This article examines the public and private responses to the accidental deaths of two Belgian royals: King Albert I and his daughter-in-law, Queen Astrid. Both of them met untimely deaths within a very short period of time. King Albert died mountaineering in 1934; Queen Astrid died in a car accident in 1935. These events will be analysed in a three-tiered structure as national, political and media events. Particular attention will be paid to the funerals as staged ceremonies of mourning. This article connects to seminal and more recent studies which explore the relationship between modern European monarchies and political culture and media culture. David Cannadine's article on British royal ceremonies led to studies on other modern monarchies and also to revisions of his own work and chronology.Footnote 1 However, these studies generally concentrate on nineteenth-century monarchies in large countries, which makes rituals in the Belgian monarchy during the interwar period a neglected subject of historical research.Footnote 2 All these studies show that royal ceremony did not lack political meaning in the modern period. Various authors have already stressed how royal funerals and state funerals can be of relevance in public politics in the modern period through the use of ritual.Footnote 3 Royal funerals can and have been used in various ways: to legitimise new regimes, to integrate the political nation, to exalt royal power, to display the symbolic patriarchal role of the monarch and to impress foreign nations.
This paper not only analyses both royal funerals but also explores how the public perceived the deaths of both royals. This will offer insights into the relationship between the Belgian monarchy and the nation in the 1930s. One important criticism of Cannadine's article has been that it focused solely on royal rituals from a top-down perspective. The reaction of the audience was left out. In the meantime, the subject of the reception and use of monarchies, including the Belgian monarchy, by the people has received attention in different monographs.Footnote 4 Responses to the deaths of Albert and Astrid have already been explored in previous studies, but never in the context of a comparative methodology.Footnote 5
In 2012 Swiss historian Alexis Schwarzenbach published a comprehensive cultural history of modern Western monarchies, with a particular focus on the Belgian monarchy in the interwar period.Footnote 6 Schwarzenbach's study is of value for its broader contextualisation of the use of various forms of communication by the Belgian and other royal courts. However, due to its broad geographic and thematic reach, his work lacks a detailed treatment of the national and international political context of the interwar period which provided a specific meaning to the deaths and funerals, particularly Albert’s. A thorough contextualisation of both deaths in their contemporary surroundings and environment, by means of ‘thick description’, is of special relevance to the interpretation of public and symbolic actions during and after the funerals.
The impact of the First World War is of special importance here. David Cannadine argues that interwar Britain was more obsessed with death than any other period of British history. He arrives at this conclusion by examining the construction of war memorials and the ritual of Armistice Day.Footnote 7 Can the same be said of interwar Belgium, where less than twenty per cent of its men had been at the front during the war? What was the role of the two royal funerals in this death cult?
This article will begin by analysing the reactions to both royal deaths and their relationship to different aspects of the national identity of interwar Belgium, a nation dominated in the 1930s by its war experience, patriotic mysticism and the symbols and institutions of Roman Catholicism.Footnote 8 With the growing national rivalry between monarchies, the symbolic role of the monarch gained increased significance towards the end of the nineteenth century. European politics even developed a certain theatrical character at the end of the nineteenth century and during the decades before the First World War. The second half of the nineteenth century was also the period of the nationalisation of European monarchies, a process which reached its peak with the First World War.Footnote 9 In this context royal funerals became prestigious ceremonial events par excellence and gained structural meaning in this world theatre of performing monarchies and national rivalry. In the second part of this article I will consider the ‘symbolic’ or ‘ceremonial politics’ that were pursued during Albert's funeral, focusing on the importance of the foreign guests and the symbolic meaning of the ceremonies against the background of tensions in world politics. The deaths of Albert and Astrid also gained a special significance in view of the strained national political situation. The growing political instability of domestic Belgian politics determined the impact of both events and the reactions from various political parties and movements.
The last part of this article deals with both royal deaths from the perspective of ‘media events’. From the end of the nineteenth century onwards, the deaths of monarchs and the ceremonial practices surrounding their remains became accessible to and part of the public domain through the use of mass media. Mass media made it possible to reach the people who were not physically present at such events.Footnote 10 As a matter of fact, without the media an emotional connection between the throne and the people could be considered impossible.Footnote 11 The concept of ‘media events’ is used in a most interesting study by media sociologists Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz on the live broadcasting of history.Footnote 12 This concept, however, can also be adapted for use outside our own age of television. In the interwar years new audiovisual mass media such as radio broadcasting and newsreels became essential in the construction of a personal relationship between Belgian citizens and the royal family.
