Adrienne von Speyr - My Early Years

ADRIENNE VON SPEYR
My Early Years

ADRIENNE VON SPEYR

Edited and with a Preface by
Hans Urs von Balthasar

Translated by Mary Emily Hamilton
and Dennis D. Martin

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Part One, which was originally written in French,
has been translated from the French text:
Adrienne von Speyr: Fragments autobiographiques
1978 Dessain et Tolra, Paris

Part Two, which was originally written in German,
has been translated from the German text:
Adrienne von Speyr: Am meinem Leben:
Fragment einer Selbstbiographie
1968 Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln
Second edition 1984

Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum

1995 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-541-6
Library of Congress catalogue number 94-73063
Printed in the United States of America

The Basel Girls Secondary School
(August 1921-April 1923)

The Beginning of Medical School
(Easter-October 1923)

The Second Prope Nears
(Summer Semester 1925)

The Neergard Affair
(Winter Semester 1925/1926)

The Death of Professor Hotz
(Summer Semester 1926)

The von Speyr Family portrait.
Adrienne standing behind her parents

Adrienne von Speyr would not, on her own initiative, have begun to write this partial autobiography. However, since she liked to tell stories about her childhood and youth, and because the events of her life before her conversion seemed indispensable for an understanding of her extraordinary existence, somewhere around 1945 I asked her for a written description of her life that would at the same time make her inner development comprehensible. I do not know how long she spent writing the manuscript that is presented in this book, but she probably worked at it intermittently until the early 1950s, placing the large sheets of paper in her desk drawer when they were finished. Since she probably never reread them as a whole, occasional minor repetition in content and unevenness in style remain. Some of this only becomes apparent if one compares the present work with the other autobiography she wrote later. None of it affects the overall picture that emerges from these two complementary portraits of her early life. Moreover, one is astonished at the freshness and precision with which this woman of fifty years of age recalls the events of her youth, and one marvels at her facility at extracting the meaning and significance of these events within the broad scope of her life as well as their import when viewed in retrospect.

The first part of the manuscript, which covers her youth up to the point of her entry into the Basel girls secondary school [ Basler Tchterschule ], was written in French. Adrienne wrote the second part of the book, dealing with her life in Basel, in German, a language that, like the Basel dialect, she never managed to master effortlessly. For this reason, a few minor adjustments in style have been made by the editor. The books content was never altered at all; the editors concern was simply to remove a few Swiss idioms and, here and there, to simplify the syntax. Her vivacious way of expressing herself is evident in a charming chapter that she dictated rather than wrote down, which has been added here as an appendix: Grandmothers House. The editor is also responsible for adding a few headings to break up what otherwise would have been excessively lengthy sections.

As we have seen, the authors concern lay primarily with inner development, with the way that both pleasant and difficult experiences became significant for later decisions. This is in fact the main thrust of the entire work, and the reader soon becomes aware that it must be read in this light. Two themes weave their way like a scarlet thread through the labyrinth of her earliest years: an unshakable determination to become a physician (note her frequent doctor role-playing games as a child as well as her description of a visit to the national exposition in 1914) and an equally unshakable determination to belong to God alone, to place her entire existence unreservedly at Gods disposal. Only as a negative aspect of this second theme can one grasp her otherwise almost incomprehensible antipathy toward the conventionally bourgeois, relatively superficial yet firmly anti-Catholic Protestantism of her surroundings.

In her childhood, Adrienne had no possibility of contact with Catholics, to say nothing of Catholic clergy, yet, as both autobiographies reveal, she manifested already in her earliest years a rare and penetrating knowledge of certain facets of things Catholic. Moreover, she gave public evidence of this in school recitations. For this reason the editor has thought it indispensable to insert as a fifth chapter her short account of an encounter, on a steep lane in La Chaux-de-Fonds on Christmas Day 1908 between the six-year-old girl and a man she later clearly recognized in visions as having been Saint Ignatius of Loyola. In connection with the writing of her second autobiography, she told me this story; I asked her for a written account of it, which she gave me. It has been inserted here at the proper place chronologically.

To some degree this brief chapter constitutes a digression in this first autobiography, since Adrienne, who never made anything at all out of her supernatural experiences, omitted mention of other similar events from earlier or later periods of her childhood and youth (at the Waldau mental hospital during Holy Week in 1911, she experienced a vision of the Crucified One). Her account of the vision of the Mother of God that took place in November 1917 is the only exception here, and this she reports in a succinct and unselfconscious way (omitting details that would later prove to be significant), as if it were, though certainly a beautiful and blessed event, not really anything extraordinary. When Adrienne comments elsewhere on the theory of mysticism, one often finds that she made no effective distinction between specifically mystical vision and experience and the normal vision of the mysteries of the faith granted by grace and the indwelling Holy Spirit to anyone with living faith. Still, the insertion of this short chapter does no harm if it makes the reader aware of the special quality of the life that is described here, if it helps make clear that more than mere obstinacy directed this girls resolute yet uncompleted search for her place in the world and in Gods kingdom, if it illustrates how much importance such minor and apparently tangential experiences may acquire for other Christians as well.

One of the most beautiful aspects of this book is Adriennes precise way of reading the fundamental principles of Christian love of neighbor out of the examples and models that were given in her experiencein other words, how the religious dimension unquestioningly shines forth from the ethical. One example of this is found in her description of her fathers personality, as also in her description of her cousin Charlotte Olivier, and even more so in the portrait of her beloved teacher, Professor Hotz. Finally, this characteristic takes on almost lyrical proportions in her account of the asceticism of the nurses in the operating room under the spiritual leadership of Hedi Hotz. Here she finds, basically, the realization of the ideal she has always sought. She sees in their anonymous but perfect and faithful service a land of model for what she wanted to see accomplished by the members of the secular institute she founded after her conversion: total forgetfulness of self in service to ones neighbor, out of love of the God who loved us in Christ.