A Visit with Lissy Voegelin

In October of 1992, I decided to visit my son who was then living in Oakland, California. Oakland is across the bay from San Francisco and I had never before visited this beautiful area of the United States. I thought it would be a nice opportunity to meet Paul Caringella, Eric Voegelin’s personal assistant for many years, so I called him from my home in Ohio and arranged to meet him at Stanford University in Palo Alto, a city just south of San Francisco.

With my son beside me, I finally got to meet Paul at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford campus. He took us to the cemetery where Eric Voegelin had been buried in January of 1985. It was on a hill top with a lovely vista. One could see many miles across valleys to the distant hills. It was the kind of beauty for which California is famous. A single small wind-twisted tree broke the horizon. Nothing else impaired the view: no monuments, only simple flat headstones. Paul pointed out the headstone for the man lying next to Voegelin. It said simply, “Wiseman.”

Later my son and I and a friend of my son from Baden, Germany, a young electrical engineer named Ulrich, went with Paul to visit Lissy Voegelin at the Voegelin home in Palo Alto. We came by appointment and Lissy awaited us sitting up in bed in the master bedroom. She looked elegant and regal in a blue robe, with her freshly permed thick white hair.

Lissy said she never spoke German anymore (I believe she said that she and Eric made it a rule to talk together only in English.) But in the case of Ulrich, when he stepped forward to be introduced, she took his hand and said a few things to him “auf Deutsch.”

Paul told Lissy that I had some memories of Eric at Notre Dame back about 1960 and Paul thought Lissy would enjoy them; enthusiastically she encouraged me to share my memories.

To put a time frame around events I asked her if she remembered when Eric was beaten by muggers as he walked in the night from school to their apartment. Of course she remembered all this very clearly. It was shortly after this that that my story takes place. This is the story I told Lissy:

I took Professor Voegelin’s “New Science of Politics” course when I was a junior undergraduate at Notre Dame. I decided I would buy extra copies of The New Science of Politics and give them as Christmas gifts to friends. I thought it would be great if I could have them signed by Professor Voegelin, so I went up to him after class one day (as far as I recall the only time I ever spoke to him in the classroom) and asked him if he would be willing to autograph copies of his book? He glanced at his pocket calender and told me to come to his apartment the following day at 1:00 P.M.

(I clearly recall the appointment was for a Saturday. By this time the Voegelin’s had moved into the Morris Inn for safety as a result of the mugging incident already mentioned. Father Hesburg, the then university president, had insisted that the Voegelins be provided accomodations on campus and had ordered some walls knocked down to combine individual guest rooms into a single habitable apartment.)

Promptly at one o’clock I knocked at the Voegelin’s door. The door opened narrowly and a graduate student stood there blocking my view. I still remember the scowl on his face when I told him I had an appointment. He told me to wait. Then I was led into a foyer or anti-room located at the center of a kind of rabbit warren of low ceilings and narrow halls and doorways.

I stood there with my armload of books for a few minutes and into the room bounded Professor Voegelin wearing his three-piece suit and a public smile (I sensed he had just put on the jacket.). He dropped into a small upholstered chair and rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.

“Well! What do we have here today?” he asked.

I told him I had these books for him to sign. I handed him four copies of the NEW SCIENCE. (He signed with a ball point pen he took from his coat pocket. I hadn’t had the presence of mind to bring a fountain pen. Nor did I have the presence of mind to suggest a sentiment or even a date on any of the copies, so the autograph was simply his name.

“There you are,” he said, handing back the slender blue volumes.

“Would you also sign these, Professor?”

I offered him my three volumes of Order and History (There were only three then!). He took them and looked at them speculatively, flipping open one of the volumes.

“You don’t expect me to sign all of them, do you?”

“Yes, please” I said.

“But it is customary for an author to sign only the first volume of a multi-volume work.”

At this point, Lissy Voegelin interrupted my story:

“I hope you made him sign! You did make him sign?” “Yes,” I said, “He signed them all.”

“Good!” she smiled, “I’m glad you made him do it.”

When the visit with Lissy was over, we filed out of the room. I was the last to leave. I stopped and looked at her and she at me. For a moment the masks fell away and we looked at each other with tenderness and sadness. Then I left her home and returned to Ohio.

I pray for the repose of Eric and Lissy at the memorial of every Mass.

( A post-script from today: Some time ago I went back and looked at the three volumes of Order and History. Only Volume I bears his signature.)

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