In order to study the responses to the deaths of Albert and Astrid, textual analysis of journals can offer a diverse range of public voices, including radical republican criticism, as Belgium had, as did the United Kingdom, a tradition of freedom of the press. However, the sole use of press sources limits the depth and range of a ‘reception history’. I have chosen to use a broad archival base and have looked for sources in police archives, royal archives, national archives and archives of the Church, as well as documents concerning the audiovisual media, material not yet explored by previous authors.
The royal deaths as national events: mourning and national identity
The nineteenth-century Belgian monarch Leopold II (1835–1909) acted like a private individual, pursuing personal interests regarding his colony of the Congo and scandalising public opinion with his extra-marital adventures. As a result, at the end of his reign the Belgian monarchy had become the subject of harsh criticism. Leopold's twentieth-century successors, King Albert and Queen Elisabeth and later on King Leopold III and Queen Astrid, were well aware that in order for modern monarchies to survive in the new century, European royals needed to conduct public relation campaigns to emphasise their ideal qualities and accomplishments. The latter two included a patriotic dedication to the nation, military successes, efforts to guarantee the peace, impartial arbitration of social conflicts and various charitable works. In addition to this, royals had to make sure they displayed both an aura of glamour and pomp as well as an image of a harmonious family life. It is well known that the narrative of suffering is particularly effective in bringing monarchies down to an accessible human level.Footnote 13 Misery and sudden deaths increase the public appeal of royal families because this suffering brings the royal family closer to the people. These elements explain why the Belgian monarchy gained popularity between the two World Wars. King Albert and his daughter-in-law Queen Astrid of Belgium jointly embodied all of the royal traits mentioned above, with Albert fulfilling the role of military leader and protector of the nation while Astrid was seen as the embodiment of middle-class cultural values. Finally, the sudden and accidental nature of their deaths fulfilled the characteristic of royal suffering.
Albert was Leopold's nephew. He was a friendly family man with social interests who married the German Duchess Elisabeth in 1900. Their marriage was a love match, which was unheard of in Belgium. Albert's popularity soared after the First World War with the legend of the ‘King-Soldier’ beginning in August 1914. Albert took command of his army and stayed close to his troops in the trenches behind the River Yser. The war gave a new identity to Belgium and its king – an identity characterised by glory, courage and sacrifice. Albert, who enjoyed solitary mountain climbing, was killed in a climbing accident in the Belgian Ardennes in February 1934. His son Leopold succeeded to the throne. Leopold had, in 1926, married the Swedish Princess Astrid. The new queen devoted her time to raising her family and promoting social causes. With Astrid the ‘feminisation’ of the Belgian monarchy became an essential element in the popularisation of the royal family. In August 1935, Astrid and Leopold spent a holiday in Switzerland. While driving round the Lake Lucerne, Leopold lost control of his vehicle. Astrid was killed in the crash, only eighteen months after Albert's death. She left behind three young children. Astrid's youngest son, who was named after his grandfather, was only one year old when his mother died.
The surge of public sympathy and loyalty towards the royal family after these sudden deaths was unprecedented in Belgian history. The nineteenth century had already seen the Belgian royal family be confronted with tragedies which fortified the emotional relationship between the monarchy and the people during those specific periods, but none of these events had the traumatic impact of the deaths of Albert and Astrid.Footnote 14 The question of whether the national outpouring of public grief was genuine, and, thus, whether the cult surrounding Albert and Astrid was as forceful as it appeared in the media, is a complex one. It has become increasingly difficult to disentangle ‘authentic’ reactions and ‘mediated’ reactions, by which I mean reactions intensified by the media, as people adopted certain types of behaviour from media representations and the press amplified the very reactions it was reporting. The Belgian nation ‘united in grief’ was an image produced by the press in the aftermath of both deaths but one which excluded all those who did not overwhelmingly share these feelings. Images of national unity were clothed in in hyperbolic terms by the media when they described the funerals of Albert and Astrid. The sense of harmony reported on during funerals often concealed a more complex picture of divergent opinions, especially in linguistically divided Belgium.Footnote 15 However, a simple ‘deconstruction’ of royal myths and representations by the media through a comparison with ‘historical reality’ cannot grasp the various emotional, media-boosted reactions and expressions of popular feeling triggered by both deaths. Decisions regarding the organisation of the funerals and personal testimonies kept in different archives enable the historian to look for the collective values, identities and dreams which were projected onto both royal figures after their deaths.Footnote 16
The most important trait of royalty in the late nineteenth and twentieth century was the claim of serving the nation. In interwar Belgium the construction of a national identity was linked to the memory of Belgian martyrdom during the war and to the nation's most important hero, King Albert. Albert's military glory and the martyrdom of Belgium during the war were transformed into one collective memory.Footnote 17 Albert's death allowed the country to reaffirm this identity, as shown in personal condolence letters and the staging of the funeral as an event of collective exaltation. Countless war veterans or their families sent condolence letters to Queen Elisabeth after Albert's death. They recalled their encounters with Albert as chief commander and Elisabeth as the ‘Queen-nurse’, an image consecrated by the war.Footnote 18
