Renate Rubinstein

During her study - which she broke off after two years - Rubinstein started her career as a writer, first writing for the Nieuw Israëlitische Weekblad (New Israelite Weekly) and Propria Cures.

In 1966 she was forced to pay a fine for her involvement in protests against the German Claus von Amsberg, who was about to marry princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, although she publicly changed her mind about him for the better later.

Her weekly columns in Vrij Nederland, which started to appear in 1962 under the pseudonym Tamar, were very popular and often provoked furious debates with other columnists, like Hugo Brandt Corstius and W.F.

The latter objected fiercely in an essay about Collaboratie en verzet (Collaboration and resistance) to the - according to Hermans - unreasonable and unfounded attack on a Jewish woman Bep Turksma in the "autobiography" of Friedrich Weinreb, which had been edited by Rubinstein and her ex-husband Aad Nuis.

Though her heart was on the left in the political sense, she often ruffled feathers in left-wing circles with her misgivings about feminism, totalitarian socialism as it had developed in Eastern Europe and Maoist China, and nuclear pacifism.