The Brussels town house at Rue de Florence 13 has a secret history that almost no one knows about. It was built from 1894 to 1898 by the architect Octave van Rysselberghe in the new and fashionable art nouveau style. The street names Florence and Livourne are carved into the stonework in elegant lettering
The house was owned by a rich young man called Paul Otlet. His father had made a vast fortune building tramways all over the world, but Paul wasn’t interested in money. ‘I’m interested in the universal and the well-being of all,’ he insisted.
Three years before this house was begun, Otlet met a Brussels lawyer called Henri La Fontaine. They believed passionately that the classification of knowledge would help to secure human progress and world peace.
One year before he moved into the house, Otlet came up with a plan to create a utopian city with representatives from all the nations of the world. The centrepiece was a permanent institution called the Mundaneum which would hold his collection of 12 million index cards. ‘This repertory,’ he wrote 1897, ‘will consist of an inventory of all that has been written at all times, in all languages, and on all subjects.’
Otlet moved into the house in 1898 with his wife and two sons. He used the room on the corner as his study. Here he came up with other utopian ideas until the outbreak of war in 1914 shattered his plans. Otlet fled to Paris after the Germans marched into Brussels. One of his sons died in the Belgian trenches.
At the end of the war, Otlet returned here to continue his campaign for world peace. He finally convinced the Belgian government to give him a wing of the Palais du Cinquantenaire to install the Mundaneum.
Otlet’s vast collection included political posters, films and newspapers, but also strange objects sent by his collaborators. You could have found the tusk of an African wild boar, the seeds of Brazilian plants and a pistol presented by a Belgian arms factory. Everything was carefully noted down on the 12 million index cards kept in wooden filing cabinets. The entire collection filled more than one hundred rooms.
Otlet’s Mundaneum is now seen as the world’s first internet.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