An atmosphere of popular patriotic mysticism was especially present during Albert's funeral. In various ways, the ministers of the governments decided that the identity of the war experience was to become the most visible aspect of the ceremonies. Both foreign and Belgian war veterans played a significant role in the ceremonies. The government decided that veterans should be invited to form a double line along the road when Albert's body was to be transferred to the Royal Palace in the evening. The government also decided to use a gun carriage as a hearse, which had never been done in previous royal funerals in Belgium. When the carriage reached the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, surrounded by representatives of Belgian and foreign veteran organisations, the procession came to a halt for a minute of silence.Footnote 19 The climax in this participation of war veterans was reached when French, English, Italian, Romanian and American veterans, in addition to associations of Belgian veterans, invalids, orphans, widows and other patriotic organisations, paraded past the coffin at the beginning of the ceremonies.Footnote 20
Astrid had no real connection with the war, but the national identity of Belgium and the monarchy had become fused with the collective memory of the war experience and Albert's role in it. This explains why the chapel constructed at the place of the accident in Switzerland was financed by a national association of war invalids and why five hundred veterans and invalids attended the official inauguration ceremony of this Astrid-chapel.Footnote 21 Minister and veteran François Bovesse gave a special radio speech to the nation's youth after Astrid's death and spoke in the name of ‘la génération de la guerre’ (‘the war generation’), who had lost a symbol of a new era of hope.Footnote 22 This close relation between the collective memories of Albert's death, the war and Astrid's death is shown in the martial character of Astrid's funeral. When Astrid's remains were transported from the train station to the Palace, delegations of different veteran organisations gathered at the symbolic Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to pay their final respects.Footnote 23 All veterans’ organisations and organisations of war widows, invalids, nurses and political prisoners were offered the opportunity to send representatives carrying flags to walk at the head of the funeral procession and veterans’ organisations were granted the honour of lining the left side of the road to the royal crypt.Footnote 24
Though members of patriotic veterans’ organisations remained a minority in the post-war male population, the urge among veteran circles to provide for public display and participation in both royal funerals confronted the organisers with a delicate situation and caused frictions and organisational chaos. As mentioned before, veterans were offered the possibility to march before the mortal remains of Albert at the beginning of the ceremonies. A considerable number of veterans took their children and wives with them and caused an insurmountable delay in the proceedings. In order not to delay the procession the parade was ended before the majority of the members of the important nationalist and royalist Union of the Fraternal Organisations of the Field Army (Union des Fraternelles de l’Armée de Campagne, hereafter: UFAC) had the chance to march past the coffin. This enraged different members of the Union and a protest of the administrative council was published in the national newspapers.Footnote 25 It was well known that nationalist right-wing veterans, disgruntled with national politics, had the potential to destabilise a parliamentarian regime. Only a week before Albert's funeral, war veterans had protested in Paris against the republican regime and veterans had assaulted parliamentarians after the religious service for Ferdinand Foch in 1929 because they could not march past the remains of the military leader.Footnote 26 The UFAC in particular was sensitive to extreme-right infiltration.Footnote 27 The authorities thus had a lot to gain by keeping these veterans within the boundaries of the constitutional monarchy in the aftermath of Albert's death. The UFAC was eventually compensated a month later by a special audience with the bereaved Elisabeth and a special parade in the royal crypt.Footnote 28
During Astrid's funeral the prestige and organisational power of veterans confronted the organisers with logistical problems yet again. The National Confederation of War Veterans proposed arrangements to the government regarding the participation of veterans in the funeral ceremony of the queen.Footnote 29 Eventually, on a trajectory of no more than five kilometres, around 60,000 veterans assembled for the funeral of the queen. This was far too great a presence, however, and some veterans misused their status to gain a prominent place at the cost of others, while some groups even refused to follow instructions from authorities.Footnote 30 Because of all this the mayor of Brussels and the minister of internal affairs desired to drastically reduce the number of veterans in future ceremonies.Footnote 31
The nationalist post-war boost in prestige explains the survival and popularity of the Belgian monarchy only to some extent, especially with regard to the image of Astrid as ‘mother of the nation’. It seems that the modern mixture of the extraordinary and the commonplace, the unique and the typical, also played a vital role in the popularity of the Belgian monarchy in the twentieth century, a process which had started much earlier within the British monarchy.Footnote 32 In Belgium, however, this process began with Elisabeth and Albert and reached its climax with Astrid and Leopold.Footnote 33 As a matter of fact, not only war veterans but also thousands of schoolchildren were placed along the road of the funerary procession at Astrid's funeral – an initiative taken by the government.Footnote 34 Another symbolic act in the management of Astrid's funeral was the presence, at a certain point along the road, of a group of mineworkers in working clothes who were meant to symbolise Astrid's social concerns.Footnote 35
