Herman Heijermans (1864-1924) was convinced that he lived in an "overgangs 1 tijdperk," a transitional period. As a young man in the eighteen nineties, he rejected those values and life styles which he felt belonged to the past period dominated by the bourgeoisie, and sought out situations and a profession which would attune him to the future when, he hoped, the proletariat would 2 be in power. He left the conservative business milieu of Rotterdam in 1892 and went to Amsterdam- then teeming with radical ideas. At first, Heijermans was attracted to a group of poets, de tachtigers, who were...