Augustin Lodewyckx (1876-1964) was born in Belgium and came to Australia
after a career which included teaching French and German at the Victoria
College, Stellenbosch, South Africa, and educational administration
in the Katanga Province of what was then the Belgian Congo. When he
arrived in Melbourne in 1914, he and his family were actually en route
for America, but were stranded by the outbreak of war. Lodewyckx was
appointed lecturer in German in 1915 and Associate-Professor in 1922.
For the next 25 years he not only fostered the development of German
within the University and the community at large, but also initiated
and supported teaching and research in Dutch, Old Icelandic and Swedish,
in some cases writing the textbooks as well as giving the lectures.
He published very widely on philology, demography and the history of
Germanic languages.
His son K A (Axel) Lodewycks (1910-1991) enrolled at the University
of Melbourne in 1928, simultaneously working at the Public Library of
Victoria (now the State Library). He graduated in 1933 and a six-month
overseas trip visiting libraries in Europe and the United States found
him in Nuremberg on the Night of the Long Knives. He enlisted in the
second AIF in 1940 and served as an intelligence officer and archivist.
Lodewycks joined the University Library staff in 1948 and was University
Librarian from 1956 to 1973, overseeing the design of the Baillieu Library,
in its day an example of cutting-edge architecture. It was the first
purpose-built Australian university library for decades.
The relations between Axel Lodewycks and the University administration
were frequently acrimonious as he insisted that funding for staff and
collections was less than adequate to the needs of the growing institution.
During this period, however, the foundations of a great collection were
laid, with acquisitions such as the Poynton Collection achieving international
importance.
