Dr John Crosby is Professor of Philosophy at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and a leading authority on the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand and on Christian personalism more generally. I’ve found Dr Crosby’s commentaries on von Hildebrand, his books on the personalism of Pope John Paul II and John Henry Newman, and his landmark study, The Selfhood of the Human Person, enormously stimulating and helpful, both personally and professionally.
John F. Crosby (via hildebrandproject.org)
John Crosby studied with Dietrich von Hildebrand in Salzburg, which is where he met his wife, Pia, the daughter of the author and educator Ernst Wenisch and sister of the philosopher Fritz Wenisch. Their association with von Hildebrand led to John and Pia Crosby’s involvement in the spiritual community, or Gemeinschaft, which was partly inspired by the German philosopher’s ideas.
It was through their membership of the Gemeinschaft that the Crosbys came to know Theodor and Friedl Kern. I was already aware of their connection with the Kerns from reading Friedl’s will of 1977, in which she left a collection of lace ‘to Mrs Pia Corby of Texas [Dr Crosby was teaching at the University of Dallas at the time] to be delivered to her parents Professor Ernst Wenisch and Mrs Ilse Wenisch’ at their home address in Salzburg. I was recently in contact with the Crosbys’ son John Henry, the president and founder of the Hildebrand Project, about references to Theodor Kern in von Hildebrand’s memoirs, and he suggested that I should email his father, which I duly did.
Dr Crosby kindly sent me a reply, noting that since receiving my email he and his wife had been trying to ‘stir up in each other our recollections’ of Theodor and Friedl, ‘recollections that go back almost half a century’. He goes on to say that, after Theodor’s death, ‘we saw Friedl in Salzburg on the occasion of the retreat of the Gemeinschaft a few times’. Then, on the occasion of the Crosbys’ wedding in 1977, ‘she kindly gave us… [a] wood carving of the Madonna by Theodor…We keep it in a little shrine in our bedroom.’
Dr Crosby has taken the trouble to photograph the carving and attach a copy to his email. He comments: ‘When I went to take a picture of it for you, I began to look at it with fresh eyes, and was taken anew by it. Thank you for giving me the occasion to renew my gratitude to them for this special gift.’ I agree with Dr Crosby that this carving of the Madonna and Child is indeed special, and truly beautiful. For me, it evokes the same kind of awe and devotion as Kern’s ‘Laetare’ wood carving in the artist’s parish church here in Hitchin, the work that first drew me to his art.
Theodor Kern 