At the Royal Palace | 2014-18.brussels

Surgery…in a hall of the Royal Palace. Transformed into a hospital, the massive building began to receive the Belgian soldiers that were evacuated from the front in August 1914. After the seizing of Brussels, German soldiers also arrived, lying side by side with their combat enemies. A few months later, German authorities would put an end to this cohabitation, ceasing to send Germans to the Palace hospital. They nevertheless repeatedly tried to take control over the place in order to reserve it exclusively for Germans.

German attempts to seize the hospital failed, hindered by protests from the management, the support of neutral powers and the symbolic dimension of the place. With an exclusively Belgian, allied, or neutral team, the hospital took care of invalid soldiers until the end of the war. Between 1914 and 1918, the Royal Palace hospital received 945 wounded, of which 605 were Belgians and 293 were German.