Herman Vander Linden
Herman Vander Linden (1868–1956) was a Belgian historian who was a professor at the University of Liège. Life. Vander Linden was born in Leuven on 27 April 1868 and was educated in the state secondary school there. He graduated doctor of philosophy from Ghent University in 1891, with a thesis on the constitution of the medieval city of Leuven. His teachers were Henri Pirenne and Paul Fredericq. He visited a number of German universities and studied at the Ecole des Chartes in Paris (1892-1894). In 1895 he obtained a special doctorate in historical sciences with a  thesis on merchant guilds in the medieval Low Countries. From October 1895 to October 1903 he taught history and geography in a state secondary school in Antwerp. In 1903 he was appointed to a lectureship in the University of Liège. His private library was destroyed in the sack of Leuven in 1914. He and his family became refugees in England, returning after the end of the German occupation of Belgium in World War I. Together with F. L. Ganshof he edited the 1926 Festschrift for Henri Pirenne, "Mélanges d'histoire offerts à Henri Pirenne par ses anciens élèves et ses amis  à l'occasion de sa quarantième année d'enseignement à l'Université de Gand, 1886-1926". Vander Linden retired from teaching in 1938. He was an active contributor to the "Biographie Nationale de Belgique", and from 1935 to 1944 secretary of the committee responsible for publishing it. Under the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, one of his sons was arrested as a member of the Resistance, and died in a German concentration camp in 1942. Herman Vander Linden died in Korbeek-Lo on 15 April 1956.