Algemeen Handelsblad
The Algemeen Handelsblad ( General Handelsblatt ) was a supraregional Dutch daily newspaper with an editorial office in Amsterdam .
history
The first edition of the Algemeen Handelsblad appeared on January 5, 1828. The founder and first editor-in-chief was Jacob Willem van der Biesen. The newspaper initially appeared twice a week and switched to a daily publication on October 1, 1830. This made it the first Dutch-language daily newspaper, even though it briefly came out again in 1831 with only three issues a week.
Algemeen Handelsblad positioned itself as a national newspaper in the first few years and in 1835 sold only 400 of its 2,000 copies in Amsterdam. As the delivery at that time still took place via cargo boats or stagecoaches, the newspaper outside Amsterdam could not be delivered on the day of publication, which is why the newspaper was postponed one day. During the French February Revolution of 1848 , the Algemeen Handelsblad even used the help of carrier pigeons to transmit messages . At that time, up to four issues appeared daily.
The Algemeen Handelsblad also played a pioneering role in the second half of the 19th century, and in 1877 it was the first newspaper to print a color illustration. Since 1882 it has appeared twice a day. In 1885, the paper was probably the first newspaper in the Netherlands to send Johan de Meester a correspondent abroad, in this case to Paris . Before that, Dutch newspapers only used freelance workers abroad. In 1887 the Algemeen Handelsblad was the first Dutch newspaper to introduce a daily editorial.
In the meantime, the newspaper had become a fixture in the media landscape and, with a circulation of 9,000 copies in 1882, was one of the largest daily newspapers in the Netherlands. Politically, it was close to the liberals and, together with the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant , which incidentally had a similar importance to the Algemeen Handelsblad throughout both newspapers , became the figurehead of the liberal bourgeoisie in the Dutch media landscape. By the Second World War, the circulation rose to around 50,000 copies.
At the beginning of the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the country's newspapers had a certain amount of freedom for a year as long as the content did not conflict with the intentions of the occupying power. Subsequently, however, the situation worsened, and Willi Janke, head of the press department of the Reichskommissariat, decided together with Max Blokzijl , formerly Berlin correspondent of the newspaper and now National Socialist press guard in the main department for public education and the arts, on the Algemeen Handelsblad , which is considered anti-German to make an example and let the security police break into the newspaper. Part of the archives was confiscated and editor-in-chief Daniel Johannes von Balluseck (1895–1976) was arrested along with one of the directors. Both were released after a month, but an editor from the ranks of the Dutch National Socialists NSB was appointed deputy editor-in-chief and additional new employees from the ranks of the NSB were brought into the paper. This forced Nazification cost the paper a large number of subscribers.
After the war, the Algemeen Handelsblad was able to return to its old meaning, but was increasingly confronted with the new competition from television and radio, which put the advertising market under pressure. Labor, printing and paper costs also increased. In 1964 the Algemeen Handelsblad and the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant came under the new joint publisher Nederlandse Dagblad Unie (NDU). The latter newspaper had to struggle with similar problems, whereupon NDU decided against the initial resistance of the two editorial offices to give up the independence of both newspapers and to merge them in 1970 to form NRC Handelsblad . Despite the initial loss of circulation, this newspaper subsequently developed into a successful title and in the mid-1990s had reached a circulation value that far exceeded that of the two previous newspapers taken together.
See also
- The list of Dutch newspapers shows the position of the Algemeen Handelsblad compared to the other newspapers in the country
literature
- Jan van de Plasse: Kroniek van de Nederlandse dagblad- en opiniepers / seed gesteld by Jan van de Plasse. Red. Wim Verbei , Otto Cramwinckel Uitgever, Amsterdam 2005, ISBN 90-75727-77-1 . (Dutch; earlier edition: Jan van de Plasse, Kroniek van de Nederlandse dagbladpers , Cramwinckel, Amsterdam 1999, ISBN 90-75727-25-9 )
- René Kok: Max Blokzijl: Stem van het nationaal-socialisme , Sijthoff, Amsterdam 1988, ISBN 90-218-0231-7 (Dutch)
Individual evidence
- ^ Piet Hagen: Journalisten in Nederland - Een persgeschiedenis in portretten , p. 161 (Dutch)
- ↑ Jan van der Plasse, p. 33
