Partner Tine van Klooster, Suzy van Hall
Queer Places:
Amsteldijk 143, 1079 Amsterdam
Prinsengracht 856, 1017 JN Amsterdam
Rijksstraatweg 244, 3634 AN Loenersloot
Cimetière Communal de Saint-Cybranet, 24250 Saint-Cybranet, France
Johanna Jacoba Schregardus (June 12, 1897,
Groningen
– May 29, 1976, Saint
Cybranet, France) was a publisher.
Daughter of Hendrik C. Schregardus (1862-1919), underwriter, and Cornelia
Tuithof (1859-1945), Jacoba Schregardus lived from 1925 to 1942 with
Jantina Henderika van
Klooster (1894-1945)
publisher; and from 1950? until 1976 with Suzy van Hall
(1907-1978), publisher.
Johanna Jacoba (Koos) Schregardus was the youngest of six in the family of a Groningen insurer - not counting three children who died young. The family moved a lot: until her third year she lived in Groningen, then in Utrecht, Ouderijn, Bilthoven and then Utrecht again. It is unclear what education Koos Schregardus followed after primary school. She later called herself a State Economics and Statistics teacher, which may indicate that she had completed a degree in these subjects. In June 1925 she moved to Amsterdam, where she went to live with Jantina van Klooster, the girl next door from her earliest childhood on the Westerkade in Groningen.
In August 1925, Koos Schregardus and Tine van Klooster founded the publishing company De Branding together with the lithographer Arie Rünckel. The collaboration lasted only briefly: from March 1926 Rünckel continued the publishing house on his own. In that half year De Branding had set up a new series ( Menschen on the stage ), published by Reinaart de Vos and posthumously published the thesis De joden in Overijssel from their establishment until 1814 by Helena Poppers (1895-1925), a fellow student of Tine who died in 1925.
On March 1, 1926, Schregardus and Van Klooster started De Spieghel at their home at Amsteldijk (no. 143), and in August 1928 this publishing house moved with them to their new home at Prinsengracht (no. 856). With De Spieghel they built up a broad fund of novels, essays, poetry collections and art and history books; they published an average of fifteen books a year. In addition, De Spieghel published eight magazines, including De Vrije Bladen (1928-1935) and Visual Arts (1932-1942) . Schregardus mainly focused on the business side of the company and negotiated with printers and authors. She also wrote several chapters in the two-volume publication about Dutch windmills (1926 and 1929).
From 1929 they worked together with the Belgian writer K. Goossens from Mechelen as a firm 'De Spieghel, Goossens & Co'. Goossens imported books from the Netherlands and, together with De Spieghel, published books under the name Het Kompas. Together they set up ambitious series, such as Het Zilveren Bronneke and the Feniks series , until Goossens was fired for embezzlement in 1935. The Kompas moved to Antwerp and after the war transferred to LJ Veen.
Schregardus and Van Klooster did not specialize in publishing books by and about women. Many women were involved in the company. Illustrator Tine Baanders , a good friend of Van Klooster and Schregardus, designed book covers for the publishing house and Nelly Bodenheim , one of the Amsterdam 'joffers', provided illustrations. They also regularly engaged female translators, and Leiden friends Jantina van Hoorn and Alida Langezaal became supervisory directors of NV De Spieghel in 1935. De Spieghel published several dissertations of women in literature, as well as the monthly magazine Woman and Community (1932 to the end of 1934) and the newsletter of the Lyceumclub (1926-1940).
The 'Spieghels', as Van Klooster and Schregardus were also called, were part of the Amsterdam artist environment, where their friends also included the literary man Kees Kelk and his wife Helena Suzanna (Suzy) van Hall and the painting couple Else Berg and Mommie Schwarz. In 1933 they bought a country house on the Vinkeveense Plassen, which they exchanged in 1942 for a house in Loenersloot (now Rijkstraatweg 244). Their desire for the outdoors was also reflected in their preference to publish books and magazines in the fields of nature, games and sports.
In 1942 Schregardus and Van Klooster refused to join the Kultuurkamer, after which their publishing house went into liquidation. In Loenersloot they occasionally hid people in hiding, and they became involved in the circle of resistance fighters, including Gerrit Jan van der Veen, Frits van Hall and his sister Suzy. When Van der Veen was able to escape narrowly and seriously injured during the robbery of the House of Detention on the Amsterdam Weteringsschans in May 1944, he went into hiding in their house on the Prinsengracht. Ten days later the address was betrayed and Tine van Klooster, Suzy van Hall and the nurse Coos Frielink were arrested - Tine would die on January 30, 1945, in Ravensbrück concentration camp. At the time of the raid by the Sicherheitsdienst, Koos Schregardus was not at home and escaped arrest.
During the war years, De Spieghel published two illegal publications: in 1943 a folder with captive self-portraits by the artist Cor van Teeseling and in 1944 a reissue of A new geusen bodexs from 1581. On 25 July 1945, Koos Schregardus received from the Commission of Trade permission to resume publishing. She did this together with Suzy van Hall. She also joined the board of the Foundation Artists Resistance 1942-1945. In 1946 she published a highly hagiographical biography of Gerrit Jan van der Veen, written by Albert Helman and dedicated to Tine van Klooster. Also in 1946 a book by Mari Andriessen about Frits van Hall's sculpture was published.
Around 1950 Schregardus and Van Hall moved to the Dordogne. The affairs in Amsterdam were first observed by the couple Catharina (Zus) and Aart van Breda-de Vries. In 1954 Schregardus transferred the publishing house to CPJ van der Peet. In the following years a number of books were published under the name De Spieghel, most recently in 1972. Koos Schregardus died on May 29, 1976 in Saint Cybranet, at the age of 72 years. Suzy van Hall died two years later. The women were buried together in Saint Cybranet.
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