‘Mémoires - Jean-Jacques Adrien’

In the North East of Belgium, in Herve country, in this part of Wallonia next to the Netherlands and Germany, Fouron-le-Comte, one of the six villages which has been legally annexed to a Flemish region, but is French-speaking out of choice. On Sunday 20 May 1979, a demonstration of Flemish nationalists was announced for the afternoon. Policemen on horseback are a reminder that, for almost twenty years, the region lived in a state of siege. Home invasions, the police force’s partisan attitude, indiscriminate arrests of French-speakers, such are the incidents of the day which would push one of the villagers’ spokespeople to meet the King of the Belgians. 

Jean-Jacques Adrien was born opposite the Grand Théâtre of Verviers in 1944. His parents had always lived in the Aubel. The father is the eldest of eleven children. He was the only one not to become a farmer. He studied at Saint-Luc, Liège, and went on to become a portraitist. Jean-Jacques, his son, continued his studies in Verviers, then Liège. In 1965, Jean-Jacques Adrien was admitted to the INSAS.