Herman Heijermans | |
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 Heijermans in 1923 | |
| Born | Herman Heijermans 3 December 1864 Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands |
| Died | 22 November 1924 (aged 59) Zandvoort, North Holland, Netherlands |
| Resting place | Zorgvlied cemetery, Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Occupation | Playwright |
| Language | Dutch |
| Notable works | Ghetto (1898) The Good Hope (1900) A Case of Arson (1903) Links (1903) Eva Bonheur (1916) The Wise Tomcat (1917) |
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Herman Heijermans (3 December 1864 – 22 November 1924), was a Dutch playwright, novelist and sketch story writer, who is considered to be the greatest Dutch dramatist of the modern era. He is the most notable playwright from the Netherlands since Joost van den Vondel to have gained widespread recognition outside his own country.
Heijermans was born in Rotterdam, into a liberal Jewish family, the fifth of the 11 children of Herman and Matilda (Moses) Spiers. Painter Marie Heijermans was his sister.[1][2]
During the winter of 1891-92 Heijermans wrote his first play, using the theme of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and adding new characters and an authentic Dutch setting. Dora Kremer premiered on April 25, 1893, at the Groote Schouwburg in Rotterdam, and was met with general disapproval. Eager to avenge the humiliation, Heijermans plotted one of the most daring stratagems in modern Dutch literature. Determined to demonstrate that anyone but a Hollander would receive a warm welcome to the Dutch stage, he seized upon the Russian-sounding pseudonym 'Ivan Jelakowitch' and, keeping his own identity secret, announced his new one-act play Ahasverus, about a Jewish family caught in the violence of the pogroms of the 1880s. The play was a great success. In an article in De Telegraaf, Heijermans revealed his secret, quoting the reviews of Ahasverus along with the comments on Dora Kremer, much to the mortification of the critics. Soon after these events, Heijermans moved to Amsterdam.[3]
Having won a triumphant victory with the name of Ivan Jelakowitch, Heijermans decided to adopt another pseudonym, 'Samuel Falkland Jr.', publishing a series of sketches of life in Amsterdam in De Telegraaf, and later in the Algemeen Handelsblad daily. These so-called 'Falklandjes' were later collected and published in book form, filling no less than eighteen volumes.[4]
During his first years in Amsterdam, Heijermans fell in love with cabaret singer Marie Sophia Peers. She had married an Amsterdam diamond polisher at the age of seventeen, but her husband had left for America, leaving her behind to face poverty with their two small children. Heijermans persuaded her to come and live with him, treating her as his wife and eventually marrying her. Their happiness was, however, marred by narrow-minded neighbours. Heijermans recast the experiences of their early years in the highly autobiographical novel Sin in a Furnished Room, written in 1896 under the pseudonym of 'Koos Habbema'; a defense of the essential purity of free love as against the corrupt marriages of bourgeois society.[5]
In 1896 Heijermans left De Telegraaf and Amsterdam, and moved to Wijk aan Zee with Marie Peers. He joined the Social Democratic Workers' Party and founded a magazine of his own, De Jonge Gids (The Young Guide), which he was able to keep going for four years. Much of his own work appeared in it, including stories, one-act plays, and fragments of novels and full-length plays. Seeking to combine his socialistic point of view with the drama, he wrote two full-length plays: Ghetto and The Seventh Commandment.[6]
The Good Hope (1900), an indictment of the exploitation of sea fishermen in the Netherlands at the turn of the century, became Heijermans' most popular play and spread Heijermans' fame far beyond his homeland to countries all over the world. The continuing popularity of the play turned the attention of the public to conditions in the fishing industry, and a campaign was soon under way for a law requiring strict inspections of unseaworthy vessels. A Dutch merchant shipping act was passed a few years later, the 'Schepenwet' of 1909.
In both quality and quantity, 1903 was one of the most productive years in the playwright's career: he wrote four one-act plays, The Child, The Screen, The Case of Arson and Neighbors, two full-length plays, Links and Maytime, and a revised version of earlier work Number Eighty. With Links especially he made another contribution of real significance to the European drama; the play was staged in London, Berlin, Vienna and Stockholm, and received a film adaptation in 1920. A Case of Arson, notable for Henri de Vries' performance as no less than seven different characters, was staged in the United Kingdom with De Vries reprising his roles in English.
As a good testimony of his continuing vitality, in August of 1916 Heijermans completed two plays: Dawn and Eva Bonheur. The latter, featuring an elaborate split-stage device, would be considered one of his greatest plays. During the summer of the following year, he wrote socialist-inspired fairytale The Wise Tomcat, a sharp satire in which, in the comparison of the ways of man and beast, man comes off second best.
Heijermans died in Zandvoort at age 59, and is buried at Zorgvlied cemetery.
