POTTER United Families

The history of Ghent was a key reference of de Potter’s work. This
has mainly to do with the original way the publication has been
conceived, so that it always differs from others.
The author chose not to take a chronological or substantive structure,
but for a topographic layout.
As if an experienced guide was walking with the reader through the
streets of Ghent, and on the basis of the history of the buildings and
residents, telling the history of the city and its institutions.
Another merit of this work lies in the field of heuristics. Frans de
Potter collected data from many untold and unreleased archive
documents.
The founder of the Flemish David Fund and heavy supporter of the
Willems Fund, as well as the Flemish emancipation movement, was
not a man of science.
He felt that way in his work, but science owes an infinite amount to
this hard worker, friend of modest countryside men, this fighter who
died with the pen in his hand.
He led a life of uninterrupted quest for Flemish identity and
“Belgian” history and the rest of his ageing period was short. After a
short illness, he died in Ghent on August 15, 1904.
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