22 August 2026
Pope Leo XIV visits the exhibition “Léon Harmel. La profezia di un'impresa”
Shown at the Rimini Meeting (21-26 August), the exhibition tells the story of the Val-des-Bois experiment. Watch the visit on video.
Léon Harmel, 1908 · Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
Warmeriville · 1829-1915
LéonHarmel
The employer who gave his workers a seat at the table. A wool-mill owner near Reims, a council of elected workers, more than half a century before works councils.
A mill deep in a valley
1840 · Val-des-Bois
Jacques-Joseph Harmel bought a plot of woodland on the banks of the Suippe. His son Léon took charge of the mill at twenty-five and would spend his whole life there. Widowed at forty-one with eight children, a fervent Catholic, he was convinced that the mill could be a community rather than a place of exploitation.
Savings at 4%, mutual aid, houses with gardens, schools, a cooperative run by the workers; then, in 1883, an elected council that discussed wages, apprenticeship and safety with the management. In 1891, a family fund topped up wages according to the number of children. A century later, many of these ideas had passed into law.
Every evening, 700 workers stream out of the workshops
The workforce leaving the mill, beside the Suippe, 1900 photograph album ·Archives départementales de la Marne, 59 J 134- First council of elected workers
- 1883First council of elected workers
- Family fund, forerunner of family allowances
- 1891Family fund, forerunner of family allowances
- pilgrims led to Rome in 1889
- 10,000pilgrims led to Rome in 1889
- The council becomes a works council
- 1945The council becomes a works council
The good of the worker through the worker and with him, as far as possible; never without him and, all the more so, never in spite of him.
1905period
photo
photo
The elected members of the factory council, each with the tool of his trade
Budgett Meakin, Model Factories and Villages, London, 1905 · public domainFour chapters
His life
From the Ardennes to Nice, 1829-1915
The mill
Funds, schools, factory council
Rome
Pilgrimages, Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum
Modernity
What he handed down to us
Explore
The interactive museum
Plan of the Val
Click the numbers on the 1900 view: each place has its own card and photo.
Before, after
Drag the slider: the destruction of 1918, then the rebirth.
The road to Rome
The animated map of the workers' pilgrimages, from 1885 to 1897.
The family tree
Four generations of the Harmel family, one card at a time.
Key dates
A life in dates
- 1829Léon is born17 February
- 1840Val-des-Bois
- 1854The son takes the helmlate 1854
- 1874The fire13 September
- 1883The Professional Council
- 1889The Catéchisme du patron and 10,000 pilgrims
- 1891Rerum Novarum15 May
- 1891The family fund
- 1915Death in Nice25 November
- 2026Leo XIV at the Rimini exhibition22 August
News
A name resurfaces
Long forgotten by the general public, Léon Harmel is attracting renewed interest in France and Italy alike.
25 November 2025
Mass for the 110th anniversary of his death at Reims Cathedral
The diocese announces a new step towards his beatification, after a first cause opened in 1938.
September 2025
A new biography
Émeric Saucourt-Harmel publishes Léon Harmel (1829-1915). L'origine catholique de la paix sociale dans le monde contemporain (The Catholic Origin of Social Peace in the Contemporary World) with Salvator.