Although more could be expected from a publisher such as Stols, his war editions were rarely remarkable. One exception might be the French editions. After unsuccessfully applying for a job in 1940 as a typography consultant to the Post Office, Stols held a similar function from early 1941 at the publishers Nijgh & Van Ditmar. At the beginning of 1941 he was also typography adviser to The Hague printers, Trio. He held both positions until the end of the war. In mid-1940 he released his first (and only in that year) clandestine publication. Spread over the duration of the war came two in 1941, eight in 1942, fifteen in 1943, twenty-two in 1944 and six in early 1945. Of those 54, 24 were French editions with which Stols could not go wrong. In addition, in March 1944, Trio printed the essay collection Sparsa by Arthur van Schendel and designed by Stols for De Bezige Bij.
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Stols sometimes produced editions for other clandestine publishers. He designed the poetry collection Novemberland (1943) by Koos Schuur for fellow resident of The Hague Dirk de Jong and had it printed by Boosten & Stols. From mid-1943, he provided paid typographical advice for Jaap Romijn for a number of volumes of his Schildpad series. In 1944, the printer Meijer of Wormerveer printed G.H. ’s-Gravesande’s Verzen van een eenzaam man [Verses of a lonely man], designed by Stols. Finally in November 1944 and February 1945, Stols worked under the imprint Halewijn-Pers on two small clandestine publications with Fokko Tamminga of the Ando printers.
Besides his illegal edition, he had a conventional publisher’s list. Apart from the French editions that he published himself from March until September 1944 (using the imprint Pierre Mangart of Rosières, amongst others), he brought out three small clandestine editions together with Pierre Seghers of Vichy in France. All three were printed by Trio; the first book with the imprint A.A.M. Stols & Pierre Seghers, the other two with the imprints of ‘Pour les Amis du Chien de Pique’ and ‘Pour les Amis de Génétrix’.
Altogether during the war Stols published a great deal, legally and illegally, but it was not very exceptional, unlike Valery Larbaud’s Questions militaires printed by Trio and beautifully illustrated with superb coloured lithographs by Piet Worm. His publisher’s list appeared perhaps rather unexciting, but Stols did manage to miraculously realize one of the most remarkable bibliophile projects of the war: the periodical Halcyon.
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| Halcyon. Driemaandelijksch tijdschrift voor boek-, druk- en prentkunst. Vierteljahrschrift für Buchkunst, Druckkunst und Graphik. A quarterly devoted to book production and the graphic arts. Revue trimestrielle consacrée à l’art du livre et de la gravure. 1 (1940)-3 (1942). KB: 48 D 1-3. (KB: JU) |
By the end of 1941, a great many periodicals had disappeared due to the paper shortage and to the editors of those still appearing being obliged to become members of the Press Guild of the Kultuurkamer. Hence Stols was forced to cease his Helikon poetry series, although he still continued to issue an irregular series of separate poetry collections under the title of Atlantis. In May 1940 Stols also began the exceptionally typographically beautiful Halcyon,a ‘quarterly devoted to book production and the graphic arts’. The last instalment appeared, greatly delayed, in July 1944. The paper supplier, G.H. Bührmann, put up the initial finance. In all, there were 12 instalments (including two double issues), each consisting of a number of separate contributions in a cover. The contributions were printed by different printers on different papers and were composed in various typefaces; in most cases contributions were also profusely illustrated.
It is a mystery how Stols succeeded in steering this periodical through the war. It was a so-called ‘scientific’ journal, so Stols could write confidently to the typographer S.H. de Roos, ‘You need not worry about your collaboration: Halcyon is a trade journal and collaboration on it does not involve obligations concerning the K.K. [Kultuurkamer]’.
Even so, it was also a periodical that defied all the restrictive German measures. Stols possibly had powerful protectors in the persons of F.M. Huebner, Ed. Gerdes (Head of Visual Arts, Architecture and Applied Arts, Deputy Secretary-General of the Department of Public Information and the Arts) and the art critic Erhard Göpel. In autumn 1943, the latter supplied a piece on the typographer S.H. de Roos for Halcyon. He was attached to the Referat für Sonderfragen in which capacity he stole Dutch art for the Führermuseum to be established in Linz, Austria. Even under the terrible conditions of war in 1941, Stols still had high hopes of selling his periodical abroad. To Greshoff he wrote: ‘Further, my periodical for book and print art “Halcyon” enjoys much success, but it will only pay off if I can export it abroad. We are starting to send it to Belgium’.
The poet Theo van Baaren and his wife Gertrude Pape still surpassed Stols with their magazine De schoone zakdoek [The clean handkerchief] of which only one copy appeared with contributions in handwriting and typescript, collages and drawings by a variety of fellow workers. The magazine could only be read at the home of the publishers.(SvF)