‘La Chapelle Saint-Lambert’, immigration is timeless

From 1870 to 1919, this baroque chapel served as a house of worship for the numerous German community who had migrated there. These immigrants were primarily concentrated around what is now rue Marie-Henriette and Prés-Javais, in a neighborhood that was not coincidentally named ‘La petite Prusse’.

The first wave of immigration began around 1840 when mainly skilled workers and technicians from Aachen, Monschau, and the Eifel arrived in an industrially advancing Verviers. They found better opportunities to find work or earn more here.

The Catholic parish was very active, but the Protestant community was also significant enough to hold German-speaking services in the temple of Hodimont. The German-speaking schools had an average of 300 students. There were German cafes and German newspapers. There was even a separate German-speaking section of the First International.

A new wave of immigration began around 1870. There are several reasons for this: the economically difficult times led German workers to the factories in Verviers, not least attracted by the fact that the social climate here still allowed child labor. This had already been regulated early on in Prussia. But Bismarck's Kulturkampf was also an incentive to emigrate. Catholics were oppressed in the German Empire created under Prussian rule. Military conscription was extraordinarily long. Several German religious orders settled in Verviers and in the Land of Herve.

By 1887, there were about 14,000 Germans in the broader agglomeration of the region, of which 12,000 lived in Verviers itself. That means about a quarter of the population. Walloons and Germans lived peacefully alongside each other during this period. However, World War I abruptly ended this harmony, and after 1918, we hear nothing more from this once-thriving community.

Jan Rymenams