Astrid had cultivated the image of an accessible queen through different symbolic acts: she embraced Leopold when she arrived in Antwerp, she showed her newborn child to the public, she converted to Catholicism and, in February 1935, she wrote a public letter supporting the organisation of a national relief action for the poor. This explains why her death triggered a huge wave of compassion for the young motherless children and young widower king.Footnote 36 The young King Leopold III received hundreds of emotional condolence letters from children, mothers, migrants, war veterans and working people. Even convicts who had never seen Astrid in real life wrote letters to the young king.Footnote 37
Two remarkable categories of condolence letters symbolised the increasingly personalised relationship between both Belgian and foreign citizens and the Belgian royal family in these years, a sharp contrast with the pre-war hierarchical image of Leopold II. Astrid's young children received letters from foreign children who attempted to comfort them by describing how they had also lost a parent.Footnote 38 These children were afterwards rewarded with a small mourning picture of Astrid. In the twentieth century, sending portraits as a gift was a way for European monarchies to establish a positive emotional relationship with their subjects, especially with children.Footnote 39 Leopold himself received letters from both common and higher ranking individuals, both Belgian and foreigner, who tried to console the king by writing about the losses they themselves had endured in the past. They felt a close relationship with Leopold because the king was now confronted with the same kind of personal tragedy.Footnote 40
These letters show how human and approachable the Belgian monarchy had become. Leopold further cultivated this image of the bereaved family man and husband by insisting on walking the entire distance behind the hearse carrying the body of his wife, with his arm in a sling, thus ignoring both the official programme and medical advice. The image of the limping Leopold was repeatedly highlighted through photos and theatrical descriptions in the (national and foreign) press and the newsreels.Footnote 41 The condolence letters written by Belgian citizens and foreigners to Leopold III show Astrid's existence as an image, fabricated by the media, to which people looked for drama and sensation and on to which they projected greatness, as would become the case with Princess Diana decades later. However, whereas Diana's existence as a media figure was a manifestation of our contemporary electronic televisual age, Astrid became a celebrity through (manipulated) stylish photos of her which appeared in the illustrated press.Footnote 42
At the same time, royal veneration can become infused with religious sentiments. Icons of Diana appeared in shrines after her tragic accident and many citizens asked for an official canonisation of the devoutly Catholic Belgian King Baudouin (Astrid's oldest son) after his unexpected death in 1993.Footnote 43 In fact, a re-sacralisation of the Belgian monarchy already began in the interwar period through the sacral aura constructed around the memory of Astrid an Albert. Astrid and Albert died at a moment when Belgium faced a major economic crisis. In times of crisis religiosity and mysticism reached new heights, even when the Catholic Party was in decline.Footnote 44 One can observe the urge to invest in a higher metaphysical force through the way Astrid and Albert were often transformed into martyr saints, set apart from ordinary mortals. The decoration of the chapel in Switzerland, at the location of the accident, with the image of Astrid in the stained glass windows, strengthened the portrayal of the Belgian queen as a Maria-like figure. During the inaugural ceremony, a priest described it as a ‘sacred place’ and young Swiss couples even visited the place of the accident in this Catholic region to ask for Astrid's protection as if she were a saint who incarnated domestic happiness.Footnote 45
In the years following Astrid's death, the Belgian Archbishop and the royal court received letters from foreign Catholics who experienced personal miracles after praying to the saintly queen, who converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism only a few years after her marriage.Footnote 46 On the fifth and sixth anniversary of Astrid's death, when Belgium and its king were living under German occupation, citizens described Astrid as a saint who would save Belgium and its people in their personal letters to Leopold III.Footnote 47 The memory of Albert was also influenced by this climate of mysticism. Photographs of Albert were used as icons after his death. People asked Elisabeth to give them an object that belonged to Albert in order to keep it as a relic. Albert was often compared with Christ and certain clergymen did not hesitate to treat Albert as a saint, an intermediary between the people and God.Footnote 48
Royal deaths as political events: mourning and interwar politics
Johannes Paulmann argues that the First World War ended an era of royal theatricality, an era in which symbolic practices, royal pomp and international politics were closely connected.Footnote 49 This conclusion and chronology seems to us too abrupt and artificial, especially considering the Belgian context, in which the monarchy was not destroyed but strengthened by the war, while royal pomp, in interaction with republican regimes, was not without political significance in the interwar years. In times of growing international tension, protocol and ceremony was used more than ever to express mutual respect and diplomatic reciprocity. The years 1933 to 1935 were a moment of marked international and national instability.Footnote 50 Hitler rose to power, the French Republic faced a major political crisis, Mussolini consolidated his position, the economic crisis seemed endless and Belgian governments proved to be highly unstable.
