Jacob Karsman (Antwerp 22 January 1818 - Berchem July 20, 1886) was a Dutch businessman and flamingant agitator and closer to Jewish roots. Life Jacob Karsman, Dichtbloemkroon, Antwerp, 1884
He was the son of a Flemish mother and a Dutch father. After the Belgian revolution, he refused to assume Belgian nationality because of his Great Dutch belief. For the sake of sake, Karsman was a diamond trader and made a fortune.
In 1863, he published a poem in a weekly magazine protesting against the construction of a fortress belt around Antwerp. He picked up a certain supplement and left the seal, which contained an anti-Belgian passage. For this he was sentenced by the Antwerp court to a fine. In appeal, the fine was converted into a three-month imprisonment. The aggravation of the verdict came along because he, together with his counselor, Flemish-based lawyer Julius Vuylsteke, had left the courtroom in protest when they were forbidden to plead in Dutch. The Karsman case drew attention to the discrimination of the Flemings in the Belgian court and caused a lot of stir. In some cities, flamingant protest meetings were held which gave the starting point for the fight for equal rights in Dutch in court cases.
After his release, the rebel Karsman continued to work for the Flemish affair and was the lender of Flemish politician Jan van Rijswijck, the late Mayor of Antwerp. In 1884 he again collided with the Belgian court. This time following an action for the use of Dutch in the Antwerp City Council. Karsman was of the opinion that citizens who attended the council should be able to follow the debates in the Dutch language. During a crowded city council, largely in French, he asked the chairman whether he should know what was told. Karsman was put to the door and charged with the court. The Public Prosecutor named him as a stranger and stressed that the defendant had published a brochure in 1863 that was aimed at the Belgian institutions. Karsman was again fined, but decided not to appeal this time. However, he tried to defend himself by spreading a scrapbook. In this he responded to the charges of the Public Prosecutor. For example, Karsman suggested that he, as a born Antwerp, was less stranger than the king and a number of Belgian statesmen and notaries who came from France. Literary works
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