In 1839 Belgium and the Netherlands were definitively separated from each other. Part of the arrangement was that Limburg east of the Meuse was separated from Belgium and, together with the fortress Maastricht, joined to the Netherlands as the Dutch province of Limburg (from here on in this article the name ‘Limburg’ always refers to the Dutch province Limburg, and not the Belgian province of the same name). As a result of these separations, the language situation changed both in Flanders and in Limburg. In Flanders, the French language, which was already frequently used by the upper classes, became the language of the administrative and judicial systems, despite the fact that Netherlandic was the language of the people, the church, and primary education. Without command of French it was impossible to climb the social ladder. Meanwhile, in Limburg Netherlandic became the language of public life. For a long time, mastery of French remained a distinguishing sign in social intercourse of the upper classes in Limburg, but in no way there was a threat from French to the use of Netherlandic. In Flanders, especially in Ghent and Antwerp, a movement (the ‘Vlaamse Beweging’) soon arose that strived to put an end to the suppression of the Flemish identity by the French language, and to restore the pride of the Flemish people in their own Netherlandic (‘diets’) character. From 1849 onwards, Dutch-Belgian Netherlandic philologists organized three-day congresses, alternatingly in a Belgian and a Dutch city, to experience the common linguistic identity (the ‘Groot-Nederlandse Gedachte’), to promote the practice of the Netherlandic language and literature, and to raise the status of Netherlandic in Flanders. On the Flemish side, the novelist Pieter Ecrevisse and the poet Jan Michiel Dautzenberg played a prominent role. They belonged to the group of former Limburg citizens who, at the time of the separation, had opted for moving to Belgium. In Limburg there was initially little interest in the Netherlandic Congresses. Here, the ...