R.I.P. Wolfgang Waldstein (1928 – 2023)

The death has been announced of Wolfgang Waldstein, at the age of 95. His grandson Pater Edmund Waldstein, a monk at the monastery of Stift Heiligenkreuz in Austria, wrote on his blog yesterday: ‘Of your charity, pray for the soul of my grandfather, who passed away at noon today’.

Wolfgang Waldstein (via https://johannes-messner-gesellschaft.org)

Wolfgang Waldstein was born in 1928 in Finland (where his father, a pianist, had fled from St Petersburg following the Russian Revolution) but grew up in Austria. He was a lawyer and jurist who taught at the University of Salzburg and at the Pontifical Lateran Academy. His illustrious family includes his son the eminent Austrian-American theologian Michael Waldstein.

Wolfgang Waldstein was part of the circle around Dietrich von Hildebrand and a prominent member of the Hildebrand-influenced Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft, the spiritual community to which Theodor and Frieda Kern both belonged. Indeed, in her 2018 lecture about the Gemeinschaft, and in correspondence with me, longstanding member Katherine Weir describes Waldstein as in later years ‘the governor of the entire institute’ and as the author of a book about the founding, teaching and spirituality of the community.

In Theodor Kern’s will of July 1964, he appointed ‘Graf [Count] Wolfgang Waldstein’ of ‘Arzlerstrasse 3, Innsbruck (Tyrol)’ fourth in line, after Marguerite Solbrig, Edith Seifert and Margarete Fischer, to act as his executor, should his wife Frieda predecease him. In Frieda’s own will of 1975 (see the previous post), ‘Professor Dr. Wolfgang Waldstein and wife’, now of Essergasse 11, Salzburg, were bequeathed a ‘square oak wooden plaque’, to be found ‘on mantlepiece in living room’.

May he rest in peace.

Frieda in Munich

I’m hoping to visit Munich in the near future and, in anticipation, I’ve been thinking about Theodor Kern’s second wife, Frieda, and her connections with the city. As I’ve noted in previous posts, Frieda Frank was born in 1897 in Steinach, Bavaria, into a middle-class Jewish family. A number of Frieda’s relatives, including her mother, would be murdered by the Nazis, while others fled to England, America and Israel (see this post).

According to Ernst Ziegeleder’s brief biography of Theodor Kern, Frieda moved to Munich as a young woman to study at the ‘School for Social Women’s Professions’. This was probably one of the ‘Soziale Frauenschule’ that were established in Germany in the early decades of the twentieth century. Apparently these institutions grew out of the women’s movement and provided vocational training for women in the welfare professions. The Munich ‘Soziale Frauenschule’, which would later evolve into the University of Applied Sciences, was founded in 1919, when Frieda would have been in her early twenties. Although the details of Frieda’s studies are unknown, we do know that on her arrival in England she described herself to officials a ‘social welfare worker’ and that she would initially find work here as a ‘children’s nurse’.

Weekly timetable of the ‘Soziale Frauenschule’, Munich, from 1920 (via)

It was during her time as a student in Munich that, according to Ziegeleder, Frieda Kern befriended another young Jewish student, Helene (Leni) Katzenstein, who was the same age as her, though it’s unclear whether she was studying at the same institution. What we do know is that in 1931 Leni Katzenstein would marry Balduin Schwarz, a postgraduate student of the philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, who was teaching at the University of Munich. Born into a secular Jewish family in Munich, Leni converted to Catholicism in 1929, apparently under Hildebrand’s influence.

Presumably it was through her friendship with Leni Katzenstein that Frieda Frank was drawn into the circle around Dietrich von Hildebrand, as confirmed by Karl Heinz Ritschel in his book about Theodor Kern. In his own account, Ernst Ziegeleder states that Frieda ‘moved in artistic circles’ during her time in Munich. There is probably a connection between the two claims, since the Hildebrand circle’s concerns were as much aesthetic as they were philosophical and spiritual. Born in 1889 in Florence, Dietrich von Hildebrand was the son of the renowned German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand. During Dietrich’s childhood, the family would spend half of the year at its villa in Florence, from which Theodor Kern would later paint some of his iconic views of the city (see this post), and the other half at their large house, built by Adolf, in Maria-Theresia-Straße, in the upscale Bogenhausen district of Munich. Dietrich von Hildebrand studied philosophy at the University of Munich, and then under Edmund Husserl, the founding father of phenomenology, in Göttingen, before returning to Munich in 1919 as an adjunct professor of the philosophy of religion. Five years earlier Hildebrand, whose upbringing had been entirely secular, had converted to Catholicism.

Perhaps because of his family background, Hildebrand had a passionate interest in the arts. Following his father’s death in 1921, Dietrich and his sisters inherited the house in Maria-Theresia-Straße, which became the location for regular afternoon philosophical and artistic ‘at homes’ for the philosopher’s students and wider social circle. I wonder if these were the ‘artistic circles’ into which Frieda Frank was drawn? The Hildebrandhaus is now home to ‘Monacensia’, the literary archive of the city of Munich.  

The Hildebrand family house in Munich, now ‘Monacensia’ (via enwikipedia.org)

There remains the mystery of Frieda’s own religious conversion. As already mentioned, she was born into a Jewish family, but by the time she married Theodor Kern in Hitchin in 1946, Frieda was, like her husband, a practising Catholic. I can only think that it was the influence of her friend Leni Katzenstein, and through her of Dietrich von Hildebrand, that brought about this change.

During her time as a student in Munich, Frieda Frank presumably experienced at first hand Hitler’s short-lived Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, which led to Dietrich von Hildebrand’s hurried temporary departure from the city, as someone whose public opposition to the Nazis had put him on their blacklist. The establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany ten years later, in 1933, led first to Hildebrand’s dismissal from his university post in Munich and then to his final departure, first for Florence and then for Vienna, which is where Theodor Kern would become a member of the circle that gathered around him. At around the same time Balduin Schwarz, now a professor of philosophy in Munster, and like his mentor Hildebrand an outspoken critic of the National Socialists, also left Germany, with his wife Leni and infant son Stephen (see this post), to take up a post in Fribourg, Switzerland. Theodor Kern would stay with them briefly following his flight from Austria after the Anschluss of 1938, en route to England. The Schwarzes would later join the Hildebrands in settling in the United States for the duration of the War.

As for Frieda Frank, I don’t think she left Germany until early 1939 when, according to Ziegeleder, she came to England through the influence of a friend of her mother’s. On graduating, Frieda had found work firstly in Munich, then in Stuttgart and Berlin, presumably in some kind of social welfare occupation. She arrived in London in February 1939 and Ritschel states that she first met Theodor Kern shortly after Easter that year. Ziegeleder explains that Frieda ‘was trying to find her way to people with similar interests, as a woman with a knowledge of art who had moved in artistic circles during her time in Munich’ and that she met Theodor ‘through a letter from Switzerland recommending that she should contact this Austrian painter if she had any desire for German conversation.’ It’s almost certainly the case that the letter was from her old Munich friend Leni Schwarz, née Katzenstein.

