Herman Heijermans

Heijermans, Herman (1864–1924), Dutch dramatist, and the first since Vondel to become well known outside his own country. Under the influence of the new naturalism, he set out to depict the hypocrisy of contemporary bourgeois morality and the miseries of racial minorities and the working class. His first successful plays Ahasverus (1893) and Ghetto (1898), seen in London and New York in 1899, both dealt with the sufferings of the Jewish people in Russia and Amsterdam—Heijermans was himself a Jew. Among his later one-act plays was In der Jong Jan (1903), written for the Dutch actor Henri de Vries, who took it to New York in 1905 as A Case of Arson, playing all seven witnesses of the crime himself. Hei-jermans's masterpiece was undoubtedly the three-act drama of the sea, Op Hoop van Zegen (1900), which dealt with the exploitation of poor Dutch fishermen by greedy shipowners. As The Good Hope it was seen in London in 1903, with Ellen Terry, and in 1927 was produced for the Civic Repertory Company by Eva Le Gallienne.

Herman Heijermans , 1864-1924, Dutch dramatist. Much of his work treated life among the Dutch Jews. His dramas include Op Hoop van Zegen (1900, tr. The Good Hope, 1928).