Henriëtte Laman Trip-de Beaufort

Henriëtte Laman Trip-de Beaufort studied history and Dutch at the University of Utrecht. Her father was the mayor of The Hague, but she became an orphan at age 16. De Beaufort married Herman Laman Trip in 1914 and together, they founded a sanatorium for children at German Oberstdorf in the Allgäu Alps called “Hohes Licht“. Beside her work for the sanatorium she began writing novels. After 1933 they saved several Jewish children, making their flights to Switzerland with the help of false passports, as the sanatorium had international status. After her return to the Netherlands during World War II she concentrated on her own creative work.

Laman Trip published her own works and was awarded the Prize for Literature by the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences in 1954. In 1956 she sold “Hohes Licht”, having less time to deal with it because of her writing. She wrote biographies of Queen Juliana in 1959 and of Queen Wilhelmina in 1965. Even in her later years she was an administrator in several literary associations in the Netherlands. On her 80th birthday Laman Trip was awarded the Order of Orange-Nassau. Her success was based on her gift of storytelling and her meticulous writing style. The short story Makkerschap (Companionship) first appeared in 1929 in the literary journal “De Nieuwe Gids”. It tells the story a ski tour in the Gotthard area, where the group is caught by surprise by a snowstorm.