The center
Het Centrum ( German "Das Zentrum" ) was a (until 1932) supraregional Dutch daily newspaper with editorial offices in Utrecht , and at times also in Amsterdam .
history
The first edition of the Centrum appeared on May 1, 1884. The founder and first editor was CJ Langendam, the son of the founder of the Nijmegen newspaper De Gelderlander . It was the third national Catholic daily newspaper after De Maasbode and De Tijd . The first editor-in-chief was HL Lindendaal Jacobs. In 1885 the editorial team moved to Amsterdam, but returned to Utrecht in 1897. In contrast to its conservative Catholic competitors, the Centrum took a progressive course. It supported the ideas of the priest, poet and politician Herman Schaepman , who was editor at De Tijd from 1870 to 1883 and also became editor-in-chief there. After a break between himself and his newspaper, he became a freelancer for the center . It is no coincidence that the name of the newspaper is dissimilar to that of the German Center Party founded in 1870 , because Schaepman was an advocate of a large Christian gathering party, which went beyond the orientation of the German Center Party, which saw itself as the representative of German Catholics. However, this remained an unfulfilled dream for a long time, and it was not until the 1960s that the development towards a non-denominational Christian party began, today's CDA , which eventually became the three largest Christian parties in the Netherlands in 1980.
In 1887 the center got a side edition called De Volkscourant ( The People's Gazette ), which appeared three times a week and was aimed specifically at Catholic workers. In Amsterdam the Volkscourant even had a stronger position than its mother newspaper. Despite its 3,000 subscribers at the end of the year, De Volkscourant was finally merged with the Centrum again in 1895 and thus effectively discontinued, although an office in Amsterdam remained after the return to Utrecht. Before the First World War was Het Centrum , the largest Catholic newspaper of the Netherlands and was still in the years 1914/1915 with a circulation of 20,000 copies well ahead of his Catholic rivals, but then that got Centrum it with a new competition in the form of Volkskrant do , which had been conceived as a newspaper for Catholic workers and which showed similarities to the Centrum in its orientation . In the period that followed, the importance of the center declined sharply, so that in 1932 it abandoned its supra-regional orientation and left the field to its three national competitors in this regard since De Volkskrant was founded . After Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940 during the Second World War , the Centrum and the Volkskrant ceased publication the following year , the Maasbode was banned, only De Tijd continued to appear until the end of the occupation. While the last three newspapers were continued under their old names after the war, the center was given the new name Utrechts Katholiek Dagblad .
In 1955 the Utrechts Katholiek Dagblad was merged with the Amersfoorts Katholiek Dagblad and was given its previous name again. In 1971 Het Centrum was finally taken over by the Utrechtsch Nieuwsblad , which after the interruption from 1941 to 1945 meant the final termination. The Utrechtsch Nieuwsblad was brought into a joint venture with the Algemeen Dagblad published by De Persgroep Nederland in 2005 by its publishing house "Wegener" and has since been a local edition of the latter, which was renamed to the short form AD in the course of this merger .
swell
- Joan Hemels: De emancipatie van een dagblad. Geschiedenis van de Volkskrant. Ambo, Baarn 1981. ISBN 90-263-0537-0
- 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 )
