ABSTRACT
The creation of enemy images was copied in Belgium after the war. According to De Keyser, the SAB president, the war had been initiated by ‘a treacherous and criminal nation’ that destroyed libraries, laboratories, and museum collections. In Augustus 1914, German troops had set fire to the library of the University of Leuven, destroying hundreds of precious manuscripts and 300,000 books. Gauls and Germanics still belonged to the same ethnic stock, Houze stated but had known a divergent evolution. Mediterranean Celts on the one hand had acquired a head start since protohistory due to their contacts with southern and eastern civilizations. Houze remained convinced about brachycephalic superiority until the end of his career. His last contribution to the BSAB makes clear that he also kept defending the gap between apes and humans. In the same speech, Pirenne criticized the ‘bric-a-brac scholarship’ of Lang and de Gobineau, scientists who still had inspired Vanderkindere before the World War I.
