Jos Russel (1829-1888)

Letterkundige en geëngageerd krantenman

Samenvatting

Working as a man of letters in 1860 to 1888, Jos Russel (1829- 1888) cultivated a broad range of literary genres. He was known for a number of historically well-documented topographies. He published archeologist and historical as well as linguistic studies. He was a novelist and a play-writer. As a novelist, Jos Russel appeared an adept of the literary man Pieter Ecrevisse (1804- 1879), sharing his ambitions of restauration and renewal of the Dutch literature in Limbourg after decades of foreign domination.

Before all, Jos Russel was a pressman. He was the editor and printer of his own newspapers and magazines, besides his own studies and literary works. In the highly politically polarized Maastricht and Limbourg society of his days, Russel was apprehended for his trenchant newspaper- articles. He was a dreaded pamphleteer as well as a tenacious political activist.

Finally, Jos Russel continuously explored, from a legal perspective, the limits of the responsibilities and the latitudes of his profession as a newspaper-editor. He repeatedly transgressed these limits. He gathered great amounts of convictions. When the financial loads were increasingly weighing upon Russel, and when he had been sentenced to prolonged periods of imprisonment, Jos Russel emigrated to Smeermaas, Belgium, the neighboring village of Maastricht. Here he lived as a ‘political refugee’, however continuing his work as a man of letters.