Discovering an Unpublished Manuscript on Newman in Munich: An Interview with Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz

In 2004, German Catholic scholar Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz edited and published a posthumous edition of Ida Görres’ book on Newman, Der Geopferte: ein anderer Blick auf John Henry Newman, which Görres had originally written in the 1940s.

In this interview, Jennifer Bryson asks Gerl-Falkovitz about the project and the knowledge gained in editing Görres' work. Bryson has published the first English translation of the book entitled John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed.

While the interest the once-famous Catholic author Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) had in John Henry Newman and her desire to write a book about him were known, the existence of an unpublished manuscript by her on Newman was unknown decades after her death. How did you first learn of the existence of this manuscript?

Ida Görres sometimes mentioned a Newman manuscript in her letters after 1945; she also stayed in the Birmingham Oratory in 1949 to gather excerpts from texts and unpublished letters of Newman. And around that time, she then gave several lectures on Newman in Germany, for example in Stuttgart and Heidelberg. But otherwise, there was no indication of how far the manuscript had progressed or whether it still existed.

It must be added that Newman had a significant influence on German theology from the 1920s on. The translation and reception of his work happened on a wide scale; this includes names such as Romano Guardini, Edith Stein, Matthias Laros, Maria Knoepfler, and the Jesuit Erich Przywara, and later also Joseph Ratzinger. In the 1930s, the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, which Newman had re-established in England, was also re-established in Germany in several places, first in Leipzig, then in Munich, Heidelberg, Dresden, Frankfurt, and so on.

The interest of Ida Görres in Newman is thus embedded in the theology in Germany at that time; she herself was close friends with various Oratorians, especially those in Leipzig who, like her, came from the Catholic Youth Movement [from 1919 to the 1930s]. Also, she married her husband Carl-Joseph Görres (1905–1973) in 1935 in the famous Leipzig Oratory.

How did these papers find their way into your hands?

It was a bit of a game of chance. In 1998, Silvia Görres (1925–2015), the sister-in-law of Ida Görres, told me that the Newman manuscript was in Munich and that I should pick it up quickly. Where was it?

The executor of the literary remains of Ida Görres, Beatrix Klaiber (1929–2020) in Freiburg, had at some point given it to Silvia's husband Albert Görres, PhD, (1918–1996), the younger brother of Carl-Josef Görres. In the 1990s, Albert Görres passed it on to Prof. Heinrich Fries in Munich. Heinrich Fries (1911–1998) was a Catholic priest and held the chair for fundamental theology and ecumenical theology at the University of Munich. He was himself a Newman researcher and a member of the Newman Society in Germany, which was large back then. When he died in 1998, his library and his lecture notes were made available to a small circle of friends so that they could select books and papers for themselves as a memorial. I immediately drove from Erlangen with my husband, Prof. Hans-Bernhard Wuermeling, to Heinrich Fries's apartment in Munich and asked for the manuscript. And thanks to Silvia Görres, I got it!

There were about 250 loose sheets of paper, typed and with handwritten entries. The pages were quite damaged, bent, and torn at the corners; some of it was poor quality wartime paper, yellowed and brittle. At first glance, I saw that there was no continuous pagination or even several different paginations, so the order of the pages was unclear. It was in a rough-hewn state and by no means finished. Apparently, individual parts of it had been used for lectures.

I also received some note boxes; these were wooden boxes for holding A5 [5.8 x 8.3”] size notecards with handwritten quotations from Newman on them. They were partly written down in Birmingham while others were also copied from books. These served as material for the work of Ida Görres.

You are a famous scholar who is already very busy with other projects. Why were you willing to accept the difficult, time-consuming task of editing this unfinished manuscript by an author whom most Catholics today have never even heard of?

At my first reading of the pages, it was clear to me that it was an exceptional study of Newman. Ida Görres had a wonderful style, one often “lit ablaze”; she could describe a person in all his or her uniqueness with just a few strokes of the pen and in unusual language. I noticed how “warmly” she wrote about him. And I love her style, her command of language. In addition, she became famous in Germany through a monograph on Thérèse of Lisieux (1946, 2nd ed.), and I quickly saw that the study on Newman was a follow-up to this and that through this connection, the meaning of the title “A Life Sacrificed” becomes clear.

