Jules Destrée

Jules Destrée (Marcinelle, August 21, 1863 - Brussels, January 3, 1936) was a Walloon lawyer, cultural critic and socialist politician. The trials subsequent to the strikes of 1886 have deterimed his commitment within the Belgian Labour Party. He wrote a "Letter to the King" in 1912, which is seen as the funding declaration of the Walloon movement. He is famous for his quote "Il n'y a pas de Belges" ("There are no Belgians"), pointing to the lack of patriotic feelings in Flemings and Walloons, while pleading for some kind of federal state.

Biography

His father was an engineer in the chemical industry in Marcinelle and Couillet and later became a professor. Jules himself was a gifted student, getting his PhD in Law from the Université Libre de Bruxelles at the age of 20. His younger brother, Olivier Georges, became a monk, first in the Maredsous Abbey, later in the Abbey of Keizersberg in Leuven.

Besides his judicial work, he liked circulating among the artistic and literary circles of his time. There, he met etcher Auguste Danse, who's daughter Marie, a niece of Constantin Meunier, he married in 1889.

In 1892, together with Paul Pastur, he founded the Democratic Federation. He started a political career with the socialist party Parti Ouvrier Belge (POB), and was elected as a member of the Belgian Chamber of People's Representatives in 1894, where he continued to work until his death.

He wrote many and diverse publications; prose, political and social works, and studies on artists (like Odilon Redon and Rogier van der Weyden).

In 1911, during an exhibition of ancient arts of the Hainaut, Jules Destrée realised that Wallonia had many specific characteristics. From then on, he expressed his revendications for an autonomous Wallonia. In November, he gives a talk in front of the association of the young lawyers of Brussels (Jeune Barreau de Bruxelles). During this conference, he presents the political minorisation of the Walloon people. He said: "we are defeated, and governed against our menatlity. [« Nous sommes des vaincus, et des vaincus gouvernés contre notre mentalité. »]

Jules Destrée wrote his opened letter in 1912 to the King of the Belgians Albert I. The letter was published in the "Revue de Belgique" (15 August 1912) and in the "Journal de Charleroi" (24 August 1912). The largest newspapers, including "la Gazette de Charleroi", "l'Express" and "la Meuse", published the letter later on. And, in the foreign countries, for instance The New York Times publishe a short article about this lettercite web |url=http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B04E3DA113AE633A2575BC0A96F9C946396D6CF&oref=slogin|title=Belgium may separate |publisher=New York Times |date=1912-08-09 |accessdate=2008-06-11]

After Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, Jules Destrée went into exile in France at the request of the Belgian government, pleading for the Belgian cause in London, Paris and Rome. He also went on diplomatic missions, to Saint Petersburg and to China in 1918.

From 1919 to 1912 he was Minister of Arts and Sciences. He installed a "Fonds des mieux doués", a fund for the education of gifted children from poor families. In 1920 he started the "Académie de Langue et de Littérature françaises de Belgique", the "Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium".

Until his death he would continue to work on improving the political situation of Wallonia. In 1923 he left the "Assemblée wallonne" (the "Wallonian Assembly"), of which he was a co-founder in 1912, because it hadn't paid enough attention the Walloon working class. In 1929 he signed, together with Camille Huysmans, the "Compromis des Belges" ("Compromise of the Belgians"). This document judged separatism, accepted the cultural autonomy of Flanders and Wallonia, and suggested a greater autonomy for municipalities and provinces. The Compromise foresaw a bilingual Flanders and an unilingual Wallonia (this was before Brabant was split and the Brussels-Capital Region was created as a separate entity).

In 1938 the Institut Jules Destrée was founded to promote the regional development of Wallonia. With his heritage, a museum was founded in the attic of the Town Hall of Charleroi (Musée Jules Destrée), which opened in 1988.

Thoughts

According to Destrée, Belgium was composed of two separate entities, Flanders and Wallonia, and a feeling of Belgian nationalism was not possible, illustrated in his 1906 work "Une idée qui meurt: la patrie" ("An idea that is dying: the fatherland"). In the "Revue de Belgique" of August 15, 1912 he articulates this in his famous and notorious "Lettre au roi sur la séparation de la Wallonie et de la Flandre" ("Letter to the king on the separation of Wallonia and Flanders"), where he wrote: quote|Il y a en Belgique des Wallons et des Flamands. Il n'y a pas de Belges.

"In Belgium there are Walloons and Flemings. There are no Belgians."

The King agreed secretly with the Destrée's view but not to his proposal of a kind of Home Rule and wrote to his councellor: "I red the letter of Destrée [...] All he said is asbolutely true [...] But the separate administration would be an evil with more inconvenients and more dangers than the actual situation..." [fr J'ai lu la lettre de Destrée qui, sans conteste, est un littérateur de grand talent. Tout ce qu'il dit est absolument vrai, mais il est non moins vrai que la séparation administrative serait un mal entraînant plus d'inconvénients et de dangers de tout genre que la situation actuelle. Landro, 30 août, "A Jules Ingebleek, secrétaire privé du Roi et de la Reine", lettre reproduite in extenso in M-R Thielemans et E. Vandewoude, "Le Roi Albert au travers de ses lettres inédites", Office international de librairie, Bruxelles, 1982, pp. 435-436.] Contrary to what the title of his lettre might suggest, he didn't plead for the separation of Belgium, but for some kind of federal state, before such a term even existed.quote|Une Belgique faite de l'union de deux peuples indépendants et libres, accordés précisément à cause de cette indépendance réciproque, ne serait-elle pas un Etat infiniment plus robuste qu'une Belgique dont la moitié se croirait opprimée par l'autre moitié?
"A Belgium made of the union of two independent and free peoples, would that not be a State infinitely more robust than a Belgium where one half believes itself to be oppressed by the other half?"His primary reason was the fear that Flanders, being more closely populated, would dominate a unitary Belgium [see higher for instance the note 2] . Later, Gaston Eyskens modified his quote, saying "Sire, il n'y a plus de Belges" ("Sire, there are no longer Belgians"), after the first steps were taken to transform Belgian into a federal state.

References

* [http://www.charleroi-museum.org/mjd/hp/hp_en.asp The Jules Destrée Museum] , Retrieved October 13, 2006.

External links

* [http://www.destree.org/ Institut "Jules-Destrée"]
* [http://www.academiedelitterature.be/academie-membre-destree.php R. V. N., art. Jules Destrée (2006)]
* [http://www.wallonie-en-ligne.net/wallonie-publications/1995_Destatte_Philippe_Jules-Destree_Antisemitisme-et-Belgique.htm Jules Destrée and his antisemitism]