Died 1996 | ||
Similar Frans Van der Elst, Bart Staes, Maurits Coppieters, Geert Bourgeois, Bart De Wever | ||
Walter Couvreur (1914–1996) was a Dutch philologist. He studied Classical and Oriental languages. He was professor of Hittite and Tocharian at the University of Ghent.
Couvreur published the first comparative grammar of Tocharian to fully take (West Tocharian (TB) into account in 1947, and edited many manuscripts. He was the President of the Higher Institute for Eastern, East European and African language and history. He was also a member of the Royal Academy for Language and Literature.
His linguistic activities also saw him involved in Dutch orthography as co-author of what is known as 'het Groene Boekje' , a list of words of the Dutch language, published in 1954. He was for many years the secretary of the Commission, set up by the respective Ministers of education in the Netherlands and Belgium in 1947 and entrusted with drawing up a list for a standardized Dutch spelling.
In the early postwar period he became interested in Flemish nationalism and played a role in the Algemeen Nederlands Verbond. Later he was active in the Vlaams Comité voor Federalisme. He succeeded Corneel Heymans as President of this Committee. Within this Committee and together with Walloon federalists he worked out a federal constitution for Belgium in 1954. Consequently, he became involved in politics in 1954 by negotiating the election cartel ' Christian Volksunie'. After the elections of 1954 which were not a success he presided over the negotiations leading to the setting up of a new Flemish national party, People's Union (Belgium) (de Volksunie). He was the first President of this party, remaining in office from 1954 until mid-1955, when he resigned for personal reasons.
He was conferred a knighthood by the King in 1989.