Indeed, I simply enjoyed reading this heap of papers—it was like discovering a new country. I immediately recognized what quality the content and language of her portrayal had.

But there were peculiar challenges. For example, since the pages had different paginations and I was uncertain how to order the chapters, I came up with the idea to turn the pages over. Görres had used sheets of paper which already had other writing on the back (paper was expensive at the time): Her husband's business letters, other notes, etc. From the dates on the back, I got a rough idea of when the respective pages were created and was thereby better able to arrange them chronologically. It was detective work—but that added to the excitement!

What surprised you the most in the content of this book?

The manuscript did not yet have a final title. Ida Görres toyed with the idea of calling the book “The Golden Apple,” which is a beautiful image that appears in the Introduction and Chapter 2. “The Golden Apple” is the temptation to finally offer Christianity to the world as an enticing fruit—that is, to portray Newman as the great Christian gentleman who was open to the world. Out of the “ghetto” of Catholicism—into the fullness of existence, no more asceticism.

It was precisely the Catholic Youth Movement, to which Ida Görres belonged, that had rediscovered the “world” in its beauty, in its divine glory. But then Görres’s impression of Newman as someone who was “sacrificed” (51 ff.), who was not able to truly live out his great gifts, and who was often misunderstood, predominates. This is why I gave the book the title Der Geopferte (The Man Who Was Sacrificed) which is also the title Görres gave to Chapter 1. This slow and profound sacrifice is immensely moving to read. Görres gets at the “hidden heart” of Newman: his slow, bloodless martyrdom.

When you refer to Görres getting at “the hidden heart” of Newman, are you suggesting an echo from the title of her famous book on St. Thérèse, The Hidden Face?

Yes. When one reads them side-by-side, a connection between the two books is clear.

What did you learn about St. John Henry Newman from editing this book?

I got to know Newman's enchanting humanity. Even as a lecturer at Oxford, he was loved like few others. I also got to know the scholar and his extensive knowledge. Then the Christian who sought the Truth with such great pain. And then his humility when he converted and could no longer have a real “career” in the Catholic Church, for example, not being allowed to develop the Catholic University of Dublin, and so on. Görres describes this drama in a moving, poignant way, without sentimentality. She said—using the English word—that Newman had a “sweetness” to him, something that cannot be expressed in German.

There are many books about John Henry Newman. What is special about this book?

The book shows the human side of Newman. In her book on Thérèse, Görres had already managed to show the development toward Christ as a development toward a deep humanity. She also achieves this with Newman. In the book, he gains color, contour, warmth, charm, and appeal, he bespeaks emotion and reason—there are as many notes as on an organ.

Since I am not a Newman researcher myself, I did not want to make any mistakes on account of my enthusiasm for Görres and this depiction by her. So, I asked the Newman researcher Prof. Günther Biemer from Freiburg to take a look at the finished manuscript and see whether it stood up to his “academic” eyes. He wrote back to me saying the book was excellent. I knew then that the quality of the depiction was not only extraordinary in terms of language and ideas but also factually correct. He confirmed my impression.

Therefore, I extend my gratitude to the translator Jennifer Bryson, that this book is now returning to the English-speaking world from which it originated.

It was an honor for me to make this book accessible to English-speaking readers. Thank you, Prof. Gerl-Falkovitz, for telling us more about the adventure of this manuscript and for your effort to make sure this book would not be lost to history.

For interested readers, Ida Görres’s book is available for purchase through the Ignatius Press Website.

Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, PhD, is a scholar of religious philosophy and winner of the 2021 Ratzinger Prize for Theology. She edited the German edition of John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed and wrote the introduction to the book. She lives in Erlangen, Germany.

Jennifer S. Bryson, PhD, is a Fellow in the Catholic Women’s Forum of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. She translated this book as well as this interview from German into English. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.