Herman Liebaers (February 1, 1919 in Tienen, Belgium – November 9, 2010 in Jette, Brussels) was a Belgian linguist. He was director general of the central Belgian Royal Library and Marshal of the Royal Household of the Royal Court of Belgium.
Education He obtained a master's degree in literature from Ghent University in 1942 and a Ph.D. in 1955 at the same university.
Career In 1943, he started working at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels (Albertina). During the war he was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in the concentration camps of Breendonk and Huy. In 1950, he spent 6 months in the U. S. with a Fulbright scholarship and worked a few weeks at the Library of Congress. From 1951 until 1956, he was also Assistant Secretary of the Belgian American Educational Foundation. In 1954, he moved on to become the librarian of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).Wijnstroom, Margreet (2 December 2010). "Dr. Herman Liebaers, 1919-2010". International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. ifla.org. Retrieved 23 February 2024.
In 1956, he returned to the Royal Library in Brussels, being appointed its director general, and helped oversee the establishment of its new permanent secretariat in The Hague.Rayward, W. Boyd (1994). "Library associations, international," in Encyclopedia of Library History. Eds. Wayne A. Wiegand and Don G. Davis, Jr. New York: Garland Press. pp. 342-347. From 1969 until 1974, he was president of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), and subsequently honorary president. He was an editor and biographer of the 19th-century poet Hélène Swarth.
From 1973 until 1981, he was Marshal of the Royal Household of king Baudouin I of Belgium. He was the first Dutch speaking Fleming in this post. Other Flemings had preceded him but were French-speaking members of the old nobility.
In 1976, he was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership."IFLA Honorary President, Has Been Awarded an Honorary Membership on the Occasion of the Centenary of American Library Association." 1976. IFLA Journal 2 (3): 173.
Personal life He was married to Isa Hereng. They had a son, Dirk, and a daughter Inge Liebaers, who was a professor of genetics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Bibliography Hélène Swarths Zuidnederlandse jaren, Ghent, 1964. Hélène Swarth. Brieven aan Pol de Mont, Ghent, 1964 Liebaers on Libraries and the 37th Session of IFLA in Liverpool, Wilson Library Bulletin, 45, 10, 950–951, June 1971 Book promotion through libraries, New Delhi: Federation of Publishers and Booksellers Associations in India, 1973 The impact of American and European librarianship upon each other, Chicago, 1977 Small Talk about Great Books, Delivered on the Occasion of the 7th. Annual Bromsen Lecture, Boston, Mass., May 12, 1979. Mostly in the line of duty: thirty years with books, The Hague, Boston, London, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1980 Rond de Brusselse Warande, Brussels, 1988 Autour Du Parc De Bruxelles, Brussels, 1988 Books over bombs, IFLA in Moscow, August 1991 Koning Boudewijn in spiegelbeeld, Van Halewyck, 1998 Beyond Belgium, Van Halewyck, 2003
References
External links International Library Associations Herman Liebaers' obituary