| Willem Frederik Hermans | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1 September 1921 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Died | 27 April 1995 (aged 73) Utrecht, Netherlands |
| Occupation | Physical geographer, writer |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Period | 1948-1995 |
| Genres | Novels, short stories, essays, scientific works |
| Spouse(s) | Emmy Meurs (1950-1995; 1 child) |
Willem Frederik Hermans (1 September 1921 - 27 April 1995) was a Dutch author. He is considered one of the three most important authors in the Netherlands in the postwar period, along with Harry Mulisch and Gerard Reve. His works include novels, short stories, plays, poetry, essays, photography and philosophical and scientific works.
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In 1958, Hermans was appointed reader in physical geography at Groningen University. In 1972, after accusations by among others the Calvinist Member of Parliament and later minister Jan de Koning that Hermans was using his time writing instead of lecturing, a parliamentary committee was set up to investigate the matter. The committee found that Hermans's chief crime was his use of university stationery for writing his notes.
In 1973, he resigned and settled as a full-time writer in Paris. In Onder professoren (Among professors) (1975) he described university life in Groningen in a bitter and satirical way. It can be read as a roman à clef and was entirely written on the empty sides of university letters, according to Hermans's alter ego Zomerplaag 'to do something useful with this expensive paper that would normally disappear unread in the garbage bin, polluting the environment'. Afterwards the university issued instructions to staff that both sides of university paper were to be used.
Hermans received honorary doctorates from the University of Liège (Luik) in 1990 and the University of Pretoria in 1993.
Hermans was notorious for his polemics, as was demonstrated in particular in the 'Weinreb affair', when he played a key role in the unmasking of a Jewish imposter who claimed to have been a resistance fighter helping other Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
In 1986, the Mayor and City Council of Amsterdam officially declared Hermans persona non grata in Amsterdam as he visited South Africa in 1983 in defiance of a cultural boycott that was declared on that country because of its apartheid policy. Being married to a non-white woman, Hermans remained totally unrepentant and did not visit his birthplace again until 1993 for a book presentation, after the City Council had ended that status on his insistence.
The best example of Hermans's notoriety was the minor issue of the first volume of the memoirs of the minor writer C. Buddingh', which Hermans savagely and condescendingly criticised in a review in 1979. The next volume was published only in 1995, ten years after the death of Buddingh' but only months after Hermans' death.
His style is existentialist and generally quite bleak, and his writing style is unique in Dutch literature with its short and pointed sentences. There is no doubt that he was influenced by World War II and the German occupation of the Netherlands between 1940 and 1945, and his longer novels (De tranen der acacia's and De donkere kamer van Damokles) are set during the war. Even his more upbeat writings (Onder professoren and Au pair) can have a strange, existentialist twist to them.
Hermans married Emmy Meurs (1923–2008), a black Surinam woman, in 1950. The couple had a son, Ruprecht, in 1955. Ruprecht Hermans is a lawyer, married to Rineke Neppelenbroek and father of four sons.