Abstract Correspondence of German Jewish archaeologist Dr. Hermine Speier (1898-1989), the first woman employed by the Vatican, who converted to Catholicism and worked under Church protection. The majority of the correspondence is with Speier's lover, Italian airship navigator General Umberto Nobile, who lived in America in exile due to personal conflicts with Mussolini. The collection includes many photographs of Nobile and some of Speier, and a photograph album of Nobile, compiled and dedicated by...

Scope and Contents This is a series of letters (and some postcards) written by Umberto Nobile in Italy to Hermine Speier during her extended stay in Frankfurt in 1937. Nobile frequently visits Speier's home on Salita Sant'Onofrio in Rome during her absence to check on her affairs and to collect her mail, visits of which he keeps her well apprised. Nobile himself reports having done a fair amount of travel during the period - trips to Milan (and to nearby Uggiate to visit one General Morris), to Augsburg, and...

Scope and Contents This is a collection of letters (and telegrams) written by Umberto Nobile in Italy to Hermine Speier during her time in Geneva, Basel, and Frankfurt in April and May of 1938. During this period, Nobile is regularly commuting by train between Rome, where he lives, and Naples, where he is working as a professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Naples. He tells Speier when new engineering possibilities occur to him, and he expresses nostalgia for the days in which, immediately...

Scope and Contents This is a collection of letters (and telegrams) written by Umberto Nobile to Hermine Speier during June through October of 1938. Nobile spends much of the month of June in Stockholm, where he stays with a former colleague from his time in the air force, before flying to Berlin for a short time. The absence of correspondence in July and August indicates that the couple were both in Rome during those months. In September, Speier takes leave of Rome, traveling to the Tuscan town of Chianciano....

Scope and Contents This is a collection of letters (and telegrams) written by Umberto Nobile in Illinois to Hermine Speier in Rome during June and July of 1939. The contents of this folder mark the beginning of Nobile’s employment as an aeronautics professor at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois and the start of the lengthy separation that necessitated the couple’s incessant epistolary correspondence between 1939 and 1942. In his letters, Nobile paints this period as an especially emotionally tumultuous...

Scope and Contents This is a collection of letters (and telegrams) written by Umberto Nobile in Joliet, Illinois to Hermine Speier in Rome during August and September of 1939. Nobile’s letters continue to feature the weather in Illinois and the books that he and Speier read together as recurrent themes. Also in this period, another recurrent theme arises, one that will consume the initial paragraphs of almost every letter Nobile writes from here on out: that is, a discussion of which of Speier’s letters he’s...

Scope and Contents This is a collection of letters (and telegrams) written by Umberto Nobile in Joliet, Illinois to Hermine Speier in Rome in October, 1939. Nobile continues to express feeling very alone in his new life in America, and he seems to have lost all faith in the postal service’s ability to deliver the mail from Italy that he views as his only solace. In addition to his debilitated mental state, he reports a decline in his physical health. He is invited to attend and make a speech at the annual...

Scope and Contents This is a collection of letters (as well as postcards and telegrams) written by Umberto Nobile in Joliet, Illinois and in Lockport, Illinois to Hermine Speier in Rome during November and December of 1939. Nobile frequently travels during this period to attend various functions: he goes to Chicago to speak at an aviation post of the American Legion, goes to Springfield, IL for a celebration of Abraham Lincoln at his tomb, represents the Consul General at a meeting of the Italian American...