Controversies
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.
Read more about this topic: Willem Frederik Hermans