famous (ahem) Belgians

It is probably what Belgium is most celebrated for. Having very few, if any, famous people. How ironic then that when the time came to elect the greatest Belgian of them all, they held two separate competitions.

Here is how the Flemish voted: http://www.degrootstebelg.be/

1. Father Damiaan
2. Paul Janssen
3. Eddy Merckx
4. Ambiorix
5. Adolf Daens
6. Andreas Vesalius
7. Jacques Brel
8. Gerardus Mercator
9. Peter Paul Rubens
10. Hendrik Conscience

And the Walloon’s: http://lesplusgrandsbelges.rtbf.be/

1. Jacques Brel
2. King Boudewijn
3. Father Damiaan
4. Eddy Merckx
5. Sister Emanuelle
6. José Van Dam
7. Benoît Poelvoorde
8. Hergé
9. René Magritte
10. Georges Simenon

As can be seen, there is very little overlap. The Flemish largely opt for their own, as do the Walloons. One more piece of evidence for those who believe that Belgium is really two countries anyway. Nevertheless, given that the split hasn’t happened (yet), the Witloof finds the lack of clarity to be thoroughly suboptimal and has come up with a very complicated manner of deciding who the single Greatest Belgian of all time actually is. The methodology, which is unlikely to keep mathematicians or those operating at the advanced end of the social sciences awake at night, is as follows:

Focussing entirely upon the respective top tens, 100 points are allocated to each of those toping their respective poll, 90 to those coming second, 80 to the third placed…right down to ten for those coming tenth. These scores are then multiplied by the percentage that roughly coordinates to the presumed relative size of the two main language communities in Belgium – 60% Flemish and 40% French. Finally after adding up the scores of any of those who came in the top ten in both Flanders and Wallonia we can see the following, entirely expected, top five:

1. Damiaan (92)
2. Merckx (76)
3. Brel (64)
4. Janssen (54)
5. Ambiorix (42)

So the Germans and the English went for the most important wartime and post-war figures respectively – Adenauer and Churchill. The Dutch went for another dead politician – granted he died in rather different circumstances – Pim Fortuyn. The Belgians on the other hand, although inhabiting the battleground for most European wars, opted, true to form, for someone I had frankly never heard of.

Now I am willing to admit that this says more about me than about the Belgians - I mean I thought that Emanuelle was a porn star, that Jose van Dam was a misspelling of Jean-Claude van Damme, and that Poirot and the singing nun should have been contenders for the title. It turns out that Damiaan, aka Jozef de Veuster, is the patron saint of those with leprosy and AIDS/HIV, was beatified in 1995 and is currently awaiting formal approval for sainthood. All of which helps place him above ridicule in a flippant blog.

One of the main debates in all of this was the respective worthiness of Damiaan and Merckx for the title. For a country that knows what the foreign perception of it is the temptation to vote for someone like Merckx, well-known abroad, must have been almost overwhelming. However, it appears that it is precisely the recognition of this which decided the minds of most Belgians. They would not be seen to promote the obvious candidate – the one man who most people outside of the country could readily associate with Belgium. Instead they went for Damiaan. I think that they can be proud.