{"product_id":"belgian-wwi-yvonne-vieslet-commemorative-bronze-medal-marchienne-au-pont-1918","title":"Belgian WWI Yvonne Vieslet Commemorative Bronze Medal Marchienne-au-Pont 1918","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [\u0026amp;_\u0026gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eOriginal Belgian commemorative bronze table medal honoring Yvonne Vieslet (1908–1918), the ten-year-old Belgian girl shot dead by a German sentry at Marchienne-au-Pont on 12 October 1918 for the act of attempting to pass her school cake through the fence of a holding compound to a group of starving French prisoners of war. The medal was issued in 1948 — the thirtieth anniversary of her death — to raise funds for the construction of \u003cem\u003eMaison Yvonne Vieslet\u003c\/em\u003e, a Franco-Belgian cultural center for women conceived as a permanent memorial to the child and to the Franco-Belgian solidarity her death came to symbolize in the immediate post-war years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [\u0026amp;_\u0026gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe medal is a substantial table-format piece, measuring approximately 2 1\/2 inches (63 mm) in diameter and struck in bronze of medium thickness. The obverse depicts the moment of the act itself: a young girl in a simple dress, her hair loose, standing before the iron palisade of the prisoners' compound, her right arm extended through or above the bars. Behind the bars stands the figure of a French soldier, his form partially obscured by the rendered foliage of the compound interior. The composition reads from left to right as a deliberate progression — child, fence, prisoner — and carries the legend \u003cem\u003eYVONNE VIESLET · 1918\u003c\/em\u003e around the upper rim, with \u003cem\u003e1948\u003c\/em\u003e at the lower margin marking the anniversary of issue. The artist's signature is impressed at the right field but is not clearly resolved from the present examination.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [\u0026amp;_\u0026gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe reverse bears a deeply allegorical composition centered on a sword (\u003cem\u003el'épée\u003c\/em\u003e) thrust point-downward into the earth, hilt upright, with the Latin legend \u003cem\u003ePAX\u003c\/em\u003e (Peace) above. From the soil at the base of the sword rise stylized sheaves of wheat interspersed with the bowed heads of fallen soldiers — the visual fusion of the harvest and the war dead drawn directly from the encircling French inscription. To the right of the sword a small landscape of cloud and earth completes the field. Stamped at the base of the field is the partial mark \u003cem\u003eMAISON\u003c\/em\u003e, denoting the \u003cem\u003eMaison Yvonne Vieslet\u003c\/em\u003e fundraising project on whose behalf the medal was issued.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [\u0026amp;_\u0026gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe encircling French legend on the reverse reads: \u003cem\u003ePar le sang des héros fécondé, du sol patrial jailliront les moissons futures\u003c\/em\u003e, which translates as: \"From the soil of the homeland, made fertile by the blood of heroes, the future harvests shall spring forth.\" The phrase, drawn from Belgian inter-war commemorative literature, distils the specifically agrarian-spiritual register in which Belgian war memorial culture of the period framed the suffering and death of civilians and soldiers alike — the soil watered by blood becoming the ground of national renewal.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [\u0026amp;_\u0026gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eThe historical incident the medal commemorates occurred during the final weeks of the German occupation of Belgium. Yvonne Vieslet, in the company of her mother and sister, was walking to visit her father when she encountered a group of approximately twenty French soldiers — captured prisoners of war held in poor condition in the garden of the Cercle-Saint Edouard at Marchienne-au-Pont. Moved by their visible hunger, the child resolved to give them the small cake she had been carrying for her school lunch. She was waved off by the German guards, but threw the cake through the bars from a short distance. A guard then opened fire on her. She was wounded fatally and died the following day. The killing produced a powerful local and international reaction: Yvonne Vieslet was posthumously awarded military honors by both the Belgian and French armies, monuments were erected to her at Marchienne-au-Pont and in the playground of her school at Monceau-sur-Sambre, and her story became a fixture of Belgian Great War remembrance through the inter-war and post-war decades. The 1948 fundraising campaign for the \u003cem\u003eMaison Yvonne Vieslet\u003c\/em\u003e was the most ambitious of the formal memorial efforts undertaken in her name, and the medal here described was the principal commemorative artifact issued in support of that effort.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [\u0026amp;_\u0026gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eCondition is honest. The medal retains a warm, even bronze patina across both faces with no evidence of cleaning. Strike detail is strong throughout, with the obverse figural composition crisply defined — the child's gesture and the prisoner's posture both clearly read — and the reverse symbolic field similarly sharp. Minor verdigris is visible at scattered points across the obverse, particularly in the recessed areas of the bar palisade, consistent with quiet storage rather than active deterioration. The encircling legends remain entirely legible. The medal sits flat and presents well in the hand at its substantial 2 1\/2-inch diameter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"standard-markdown grid-cols-1 grid [\u0026amp;_\u0026gt;_*]:min-w-0 gap-3\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\"\u003eFor the WWI collector with broad interests beyond the conventional medal categories, the Yvonne Vieslet medal occupies a distinct and important place in the material culture of the war's memory: it is at once a commemorative artifact, a fundraising token, a piece of explicit Franco-Belgian solidarity propaganda, and a permanent record of one of the more affecting individual deaths of the closing weeks of the conflict. As a documented type held by the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, it carries institutional pedigree as a recognized medallic record of the incident.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49379014476015,"sku":"27-20","price":145.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/9169\/5855\/files\/27-20_1.jpg?v=1777405623","url":"https:\/\/derrittmeister.com\/products\/belgian-wwi-yvonne-vieslet-commemorative-bronze-medal-marchienne-au-pont-1918","provider":"Derrittmeister Militaria Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}