Hof der dingen - Xavier Taveirne’s transistorradio

Radio and TV journalist Xavier Taveirne donated this beautiful transistorradio — and the lovely story behind it: 

“This was my grandparents’ very first radio. They lived on a farm in Wildenburg, near Wingene most of their lives, and I spent nearly all my childhood there. So yes, it’s what you’d call a family heirloom. They had no way of knowing their grandson would one day fall in love with radio and become a radio journalist himself. Although I’m not a collector, I’ll never part with this. It’s a perfect visual reminder of my lifelong passion for radio and my carefree childhood in that lush green corner of West Flanders”. 

For a long time, radio — along with the daily newspaper — was the only way the outside world reached the living rooms of West Flanders. 

Kortrijk (Courtray) is widely seen as the birthplace of radio in the region. In the autumn of 1927, a man named Etienne Vergote began experimenting with a small transmitter from his home on het Plein in Kortrijk. Without any official license, he began broadcasting music and lectures on Sunday morning. The station – with a Catholic influencecame to be known as Radio Kortrijk. 

Building on that momentum, the Kortrijk Radio Guild was founded in 1928 in hopes of obtaining an official broadcasting license. Although they never managed to obtain a permanent license, Etienne continued to illegally air concerts and lectures. 

In 1930, the Belgian National Institute for Radio Broadcasting was officially established in Brussels. On May 14th that year, 150 requests for low-power broadcasting licenses landed on the desk of Minister Bovesse, then Minister of Civil Service. In the end, he only officially recognised the two oldest Flemish stations: Antwerp and Courtray. That early recognition is one of the key reasons why the provincial branch of VRT Radio — one of Flanders’ national public broadcasters — has always kept Courtray as its home base. 

Over time, the public broadcaster in Courtray was joined by dozens of independent radio stations throughout the province. Reportedly, West Flanders is said to have 59 independent local radio stations still on the air.