Willem Frederik Hermans - Biography

Biography

Willem Frederik Hermans was born on 1 September 1921 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Hermans married Emmy Meurs (1923–2008), a black Surinam woman, in 1950.

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'.

Hermans received honorary doctorates from the University of Liège (Luik) in 1990 and the University of Pretoria in 1993.

Read more about this topic:  Willem Frederik Hermans

Famous quotes containing the word biography:

    Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
    Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
    Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)

    As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)