still ongoing in 2018. Today the organization's archives are preserved in three specific deposi- tories on either side of the Atlantic. The original reason for this distribution can be traced to the wishes and plans of Herbert Hoover. The entirety of the documentation has thus been divided between the Hoover Institution Li- brary & Archives at Stanford University, California; the Hoover Presidential 3Bertrams, \The Domestic Use", p.327. 7 Library, West Branch, Iowa, and thirdly the organization's Belgian head- quarters, located at 11 rue d'Egmont, 1000 Brussels. Within the framework of the present guide, only the inventory of the Brussels collection has been transcribed, while those of the American col- lections are available online.4 At the present time the Belgian collection for the 1915 2015 period has been completely inventoried, and this stretches to a length of approximately eighty linear metres. Within this collection one inestimable resource is the fellowship application files, which can be seen as the bedrock of future prosopographical studies of Belgian scientific and aca- demic backgrounds. The collection also contains general administrative files, a section of the archives