Max Waller

While studying law at the University of Brussels, Waller gathered a talented circle of young poets, including Georges Rodenbach, Albert Giraud, and Émile Verhaeren, impatient with provincial mediocrity. In December 1881, he launched La Jeune Belgique.

Waller gave the movement its rallying cry: 'Soyons nous-mêmes' (Let us be ourselves), demanding that Belgian literature achieve world-class artistic autonomy free from moralistic sermonizing. His tragic early death at twenty-nine deprived the young Belgian renaissance of its most dynamic champion.