In this particular context, the funeral of Albert was presented as an event of diplomatic and moral unity between France and Belgium. Three French ministers, including the new Prime Minister Doumergue, who had only recently taken office in a government of national union, travelled to Brussels to offer their condolences to Elisabeth and pay their last respects.Footnote 51 The French Republic was represented at the funeral by highly respected political and military figures including Marshal Pétain, the new minister of war, and French President Lebrun. When the train carrying Lebrun and Petain arrived in Brussels, a large crowd of people had gathered there to greet them with shouts of ‘Vive la France!’.Footnote 52 Leopold realised the symbolic value of the presence of these prestigious figures in Brussels and regretted that Pétain, a national war hero in France, was unable to attend when he swore the oath of allegiance to the constitution before Parliament.Footnote 53 The French government also decided that the French army was to be represented by different regiments.Footnote 54 Moreover, thousands of French war veterans marched past Albert's coffin. This stirred up a great deal of emotion among bystanders and Belgian and French journalists.Footnote 55 The front pages of the daily papers in Paris focused on the brotherhood between the French and the Belgians during the funeral ceremonies.Footnote 56 Aside from the French presence at the funeral, British and Italian military regiments could also be seen marching at the head of the funeral procession.Footnote 57
The symbolic fraternisation between France and Belgium during the funeral was the continuation of Albert's own symbolic presence in Paris when Marshal Ferdinand Foch and President Doumer died in 1929 and 1932 respectively. Marshal Pétain had also attended the funeral of the Belgian war hero General Gérard Leman, back in 1920. Other important precedents were the ceremonial visits of Presidents Pointcarré and Doumergue in 1919 and 1929, which generated strong patriotic emotions in Brussels.Footnote 58 The memory of Astrid was also invoked at different occasions in the French capital to create displays of French-Belgian friendship. The French President Lebrun attended a special requiem ceremony at the Notre Dame in September 1935 and visited the opening of an exhibition with art objects and photographs portraying Astrid in May 1936, accompanied by other prominent French statesmen.Footnote 59 Around the same time, the municipal council of Paris decided to name a square after Astrid.Footnote 60
According to the Belgian minister in the German capital, the image of the allied army forces united at Albert's funeral left a strong impression in Berlin because it reminded the Germans that the bonds forged during the war between Belgium, France, Italy and England remained strong.Footnote 61 However, the public display of symbolic diplomacy between France and Belgium concealed a more complex and changing political reality: the diverging foreign policy of France and Belgium set against the background of the German remilitarisation. The day before Albert left for his fatal climbing expedition, the king encouraged the Belgian Prime Minister de Broqueville to convince Parliament of the need to obtain an international peace-agreement with regard to the remilitarisation of Germany.Footnote 62 The prime minister postponed his speech because of Albert's sudden death and eventually addressed the Senate in March. He openly distanced himself from the attitude of France towards Germany and ruled out ever allowing Belgium to follow France into a preventive war to stop German militarisation.
The speech created tensions between the French and Belgian governments and served as a prelude to Belgium's return to its neutral pre-war status and the end of the 1920 Franco-Belgian military agreement in 1935. In May 1936 a British colonel even caused a public scandal by insinuating that the French authorities had killed Albert for his resistance against their plans to attack Germany. This conspiracy theory received worldwide attention.Footnote 63 Leopold III, just like his father, wanted to keep Belgium free, independent and neutral.Footnote 64 In October 1938, he held a speech during the inauguration of a spectacular monument to his father in Paris near the place de la Concorde, largely funded by French war veterans. In the presence of the French President, Leopold argued that Belgium had to fulfil an independent, peacekeeping role but would always honour and acknowledge its ties with France and referred to the fraternisation between France and Belgium at his father's funeral.Footnote 65
Leopold III was not merely confronted with the loss of his father and wife in a troubled international atmosphere. On top of these crises, the Belgian governments were proving unable to solve their economic difficulties and coming under increasing attack. As a matter of fact, Albert and Astrid died at a time when the Belgian democratic system was facing its most turbulent years since the war.Footnote 66 Extreme right movements, the Communist Party and Flemish nationalism benefited from the discontent fostered by the political instability and economic difficulties of the 1930s and won one seat in four in 1936.Footnote 67 Since 1933 the most radical elements of the Flemish movement had been organised in the right-wing Flemish National Association (Vlaams Nationaal Verbond, hereafter: VNV). During a special session of Parliament after Albert's death, the political representatives of the VNV tried to publicly undermine the myth of the King-Soldier by proclaiming Albert had never cared for the Flemish people.Footnote 68 During the same session of Parliament, communist leader Joseph Jacquemotte used the occasion to recall the suspicious circumstances of Albert's death and accuse the socialists of being hypocrites in their royalist behaviour.Footnote 69
Although communist, right-wing Flemish-nationalist and francophone fascist anti-system movements tried to discredit the parliamentary regime and tried to take advantage of the memory of Albert and Astrid to further their own particular ideological positions, the political scene of interwar Belgium was still dominated by the Catholic, Liberal and Socialist Parties.Footnote 70 The political establishment of these three, internally divided, traditional parties tried to foster an image of national union and patriotism after the deaths of Albert and Astrid.
