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conuly
It sure isn't today.
With Flemish Nationalism on the Rise, Belgium Teeters on the Edge
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
LINKEBEEK, Belgium — The other morning Damien Thiéry was in the meeting room of the town hall here, where every month or so, at public council sessions, Flemish nationalists harass him.
The population of this bedroom community outside Brussels is 84 percent French-speaking. More than a year ago it picked Mr. Thiéry, a Linkebeek native, as mayor. But Linkebeek is within the Flemish north, and the region’s Flemish government has so far declined to ratify his election.
Mr. Thiéry is not Flemish.
The German newspaper Die Tageszeitung a few days ago called Belgium the “most successful ‘failed state’ of all time.” The Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme offered to resign last month, saying that the “federal consensus model has reached its limits,” and that he couldn’t bring harmony to the country’s Flemish and French-speaking regions, raising the specter that this nation of 10.4 million might split up for good.
For the umpteenth time. Belgium’s perennial woes have been much reported upon. The country keeps muddling on, as it has for decades, with per capita income exceeding that of Germany, the world’s leading exporter, although maybe a tipping point has been reached. Much of the trouble now arises from increased demands for autonomy by the more populous, prosperous north, and disputes over electoral districts like Linkebeek.
It’s about culture in the end. In its escalating dysfunction Belgium demonstrates the inextricable link between culture and nationhood. As acting mayor Mr. Thiéry presides over tense meetings at which nationalists from out of town listen to hear if he utters a word in French instead of Flemish, as the various Dutch dialects of Flanders are known. If so, he said, all council decisions can be annulled, and he can be replaced as mayor by someone the Flemish choose.
“We have two separate cultures in Belgium,” said Mr. Thiéry, a sturdy man wearing shirt sleeves on a warm summer day, clearly exasperated. “It wasn’t this divisive when I grew up. Protesters shout, ‘French people get off our territory’ at our meetings. Flemish authorities refuse to give contracts to our French-speaking schoolteachers; they give Flemish children here 179 euros a year for school trips and other expenses, French children, 68 euros. If we want subsidies, we are obliged to stock our library with 75 percent of the books in Flemish, but it’s ridiculous to have a Flemish library in a mostly French-speaking town.”
Should Flanders ever secede, an independent Flemish nation that hoped to regain European Union membership would need to respect popular elections, including his, he added ruefully. “Ironic, no?” he said.
Els Witte is a Belgian historian. At her apartment, up the street from the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, she pondered the bad marriage of French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders.
“A language is a culture,” she said. “In Belgium the two cultures know very little about each other because they speak different languages. There are singers known in one part, not in the other. Television is different, newspapers, books.”
Francophones have now come to talk about “linguistic cleansing.” Flemish, many of them openly resentful of subsidizing poorer French-speaking compatriots, who for years lorded it over them economically and otherwise (unemployment today is three times higher in rust-belt Wallonia), say the issue is preserving national heritage. “It’s difficult to have a rational conversation,” said Roel Jacobs, a writer born to Flemish parents who lives in bilingual Brussels.
“There are six million Dutch speakers and they’re angry about Francophone influence, but meanwhile they care nothing about the influence of English and Anglo culture,” he went on, “so it’s not rational. We’ve forgotten our true cultural history. In the 15th century Bruges was the most vibrant city outside Italy because it was full of foreigners. Then it was Antwerp, when the foreigners left Bruges. Today the national movement in Flanders is in complete denial of the past.”
A century or so ago Émile Verhaeren, the Flemish Symbolist poet, who was born in Sint-Amands, near Antwerp, and educated at the University of Leuven, wrote in French. Now the university has split into two, the one Flemish, the other French and moved to Wallonia, and the region around Sint-Amands is a stronghold of far-right, anti-immigrant Flemish nationalists.
“Back then the Francophones didn’t want a bilingual country,” Ms. Witte said. “French dominated, and it would have meant they would need to learn Flemish. Educated Flemish spoke in French. But then the electoral system changed and allowed everyone to vote, and more power went to the non-French-speaking Flemish middle and lower classes.”
