ABSTRACT
The Great War affected the Kingdom of Belgium in ways not experienced by other belligerents. Entirely occupied but for a small comer in the northwest region, the great material devastation induced poverty, starvation and exile. Over 35,000 soldiers and 20,000 civilians died. Belgium's cultural and geographical character also produced a unique experience both during the war, and in commemorative practices after the armistice. In 1914, Belgium was a country divided. It was home to three cultural and language groups: the Dutch-speaking Flemish in the north, the French-speaking Walloons in the south and a smaller group of German-speakers in the east. French was the de facto language of administrative and public affairs. The Great War served to exacerbate the tensions for members of the Flemish community against French-language hegemony. In the trenches, Flemish cultural organizations emerged, publishing trench journals that spoke to a specific flamingant (Flemish-minded) perspective, while a visual culture with overt Flemish propaganda addressed perceived Flemish disenfranchisement in the Belgian army. This also served the development of a Flemish memory and history of this war, separate from any Belgian national memory of the war. This chapter examines the expression of that memory of war through the history of a tombstone — the most prominent object of a plastic commemorative practice. This was the heldenhuldezerk (hero's tombstone) (Figure 10.1), created as a sentimental gesture that marked the Flemish soldier with his language and culture - a Flemish language and culture distinct from that of French-dominated Belgium. The heldenhuldezerken have been utilized in the past nearly 100 years in order to facilitate a specific Flemish-minded ideology, against a largely fragmented national commemoration of the war in Belgium.