The last will and testament of Theodor Anton Kern

My recent visit to St Paul’s church, Bedford, to see Theodor Kern’s painting of the baptism of Christ, and my conversations with local historian James Collett-White, have renewed my interest in Kern’s last will and testament. According to James, the painting was donated to the church by the late Peter Browning, the former Chief Education Officer for Bedfordshire, who was said to have acted as the artist’s executor.

This intrigued me, as until then I’d been unsuccessful in tracking down Kern’s will, and it prompted me to make another attempt. Undertaking a new search of probate records on the UK government website, I discovered that the will had been hiding in plain sight: I think I must have been looking in the wrong place before. I placed an order for a copy, which arrived by email last week.

Theodor Kern at an exhibition of his work at Luton Museum, shortly before his death

Theodor Kern’s will, made on 10^th July 1964, his 64^th birthday, five years before his death, is perhaps less informative than that of his widow, Frieda, which she made in 1975, five years before her own death. Frieda’s will includes detailed instructions for the disposal of her late husband’s possessions, including his artistic works, together with a schedule of forty-four individual donations, which has been enormously useful to me in identifying the Kerns’ network of friends and contacts in Britain, Europe and America. By contrast, Theodor’s own will leaves everything to his widow, and in the event of her predeceasing him to a succession of close friends in Germany and Austria, with no details of any specific individual bequests.

However, the first thing I noticed on reading the will is that, rather than naming Peter Browning or indeed any other individual, it appoints the Midland Bank as Kern’s executor, with Woodroffes of Hitchin acting as solicitors. Frieda would use the same firm of solicitors, and would also appoint the Midland Bank as her executor, when she made her will, but in her case the latter role was to be shared with Peter Smith, the former curator of Luton Museum and a good friend of the Kerns.

12 High Street, Hitchin, formerly the premises of Woodroffes, the Kerns’ solicitors, and now home to NatWest bank (photo by Sam Aberman, via google.co.uk/maps)

I wonder how the misunderstanding about Peter Browning’s role arose? In one of his emails to me, James Collett-White relayed a recent conversation that one of his contacts had with Eleanor Browning, Peter’s widow, in which she talked about her late husband helping Theodor Kern when he first arrived in Hitchin. She seemed unaware of Kern’s work as an art teacher in Luton, or of his marriage to Frieda, which makes me wonder whether the Brownings’ association with Kern was limited to his early years in Hitchin, rather than being the result of any formal role at the end of his life.

The artist’s signature, on his will of 1964

For me, the main value of Theodor Kern’s will is in confirming the enduring nature of his relationships with friends from his time in Austria, and in particular with those belonging to the circle around Dietrich von Hildebrand, who later formed the core of the Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft, the spiritual society or community of which he and Frieda were devoted members. Theodor’s will prescribes an order of inheritance, should Frieda predecease him, which runs as follows:

Frau Marguerite Solbrig

Frau Dr Edith Seifert

Fraulein Margarete Fischer

Graf Wolfgang Waldstein

Herr Dr Eduard Seifert

As explained in previous posts, Marguerite Solbrig was the widow of von Hildebrand’s friend Hermann Solbrig. She converted to Catholicism under Hildebrand’s influence, becoming his secretary in Munich and then fleeing with him to Vienna after the Nazis came to power in Germany. After the Anschluss she and her daughter Margarete followed the Hildebrands and others of their circle to New York, where she became the leader of the Hildebrand-influenced Gemeinschaft. In an earlier post I reported my discovery that Marguerite often visited the Kerns in Hitchin, but I had not been aware that (as suggested in the will) she had at some point moved back to Munich. Frieda Kern would leave her own residuary fund to ‘a trust for the furtherance of scientific and charitable activities on a Christian basis known as Verein zur Förderung Caritativer und Wissenschaftlicher Tätigkeiten auf Christlicher Grundlage E.V. Sitz München’, whose address is the same as that given for Marguerite in Theodor’s will.

Grave of Dr Edith Seifert, her husband Eduard and her parents, Franz and Johanna Schuchter, in the Kommunalfriedhof, Salzburg (via findagrave.com)

Dr Edith Seifert was born Edith Schuchter in Salzburg, the daughter of medical doctor Franz Schuchter and his wife Johanna, an author and translator. She and her sister were among the first women in Austria to study at university. Edith studied in Munich with Dietrich von Hildebrand, an experience which had a profound influence and led to the revival of her Catholic faith. According to Edith’s son, the eminent philosopher Professor Josef Seifert, she took over the leadership of the Gemeinschaft after Marguerite Solbrig’s death. Theodor Kern was apparently close to the Schuchter family when he was living in Salzburg in the early 1930s. After his move to Vienna in the middle years of the decade, he would be responsible for introducing his friend Hellmut Laun to Gertrud, and the couple eventually married, though there were rumours that Theodor had previously been romantically involved with her. Josef Seifert told me that, in their regular visits to Salzburg in later years, Theodor and Frieda Kern used to stay at a house that had belonged to his grandmother, on Arenbergstrasse, where his parents also lived. Edith Seifert and her sons Josef and Benedikt would be among the beneficiaries named in Frieda Kern’s will.

I’m afraid I haven’t been able to find out anything about the third name on the list, Margarete Fischer. If it hadn’t been for the ‘Fräulein’ in front of her name, I might have thought she was Marguerite Solbrig’s (married?) daughter, also known as ‘Mücki’, since, according to the addresses given in the will, the two women lived only a ten-minute walk apart in the attractive Herzogpark district in Munich. ‘Miss Margarete Fischer’ would be left some ‘tapes for tape recorder’ in Frieda Kern’s will.

Professor Dr Wolfgang Waldstein

Graf – or Count – Wolfgang Waldstein was another prominent member of the Gemeinschaft. Born in 1928, Professor Waldstein is a jurist who was active in the campaign to preserve the Tridentine Mass and since 1994 has been a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He is the father of the Austrian-American theologian Michael Waldstein and the grandfather of the Cistercian monk (at Stift Heiligenkreuz, Austria) Pater Edmund Waldstein, with whom I have corresponded about his grandfather’s friendship with Theodor Kern. He would be another of the individual beneficiaries of Frieda Kern’s will. I understand from his grandson that Count Waldstein is still alive, but at the age of 94 is now quite infirm.

