Didier Dubucq was a mysterious Belgian

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

and journalist.

Freethinker Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods ...

and anti-clerical, he founded the newspaper ''Les Corbeaux'', which he directed between 1904 and 1909. He sometimes signed his caricatures as "Ashavérus".

Career

The signature of Didier Dubucq appears in 1901, in one of the first issues of '' L'Assiette au Beurre''. His drawings are aimed at Tsar Nicholas II, who traveled to France for an official visit. The name of Didier Dubucq then reappears with ''Les Corbeaux'', a newspaper he launched in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

in May 1904: the tone is resolutely anticlerical and this periodical arises in a sensitive context, at least in France where the "

1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State The 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and State ( French: ) was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on 9 December 1905. Enacted during the Third Republic, it established state secularism in France. France was then governed by the '' ...

" was adopted on 9 December 1905. Originally established in Belgium, ''Les Corbeaux'' appeared on Sundays and was sold for 10 centimes, in a Catholic country where clerics clash on one side and "liberals" on the other. After a few months, the periodical was gradually boycotted in the kiosks and railway stations: Dubucq attacked the government and the monarchy which justified the exploitation of workers in the name of a conservatism based on religion. In April 1905, the activist chose to leave for Paris where he recast his diary at 11 rue du Croissant, surrounded by a team composed of Maurice Barthélemy, Dr. Simon N., Belgian Joseph Ghysen, who headed ''Le Lanternier'', Pierre Érard and a certain ''Gardanne''. The newspaper was affiliated with the National Association of Free Thinkers of France, the Human Rights League of France, and the Association anticlerical des Lanterniers. In 1905, the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

banned its distribution in Alsace-Lorraine. As early as May 1906 ''Les Corbeaux ''published "images of anti-clerical propaganda (...) to be spread everywhere". These 16 x 18 cm leaflets with anti-clerical drawings on fifteen different subjects, to be distributed "at conferences, public meetings, polling station doors, cafes", as well as posters to be pasted, Calendars, almanacs and amount of postcards (about 150). In September 1906, ''

La Calotte ''La Calotte'' is a French illustrated satire, satirical anticlerical weekly publication, which appeared in France from 1906 to 1912. Afterwards the title was resumed from 1930 to the present day, with a change of name under the German occupation ...

'', a new anti-clerical newspaper, came out of the press. The establishment reacted harshly to this militancy that soon aggravated the workers' rumblings and the increasingly menacing trade union movements: cartoonists like Jules Grandjouan or Aristide Delannoy were imprisoned, Georges Clemenceau became the "first cop of France" against the militant press with an anarcho-syndicalist tendency. After being sued in January 1909 by a Grenoble Association for "indecent behavior"Voir ''Les Annales catholiques'' du 2 janvier 1909, p. 136–137 �
online on Gallica
(while a parish priest had assaulted the pedlar Christin and destroyed his copies), ''Les Corbeaux'' disappeared at the end of 1909.

Notes

. * Guillaume Doizy, Jean-Bernard Lalaux, ''À bas la calotte ! La caricature anticléricale et la séparation des Églises et de l’État'', Paris, Éditions Alternatives, 2005, . * Michel Dixmier, Jacqueline Lalouette, Didier Pasamonik, ''La République et l’Église. Images d'une querelle'', Paris, Éditions de La Martinière, 2005, . * Guillaume Doizy, ''Les Corbeaux contre la calotte. La lutte anticléricale par l’image à la Belle Époque'', éditions Libertaires, 2007, , online presentation
/small>. * Guillaume Doizy, ''L'image, le rire et la libre pensée militante, exemple de la revue franco-belge Les Corbeaux (1905–1909)'', Gavroche, revue d'histoire populaire, , mars-avril 2005

External links

Cartes anticléricales du journal « Les Corbeaux »
{{Portal, Media, Anarchism, Religion, Belgium Belgian editorial cartoonists Belgian journalists Male journalists Individualist anarchists Belgian atheism activists 20th-century atheists Anti-clerical art Belgian critics of Christianity Critics of the Catholic Church

Career

Notes

See also

Bibliography

Archives

Related articles

External links