Louis Piérard

Louis Piérard is a Belgian politician and a Walloon militant born with Frameries (Borinage) in 1886. Resulting from a modest family (her two grandfathers were minors), it came very young person to socialism and fought at the sides of Jules Destrée and Vandervelde for the vote for all.

Politician and Walloon militant

He was elected appointed of Mons in 1919 and was during thirty-three years an active and dynamic member of Parliament. As of its entry with the Room, it filed in a bill “for the glorification of a dead soldier not identified” who will become the Unknown soldier.

Its parliamentary activity was exerted in favor of the artists, the writers and the organization of the leisures for the workers. He is the author of the bills founding the national Œuvre of popular education and the Fonds national of literature which comes to assistance of the writers in the form of subsidies of the edition.

He rather early adopts a federalistic position in the review Wallonia : To put an end to a conflict which threatens to oppose the peasants and the ouvriersqui suffer from the same misery, is necessary administrative separation or any other more radical measurement which will cut the dangerous Belgian fiction responsible for all this evil, Libre federation of autonomous free people and homogènes.

He will push the socialist and republican Federation Coal-mining to support the Lettre with the King on the separation of Wallonia and the Flanders of Jules Destrée in 1912. He leaves the Walloon Assemblée with Jules Destrée and Auguste Buisseret for the same reasons as them and because he is in favor of the training of Dutch by the young Walloons.

He takes part in the Walloon National congress of the October 20th and 21st 1945, is from the federalistic start, defends the Congress against Charles d' Aspremont Lynden which tended to regard the members of the Congress as unpatriotique , recalling that the Congress of Liege proposes a solution to be applied within the Belgian framework. He repeats on this occasion his opposition to the meeting in France.

Writer

He created in Belgium one of the first sections of PEN international Club, created in London in 1920.

He was the friend of the great writers of his time: Verhaeren, Elskamp, Maeterlinck, but also of many French and foreign writers. He was finally the friend of the artists whom it defended his life during, organizing the first great exposures of Belgian artists abroad. Journalist, it collaborated in the newspaper the Evening then with the newspaper the People , body of his party. He collaborated at the same time in many foreign newspapers like The Times of London and Prenza of Buenos-Surfaces, without speaking about the many French and Belgian reviews. He wrote Visages of Wallonia (republished by Labor, Brussels, 1980), just as many art critics, estimating in particular that Paulus, Wallon often dreamer, and silent, is for his alive example, the proof that one must put an end to the legend of the Flanders monopolizing art to paint. You know is not this the banal antithesis: the Fleming is painter, the Walloon musician. The Walloon is painter also, Otherwise, here are all…

He enters in 1949 to the royal Académie of language and literature Frenchwomen. He delivers this year three long articles to the New Walloon review (body of the Walloon National congress), entitled Wallonia, ground of poetry where he tries to depict a psychological geography Walloon poets and whole world.

He died in Paris in 1952 and rests with the cemetery of Frameries, with the foot of one of oldest coal mining. On the tomb set up by the commune, one reads the inscription Citoyen of the world .

Quotation

I gain my daily bread by making journalism. I deal moreover with policy and I want to remain faithful to the literature. It is you to say that I assemble several horses at the same time. This little game of the troika is perhaps dangerous. One is likely to break the kidneys there. But it comprises advantages. The politicians say with a smile while speaking about me: “It is a literary man”. And my fellow-members in literature: “It is a politician”.

Publications

Louis Piérard, tragic life of Vincent Van Gogh .

Philately

The Controls of the Belgian stations emitted on November 19th, 1973 a stamp posts of a value of four francs to the effigy of Louis Piérard according to a sculpture of Ianchelevici.

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