Monument Jozef Tielemans Aarschot

Jozef Tielemans was born in 1865. He started his political career in Aarschot as ships in 1891 and was appointed mayor in 1908. Already a day after the invasion of the Germans, he warned the population against "no hostile acts, no hostile cries… against the stranger". On August 12, the day of Belgian victory at the Battle of Halen, he explicitly repeats this: "do wait to carry weapons and above all to shoot". On Wednesday morning, August 19, he can still exonerate the dozens of civilians who threaten to shoot the Germans. But that evening, around 11 a.m., he is taken away together with son Louis, brother Emile and other hostages. In the morning of August 20, 1914, after a long night, they would be the first of a group of 29 hostages to be shot in a field behind Stockmans.

About the monument
Only in August 1998, 84 years after the events, this bust for mayor Jozef Tielemans was founded in Aarschot. In 1922, a proposal by Mayor Coomans was not accepted by the political liberal and socialist opponents for fear that the war memory in Aarschot would be colored too Catholic. In 1930 Coomans again argues for a statue of Jozef Tielemans at the Hoogbrug. But even now not everyone supports the idea.
It will be at the hands of priest Jozef De Vroey and Willy Schroeven, chairman of the Ducal Aarschotse Kring voor Heemkunde, that the statue will finally be created in 1998. The artist is Fons Past.

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