Verschaeve was convinced the Soviet Union was the greatest danger to peace and culture in Europe; he was strongly anti-communism and a convinced supporter of Nazism. In 1944 he held a meeting with SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler about the Flemish question, although it achieved little as the Allied advance into Belgium was not far away, and Flanders would soon be liberated from Nazi control. Verschaeve told Himmler at this meeting that, while he rejected Nazi paganism, he thought Nazism could become complementary to the salvific message of the Church, as long as it remained political and activist. Until the end of the successful Allied offensive against the Nazi Wehrmacht in western Belgium, Verschaeve continued calling upon young Flemish, Catholic, adolescent boys to volunteer in the Waffen-SS foreign legions against Stalin and "Satanic Bolshevism". Death He fled to Austria in 1945. He was condemned to death in absentia by a Belgian court, but survived in Austria until 1949, when he died of a heart attack at the vicarage of the Tyrolean town Solbad Hall, and was buried there. In 1973 members of the neo-Nazi Vlaamse Militanten Orde dug up his remains and reburied them in Flanders. He remains a celebrated figure amongst the more extreme ends of Flemish nationalism, and a symbol of disgraceful Flemish nationalism to French-speaking Catholics. Streets in Kortrijk , Lanaken and Breendonk were named after him; in 2019-2020 the local councils decided to rename it. Writing Verschaeve wrote extensively on philosophy, adopting a dramatic, poetic writing style. He was also known as a poet and playwright. As an author he wrote a number of plays dealing with historical and Biblical characters with Judas (1919) and Maria-Magdalena (1930) now widely held to be the best works from a prolific but sketchy output. His major works include: Jacob van Artevelde (1911) Zeesymphonieën (1911) Ferdinand Verbiest (1912) De schoonheid van het evangelie (1913) Passieverhaal (1913) Philips van Artevelde (1913) Nocturnen (1916–1924) Judas (1917) Het mysterie (1920) Uren bewondering voor groote kunstwerken (1920–1922) Maria Magdalena (1928) De Kruisboom (1929) Elijah (1936) Nocturnen (1936) Rubens, Vlaanderens Spectrum (1938) Jezus (1939) Eeuwige gestalten (1944) References 1874 births 1949 deaths Anti–World War I activists Belgian collaborators with Nazi Germany Flemish activists Flemish priests Flemish writers 20th-century Belgian Roman Catholic priests Members of the clergy convicted of crimes People from Alveringem People from Ardooie Belgian anti-communists Flemish nationalists Catholicism and far-right politics Nazis sentenced to death