Dr Eduard Seifert (via https://www.buchfreund.de)

Dr Eduard Seifert was the husband of Dr Edith Seifert. He was another key member of the Hildebrand circle. Seifert served as state education officer for Salzburg and as head of the institute for adult education.

Theodor Kern died on 28^th February 1969, leaving an estate with a net value of £3,258 and 5 shillings. Since Frieda was still living, probate was granted to her and in the event there was no need to involve the other names on the list.

My transcription of Theodor’s will follows:

I, THEODOR ANTON KERN of 55 Bearton Green Hitchin in the County of Hertfordshire Hereby Revoke all Wills and testamentary dispositions heretofore made by me and declare this to be my last Will which I make this Tenth day of July. One thousand nine hundred and sixty four.

1. I APPOINT Midland Bank Executor and Trustee Company Limited (hereinafter called ‘the Company’) to be the Executor and Trustee of this my Will upon its published Standard Conditions as now in force (as if the same were here set out) with remuneration as provided by those Conditions and the Company’s Standard Scale of Fees in force at my death AND I DESIRE that the firm of Messrs. Woodroffes of 12 High Street Hitchin in the County of Hertford shall be employed as Solicitors in connection with my estate unless the Company sees reason to the contrary.

2. I DEVISE AND BEQUEATH all my real and personal property whatsoever and wheresoever not hereby or by any Codicil hereto otherwise specifically disposed of and which I can dispose of by Will Unto the Company upon the Administration Trusts expressed in Form 8 of the Statutory Will Forms 1925 and that Form shall be deemed to be incorporated in this my Will.

3. THE COMPANY shall stand possessed of the investments hereinbefore by reference directed to be made or authorised to be retained and the investments for the time being representing the same and the income thereof (hereinafter called ‘my Residuary Trust Fund’) Upon Trust for my wife Frieda Kern absolutely PROVIDING that if my said wife shall predecease me or shall not survive me for a period of one month then the Company shall hold my Residuary Trust Fund Upon Trust for Frau Marguerite Solbrig of Hornsteinstrasse  3  8 Munich 27 West Germany PROVIDING FURTHER if both my said wife and the said Frau Marguerite Solbrig predecease me then the Company shall hold my Residuary Trust Fund Upon Trust for Frau Dr. Edith Seifert of Arenbergstrasse 19 Salzburg Austria PROVIDING that if my said wife the said Frau Marguerite Solbrig and the said Frau Dr. Edith Seifert shall predecease me then the Company shall hold my Residuary Trust Fund Upon Trust for Fraulein Margarete Fischer of Herzogparkstrasse 3 8 Munich 27 West Germany PROVIDING that if my said wife the said Frau Marguerite Solbrig the said Frau Dr. Edith Seifert and the said Fraulein Margarete Fischer shall predecease me then the Company shall hold my Residuary Trust Fund Upon Trust for Graf Wolfgang Waldstein of Arzlerstrasse 2 Innsbruck (Tyrol) Austria PROVIDING that if my said wife the said Frau Marguerite Solbrig the said Frau Dr. Edith Seifert and the said Fraulein Margarete Fischer and the said Graf Wolfgang Waldstein shall predecease me then the Company shall hold my Residuary Trust Fund Upon Trust for Herr Dr. Eduard Seifert of Arenbergstrasse 19 Salzburg Austria but if he shall predecease me then to the issue of the said Herr Dr. Eduard Seifert who shall be living at my death and if more than one in equal shares absolutely.

IN WITNESS whereof I hereunto set my hand the day and year first before written.

SIGNED by the said THEODOR ANTON KERN as and for his last Will in the presence of us both present at the same time who at his request in his presence and in the presence of each other have hereunto subscribed our names as witnesses.

A.K.Targett          )   Clerks to Messrs. Woodroffes. Solicitors. 12 High Street, Hitchin, Herts.

John S. Thomas )

Visitors

I’ve written before about Marguerite Solbrig (1890 – 1957), who converted to Catholicism under the influence of Dietrich von Hildebrand, following the death of her husband, Herman, who had been a close friend of the philosopher. Marguerite became Hildebrand’s secretary and followed him from Munich to Vienna, when he fled there to escape Nazi persecution. Following the German annexation of Austria in 1938, Hildebrand and his wife Gretchen, together with Marguerite and her daughter ‘Mücki’, emigrated to the United States, where they lived initially in the same building in New York City, together with Hildebrand’s former student, the philosopher Balduin Schwarz, and his wife Leni. Marguerite Solbrig was the leader of the Gemeinschaft, or spiritual community, to which members of the Hildebrand circle, including Theodor Kern, belonged, and which after the war would hold annual retreats in the Bavarian village of Bayerisch-Gmain, close to the Austrian border. We know that Theodor and Friedl Kern, as faithful members of the community, regularly attended these events. As a close friend of Hildebrand’s, and a member of his circle in Vienna, Theodor Kern would have known Marguerite Solbrig well.

In an earlier post, I noted that I’d found evidence that Marguerite Solbrig visited the Kerns at their home in Hitchin in 1950. In the passenger manifest of a ship sailing from Southampton to New York in February of that year, Marguerite gave her last address in England as 55 Bearton Green, Hitchin: the home of Theodor and Friedl. Since writing that post, I’ve searched the records available via ancestry.com and have found evidence of a number of other visits to the Kerns by Marguerite. In fact, she seems to have been an annual, or at least a very regular visitor.

55 Bearton Green, Hitchin (via https://www.google.co.uk/maps/)

The first available record has an incomplete date, but seems to be from the 1940s. It records that Marguerite left England to return to her home in New York, and that her last address in the United Kingdom was the Kerns’ home in Bearton Green. In addition to the February 1950 record already mentioned, Marguerite’s name appears on another passenger list from Southampton in October of that year, once again giving Bearton Green as her last UK address. She was back with the Kerns in 1952, leaving from their address to sail from Southampton to New York on 24^th October.

In the following two years, Marguerite’s travel pattern was almost identical. In both 1953 and 1954 she sailed from New York to Southampton in May, on both occasions giving 55 Bearton Green, Hitchin, as her proposed address in the UK, and then in October she made the return trip, with the Kerns’ home as her final UK address. In 1955 she arrived a month later, on 17^th June, and left on 6^th October, once again using Bearton Green as her address for both journeys. Marguerite’s final visit to the Kerns seems to have been in May 1957, though I haven’t found a record of her return journey on that occasion. I believe that she died later that year, presumably at home in New York.

In these years, when Marguerite arrived in Hitchin in the early summer and then left from there in the autumn, I believe that the Kerns’ home may have been the starting-point, and then the final port of call, for a summer spent in Europe, perhaps visiting other friends and family members in Germany and Austria, with the highlight being the annual summer retreat of the Gemeinschaft at Bayerisch-Gmain, to and from which she and the Kerns may have travelled together.

