With Flemish Nationalism on the Rise, Belgium Teeters on the Edge

[Harold Schiffman]

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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/arts/04abro.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=arts&pagewanted=print

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