Abstract

Our contribution focuses on the neurologist and educational psychologist Ovide Decroly, as a scholarly persona, and deals with the financing of scientific research as well as the financial status of researchers themselves. After all, scientific practice, the production and spread of “truth”, costs money. Decroly barely experienced the evolution from the almost selfless scientist to a scientist who is put under pressure to acquire funds. He rather dedicated himself to the progress of knowledge and renounced money, fame and career opportunities than to capitalize his science into useful output. He rather envisaged a bourgeois lifestyle than that he was formed by the criteria set by grant providers. As far as archival documents allow us, we study Decroly’s itinerarium, more or less as an ‘independent scholar’, simply by looking at the financial means he obtained – one of the necessary conditions for the development and spread of his ideas. Yet, the archival sources are far from complete. On the one hand, many sources have gone lost, and, on the other hand, the preserved archive of Decroly cannot answer all of our questions. As a result, the financial picture remains incomplete. However, the sources do give us an idea of Decroly’s revenues, and his most important financial supporters. In any case, this study offers a corrective for the myth that Decroly – as generous as he may have been – conducted research, only in service of humanity.