However long or short her stay with her friends Theodor and Friedl Kern, I find it fascinating to think of Marguerite, whom those who met her describe as a ‘holy woman’, and who had been a witness to so much of the painful history of the twentieth century, walking the familiar streets of Hitchin, just a short distance from where I’m writing this.

Having found this evidence of Theodor’s continuing friendship with one member of the Hildebrand circle, I wondered if it would be possible to find similar records for other friends. I had to enter a number of names in the search bar before I was successful. On 17^th June 1949, the Nieuw Amsterdam, of the Holland America steamship line, docked at Southampton, having sailed from New York. Among those on board was 47-year-old Professor Baldwin [sic] Schwarz, a U.S. citizen, who declared that his address while in the UK would be 53 [sic] Bearton Green, Hitchin. In spite of the spelling and numerical errors, this was obviously none other than Balduin Schwarz, the German-born philosopher and former student of Dietrich von Hildebrand, and a close friend of both Theodor and Friedl Kern.

Leni and Balduin Schwarz ((via Stephen Schwarz, ‘Why I Am Still A Catholic: From Born Catholic to Committed Catholic’, Goodbooks Media, 2017)

A firm opponent of Nazism, like his mentor Dietrich von Hildebrand, Schwarz had left Germany in the 1930s for Switzerland, where he gave temporary refuge to Theodor Kern when the latter was fleeing from post-Anschluß Austria, en route to England. As I’ve noted before, Balduin Schwarz was married to Jewish-born Helene or Leni Katzenstein, who (like Marguerite Solbrig) converted to Catholicism under the influence of Dietrich von Hildebrand. Leni was a fellow student in Munich of another young Jewish woman, Friedl Frank, later Kern, and it was through her that Friedl was herself drawn into the Hildebrand circle and (I assume) also converted. Leni was also indirectly responsible for bringing the Kerns together, when she suggested Theodor as a possible contact for Friedl when she left Germany for England. As already noted, Balduin and Leni Schwarz would eventually settle in the United States, at first living in the same apartment building in New York City as the Hildebrands and Solbrigs. The Schwarzes’ son Stephen, now an emeritus professor of philosophy, has been extremely helpful to me, in my research into Theodor Kern’s involvement in the Gemeinschaft.

I wonder if Balduin Schwarz was also en route to the community’s annual retreat when he visited the Kerns? Once again, I’m intrigued by the thought that the Kerns’ modest semi-detached home, in a quiet close in our English market town, hosted such an eminent figure in the history of Continental philosophy.

Landscapes by Kern in the Salzburg Museum collection

The list of works by Theodor Kern in the Salzburg Museum collection (see the last two posts) includes a dozen or so landscape paintings. As with the portraits discussed in the previous post, some of these were already familiar, such as ‘Ortskern an der Französische Riviera’ (1927) and ‘Haus mit Garten’ (1950), which I believe depicts Kern’s own garden and studio in Hitchin. Then there are a couple of paintings with similar subjects, and almost identical titles, to those featured in earlier posts on this site. Similar to ‘Moorlandschaft’ is this painting, also from 1920, depicting the landscape close to the artist’s childhood home in the grounds of Salzburg cemetery:

Theodor Kern, ‘Moorlandschaft in Nähe des Kommunalfriedhofs’ (1920), Salzburg Museum

And similar to the Hungarian landscape that I shared in this post, is this painting, from the same visit that Kern paid to Panon Halma monastery in 1935:

Theodor Kern, ‘Ungarische Landschaft’ (1935), Salzburg Museum

That monastic retreat was arranged for the artist by his friend, the Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand. It was during a stay at the Hildebrand family villa in Florence in the following year, 1936, that Kern produced some of his most accomplished landscapes, including his ‘Italienische Bergstadt’, also in the Salzburg Museum collection, which featured in this post. This view of Florence, which I hadn’t seen before, is another welcome addition:

Theodor Kern, ‘Florenz’ (1936), Salzburg Museum

This sketch of the town of Torbole, near Lake Garda, dates from an earlier visit to Italy, in 1927:

Theodor Kern, ‘Torbole’ (1927), Salzburg Museum

The collection also includes a number of paintings and drawings from Kern’s extended stay in Sicily in 1930, most of which were already familiar. However, this view of a street in Taormina was new to me:

Theodor Kern, ‘Gasse in Taormina’ (1930), Salzburg Museum

And this depiction of a Sicilian fishing village, though similar to at least one other painting with a similar title, is also ‘new’:

Theodor Kern, ‘Fischerhafen in Sizilien’, Salzburg Museum

Surprisingly, given his long residence here, very few of Theodor Kern’s landscapes, at least very few that are in the public domain, depict English scenes. So coming across two in this collection was a pleasant surprise. The first is of an unnamed grange (‘Gutshof’) and is dated 1930, which suggests that it was painted during Kern’s first stay in England, when he was living in Windsor:

Theodor Kern, ‘Gutshof in englischer Landschaft’ (1930), Salzburg Museum

Rather different in style is this ‘Landscape in England’, subtitled ‘beach with figures and parasols, village with rocks in the background.’ Once again, the exact location is not given, and the date – 1930–40 – means it could relate either to that first visit to England, or to the first years of Kern’s permanent migration here, though on balance it’s more likely to be the former:

Theodor Kern, ‘Landschaft in England. Strand mit Figuren und Sonnenschirmen, hinten Dorf mit Felsen’ (1930-40), Salzburg Museum

Finally, the Salzburg Museum collection includes two landscape paintings which appear unfinished, and unlocatable, though it’s claimed that both belong to Kern’s later English period. Although it’s dated 1943, when Kern was a wartime exile in London, this view of a harbour, with a female figure in the foreground, looks decidedly un-English. Is it perhaps a memory, tinged with regret, of one of the artist’s excursions abroad with his first wife Christl?

Theodor Kern, ‘Blick auf einen Hafen’ (1943), Salzburg Museum

This seaside idyll, apparently from about 1950, also has a distinctly southern European feel. As far as I know, Kern didn’t travel widely after his relocation to England – except for his annual visits to Salzburg – so I wonder if the date on one or both of these pictures is wrong?

Theodor Kern, ‘Idylle am Meer’ (c.1950), Salzburg Museum

Update

Matt Smith, the son of Peter Smith, the former curator of Luton Museum and friend of Theodor Kern, reminds me that the last two paintings featured in this post were once in his late father’s collection. Matt’s mother sold them via the Dorotheum auction house in Salzburg in about 2009, and Matt speculates that Salzburg Museum may have purchased them on that occasion. Matt comments:

I recall ‘Blick auf einen Hafen’ being on the wall in our spare room for many years, and ‘Idylle am Meer’ hanging directly over the fireplace. It looked rather nice there but my mother never liked it, and stated on more than one occasion that it looked like an out-house in the jungle! Fortunately I managed to salvage it from what may well have been a one-way trip to a car boot sale, and suggested that we should look to dispose of any unwanted paintings in a more professional manner. 

