Charles De Jace

Charles De Jace has always shown a keen interest in economic, social and societal issues. During his term as Rector, he also served as a co-opted senator. In this high office, he was rapporteur for bills on the conferring of academic degrees. It was also under his rectorship that the University acquired land in Val-Benoît.

Charles De Jace was born in Flémalle-Grande on March 12, 1856. Doctor of Philosophy and Letters in 1876, he won the Concours universitaire (historical sciences group) that year, a very favorable signal for the academic community of the time. Thanks to his travel grant, he continued his studies in Bonn, Berlin and Leipzig, as well as in Paris, at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. From then on, he tasted the resources of the two nerve centers of research on the continent, Germany and France, the latter although militarily defeated by the former in 1870.

Back in Liège, De Jace earned a second degree, becoming a Doctor of Law in 1880, and then a lawyer at the Liège bar. The variety of his training stimulated his social interests. In 1881, together with Victor Brants, he founded the Société belge des Études pratiques d'Économie sociale. He also published extensively on the subject of industrial accidents.

In 1886, he became an extraordinary professor at the University of Liège's Faculty of Law, responsible for the Historical Introduction to Civil Law and the History of the Law of Nations. He was appointed ordinary professor in 1889. His teaching load grew steadily: Natural Law, Political Economy, Comparative Labor Law, Contemporary History of Trade and Industry.

Like hundreds of thousands of Belgians, the First World War led him into exile. As a refugee in Cambridge, he and other Belgian colleagues set up university courses for Belgians, validated by certificates. His organizational skills were appreciated by the Belgian government in exile in Le Havre, which appointed him Director of Higher Education. He then entered the political arena, becoming Secretary General of the Ministry of National Reconstruction and Chief of Staff to the Minister of Economic Affairs of the Belgian government in exile.

After the war, this personal involvement led to his being co-opted as a senator for the Catholic party from 1921 to 1925. He nevertheless pursued his academic career with even greater fruitfulness, becoming rector of the University of Liège between 1921 and 1924.

Admitted to emeritus in 1926, he continued his charitable activities with the Société de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul de Liège, which he chaired from 1926 until his death in 1941.