10 Euros Renert the Fox

Renert, or the Fox, is Luxembourg's national literary epic — a 10,000-line satirical poem written by Michel Rodange and published in 1872, deliberately composed in Luxembourgish at a moment when the language had almost no formal literary tradition. Rodange chose the vernacular precisely to provoke: the poem skewers the clergy, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie through the adventures of a scheming fox, borrowing from the medieval Roman de Renart tradition but repackaging it as pointed local commentary.

The 2011 issue marks the poem's 139th anniversary — an oddly specific interval explained by it falling within a broader Luxembourg cultural commemorative program rather than any round anniversary.