The artist and the philosopher

Although my interest in Theodor Kern was initially sparked by the discovery that the Austrian-born artist had spent the second half of his life in our adopted home town of Hitchin, that interest intensified when I learned of his friendship with the German Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, whose work I had long admired (see these posts). Since making that discovery, I’ve been keen to explore the possible connections between Kern’s art and Hildebrand’s ideas.

I’ve been reading a good deal of Hildebrand’s writing recently, partly out of personal interest and partly because of my emerging academic interest (as part of my ‘day job’) in care ethics and the potential contribution that the Christian personalism of Hildebrand and others, such as Gabriel Marcel, Edith Stein and Karol Wojtyla, might make to a theory of care. So far, my reading has focused mainly on Hildebrand’s ethical writings, and I’ve yet to tackle his work on aesthetics. However, I think I’ve begun to detect some possible threads of connection between his thinking and aspects of Theodor Kern’s art. I should remind readers that I’m neither a professional philosopher nor an aesthetician, so these are the speculations of an interested amateur, and I’d be happy to be corrected or contradicted by those with greater knowledge of these subjects.

Dietrich von Hildebrand

As I’ve noted before, it’s frustrating that we have access to so few of Kern’s own writings about his art. I’m still hopeful that my contacts with the family of Kern’s nephew Ernst Ziegeleder will result in the unearthing of his surviving correspondence and papers. In the meantime, what we have are the brief extracts from his personal writings that are included in the books by both Ziegeleder and Karl Heinz Ritschel.

The other day I was looking again at the section of his book about Kern that Ziegeleder gives the heading ‘Kern über sich selbst‘, which might be roughly translated as ‘Kern on Kern’, or Kern talking about himself, and seems to be taken from a longer autobiographical piece, though no dates or other details are given. With some of Hildebrand’s ideas still fresh in my mind, I was particularly struck by this passage, in which the artist writes about his early influences and his general approach to painting [my translation]:

Regarding my work from nature, I would like to say: that it was a particularly happy moment when, for example, with a head that I had been looking at for a long time, it suddenly ‘opened up’ to me and I was allowed to participate in the secret of this head, so to speak. Drawings or paintings where this moment did not come were not so good. I think it was partly conscious, partly unconscious, that I had to listen humbly in order to ‘be able to receive’. Because if I am ‘too loud’, if I am, for example as the result of a ‘technique’, so much in the foreground, then I don’t allow the mystery of what I’m considering to enter into me, but block the way to my heart and understanding. The same is true when I consider the work of others; I have to be ‘still’ so I can ‘record’, so that I can see what is the special beauty secret [Schönheitsgeheimnis] of what I am looking at.

Theodor Kern, ‘Female Portrait’ (Wardown Park Museum, Luton)

What Kern says here about being open to the inner ‘secret’ of what he was painting is echoed by critics who have written about his work. For example, Ritschel maintains that in his portraits Kern always tried to ‘provide something of the habitus of the person’, while an early reviewer writes of the artist’s ‘quest for the inner qualities of his models’. Another critic finds it ‘astonishing’ how the ‘essential character’ of an object is ‘grasped’ in Kern’s paintings.

Those familiar with the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins might see a connection here with the Victorian poet’s notion of ‘inscape’, which he derived from the writings of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus, and by which he meant the intrinsic and individual essence of a particular thing.  The way that Hopkins describes allowing himself to be open to the ‘inscape’ of a tree, for example, is quite similar to what Kern says about being able to ‘receive’ the ‘secret’ of a head that he was attempting to paint.

Theodor Kern, ‘Frühlingswiese am Bach’ (private collection)

However, when I re-read this passage by Kern, with Hildebrand’s writings still fresh in my mind, my first thought was of the German philosopher’s concept of ‘value’ and ‘value response’. The only published reference to Theodor Kern by Dietrich von Hildebrand occurs in Memoiren und Aufsätze gegen den Nationalsocialismus 1933 – 1938, translated into English as My Battle Against Hitler. Hildebrand writes of Kern:

He had a deep sense for all that is great and beautiful in art as well as in the realm of truth. He was profoundly reverent and possessed a deeply value-responding attitude [eine tiefe wertantwortende Haltung]. 

What did Hildebrand mean by these terms? As it happens, an extremely helpful explanation was provided just this week by Professor John Crosby (see this post) in an online discussion to launch the publication by the Hildebrand Project of a new edition of the philosopher’s Ethics.

Professor John F. Crosby ((via hildebrandproject.org)

Professor Crosby glossed Hildebrand’s notion of ‘value’ as ‘the intrinsic worthiness of a being, the dignity of a being, the excellence of a being, the splendour of a being’. He quoted von Hildebrand as stating that ‘to every value an appropriate response is due’, and that ‘in all value response we transcend ourselves’. In words that recall Kern’s description of his artistic method, Professor Crosby maintained that responding in this manner involves ‘a certain self-emptying that sensitises us to the value of beings…that lets us make room in ourselves for values, that lets us fall silent in the presence of values and listen for their call’.  And in words which help us understand what Hildebrand meant when he described Theodor Kern as possessing ‘a deeply value-responding attitude’, Professor Crosby noted that Hildebrand ‘was strongly convinced that there was a connection between a person’s character and their ability to discern value’.

Of course, in setting forth these notions of value and value response, Hildebrand was thinking primarily of a moral attitude. But, as his summary of Kern’s character suggests, he drew a definite parallel between an appreciation of the ‘great and beautiful’ in art and in matters of moral ‘truth’. Even the briefest of forays into Hildebrand’s great work on aesthetics suggests that his value philosophy extended to the beautiful as well as the morally good. Indeed, the first chapter of the book is entitled ‘The objectivity of beauty’. For him, as for Theodor Kern, the task of the artist was, first and foremost, to ‘listen humbly’ so as to be able to ‘receive’ the mysterious beauty that existed in the heart of things, waiting to be brought forth.

This is my first hesitant attempt to find parallels between the ideas of Dietrich von Hildebrand and the art of Theodor Kern, and I hope to be able to expand on it in future posts, as my understanding of the work of both men develops.

Footnote

Kern’s description of his artistic philosophy brought to mind one of my favourite poems, by John Riley. It seems to me that what Riley (a convert to Orthodox Christianity who was murdered in a street robbery in 1978) described as ‘the heart’s attention’ is precisely what both Theodor Kern and Dietrich von Hildebrand are writing about.

