Patria liberata. La mémoire artistique de l’Occupation de 1914-1918 au Palais de la Nation

In the aftermath of the Great War, Belgian parliamentarians wondered how to preserve the memory of the war. At the Palace of the Nation, they chose to commemorate not the armed conflict and its dead but the occupation, the suffering of the civilian population and the way in which it was defended against the occupiers, by themselves and by others. This was an unusual choice, probably made because many parliamentarians, who had remained in their towns and villages, had experienced the difficulties and suffering of the occupation alongside the population and had committed themselves to alleviating them in various committees while officially protesting against what the occupiers were doing to them. Moreover, the occupation of the Palace of the Nation itself for four long years was probably also a determining factor.  This theme, rarely addressed in the memorial heritage of the First World War, was evoked through works of art acquired or commissioned in the immediate post-war period by the parliament. In this way, the nation, caught up in this unprecedented event in the country's history, as well as the attitudes, (moral) behaviour and actions of ordinary elected representatives and more prestigious figures during the occupation, were literally “re-presented” for the benefit of future generations of parliamentarians. In this respect, the works of art of the interwar period revived the traditions of parliamentary art established in the nineteenth century at the Palace of the Nation.