One King and two Barons...
Albert II - admired Bulgaria and studied our history for weeks
“But do you know how two barons have had an extraordinary influence on the development of Bulgaria… Both, I can proudly say, did it with Belgian investments… Both of them bear the prestigious title of “baron”!”
If an ambassador or a friend from Brussels had asked me this question, I would probably have thought twice, taken out my phone, and immediately started searching what it was about on Google.
But those words came from the mouth of King Albert II of Belgium,
casually, over a cup of tea.
At the government’s Boyana residence, we discussed an upcoming meeting with business. Several Belgian Chamber of Industry people are standing slightly stunned and confused with him.
Nobody naturally expects the King to ask such a question, and while I can almost guess what it is all about, King Albert II adds gently and a little like a schoolmaster:
“I’ll help you, I’ll help you… Dig into Bulgarian history, go back to 1873, and see who built Bulgaria’s first railway from Varna to Ruse… The German Baron Maurice de Hirsch, through his Belgian company Eastern Railways, took over the construction of the line from the High Gate of the Ottoman Empire. Although the company had a lot of mixed capital, the Belgian engineering involvement was crucial…
King Albert II was the brother of King Baudouin, who succeeded him to the throne in 1993, until his abdication twenty years later in favor of his son Philippe.
And… a cousin of our own King Simeon the Second.
He arrived in Bulgaria on a “state visit.” Still, together with a massive group of Belgian businessmen and already at the airport, his first words were, “Let’s now help my friends with whom I was on the plane to make good investments in Bulgaria, a wonderful and fast-growing country.”
Just days before the visit, together with the Belgian Ambassador Philippe Becquet, we invited a group of representatives from different business organizations to his residence to discuss how to make this visit successful and valuable for Bulgaria. The first Belgian investors had already appeared, and our country had a pretty good image among the Belgian business organizations, not without the participation of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), in which my great friends at that time, the Belgian Piet Steel, supported by the Secretary General of the ERT, the Dutch Wim Filippa, had a leading role.
In short, those were glorious times.
Business delegations arrived in Bulgaria one after the other; all of them wanted to see the Prime Minister, then King Simeon, to look for business opportunities here, to assess the environment, and quickly, back home, to make investment plans.
That’s how we welcomed King Albert II. He wanted to pave the way for more Belgian projects in the then-awakening Bulgarian economy, and he also knew how important this was for his country.
“You see, Mr. Behar, I would be happy to look at everything on my cultural agenda and meet with the politicians; I studied your history for weeks before I came. You have an incredible country to be proud of and admire! But excuse me, for me
, the most important part of my visit,
is the business forum, my meetings there, and the colleagues who came with me… We cannot develop our relationship without having a solid and profitable business; times are different now. I want to leave that in Bulgaria, and I know that this will help both countries…
At the forum at the Boyana residence, there were several hundred business representatives from both countries. King Albert II presented himself with a long speech about history, culture, and especially the economy, answering questions, smiling, being cheerful, and praising the changes in Bulgaria. When already a bit tired, we sat him in one of the small rooms of the residence and drank another tea; I innocently asked him:
“You mentioned Baron Hirsch and his railway,
but you also said it wasn’t just him; there were two…”
“Well, yes,” replied the King. “There are two. And both of them remain forever in Bulgarian-Belgian history. The second is Baron Daniel Janssen, the president of the Solvay Group… He opened the way for Belgium’s modern investments in your already modern country!”
P.S. I dedicated an article about my meetings with Baron Janssen in a previous magazine issue...
In the picture: Maxim Behar with King Albert II at the Boyana Residence, October 2003