Poem: for Rilke in Switzerland

I have brought it to my heart to be a still point
Of praise for the powers which move towards me as I
To them, through the dimensions a tree opens up,

Or a window, or a mirror. Creatures fell
Silent, then returned my stare.
Or a window, or a mirror. The shock of re-

Turning to myself after a long journey,
With music, has made me cry, cry out — angels
And history through the heart’s attention grow transparent.

A post for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27^th January, it has become customary to name specific individual victims of the Nazi genocide, so that they are not forgotten or lost in the anonymous statistics of mass murder. Today I name Ida Waldek, who was Theodor Kern’s patron and supporter in Vienna in the 1930s, and who was murdered by the Nazis, either at the transit camp of Izbica near Lublin or at Theresienstadt concentration camp near Prague (sources differ), on 15^th May 1942.

As I’ve noted in earlier posts, Ida Waldek, née Zifferer, was born on 28th October 1880 in Bystřice pod Hostýnem in Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her parents were Josef (known as Pepi) and Julie Zifferer. Ida had three brothers – Bruno, Alfred and Paul. Bruno died in 1924 at the age of 50. Alfred, a medical doctor, emigrated to the United States and died in New York in 1940 at the age of 65.

Paul Zifferer

Ida’s brother Paul Zifferer (1879 – 1928) was a novelist, diplomat, journalist and art critic. Educated in Paris, he became part of the ‘Jung Wien’ circle of writers. After the First World War and the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Austria and France, Zifferer was appointed as literary attaché to the Austrian legation in Paris. According to his Polish-born wife Wanda, née Rosner, the first initiatives towards establishing the Salzburg Festival took place in their salon in Paris.

I don’t know where Ida Zifferer studied, but she must have had at least a university education, since later sources refer to her as ‘Frau Dr Waldeck’. Ida was married to Bohemian-born Dr Karl Waldek, son of Moritz and Regine Waldek, who held a senior position with the Austrian Railways Ministry. It’s unclear whether Karl and Ida had any children before his death in 1918 at the age of 46. A number of Karl Waldek’s relatives would be murdered in the Holocaust: his niece Marianne died in the Lodz ghetto in Poland in 1941 and his brother Gustav was killed at Theresienstadt in 1942.

Wattmangasse, Hietzing, Vienna

Established in a house in Wattmanngasse in the Hietzing district of Vienna, not far from Schönbrunn Palace, the widowed Ida Waldek became a patron of the arts and her home the location for a regular salon for writers and artists. She was a published writer herself, producing an undated volume of stories under the title Die Offenbarung (‘The Revelation’) and a novel, Ihr Kind (‘Your Child’), which appeared in 1909. According to one source, in both texts ‘realistic narration is masked by modernist tones’. These two books are apparently discussed, alongside those by her brother Paul, in Libor Marek’s 2018 book Zwischen Marginalität und Zentralität. Deutsche Literatur und Kultur aus der Mährischen Walachei, 1848-1948 (‘Between marginality and centrality: German literature and culture in Moravian Wallachia, 1848 – 1948’).

Theodor Kern’s 1933 portrait of Hellmut Laun, from Laun, H. (2019) ‘How I Met God’, tr. Fritz Wenisch, New Hope, Kentucky: New Hope Publications

It was through Ida Waldek that Theodor Kern met and befriended Hellmut Laun, who would convert to Catholicism partly under Kern’s influence. On arriving in Vienna from Innsbruck in the early 1930s, Laun lodged at Frau Waldeck’s home, as he recalls in his memoir [1]:

I had taken a room in Hietzing, as I was not looking for anything more than proximity to the factory and a quiet location. I found both of these in Wattmanngasse with Frau Dr. Waldeck, a single widow, who immediately introduced me to her large circle of Viennese friends and acquaintances. Dr Waldeck was…still organising a ‘salon’: that is, she held a weekly meeting to which she invited her friends. These were young, mostly poor artists, such as Franz Lerch and Theodor Kern, whom she also supported financially… Anyway, she was a patroness, and the people who came to her were of all ages and education, but all of them artistically and intellectually active. 

Later in the book we learn that Theodor Kern was an ‘old acquaintance’ of Ida Waldeck’s and that he rejoined her salon on returning from his first spell of living in England, which took place shortly after Helmut Laun’s arrival in Vienna. I imagine that Kern knew Frau Waldek from his time as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the early 1920s. Laun relates that Ida Waldek looked forward to her former protégé’s return with some trepidation:

Frau Waldeck, herself a liberal Jewess, told us some strange things about him before his impending arrival. He had been a painter for a long time in Paris, and led a fairly free life there, but had changed completely in England. It had come to her ears that he had even lived for a while in a monastery, and in any case was completely transformed, so that she now looked forward to his return with rather mixed feelings.

Any misgivings that either Ida Waldek or Hellmut Laun had were soon overcome when Kern turned out to be ‘a cheerful person [who] had a good sense of humour and talked interestingly about his experiences abroad.’ Laun adds that Kern ‘now began to appear regularly and was always served a particularly large piece of Schnitzel, since on other days of the week he rarely had enough to eat…he also came quite often during the week to see Frau Waldeck, who acted as his protector.’ Laun also relates that it was at Ida Waldek’s salon that he first met the philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, a close friend of Theodor Kern as well as a leading campaigner against Nazism and antisemitism, and another key influence on Laun’s conversion.

Dietrich von Hildebrand

When that conversion took place some time later, ‘Frau Waldeck was the first to know … and of course that soon spread to all the people in her circle who passed through her house. Frau Waldeck was Jewish, but not a believer. Her reaction was neutral, except that she, …could not understand how one could take the step that I had taken in the face of the political situation.’ However, Laun writes elsewhere about a ‘clever and pretty niece’ of Frau Waldek’s, ‘a pharmacist’s daughter with a double doctorate’, who was a frequent visitor to the house in Hietzing, and who herself would convert from youthful radicalism to devout Catholicism, emigrate to England and join a religious order. I’ve yet to discover this woman’s name or what became of her.

Although Laun notes that his landlady was initially surprised and concerned about his own conversion, and even consulted a psychiatrist on his behalf, he also informs his readers that she herself would later be baptised into the Catholic faith.

At some point, Ira Waldek moved from Wattmangasse to Marc-Aurel-Straße. It was her last known address in Vienna. After the Anschluss of 1938 she was deported, either to Izbica or to Therienstadt, where she would die.

May she rest in peace and may her memory be a blessing.

Izbica

Theresienstadt

1. Hellmut Laun, So bin ich Gott begegnet, Franz Sales Verlag, 2010 edition (my translations)

A special gift

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.

