Adolphe Hauman (1867-1890)

Doctor of Law, merchant and President of the Central Israelite Consistory of Belgium (1834-1837)

Adolphe Hauman operated, with his partners Vinchent and Cattoir, a bookshop, printing and stationery company founded in Brussels in 1836 under the name Société de Librairie Hauman et Compagnie, of which he was director. This publishing company specialised in the printing and sale of history books and novels. It disappeared in 1846, a victim of local competition and the reaction of French publishers. Adolphe Hauman also directed the newspaper Le Politique, the Société d'Exploitation de Filasse d'Aloës and the Société pour la Fabrication des Cordages de toute Nature et de toute Espèce, which he created in 1838, and was director-manager of the Société des Corderies du Grand-Hornu (Hauman, Greive et Compagnie). He seems to have participated in the financing of the construction of the Saint-Hubert galleries, inaugurated in Brussels in 1847. He was one of the main leaders of Brussels Judaism, president of the Central Jewish Consistory of Belgium from 1834 to 1837. It was during this presidency that Adophe Hauman was condemned by the Brussels Court of Assizes in December 1835 for refusing to take the oath according to the more judaïco, when he was called as a witness before a court. Hauman, on the basis of constitutional freedoms, had not recognised the right of the court to question him about his religious belief. The case went to the Court of Cassation and ended with the decision of 29 July 1836, which held that Jews could not be forced to take an oath that clearly discriminated against them. This ruling of the Court of Cassation meant full legal equality for the Jews in Belgium, ten years before France took a similar decision. Adolphe Hauman settled in Paris in the last years of his life.