De Telegraaf - History

History

De Telegraaf was founded by Henry Tindal, who simultaneously started another paper De Courant ("The Gazette"). The first issue appeared on 1 January 1893. Following Tindal's death on 31 January 1902 the printer HMC Holdert, with backing from financiers, took over De Telegraaf and De Courant on 12 September 1902. This proved to be a good investment, particularly with regard to De Courant, enabling Holdert between 1903 and 1923 to take over one newspaper after another, suspending publication as he went. He added the name Amsterdamsche Courant ("Amsterdam Gazette") as a subtitle to De Telegraaf, and Het Nieuws van den Dag ("The News of the Day") to De Courant. In 1926, he began construction of a new printing facility at the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal in Amsterdam, designed by J.F. Staal and G.J. Langhout. Construction was completed and the building occupied in 1930. At one point, in June 1966, the building was besieged by angry construction workers and Provo followers, after a false report that a victim of a labour dispute had been killed not by the police but by a co-worker. In 1974, De Telegraaf moved to its current location in the Basisweg.

During World War I, when the Netherlands was officially neutral, Holdert's French sympathies and his pro-British standpoint caused De Telegraaf to be the focus of some controversy. During World War II, the Telegraaf companies published pro-German papers, which led to a thirty year ban on publishing after the war. The prohibition was, however, lifted in 1949 and De Telegraaf flourished anew to become the biggest newspaper in the Netherlands.

De Courant/Nieuws van de Dag ceased publication in 1998.

From 21 March 2004 until 27 December 2009, De Telegraaf has also been published on Sundays. From 1 January 2010 they ceased the publication on Sundays.