Born in Yogyakarta, Van Tienen joined the Waffen-SS during World War II and became an Untersturmführer.
[6] His activities with the NESB had led to an arrest in 1953, when he and Jan Wolthuis were sentenced to two months' imprisonment for running an organization considered a successor to the NSB.
[7] Throughout the 1950s, Van Tienen, a bookseller in Utrecht, published revisionist articles in an irregularly appearing periodical, the Nederlands Archief der Conservatieve Revolutie ("Dutch Archive of the Conservative Revolution").
He also operated a mail-order book-selling business and was arrested and convicted in 1965 of insulting a segment of the population since he sold antisemitic literature.
Van Tienen had lost his passport due to his SS involvement and fled to Spain, likely with false papers,[10] where he operated a penny arcade, and died sometime in 1995.