Karel Aeneas de Croeser

Karel Aeneas de Croeser was born at Brugge at a time when almost the entire southern part of the Netherlands was flourishing economically as a semi-detached Austrian province. His father, Karel Jozef de Croeser (1701-1775), was an army officer. Both his father and his mother, born Marie Charlotte Stochove (1724-1774), came from prominent Flemish families.[1]

His secondary schooling was with the Augustinians in Brugge, after which he moved on to study successfully for a degree in Law at the (not yet split) University of Leuven on the far side of Brussels. By January 1792 he was back in Bruges. He embarked on a career in public administration, working as a municipal "Schepen" (sometimes translated as "magistrate") in the one but last city administration to be appointed before the entire region was over-run by French revolutionary "citizen armies". In 1794, as far as surviving sources disclose, he disappeared for three years. He resurfaced in 1797, still based in Bruges, as a member of the departmental council for the recently created department of Lys, in a by now greatly enlarged version of France. The departmental council quickly became indistinguishable, in terms of its membership and principal activities, from its Ancien Régime precursor. 1802 marked the start of his lengthy incumbency as chairman of the departmental council.[1]

In addition, de Croeser was appointed Mayor of Brugge in 1803, remaining in post without a break till 1813. He was succeeded by Jean-Jacques van Zuylen van Nyevelt who after 1815 combined his civic responsibilities with membership of the Dutch parliament ("Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal"). However, in 1817 van Nyevelt abruptly withdrew from both national and city politics, probably in order to spend more time with his young second wife and their expanding family.[lower-alpha 1] Karel Aeneas de Croeser then returned to office as the city's mayor, serving between 1817 and his resignation in 1827.[1]

There was much that de Croeser did for the city. The arrival of French revolutionary invaders in 1794 had marked the start of a new age of government mandated secularism, and in 1800 he organised the removal of the great bell from the Church of Our Lady ("Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk") and had it rehung in the city belfry. In its new position the bell was first rung in order to celebrate the Treaty of Amiens, celebrated by politicians and historians on both sides as an important (if rather short-lived) triumph.[1] As regards the bell tower, this would not be the last time that de Croeser provided for additions and enhancements to the bells that regulated business and life in the city.[4] On the front of the belfry he had a large replacement statue of the Virgin Mary placed in the empty niche above the entrance, to replace the one that had been destroyed in the revolution a few years earlier.[4] He had the Boeveriepoort (city gate) rebuilt in 1811. He also, in 1819, reinvigorated the "Noble Fraternity of the Holy Blood" after a two decades during which it had been repressed and subsequently become terminally dormant.

One out of town project to which he devoted his energies was the development of the city's "Central Cemetery", a short distance outside the walls, along the route towards Oostkamp. The first burial there had taken place in 1787, but citizens had been reluctant to bury their deceased relatives outside the confines of the city, and it was only in 1804, under Mayor de Croeser, that burials within the city walls were ended. Prominent families were encouraged to set the right example, and he had a special mausoleum constructed at the cemetery for the bodies of leading citizens. His own was one of the first bodies to end up in it.[1][5]