Socialist representatives explicitly distanced themselves from the communists, and the Flemish leaders within the Catholic Party distanced themselves from the VNV in the aftermath of Albert's death. Minister Frans Van Cauwelaert responded to one of the founders of the VNV that his intervention in the Chamber of Representatives was scandalous and showed a total lack of comprehension of what the king had done for the Flemish.Footnote 71 The day after the incident in Parliament, Minister Gustaf Sap, another Flemish leader of the Catholic Party, spoke out during a special radio broadcast. He tried to convince the Flemings of the prominent role played by Albert in the ‘recovery of Flemish pride’ by supporting the demand for a Flemish university and other symbolic interventions.Footnote 72 Some days before, Catholic Flemish Minister Van Isacker reminded the nation's youth during a radio broadcast that Albert cared for all Belgians and had laid the foundations for solving the language question.Footnote 73 Flemish Catholic ministers thus tried to use Albert's sympathy for Flemish demands to transcend the destabilising effect on unity that had been caused by the radicalisation of the Flemish Movement both inside and outside of the Catholic Party itself.Footnote 74
At the same time, prominent, senior socialist leaders who belonged to the first generation of socialist representatives in 1894, including President Emile Vandervelde, Jules Destrée and Louis Bertrand, wished to present Albert as a democratic king who was receptive to the socialists’ demands, a leader whose advice was needed in times of political turmoil. Both Vandervelde and Bertrand felt honoured to have known Albert during and after the war in spite of their republican ideas.Footnote 75 In 1909, at the time of Albert's ascension to the throne, Vandervelde had been one of the co-signatories of the republican proclamation of the General Council of the Socialist Party, which stated that the labouring classes should expect nothing from the new king.Footnote 76 In 1934 the Socialist Party had evolved into a government party. Participating in royalist feeling after Albert's death was now a way to present the Socialist Party as patriotic, loyal and respectable. The party was confined to a powerless role in the opposition after earlier participations in post-war governments.Footnote 77
When Astrid died, a new generation of politicians within both the Socialist and Catholic Parties formed a government of national union with the Liberal Party, led by Catholic-leaning technocrat Paul Van Zeeland. Because of her neutral, non-political aura, Astrid's figure was well suited to transcend ideological divisions within and between parties. Catholic politicians invoked her in a moralising gendered discourse in a decade in which the Catholic Church lamented the loosening sexual morals brought about by the new mass media. Prime Minister Van Zeeland, former Catholic Minister Henry Jaspar (who continued to oppose Van Zeeland's government) and Minister Philippe Van Isacker focused on the domestic values symbolised by Astrid. The day after Astrid's death, Van Zeeland described Astrid on the radio as the ideal mother and wife, who was able to win the hearts of all Belgians. He asked the people to unite around the throne as they had after the death of Albert.Footnote 78 Catholic Minister Van Isacker, in addressing Flemish youth on the wireless, portrayed the queen as the ideal bride – silent, docile and modest – and asked them to follow her example.Footnote 79 Some months after Astrid's passing, Jaspar honoured the queen's memory during several presentations before various audiences in Wallonia and Brussels, in which he cast her death as a moment of national moral regeneration.Footnote 80 The deceased queen was also used as a nostalgic, moralising and antifeminist symbol by Léon Degrelle, the militant, francophone-Catholic journalist who was preparing his bid for power with the Catholic Party and attracted the support of Catholic intelligentsia such as Jean Denis. In a book on Astrid's death, Denis wrote about the selfish and materialistic society in which women refused to become mothers. In such a society Astrid had acted as a moral guide and her death had ‘purified’ the nation.Footnote 81
Royal deaths as media events: mourning and mass media
In this particular context of national and international political turmoil and traditional parties looking to honour the Belgian monarchy, mass media was used to strengthen collective mourning and construct a shared feeling of solidarity after both royal deaths. In 1934/35, a large public could be reached through mass media which had begun to shrink the world into a global village, producing a new form of social relationship in which people established intimate connections to famous and royal persons, in spite of the great social or geographic distances separating them. Mass media created communities of mourning and transformed the nature of the two royal funerals. The media coverage of both deaths and the rise of instant information sharing significantly affected the way in which people perceived and experienced these events, prompting a stronger sense of ‘imagined community’ and heightening a sense of national tragedy.Footnote 82 Astrid's and Albert's funerals were certainly ‘media events’ in Dayan and Katz's definition of the phenomenon: broadcast ceremonial events organised by persons well within the establishment, featuring a central personality and serving to celebrate reconciliation and integrate societies.
