Early career After gaining technical skills in Germany from 1887 to 1889, Holdert became the manager
Holdert en Co, a position that he held until the beginning of 1894, when a dispute with his uncle over his salary led him to start his own printing company, called
Elsevier, in a cellar on the
Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal. At first, he specialized in printing business cards, particularly for women, with whom he had a natural rapport, and after a few years, the business became profitable, and in 1900, Holdert moved from his basement workshop to a large new printing facility on
Van Ostadestraat street. Thanks to the financial backing from several investors, Holdert was able to take over the newspapers, revitalized them, expanded the editorial staff with renowned journalists, and transformed them into highly successful daily publications, with
De Courant flourishing particularly well due to its lower price, and those profits were then used to financially support
De Telegraaf. At the time, the most popular aspect of
De Telegraaf was a children's newspaper published by Dutch writer
Pieter Jacob Andriessen, which became so popular that Holdert became afraid that Andriessen would attempt to set up his own business, taking with him the children's newspaper and its subscribers, so to prevent that, Holdert staged a conflict with him in 1903 in order to fire Andriessen, who left in 1904, being replaced by Holdert's childhood friend
Johan Schröder, a former football player and a notorious polemicist, who served as the editor-in-chief of
De Telegraaf during the early 20th century.
De Telegraaf went from 5,412 at the time of the takeover to over 23,000 in 1914, while
De Courant went from 10,755 to over 154,000 in that same period. His greatest strength as a newspaper publisher was not only his good sense of what the general public liked to read, but also his keen business insight and his ability to navigate and influence the newspaper market, particularly through
De Courant. He also personally oversaw the editorial direction of his newspapers, with no major editorial decisions being made without his knowledge and approval, even after he relocated to
Paris in 1914 and formally transferred management to his brother. His dictatorial management style earned him the reputation of a 'slave driver'. Such was his reputation that the 22 members of the Telegraaf editorial team, a mixture of football friends, socialists, and former anarchists, were convinced that they could be thrown out at the slightest provocation.
National hegemony with journalist
Meyer Sluyser who exposes a conspiracy between Holdert's De Telegraaf and
Willem Vogt blootlegt. From the start, Holdert displayed an unbridled urge for expansion, with the flourishing success of
De Courant allowing him to acquire several other Amsterdam-based newspapers, which were closed down immediately after being bought, such as the aforementioned
Amsterdamsche Courant in 1903, followed by
Het Ochtendblad and
Amsterdamsch Nieuwsblad in 1905, the
Nieuwsblad voor Nederland in 1913, and then
De Echo in 1912, which had been co-founded by his father in 1881.
De Telegraaf thus soon became the largest newspaper company in the Netherlands. During the
First World War, all newspapers complied with the government's request not to endanger Dutch neutrality sept for
De Telegraaf, who took a pro-allied course due to Holdert's French sympathies, which caused the newspaper to be the focus of some controversy, as the Netherlands were usually pro-German at the time. In November 1915, the editor-in-chief Schröder was accused by the government of high treason for insults to Germany ("a group of unscrupulous villains who caused this war"), and was even arrested and taken into custody on 4 December, but he was released two weeks later, on 21 December, being acquitted a few months later. Holdert deliberately waited with the exculpatory statement until he had made enough publicity capital from the affair, thus making Schröder a martyr of free speech, and likewise, when he was released two weeks later, a large crowd awaited Schröder at the prison gate to accompany him on his triumphal march to his wife and children.
Louis Raemaekers, the cartoonist of
De Telegraaf, also played a key role in this storyline, since his fiercely dramatic cartoons were confiscated several times and he, along with Holdert and Schröder, was called for several trials by Minister
John Loudon. After the War, Holdert decided to transform
De Telegraaf into a simple popular mass medium, thus getting rid of the left-wing and bohemians members of the editorial team, including Alexander Cohen. In 1923, three-quarters of the editorial staff, including editor-in-chief Schröder, resigned from
De Telegraaf to join businessman
Willem Broekhuijs, who wanted to publish a new newspaper,
De Dag, which ended up never coming to fruition, so the editorial staff returned to
De Telegraaf in the summer. In 1923, Holdert acquired the
Het Nieuws van den Dag, which had been in circulation since 1870. The latter was financially stable and had a good reputation due to its content, so Holdert was only able to get a hold of it through a sly manner, a front man called AG Ruijgrok, one of the directors of the
Vereenigde Drukkerijen, who used that company to take over the
Het Nieuws before immediately sold it on to Holdert. His hostile takeover of
Het Nieuws caused a great deal of commotion and helped establish him as an unscrupulous businessman, a reputation that was especially promoted by his opponents. Three years later, in 1926, he built a new building for
De Telegraaf on the site where
Het Nieuws and the
Vereenigde Drukkerijen had been located, on the
Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, which was put into use in 1930. In that same year, Holdert bought out his last remaining co-owner, J.H.H. Hülsmann, to gain full control of
De Telegraaf. Even though he was a very wealthy man in 1930, he did not care for luxury since he never bought a car or a house, and never had an expensive hobby either, sept for breeding horses. ==Personal life==