Belgium: An Uneasy Union Heading for Divorce

The country of Belgium is another part of the low countries, and is part of the Benelux economic partner group (BeNeLux = Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), and has the current seat of the European Union capitol in Brussels.

Belgium, though, is in the middle of a torrid fight, a fight between two halves that barely get along anymore, like bickering parents. At this point it's like they're fighting over the child--powerful Brussels. Brussels, though, also has the power to keep them together, and that's what the proponents of a unified Belgium are aiming for.

The success of the Belgium experiment always carried more meaning as a blueprint for the EU as a whole.

Belgium's halves have alternated in power and influence over the years, and now as nationalism throughout Europe is on the wax, due to the forced togetherness of the EU's economic policies, the feeling of splitting is stronger than ever.

One half is called Flanders, and they're the German speaking half. In the current era, Flanders and it's Flemmish people have the power over Wallonia and their French speaking Walloons. Wallonia is the industrial, working class half, while Flanders is the technological and financial industry region.

But since this is a blog about flags (and logos), let's take a look, and see how the colors organically melded into something recognizable.

The first flag belong to Flanders. This is German speaking region, and the Lion is a common animal you'd likely find associated with different Germanic tribes:

This next flag is for Wallonia, the French speaking region. Notice the rooster, the same animal is used as a logo for the French national soccer team. Crazy, huh?

Notice how both backgrounds are yellow, making yellow central to their combined emblem. The other colors, black and red, find their way onto the Belgium "national" flag, in the form of a vertical tricolor.

The current Belgium flag, seen above, was a modified version of the following horizontal tricolor:

The flag above was one of the original flags of the union of Flanders and Wallonia, but it seemed to resemble too closely another tricolor using the same colors, the black-red-gold used by the Weimar Republic (Germany before WWI), a flag still in use today by Germany. (Red-white-black was the flag of Prussia, but I'll get to that later.)

Now, I don't think that Belgium changed their flag in response to the Weimar Republic's flag, or if it was its own natural progression.

The "grand Belgium experiment"? Can French and Germans coexist peacefully in a unified land? That's it. Both World Wars had as opposing belligerents French and Germans. Even the name of the country, France, in German belies the fact that it, Frankreich, was invaded and taken over by a Germanic tribe, displacing the Celtic Gauls. The country isn't called Gaulica, is it? You don't imagine smooth-accented mustachioed Gaulish fellas slathering up the California coeds in Paris, do you?