Dayan and Katz attribute some defining characteristics to these events.Footnote 83 The scripted public performance of Astrid's and Albert's funerals fitted all their criteria. First of all, the funerals of Albert and Astrid were broadcast live over the wireless. With radio broadcasting, ‘simultaneity of exposure’ became possible. Radio played a central role in embedding the deaths and funerals of Astrid and Albert in the daily lives of ordinary people. In 1930, Belgium counted 77,000 radio sets. Ten years later this number had reached one million.Footnote 84 Just like the Christmas broadcasts of King George V, the live broadcasting of Albert's funeral on the radio in 1934 conveyed a new sense of participation, not only in Belgium but also all over the world. Different reporters were positioned at different locations and reported on different phases of the funerals of Astrid and Albert, both in Dutch and French.Footnote 85 The radio broadcast of Albert's funeral lasted several hours and was an important event in the history of this new medium. The most prominent reporter at both funerals was war veteran Théo Fleischman, who practically invented the daily spoken-word news programmes on the Belgian radio.Footnote 86
All radio stations in Europe and the United States that broadcast part of or the entirety of the ceremonies in Brussels during Albert's funeral may have reached as many as 100,000,000 listeners in total.Footnote 87 The Americans did not hear the voice of the Belgian reporters but rather the voice of a special foreign correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System stationed in London, who described the event in English.Footnote 88 Americans wrote to Elisabeth to tell her that they had been able to follow Albert's funeral in the early morning, from six o’clock onwards, and enthusiastically described how they had heard the words of the Archbishop and the soldier's footsteps.Footnote 89 The audible experience also stirred up emotions in France, and some pious families acted as if, instead of being at home, they were in church and knelt and prayed with the Belgian archbishop.Footnote 90 A sense of community and historic occasion was thus strengthened by the radio across different parts of the world. It was a time when the International Union of Radio Broadcasting propagated the use of radio to bring different nations closer together.Footnote 91 In fact, the Belgian Institute for Broadcasting tried to strengthen the bond between Belgians living in the Belgian colony, i.e. Belgian Congo, and Brussels by organizing a special programme the day after Albert's funeral. The programme was broadcast in Léopoldville and included speeches by prominent Belgian politicians.Footnote 92 The Belgian Institute for Broadcasting also helped the Swedish Broadcasting Institute to organise a Swedish reportage of Astrid's funeral.Footnote 93
A second feature of media events is that they are organised with media coverage in mind, hence the organisers’ active cooperation with the media. Albert and Astrid's unexpected deaths required the National Institute for Broadcasting to mobilise the necessary material resources and technical staff. Dozens of microphones were placed along the road and in the church.Footnote 94 Journalists from the written press were given several opportunities to visit the mourning chapel where Astrid lay in state to enable them to publish emotional and detailed descriptions of the queen's mortal remains.Footnote 95 Opportunities were also created to film and photograph the funerals.
Short newsreels about Albert and Astrid's funerals were shown together with foreign films in cinemas. During the interwar period newsreels became part of mass culture, and, by the 1930s, foreign companies supplied five to nine newsreels in Belgium. These newsreels were produced by Belgian film crews employed by foreign movie companies such as Pathé.Footnote 96 Specialised cinemas that only projected newsreels opened in major cities.Footnote 97 These ‘cineacs’ also projected longer special films, which combined images of Albert and Astrid's lives and images of their funerals.Footnote 98 Footage of Albert's funeral and the accession of his son were combined in a single film, for example. The newsreels of Albert's life and funeral and the number of people who saw these films convinced Belgian journalists of the importance of newsreels in contemporary society.Footnote 99 Filmed images of Astrid's funeral were shown in cinemas in such distant countries as Poland and Dutch Indonesia weeks after the event.Footnote 100 Another characteristic of media events is that they supersede everything else on the air and combine the broadcasting of many channels into one monophonic line.Footnote 101 In Belgium, different ideological and political movements founded French and Flemish-speaking radio associations. The government deactivated these ideological and political broadcasting associations during the week of mourning in 1934.Footnote 102
All of the above demonstrates how a message of national unity and renewal of loyalty is intensified by the media during events such as these.Footnote 103 Daily newspapers tried to strengthen the collective mourning for Albert and framed certain meanings of ritual activities by focusing on the masses gathered in Brussels and the presence of war veterans.Footnote 104 Liberal Minister Maurice Lippens used the same method during a special radio broadcast and described the unity among war veterans, men, women and children standing at the side of the road when Albert's remains were transported to the royal crypt.Footnote 105 Indeed, the Belgian governments tried to involve the whole nation in public displays of mourning, especially young people, and strengthen their love for the royal family through special radio broadcasts. Different ministers were given the opportunity to speak about Albert and Astrid on special radio broadcasts.Footnote 106 In other words, the radio was used as a mass medium to officially educate and inform people about the qualities of both Albert and Astrid, and the state became an essential partner in the communication between the monarchy and the people.
