Land Albin-Georges

Albin-Georges Terrien is a journalist, writer and Walloon militant of Belgian nationality born with Engreux (Houffalize) in 1934. He was rural teacher of 1956 to 1986. In 1981, it published the Verdict of the fear on the Champennois business which was a sharp success. It is in the Belgian furrow that it a long time made avloir its ideas on the regionalization of agriculture and criticisms which it also puts forward in its works of fiction with regard to the Boerenbond.

Glèbe

In Glèbe , Ardenne true that one meeting is that precisely of the Glèbe, the word formerly indicating the piece of this half-slave who is the Serf. The of the Ardennes peasants are not any more of the serfs, but, in a certain manner, they keep the dependence of it: with respect to a ground poor, ungrateful, very hard work conditions. Ardenne true, it is also that of the violence of this country where, controlled, it can be used to solve conflicts of all kinds (professionals, in love), without having to resort to the official authorities (police force, judge…). A kind of Corsica. Here what jumps to the face as of the first lines of the book. One is far from the marvellous ground of holidays . The country world put unceasingly here in scene is a little that, if one wants, of the film the Great Landscape of Alexis Droeven of Jean-Jacques Andrien, but a country world even in conformity with the idea than one is done some. And it is through this world that Albin-Georges Terrien speaks to us, without never wearying itself (the 500 pages of the novel are read of a feature), of all the events which have related to Ardenne for 30 years: fight against the establishment of the military camp with Marche, the species of lynching avoided of accuracy of the Minister for agriculture in 1991 on the agricultural Foire of Libramont while passing by the great agricultural demonstration of 1972 in Brixelles, the nomination of Mgr Andre-Mutien Léonard as bishop of Namur, the dairy Quotas, the Brucellose… All is tell to us also ceaseless fights of the of the Ardennes agricultural world, more largely Walloon and European, against the CAP

Live the War!

Lives the War! is all the time written with the first anybody. It is an account of childhood, the manner of apprehending the things which could be that of a newborn in 1934: the elementary school French, the religion, the organization of more or less allowed plays and also more or less prohibited, which was the roughness to be a boy at that time. Albin Terrien concentrates without disabling on the few hectares of the village of Engreux itself déendant of Mabompré (between Bastogne and Houffalize), and over the period of April 1940 in June 1945. It is here about a village of Ardenne at the German hour. But the hour is not there, in a certain way, not always very German. One as well learns from the things on this Ardenne much more enigmatic as “mysterious” within the meaning of the stereotype hundred times re-sifted. Like the existence, during the war, parallel to the Résistance authenticates, of true bands of plunderers daring to take by storm of the villages terrorized, in spite of the weapons available to these villagers ready to defend themselves physically and fought in a way determined by a German, effective and brutal army, but whose these companies of simple maintenance of law and order, are not necessarily all of successes. One finds here the odor of chalk on the black boards, the songs of the elementary school (which lasted until 16:00 saturdays). But also pangs of the first confession (lists of sins badly identified, which one must make the rigorous account so much so that some provide themselves with notebooks), the rattles of the Holy Week, the water supplies bénite of the Easter Monday, the poachers in the cold Ourthe at night always on the alert by fear to be apprehended by the gendarmes, the terrible wars between kids of enemy villages going until the sometimes serious ways in fact, the expressions of a sexuality much less ignored than one thinks it even sometimes and very clearly spread out in its libertinage, in spite of the prejudices of time. The poor. Rich person. The powerful ones. Fraternities without kindness with the German soldiers, those deeper with the Americans. The Battle of the Ardennes in the winter most mortally cold of the Second world war… And - rarer thing -, the return of the Prisoner of war in May/June 1945, told hand of Master by somebody which took measurement at the same time this Walloon drama, but also of the criminal character of the bombardment of the German cities. Vive the War is of course an antiphrasis. By his rooting and his enthusiasm this writer makes think of André Dhôtel and Guy Denis.

Works

the verdict of the fear , Editions of the test, 1981
the prison with the walls of glass , Editions Small Steps
Glèbe , Memory Near, Érezée, 1999
Lives the War , Memory Press, Érezée, 2003.
the cassock , Memory Press, Érezée, 2007.

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