‘A delightful man with a gentle humour’

I’m grateful to Katherine Weir (whose talk about the Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft, or Society of the Sacred Heart, I transcribed in an earlier post) for emailing to share with me her memories of Theodor Kern.

Miss Weir confirms that Kern’s ‘name in religion’ as a  Benedictine oblate was indeed Frater Placidus, and she adds:

While it is so that the existence of the Gemeinschaft was kept very secret, the Benedictine oblate names were simply used privately within the community. They were not intended as ‘secret’ names. After Vatican II, the Gemeinschaft was opened to others who were not oblates, and the oblate names were not often used then.

Miss Weir has examined her copy of the book about the Gemeinschaft that I’ve been trying  to get hold of, which she says is ‘basically about the founding, teaching and spirituality’ of the community, and tells me that there is only one reference to Theodor Kern in it:

This book explains that with the coming of the Nazis, in 1940 or so, many members dispersed. Since von Hildebrand was high on the Nazi ‘wanted’ list many of his friends had to leave Europe. Margaret Solbrig, one of the founders, came to New York, where I, much later, met her. The book simply mentions that Theodor Kern left for England. Thereafter I find no further mention of him.

Bayerisch-Gmain, Bavaria, location for the annual retreat of the Gemeinschaft (via wikimedia.org)

As for her own personal memories of the artist, Miss Weir writes:

I only saw Theodor Kern and Friedl at our annual Tagung [meeting] in Bavaria and occasionally in Salzburg, but it really is a long time ago now. He was a delightful man with a gentle humour.

The ‘Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft’

In the previous post, in which I reported on my conversation with Walburga Breitenfeld Shearer, I noted that Mrs Shearer’s mother, Johanna Breitenfeld, had been a member, with Theodor and Friedl Kern, of the Gemeinschaft, or spiritual community, founded by the philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand and led by his former secretary, Marguerite Solbrig, who was Johanna’s best friend. I’ve written elsewhere about Marguerite Solbrig and the Gemeinschaft, and also about Theodor and Friedl Kern’s involvement in it.

Searching online for more information about the community, I came across the recording of a talk given by Katherine Weir, one of its longest-standing members, at the annual retreat of the Society of the Sacred Heart in Mundelein, Illinois, in 2018. As Miss Weir explains, the Gemeinschaft was relaunched in 2007 as the Society of the Sacred Heart, or Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft, a lay community within the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.

I wonder if this unfinished picture by Kern, of souls on earth and in heaven adoring Christ’s Sacred Heart, which I came across in the Smith collection, is meant to represent the community:

Theodor Kern, untitled/undated sketch (Smith collection) 

Katherine Weir’s talk provides a fascinating insight into the origins of the Gemeinschaft, its activities, and its spirituality, which I believe had a profound influence on Theodor Kern and on his art. There’s a tantalisingly brief reference to Theodor and Friedl in the talk (highlighted in bold in my transcript below), and a mention also of Johanna Breitenfeld, under her title of Countess Schönborn. I was intrigued to learn that members of the community had secret names for each other: I wonder what Theodor’s was?

Katherine Weir at the Society of the Sacred Heart Annual Retreat, June 2018 (via)

Miss Weir notes that one of the main sources that she drew on in outlining the history of the Gemeinschaft was a book by Dr Wolfgang Waldstein entitled Herz Jesus Gemeinschaft, and a copy of it can be seen on the table in the photograph above. I would dearly love to get hold of a copy of this book, as I’m sure it includes information that could assist me in my research on Theodor Kern. However, it doesn’t seem to be available online, nor have I been able to find it in any lists of Dr Waldstein’s many published works. If anyone reading this can help with my search for the book, I’d be extremely grateful.

I’ve transcribed most of Katherine Weir’s talk below, focusing on those sections in which she tells the story of the original Gemeinschaft. The links, and the notes that follow, were added by me:

I was asked…to give you some background of the Community, and I have two sources. One is a book called Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft, that’s the Society of the Sacred Heart in German, and it was written by Professor Wolfgang Waldstein, who is the Governor of the entire Institute. He lives in Salzburg and is not well, and I won’t be seeing him this year, but he’s a wonderful, wonderful soul, and so my information, the early parts that I didn’t know, come from this book, but also from my experience knowing many of the wonderful souls that did. […]

It was a different time and a different place, but we all have the same longing, and that really was the meaning of the Community, if I’ve understood Dr Waldstein, that it was partly Dietrich von Hildebrand, in his philosophy, saying that there’s a personal longing, a call to holiness, and that leads to a search for a community of like-minded souls who wish to surrender to Christ, to kill their self-will and with God’s help seek His will.

Dom Eugène Vandeur (via Site-Catholique.fr)

So that was an idea already put out by von Hildebrand quite separate from the Institute. But the actual first founder of the Gemeinschaft was Dr Elizabeth Kaufmann, born in 1895. She was a social worker, and with a priest, Père Vandeur [1], she wanted to found a cloister in the world. She believed that there were women whose apostolate was in the family or in a profession, but they wanted to lead a deeply spiritual life in some kind of community. And she and Père Vandeur explored this but Rome would not accept this idea at that time.

And so, later, in Munich, Elizabeth did meet Dietrich von Hildebrand, and that friendship began to develop. And then there were a couple, Hermann Solbrig and his wife Marguerite, who were also close friends with Dietrich von Hildebrand. They were a deeply devoted couple to each other, but they were areligious. Hermann was a fallen-away Catholic, Marguerite was a nominal Christian. They were a wonderful couple who loved each other dearly, so that was another connection there. Now in 1919 there was a political uprising in Bavaria and Hermann was shot in the leg, a curable wound in our day, but in that time devastating. And as Hermann lay dying Dietrich von Hildebrand was at his side and he helped him return to his Catholic faith before he died. Marguerite Solbrig was devastated, and again Dietrich von Hildebrand stepped in to strengthen and console her, and Marguerite became a Catholic.

Leni and Balduin Schwarz (via Stephen Schwarz, ‘Why I Am Still A Catholic: From Born Catholic to Committed Catholic’, Goodbooks Media, 2017)

And then it happened that this combination of Dietrich von Hildebrand, Marguerite Solbrig, Elizabeth Kaufmann, they came together and with the help of a Benedictine monk , Alois Mager [2] founded the community, or in German called the Gemeinschaft. And it began to take shape. The official founding of the community or Gemeinschaft was in 1928, with Elizabeth Kaufmann as Superior. It was intended to help women who lived in the world and who had professions, but who wanted to lead a deep religious life. Then soon a young student of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s, Balduin Schwarz, he asked to join the community, and so men began to join the community. When Balduin Schwarz married Leni, it was then seen that the community could be open to married couples. And this was all in the early 1930s that this occurred. Since vows of poverty and chastity were not required, the emphasis was on obedience, but of course the evangelical virtues of poverty, chastity were also presumed for anybody wanting to lead a strictly spiritual life.

