Abstract
Gerda Walther was born at Nordrach Colony, a tuberculosis sanitorium owned and directed by her father Dr. Otto Walther, in the Black Forest near Offenburg. Otto Walther and his first wife, a British physician named Hope Adams, founded the Colony in 1891 after having been forced out of Frankfurt for their illegal Socialist political activities. They were divorced in 1893 and Otto’s second wife was Ragnhild Bajer, who had come to the Colony at age nineteen as a patient. She was the daughter of Danish Nobel Prize winner, pacifist, and feminist Fredrik Bajer and his wife and colleague Mathilde Bajer. Gerda Walther was the only child of this marriage and her mother died in 1902 when she was five years old. Her father then married Ragnhild’s sister Sigrun.2
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Notes
Alexander Pfänder (1870–1941), was one of the early phenomenologists and the leader of the Munich branch of the movement. He was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich. From 1904 until the mid-1920’s Pfänder and Edmund Husserl were close colleagues, but when Pfänder did not follow Husserl in the later developments of his philosophy, i.e., the phenomenological reduction, they drifted apart. Another of Pfänder’s students, Herbert Spiegelberg, provides a brief treatment of his philosophy in The Phenomenological Movement, I, 173–192.
ZAU, pp. 194–195.
ZAU, “Bei Edmund Husserl in Freiburg i. Br.”
Edith Stein, Letter to Roman Ingarden of August 20, 1917, in Edith Steins Werke, VIII, p. 29.
ZAU, p. 209.
ZAU, “Promotion.”
ZAU, “Sturz in eine andere Welt.”
See biographical sketch of Edith Stein, pp. 157–162 of this volume.
ZAU, “Die Junger und sein Meister,” and “Studium in Heidelberg.”
ZAU, “Verarmt und verzweifelt — wieder in Skandinavien.”
ZAU, “Die ersten Stellungen,” “Gelegenheitsarbeiten,” and “Sekretarin in der badischen Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Emmendingen.”
ZAU, “Bei dem Mtinchner Parapsychologen Dr. med. A. Frhr. v. Schrenk-Notzing,” “Freunde und Mitarbeiter Dr. v. Schrenk-Notzings,” and “Im Braunauer Zirkel nach Dr. v Schrenk-Notzings Tod.”
ZAU, “Vortrage.”
For a detailed treatment of the Nazi’s attitudes toward things “occult” see Ellic Howe, Astrology and the Third Reich, Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1984.
ZAU, “Wetterleuchten.”
ZAU, “In der ‘Auslandsbriefprufstelle,’ ” and “Hinter Schlofi und Riegel.”
ZAU, “Die Geheimnisvoile ‘Gruppe SP’ im OKM.”
ZAU, “Verschlungene Faden,” “ ‘Meine’ hollandischen Patres,” “Die Taufe.”
Conversation with Gerda Walther, August 15, 1976.
Conversation with Gerda Walther, August 15, 1976.
Letter from Gerda Walther to Linda L. McAlister, of December 14, 1973, in response to an invitation from Dr. Linda L. McAlister and Dr. Wiebke Schrader of the University of Wiirzburg to a meeting of women philosophers.
The last letter from Gerda Walther to Linda L. McAlister, was written December 12, 1976. It was labored but cogent; in it she remarked, “Bad stars until January.” She died on January 7, 1977.
See biographical sketch above and Gerda Walther’s ZAU.
ZAU, p. 190.
In Jahrbuch der Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung VI (1922), 1–158.
ZAU, p. 244.
ZAU, pp. 221–228.
Third edition, Walter Verlag, Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau.
“Zur innenpsychischen Struktur der Schizophrenic” Zeitschrift fur die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, CVIII, 1/3 (1927), 56–85.
See, e.g., “Die Bedeutung der phanomenologischen Methode Edmund Husserl’s für die Parapsychologie,” in Parapsychologie, Darmstadt: Wis-senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966, pp. 683–697.
The correspondence includes the following letters: Herbert Spiegelberg to Gerda Walther, February 8, 1954; Gerda Walther to Herbert Spiegelberg, February 14, 1954; Herbert Spiegelberg to Gerda Walther, August 20, 1954; and Gerda Walther to Herbert Spiegelberg, September 15, 1954. The originals are in the Walther Nachlass in the Bavarian State Library in Munich.
Dr. J. B. Rhine, well-known American researcher who worked at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina until his retirement in 1965.
Herbert Spiegelberg, Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry: A Historical Introduction, 1972.
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McAlister, L.L. (1995). Gerda Walther (1897–1977). In: Waithe, M.E. (eds) A History of Women Philosophers. A History of Women Philosophers, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1114-0_8
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