Jozef Deleu: key obituary facts
Is Jozef Deleu dead? Yes. Jozef Deleu died on October 21, 2026, at age 89.
Cause of death: Jozef Deleu's cause of death has not been publicly confirmed.
What was Jozef Deleu known for?
He was a Belgian writer (born 1937).
More about Jozef Deleu
Born: 20 April 1937.
Place of birth: Roeselare.
Place of death: Rekkem.
Gender: male.
Occupation: writer, poet, publisher.
Nationality: Belgium.
Notable work: de lage landen, Het liegend konijn, Septentrion.
Awards: Knight of the National Order of Merit, Officer of Arts and Letters, Prijs voor Vlaams-Nederlandse Culturele Samenwerking, G.H. 's-Gravesande-prijs, Arkprijs van het Vrije Woord, Descartes Prize, Honorary doctors of Ghent University.
Occupations: Poet, prose writer, essayist, anthologist, magazine editor.
Jozef Deleu, the Belgian writer, poet and editor, died October 21, 2026, aged 89.
Born in Roeselare, he was also a prose writer, essayist and anthologist, with a career that joined literary work to cultural publishing. At 20, he founded Ons Erfdeel, a Flemish-Dutch cultural magazine that he led until 2002.
He broadened the project into a foundation that published in Dutch, French and English; the magazine is now known as de lage landen. After retiring from that work, Deleu established the poetry magazine Het liegend konijn in 2003. He assembled it single-handedly through 2025, giving the publication a sustained role in presenting poetry. Before turning fully to publishing, Deleu trained as a primary school teacher at the college in Torhout and taught from 1956 to 1970, first in Mouscron and later in Menen. The idea for Ons Erfdeel came after writer André Demedts approached him at a 1956 meeting of the Committee for French Flanders. The magazine’s first issue appeared the following year, initially in a print run of 250 copies. Deleu’s work across poetry, editing and institution-building made him a prominent figure in Flemish cultural life, where he was sometimes called the “culture pope.”