Libelle

Libelle was, and still is, a Dutch magazine for women. The first issue appeared 13 April 1934, published by Uitgeverij en Drukkerij De Spaarnestad.^[1] The name comes from 'libellus', Latin for "little book" or "writing".^[2] De Spaarnestad was a printer and publisher in the center of Haarlem, located on the Spaarne River, west of Amsterdam. The company was founded in 1906 and grew to become one of the largest publishers of illustrated magazines in the Netherlands. De Spaarnestad was of Roman Catholic origin, a relevant fact given the highly compartmentalized society that characterized the Netherlands in the first half of the twentieth century and which was strongly reflected in the media. In 1910, De Spaarnestad took over publication of the illustrated Katholieke Illustratie (Catholic Illustration) and that magazine, thanks to the purchase of the gravure press in 1915, became the pinnacle of print quality in the Dutch graphic industry. To make the expensive press profitable and stay ahead of the competition, De Spaarnestad began publishing other illustrated weeklies, also aimed at a non-Catholic audience. In the 1920s, the company served virtually the entire Dutch market with magazines such as De Sport. Illustratie, De Stad Amsterdam, Groot-Rotterdam, 's-Gravenhage in Beeld, Brabant in Woord en Beeld, Limburg in Woord en Beeld, and, starting in 1929, Panorama.^[3]

Katholieke Illustratie and Panorama became the showpieces of De Spaarnestad, as did the women's magazine Libelle, but soon Libelle had to compete with Margriet, the successful women's magazine of De Geïllustreerde Pers (whose first issue appeared on 30 September 1938), the Catholic competitor from Amsterdam.

In 1964, the two publishers were forced to merge in order to cope with the rise of television and the secularization of Dutch society. This merger, which resulted in the creation of VNU (Verenigde Nederlandse Uitgeversbedrijven) in 1965, was big news because it involved the two largest publishers of illustrated magazines in the Netherlands. Although the editors joined the same company, they continued to operate strictly separately until the 1990s.

Anne wrote in her diary that Bep Voskuijl regularly brought Libelles for her.^[4] Anne also wrote that she recognised herself in an article on blushing, written by Sis Heijster^[5] and that she would keep it at the back of her diary.^[6] Sis Heijster often wrote about adolescence and all that comes with it. Anne cut out the picture that accompanied the article and pasted it on her wall in the Secret Annex. Research has shown that many of the pictures on the wall in Anne's room are from Libelle.^[7]