A Benedictine nun risked her life smuggling Husserl’s manuscripts toward Switzerland.

Evidence

A better idea was to take them to a Belgian embassy office and thence out of the country in a diplomatic pouch, guaranteeing immunity from interference. But the nearest office with an immunity agreement was in Berlin, a long way off in the wrong direction. Van Breda asked monks at a Franciscan monastery near Freiburg if they could hide the manuscripts or help smuggle them out, but they were reluctant. Then a Benedictine nun stepped in: Sister Adelgundis Jägerschmidt, from a nearby Lioba Sisters convent. She was another former student of phenomenology who had visited Husserl regularly in his last illness, in defiance of the rules against associating with Jews. She now volunteered to take the manuscripts herself to a small house owned by her fellow sisters in Konstanz, near the Swiss border. From there, she said, the nuns could carry the manuscripts bit by bit, in small packages, across to Switzerland. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 414

Categorization

• SEED: The hidden resistance of a Catholic nun defying Nazi anti-Jewish rules to preserve a Jewish philosopher’s work is a powerful untold-history angle for a narrative essay.