Although parliamentary democracy in Belgium survived the 1930s, the deaths of Albert and Astrid did not lead to a long-term, stable, patriotic reconfiguration of Belgian politics. Governmental crises and massive demonstrations continued to destabilise national political life. Rex emerged as an independent political party and dealt a severe blow to the Catholic Party in the elections of 1936. Though Flemish ex-soldiers paraded together with Belgian nationalist right-wing francophone officers during Albert's funeral, the Belgian associations of war veterans were heavily divided according to political, social and linguistic fault lines. The battle for amnesty in favour of former activists who had collaborated with the Germans during the war escalated through public manifestations in the months before and after Albert's death and radicalised both pro-Flemish and Belgian nationalist right-wing veterans.Footnote 107 In the years after the deaths of Albert and Astrid, the Belgian monarchy under Leopold III failed to act as a symbolic institution of unification. Right-wing nationalist veterans felt that Leopold offended the memory of his father by allowing political amnesty for activists.Footnote 108 After the Second World War, the memory of Astrid was used to damage the reputation of Leopold, who had married a Flemish commoner during the occupation.Footnote 109 It was Albert's grandson and Astrid's oldest son Baudouin who was eventually able to pacify the tensioned situation.
The reign of King Baudouin ended with a grand royal funeral and a week of national mourning. The public outpouring of grief in August 1993 showed that collective representations of the Belgian monarchy as a symbol of wise national leadership and affectionate family values, images popularised under Albert and Astrid, were still important as focal points of collective identity and patriotic sentiments, especially in the aftermath of an unexpected royal death.Footnote 110
Conclusion
The deaths of Albert and Astrid were, to varying degrees, perceived as national, political and media events of significance. The massive popular and media response to the deaths of the Belgian King Albert I (1934) and Queen Astrid (1935), both in Belgium and abroad, showed strong emotional ties between the monarchy and the Belgian nation after the war. Albert and Astrid were central figures with whom many people identified themselves, and their sudden and violent deaths caused considerable disorientation. The ritual of the funerals became a means to publicly express emotions and collective identities and offered a cathartic pole. Albert was buried and remembered as a hero of the Great War. The memory of the war experience permeated Albert's funeral and the condolence letters sent to Elisabeth. The need to link the national identity of interwar Belgium to the war sacrifice and the monarchy also became apparent in the prominent place of war veterans at the funeral of Astrid, even if the queen had no direct link with the war. Veterans were disgruntled when they were not given the opportunity to march past the coffin of Albert and imposed themselves on the funeral of Astrid. Astrid's popularity was nonetheless mostly connected with the successful ‘feminisation’ of the monarchy through her mediatised appearance and accessibility. Though royals had to present themselves as normal and accessible, a certain sacral aura remained important in justifying the existence of the monarchy. Their untimely deaths stimulated the mystification of both royal figures.
The funeral of Albert was used as a tool of ‘symbolic diplomacy’ to strengthen the interstate relations between France and Belgium. The funeral was presented as an event of diplomatic and moral unity between France and Belgium, even though both countries began to take different positions towards the remilitarisation of Germany. Both events contributed to a stronger and more intimate relationship between large parts of the population and the royal family but did not result in a long-term pacification of national politics and linguistic tensions. On the domestic political level, Socialist and Catholic leaders explicitly tried to participate in the surge of patriotic sentiments and publicly defended the monarchy after Albert's death against attacks from radical Flemish nationalists and communists who stood at the eve of an electoral breakthrough. Both Catholic politicians and young intelligentsia were receptive to a moralising anti-materialistic discourse after Astrid's death as she embodied the ideal wife, mother and queen. The Belgian governments in question made use of the new possibilities of the radio to involve the whole nation in the public mourning process. In fact, the meaning of both high-profile deaths was negotiated within the mass media. Radio, cinema and the press ensured a wide coverage of the royal deaths and funeral ceremonies to a degree that justifies calling them media events.
