Maurice Bologne

Maurice Pierre Joseph Bologne (born May 4, 1900 in Liège , Province of Liège , † February 26, 1984 in Ham-sur-Heure-Nalinnes , Hainaut ) was a Belgian librarian , linguist , historian and politician who was particularly committed to the interests of Walloon region began.

Life

After attending school, Bologne studied philosophy and literature at the University of Liège and the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and after graduating in 1925 he worked in the office of Camille Huysmans , who was Minister for Fine Arts and Education. In 1927 he took part next to Jawaharlal Nehru and Madame Sun Yat-sen in an international conference in Brussels , which was directed against the oppression of colonialism and imperialism . He achieved widespread fame in 1928 through his book L'Insurrection prolétarienne de 1830 en Belgique , in which he dealt with the Belgian Revolution of 1830 and which, in his opinion, was a revolution of the proletariat .

After he was librarian at the Ministry of Science and Art from 1929 to 1935, he became professor of ancient languages in 1935 and taught ancient Greek , Latin and ancient French until 1955 .

On February 12, 1938, at a meeting in Waterloo, he met Abbé Jules Mahieu and shortly thereafter founded the Société historique pour la Défense et l'Illustration de la Wallonie , which deals with the defense and documentation of the independence of Wallonia which in 1960 emerged the Institut Jules Destrée named after Jules Destrée . At the same time, Bologne and Abbé Mahieu founded the Wallonia Independent Party ( Parti wallon independent ) in 1938 .

After the occupation of Belgium by the German Wehrmacht , he and his wife Aimée Lemaire were among the founders and most active members of the Walloon resistance to National Socialism during the Second World War , which also dealt with the planning of the post-war period. He also became president of the Wallonie libre movement in 1940 and was also involved in the Wallonia Economic Council and in the Association for the Intellectual and Artistic Progress of Wallonia.

After the end of the Second World War, he stood up for the rights of Wallonia, particularly during the so-called "King's Question" , but supported federalism in particular to maintain the unity of the country and thus King Baudouin , who in 1951 succeeded his father Leopold III. has been. He underlined his federalist stance in 1954 by supporting the Schreurs-Couvreur Agreement, named after Fernand Schreurs and Walter Couvreur, which promoted dialogue between Flemings and Walloons .

Between 1960 and 1975 he was President of the Institut Jules Destrée . In February 1961, he was one of the co-founders of the Mouvement populaire wallon (MPW) alongside André Renard , which called for a new discussion of structural reforms and federalism, especially after the previous major strikes. Although the Parti Socialiste (PS) rejected the MPW and ignored the results of the petitions presented by it in 1963 and 1964 , Bologne negotiated with the PS. He then supported Robert Moreau in founding the Front wallon pour l'Unité et la Liberté de la Wallonie (FWULW) and became chairman of this movement in 1965.

In 1968, Bologne was elected a member of the Belgian Senate as a candidate for the Rassemblement wallon (RW) and was a member of it until 1974. Most recently from 1972 to 1974 he was also speaker and chairman of the parliamentary group of the Front démocratique des francophones (FDF) -RW in the Senate.

Publications

• L'Insurrection prolétarienne de 1830 en Belgique , 1928
• L'histoire racontée aux Wallons , 1945
• Notre passé wallon. Esquisse d'une histoire des événements politiques des origines à 1940 , 1973
• Petit guide étymologique des noms des régions, des villes, des Villes et des riviéres de Wallonie

Background literature

• Robert Moreau: Maurice Bologne. Une vie, un combat, un objectif: la Wallonie libre et prospère , 1985

Web links

• Literature by and about Maurice Bologne in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Bibliography ( Open Library )
• Biography in Cent Wallons du siècle , Institut Jules Destrée, Charleroi, 1995