Johan Germonpré (Ostend, 1955) is a retired secondary school teacher, visual artist and author of many travel blogs.
Walk of life
Johan completed his secondary education at the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwecollege in Ostend. From an early age he had a special interest in sciences and technology. He actually wanted to get a technical education.
After secondary education, he went to the Teacher Training College in Torhout. He chose the subjects geography, physics, chemistry and biology. At that time his interest was not so much in ‘field biology’, but in the how and why of everything: evolutionary biology, chemistry and the physical laws of the atom and the universe.
At the age of 21, he started teaching in a secondary school (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwecollege Assebroek in Bruges). A few years later he found his own way of working and thinking ‘rather theoretical’ and took a full course as a garage mechanic at the SNT in Bruges. There his bond with concrete material arose and a ‘forbidden childhood dream’ was fulfilled.
In his search for the meaning of everything, he still could not make the connection between the Christian tradition he was raised in and scientific thinking. This changed in 1986 by studying ‘The phenomenon of man’, a book by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (see: www.teilhard.org.uk). In this work, Johan received an answer: a total vision of the future of the earth and mankind from the perspective of science. A vision that did not appear to conflict with Christianity or humanism. On the contrary, they complemented each other. In the meantime, Johan also studied music (clarinet) at the conservatory in Bruges.
Cycling through the interior of Turkey from east to west with his wife Christine, was a real eye-opener for Johan in 2004. For the first time he had an intense contact with another culture. Especially the hospitality and cordiality of the people he met left a deep impression.
In 2006, when his own 4 children were independent, he went on a world tour with Christine. They drove through Turkey and Iran and northern Pakistan by car. Then thy crossed the border into the Uyghur area in China. They continued their journey by public transport to Beijing, later picked up their car again and went on to India and Nepal. By public transport they visited Thailand, Malaysia, the islands of Indonesia and South Australia. Then again by car via Pakistan, Iran and Turkey towards Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia to Kenya.
Deep contacts with people outside the European culture have changed me forever. I also noticed that the essence of the other world religions is the same as that of our Christian tradition.
Johan Germonpré
In the meantime, in addition to the theory of evolution, Johan took an interest into the findings of two new sciences: relativity and quantum mechanics. It took Johan more than ten years to understand their impact and to connect it to the theory of evolution. This created a new future-oriented worldview for him.
Artist
All of nature invites us to make art. Many years ago Johan started as a sculptor in ‘found wood’ – “waist direct method”. When he ended his teaching career in 2012, time became available to take a higher art education at the Municipal Academy in Bruges, with courses of drawing, painting and sculpting the human body – for him the most beautiful creation in the known universe.
You can find a number of his works of art on this website: click here.
Writer
In 2021, Johan started writing down everything he had learned over the years about science and religion. Together with a number of in-depth conversations and experiences with people outside Europe (taken from previous travel blogs) they have become a book : ‘Science and spirituality: an alliance starting from the Big Bang’.