The members had religious names, and in private they used these names. Marguerite Solbrig was known as Mater Scholastica, Balduin Schwarz who was a philosophy professor, was called Frater Anselm. For many reasons, one, to protect the members who had a more public life, and also for fear of the Nazis, a very strict secretivity was preserved. Unfortunately that aspect lasted too long. We were really hidden away in secret from our own families. My own mother didn’t know to the day she died what I had been doing, and she suffered from that.

The Gemeinschaft members lived in Munich and other parts of Germany and also in Salzburg and other parts of Austria. World War Two had a great effect on the community. Dietrich von Hildebrand, his wife, Balduin Schwarz and his family, Marguerite Solbrig and her daughter Mücki, had to leave Europe and come to America. It’s probably the only good thing that Hitler ever did, at least from my perspective. Theodor Kern, also a member, from Salzburg, and his wife, went to England [3]. And, of course, this then opened up the Gemeinschaft to other people.

Elizabeth Kaufmann sadly was killed in an Allied air raid in Dresden, and thereafter Marguerite Solbrig became the Superior of the community. Now God works in very strange ways, and in the United States, von Hildebrand and Balduin Schwarz, met other good Catholics who were also seeking a deeper spiritual life, and they too joined the Gemeinschaft, the Community. So there were community gatherings at Central Park West and 105^th Street in Manhattan, in the Forties, the Fifties and the Sixties […]

448 Central Park West, New York City, home to the Hildebrand, Schwarz and Solbrig families in the immediate post-war period (via google.co.uk/maps)

Not all members of the Community were famous professors. Some were mothers, caring for their children, elementary school teachers, women who came into Gemeinschaft households as housekeepers- they did all the cleaning and the cooking, and they eventually became beloved members of the Gemeinschaft. So it was all types of people came. There were businessmen, social workers, a scientist, several artists, and some of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s sisters, wonderful characters, joined the Community. In Europe there were also counts and countesses, even a princess, who kept telling me that she was from the poor side of the family. There was also Countess Schönborn. Countess Schönborn was the aunt of Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna. She was a social worker, and she fled to England during the War and died there, and was a wonderful, wonderful person, a true Countess.

Johanna Breitenfeld, Countess Schönborn (photo courtesy of Radka Ristovska)

There were families with children, some of whom were handicapped, and the parents needed to care for them, so nobody had an easy time. Since most of the members, even in New York, and certainly in Salzburg and in Munich, they lived together in a household, or nearby, it was easy to meet. So every week there was a community gathering to pray Vespers and instruction was given, prayers were offered for special intentions, especially for the dead, and there were long lists going down forever, praying for our departed and for relatives of the departed. Even a collection was taken, each giving according to his need.

Private instructions were given on a regular basis. You would go to meet with Marguerite or Balduin or whoever you found helpful, ready to answer questions, solve problems and offer advice, and some of them I think are saints in heaven because of all the phone calls they had to answer from people that needed help. Mater Scholastica died in 1969 and after, Edith Seifert [4] of Salzburg became the Superior of the Gemeinschaft, and she was known as Mater Assumpta.

Now Vatican II, in the middle of the Sixties, had a great effect on the Gemeinschaft, especially with the decree on lay spirituality. I don’t recall it being so focused on before that time. And so, under Edith’s guidance, the Gemeinschaft began to re-think its practices and, in effect, it gave up a lot of its strict monastic character and the Community began to accept new members who were not Benedictine oblates and there was less intrusion into private lives. But the help was always there, you could always find a kind, understanding, helpful person who would help you in a difficult situation.

Notes

1. Dom Eugène Vandeur (1875 – 1968), Belgian monk and author of many books on spirituality.
2. Alois Mager (1883 – 1946), Benedictine monk, philosopher and psychologist. See this post.
3. This is slightly misleading. Theodor Kern only met his second wife, Friedl, when they were both refugees in London in the 1940s.
4. Edith Seifert (1909 – 1997) was the mother of the philosopher, and student of Dietrich von Hildebrand, Josef Seifert, who has been one of my key informants about Theodor Kern’s involvement in the Hildebrand circle. See this post.

Update

Wolfgang Waldstein

I’ve found a reference to the book about the Gemeinschaft that was mentioned by Katherine Weir in her talk, in Wolfgang Waldstein’s memoir Mein Leben: Errinerungen (Media Maria Verlag, 2013). On pages 234-235, Dr. Waldstein writes (my translation):

A longstanding concern of the Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft has been to create an anthology from the early writings of this community. Dr. Ernst Wenisch had worked on it for many years, but ultimately could not get his work due to his longstanding illness. The result, which is the book Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft, Auswahl aus frühen Schriften [The Sacred Heart Community: Selection of Early Writings],  was published in 2006 by the Herz Jesu Gemeinschaft in the Institut Christus König und Hoherpriester. It is not available in bookstores and can only be obtained from the Institut Christus König und Hoherpriester in Bayerisch Gmain.

I plan to contact the Institute to see if they have a copy available for sale.

Further update

Unfortunately, the Institut Christus König und Hoherpriester  has informed me that the book in question is only available to members of the Society of the Sacred Heart. I contacted Stephen Schwarz, who was so helpful to me last year in providing information about Theodor Kern’s membership of the Gemeinschaft. He does not have access to a copy, and does not know whether it includes any reference to Kern. Stephen also helpfully pointed out a few errors in what I’ve written about the Gemeinschaft, which I’m happy to correct here. 

Apparently it is not strictly true to say that the Gemeinschaft was founded by Dietrich von Hildebrand, though, as Stephen writes, ‘his ideas were probably part of the spirituality that originally formed it.’ Stephen adds that, during a good part of the time that he attended meetings of the community in Marguerite Solbrig’s New York apartment, von Hildebrand did not actually attend, though he joined some time later. Marguerite was the leader of the community, from the time of its inception until her death. Stephen confirms that one of the founders was Elizabeth Kaufmann, who is mentioned by Katharine Weir in her talk (see above). Elizabeth Kaufman was, in fact, Stephen’s godmother; von Hildebrand was his godfather. Finally, Stephen corrects the impression given in Miss Weir’s talk that members of the Gemeinschaft had ‘secret’ names for each other. Their names in the community were simply those they took as oblates in the Order of St. Benedict. Stephen adds that von Hildebrand was known as Frater Petrus, while he himself was Frater Joseph.

‘Frater Placidus’

Yet another update to this post. Stephen Schwarz has been in touch again, to inform me that Theodor Kern’s Benedictine oblate name was Frater Placidus.