Johan Bodegraven

Johan Bodegraven (1951)

Johan Bodegraven , with full name: Johannes Gerrit Bodegraven (born July 3, 1914 in Tiel ; † March 8, 1993 in Hilversum ), was a Dutch reporter and radio announcer for the NCRV ( Nederlandse Christelijke Radio-Vereniging , German: Dutch Christian Radio Association ).

Life

Bodegraven grew up in Gelderland and later in Utrecht in a traditionally Calvinist milieu in which his artistic interests were only accepted as a leisure activity. Therefore, contrary to his actual wish to become an actor, he embarked on the career of a tax officer, which his father also pursued, and worked at the Utrecht Tax Office. In 1940 he married Johanna IJperlaan, with whom he had three children.

As a hobby he got involved in an amateur play group , where he was discovered in 1946 by Gerard Hoek, the program director of Radio NCRV. There he initially worked part-time at Studio Steravond , an evening entertainment program broadcast every Thursday. From 1947 he moderated the program Spraakwaterval ("Redewasserfall"), which was about speaking continuously for a certain period of time. In 1948 he quit the tax office, moved to Hilversum and worked full-time for the broadcaster, where he was to stay until his retirement.

Bodegraven became known nationwide for its fundraising campaigns. The first happened accidentally on his show Haak-in , in which participants had to form strings of words by adding a word that began with the last letter of the previous word. Bodegraven came up with the idea to involve his listeners in the game. They were supposed to send their solution to the sender by postcard, which was stuck with a charity stamp, 25 percent of which was donated to the cancer aid organization Koningin Wilhelmina Fund . As a result, not only the planned 80,000 guilders were donated, but more than 3 million guilders were collected .

After this overwhelming success, the NCRV carried out a fundraising campaign every year under the direction of Bodegraven, who had meanwhile been nicknamed Aartsbedelaar (arch beggar). The most famous broadcast was Beurzen open, dijken Dicht (purses open, dykes tight) on the occasion of the flood disaster of 1953 , in which around six million guilders were collected.

In total, Bodegraven collected more than 15 million guilders.

Bodegraven remained a "radio man" throughout his life, the new medium of television scared him off. In 1957 he gave in to the insistence of his broadcaster and presented the TV show Plus of Min , which was a failure and soon made him return to radio, where he worked until 1979. He stayed in Hilversum, where he lived in seclusion and succumbed to cancer in 1993.

Web links

• Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis: Biography Bodegraven