“See you soon!!!” | 2014-18.brussels

Two well-known personalities appear on this postcard. Mayor of the city, Adolphe Max directly and openly opposed the occupier already in September 1914, which caused his deportation to Germany. King Albert left Brussels too, after rejecting the German ultimatum, and led Belgian troops at the Yser to defend the last free Belgian plot of land. With these two symbols of refusal, this postcard could only circulate covertly. Secretly sold in Brussels, it represented the resistance to German domination. Yet contrary to what this image suggests, resistance was not only a matter of “great men”.

As from November 1914, small networks, sometimes reduced to one single family, fought against German occupation. They were involved in activities such as clandestine printing, recruiting for the front, and collecting military information. German authorities reacted by pursuing them, most notably the group that printed La Libre Belgique, which became an influential clandestine newspaper, originally stemming from Catholic circles. In October 1915, English nurse Edith Cavell was sentenced to death for her engagement in helping soldiers to escape to the Netherlands. The following year another emblematic feminine figure of resistance, Gabrielle Petit, was also executed at the Tir National in Schaerbeek. On the whole, one third of the resistance fighters of 1914-1918 were women.