The other afternoon Francis Dannemark was at home in Brussels. Through the open French doors in his library, a Ping-Pong table crammed the balcony, beyond the stacks of books and DVDs. “I don’t think it will, but for the first time I really believe Belgium could disappear,” he said. Mr. Dannemark is an editor at Le Castor Astral, a French-language publisher. He prints translations of Flemish writers from Dutch, a rarity here.
“Flemish people today revere their writers because for them language is a symbol of independence,” he said. “I was shocked that my French-speaking counterparts didn’t know their neighbors.” He picked up a French translation of “The Belgian Labyrinth,” by Geert van Istendael, perhaps the most well-known living writer in Flanders, who’s still largely unread by Francophones.
“A Flemish friend,” Mr. Dannemark said, “put it to me this way: ‘Flanders has nothing in common with Holland except language, and the Flemish and Walloons have everything in common except language.’ But there’s almost no communication between the two communities, except through rock music, which everybody sings in English, and sports, which transcend everything.”
Mr. Dannemark added: “Flemish culture is dynamic today, Flemish intellectuals are fluent in Dutch and French and English, and they aren’t part of the separatist movement. Many of them come to live in Brussels because we here are the last Belgians. Most people in Flanders now say, ‘I’m Flemish,’ not ‘I’m Belgian.’ It’s as if Flemish-speaking Belgium wanted to leave Europe. And if they weren’t poor, Walloons would probably want to secede too.”
Mr. Jacobs sighed when that remark was repeated to him. “All cultural movements have a history and the nationalist movement in Flanders started long ago when left-wing liberals from French-speaking Belgium promoted Flemish as the language of the people in Flanders,” he said. “They believed promoting the Dutch language would help educate the poor, who could learn French afterward. Then the Catholic Church came to dominate the movement, to see it as rural and religious in opposition to liberal, urban, bilingual Brussels, and it became conservative. Now there’s a xenophobic, far-right wing.
“I consider myself someone from Brussels,” he added. He was at the moment in a cafe in the city. A Francophone literary colleague ambled over with his young daughter in tow, patted Mr. Jabobs on the back, idly picked up a compilation of Flemish writings, one of Mr. Dannemark’s books, which was resting on the table, and rolled his eyes. Discerning the conversation, he suddenly remembered a pressing engagement.
“My family is from Flanders,” Mr. Jacobs went on. “They put me in a Dutch Catholic school. I learned French in the street. I write in Dutch but refuse to publish only in Dutch, so I translate myself into French. But it’s difficult to have a public on both sides. Flemish writers want to be published in Holland, Francophones in France.”
The enmity is everywhere. The other morning Eugene Messemakers was on the street in Vilvoorde, a Flemish town not far away from Brussels. A retired construction project manager, he has been a councilman for 32 years from the mostly Francophone neighborhood of Beauval, he said. French speakers like him make up some 10 percent of Vilvoorde’s population of 31,000. Mr. Messemakers nodded toward city hall, behind him. The entrance had been moved to the rear of the building. His explanation was that the stone front bore old inscriptions chiseled in French. There was a Flemish flag outside, and a European Union flag.
No Belgian one.
“It’s gotten to the point that landlords want to rent only to Flemish speakers,” he said. “I used to hire Flemish workers for building projects in Francophone areas, but now French workers need to speak Dutch to be hired by Flemish bosses. At my bank, documents are in Flemish and if you ask for them in French you’re told they’re out.”
Ms. Witte, the historian, responded: “Years ago many Flemish went to places like Liège in Wallonia to work and never got the reciprocity Francophones in the Flemish parts of Belgium now want. Even today, there is still a feeling among Francophones that French is so important they don’t need to learn Dutch.”
Asked if the Flemish side, at this point dominant, might be more linguistically accommodating, Ms. Witte, who’s Flemish, paused.
“In a global society, nations are less important,” she answered. “It’s a moral question. Does a culture have a right to stand up for itself? More than that: Do unity and nationhood take priority over one’s culture? That’s not just an issue for Belgians but everyone.”
