Adrienne Von Speyr - Early Life

Early Life

Von Speyr was born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Her father, Theodor von Speyr, was an ophthalmologist. Her mother, Laure Girard, was the descendant of a family of noted watchmakers and jewelers from Geneva and Neuenburg. Speyr was her parents' second child. Her sister, Helen, was a year-and-a-half older. Her first brother, Wilhelm, who became a physician, was born in 1905 and died in 1978. Her second brother, Theodor, was born in 1913 and became the director of a bank in London for many years.

Speyr's mother scolded her daily and this led her to form a strong trust and devotion to God, as well as a recognition of the meaning of sacrifice and renunciation. She also formed a deep relationship with her grandmother, a holy and pious woman. She also had a devotion to her father, who treated her with mutual respect and understanding, often taking her with him to the hospital to visit sick children. In her primary school years she began working with the poor and even formed a society with her friends for those living in poverty.

A very bright student, Speyr occasionally substituted for one of her teachers who suffered from asthma. It was in her religion classes that she began to sense the emptiness of the Protestantism that was being offered to her. At the age of nine she gave a talk to her classmates about the Jesuits, believing that an angel had told her "that the Jesuits were people who loved Jesus totally, and that the truth of God was greater than that of men, and as a result one could not always tell people everything exactly as one understands it in God". When she was six years old, she later told Balthasar, she had a mysterious encounter with St. Ignatius while walking up a steep street on Christmas Eve.