Later Life
In 1927, leaders of the Soviet Union discovered that the real author of The Internationale, which was then the Soviet Union's national anthem, had not yet died. Pierre was invited to Moscow for the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution and was in the stands of the honorary guests, with the German sculptor Käthe Kollwitz at his side. Joseph Stalin awarded him a Soviet Union state pension (according to some sources as a compensation for his copyright). As this was Pierre's only income, apart from modest fees collected on music for the other Pottier poems (particularly L'Insurgé and En avant la Classe Ouvrière) and on popular tunes he had also composed, and although the left-wing town administration of Saint-Denis granted him a free apartment, Pierre De Geyter spent the last years of his life in precarity. After his death at Saint-Denis, France, in 1932, more than fifty thousand people attended his funeral.
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