With Flemish Nationalism on the Rise, Belgium Teeters on the Edge
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
LINKEBEEK, Belgium — The other morning Damien Thiéry was in the meeting room of the town hall here, where every month or so, at public council sessions, Flemish nationalists harass him.
The population of this bedroom community outside Brussels is 84 percent French-speaking. More than a year ago it picked Mr. Thiéry, a Linkebeek native, as mayor. But Linkebeek is within the Flemish north, and the region’s Flemish government has so far declined to ratify his election.
Mr. Thiéry is not Flemish.
The German newspaper Die Tageszeitung a few days ago called Belgium the “most successful ‘failed state’ of all time.” The Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme offered to resign last month, saying that the “federal consensus model has reached its limits,” and that he couldn’t bring harmony to the country’s Flemish and French-speaking regions, raising the specter that this nation of 10.4 million might split up for good.
For the umpteenth time. Belgium’s perennial woes have been much reported upon. The country keeps muddling on, as it has for decades, with per capita income exceeding that of Germany, the world’s leading exporter, although maybe a tipping point has been reached. Much of the trouble now arises from increased demands for autonomy by the more populous, prosperous north, and disputes over electoral districts like Linkebeek.
It’s about culture in the end. In its escalating dysfunction Belgium demonstrates the inextricable link between culture and nationhood. As acting mayor Mr. Thiéry presides over tense meetings at which nationalists from out of town listen to hear if he utters a word in French instead of Flemish, as the various Dutch dialects of Flanders are known. If so, he said, all council decisions can be annulled, and he can be replaced as mayor by someone the Flemish choose.
“We have two separate cultures in Belgium,” said Mr. Thiéry, a sturdy man wearing shirt sleeves on a warm summer day, clearly exasperated. “It wasn’t this divisive when I grew up. Protesters shout, ‘French people get off our territory’ at our meetings. Flemish authorities refuse to give contracts to our French-speaking schoolteachers; they give Flemish children here 179 euros a year for school trips and other expenses, French children, 68 euros. If we want subsidies, we are obliged to stock our library with 75 percent of the books in Flemish, but it’s ridiculous to have a Flemish library in a mostly French-speaking town.”
Should Flanders ever secede, an independent Flemish nation that hoped to regain European Union membership would need to respect popular elections, including his, he added ruefully. “Ironic, no?” he said.
Els Witte is a Belgian historian. At her apartment, up the street from the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, she pondered the bad marriage of French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders.
“A language is a culture,” she said. “In Belgium the two cultures know very little about each other because they speak different languages. There are singers known in one part, not in the other. Television is different, newspapers, books.”
Francophones have now come to talk about “linguistic cleansing.” Flemish, many of them openly resentful of subsidizing poorer French-speaking compatriots, who for years lorded it over them economically and otherwise (unemployment today is three times higher in rust-belt Wallonia), say the issue is preserving national heritage. “It’s difficult to have a rational conversation,” said Roel Jacobs, a writer born to Flemish parents who lives in bilingual Brussels.
“There are six million Dutch speakers and they’re angry about Francophone influence, but meanwhile they care nothing about the influence of English and Anglo culture,” he went on, “so it’s not rational. We’ve forgotten our true cultural history. In the 15th century Bruges was the most vibrant city outside Italy because it was full of foreigners. Then it was Antwerp, when the foreigners left Bruges. Today the national movement in Flanders is in complete denial of the past.”
A century or so ago Émile Verhaeren, the Flemish Symbolist poet, who was born in Sint-Amands, near Antwerp, and educated at the University of Leuven, wrote in French. Now the university has split into two, the one Flemish, the other French and moved to Wallonia, and the region around Sint-Amands is a stronghold of far-right, anti-immigrant Flemish nationalists.
“Back then the Francophones didn’t want a bilingual country,” Ms. Witte said. “French dominated, and it would have meant they would need to learn Flemish. Educated Flemish spoke in French. But then the electoral system changed and allowed everyone to vote, and more power went to the non-French-speaking Flemish middle and lower classes.”
The other afternoon Francis Dannemark was at home in Brussels. Through the open French doors in his library, a Ping-Pong table crammed the balcony, beyond the stacks of books and DVDs. “I don’t think it will, but for the first time I really believe Belgium could disappear,” he said. Mr. Dannemark is an editor at Le Castor Astral, a French-language publisher. He prints translations of Flemish writers from Dutch, a rarity here.
“Flemish people today revere their writers because for them language is a symbol of independence,” he said. “I was shocked that my French-speaking counterparts didn’t know their neighbors.” He picked up a French translation of “The Belgian Labyrinth,” by Geert van Istendael, perhaps the most well-known living writer in Flanders, who’s still largely unread by Francophones.
“A Flemish friend,” Mr. Dannemark said, “put it to me this way: ‘Flanders has nothing in common with Holland except language, and the Flemish and Walloons have everything in common except language.’ But there’s almost no communication between the two communities, except through rock music, which everybody sings in English, and sports, which transcend everything.”
Mr. Dannemark added: “Flemish culture is dynamic today, Flemish intellectuals are fluent in Dutch and French and English, and they aren’t part of the separatist movement. Many of them come to live in Brussels because we here are the last Belgians. Most people in Flanders now say, ‘I’m Flemish,’ not ‘I’m Belgian.’ It’s as if Flemish-speaking Belgium wanted to leave Europe. And if they weren’t poor, Walloons would probably want to secede too.”
Mr. Jacobs sighed when that remark was repeated to him. “All cultural movements have a history and the nationalist movement in Flanders started long ago when left-wing liberals from French-speaking Belgium promoted Flemish as the language of the people in Flanders,” he said. “They believed promoting the Dutch language would help educate the poor, who could learn French afterward. Then the Catholic Church came to dominate the movement, to see it as rural and religious in opposition to liberal, urban, bilingual Brussels, and it became conservative. Now there’s a xenophobic, far-right wing.
“I consider myself someone from Brussels,” he added. He was at the moment in a cafe in the city. A Francophone literary colleague ambled over with his young daughter in tow, patted Mr. Jabobs on the back, idly picked up a compilation of Flemish writings, one of Mr. Dannemark’s books, which was resting on the table, and rolled his eyes. Discerning the conversation, he suddenly remembered a pressing engagement.
“My family is from Flanders,” Mr. Jacobs went on. “They put me in a Dutch Catholic school. I learned French in the street. I write in Dutch but refuse to publish only in Dutch, so I translate myself into French. But it’s difficult to have a public on both sides. Flemish writers want to be published in Holland, Francophones in France.”
The enmity is everywhere. The other morning Eugene Messemakers was on the street in Vilvoorde, a Flemish town not far away from Brussels. A retired construction project manager, he has been a councilman for 32 years from the mostly Francophone neighborhood of Beauval, he said. French speakers like him make up some 10 percent of Vilvoorde’s population of 31,000. Mr. Messemakers nodded toward city hall, behind him. The entrance had been moved to the rear of the building. His explanation was that the stone front bore old inscriptions chiseled in French. There was a Flemish flag outside, and a European Union flag.
No Belgian one.
“It’s gotten to the point that landlords want to rent only to Flemish speakers,” he said. “I used to hire Flemish workers for building projects in Francophone areas, but now French workers need to speak Dutch to be hired by Flemish bosses. At my bank, documents are in Flemish and if you ask for them in French you’re told they’re out.”
Ms. Witte, the historian, responded: “Years ago many Flemish went to places like Liège in Wallonia to work and never got the reciprocity Francophones in the Flemish parts of Belgium now want. Even today, there is still a feeling among Francophones that French is so important they don’t need to learn Dutch.”
Asked if the Flemish side, at this point dominant, might be more linguistically accommodating, Ms. Witte, who’s Flemish, paused.
“In a global society, nations are less important,” she answered. “It’s a moral question. Does a culture have a right to stand up for itself? More than that: Do unity and nationhood take priority over one’s culture? That’s not just an issue for Belgians but everyone.”
