As elaborated on in the essay by Alexandra Nagel and Denise de Costa in this volume, in December 2012 the publisher Jan Geurt Gaarlandt retrieved a binder with some documents that he had stored away. One of the papers is identified as a letter from Julius Spier to Etty Hillesum. To date, this document is the first letter retrieved that Spier wrote to his most famous pupil. It is part of the series that the two exchanged in August 1941, when Hillesum stayed with her parents in Deventer, and Spier was visiting friends in the province of Gelderland. Thanks to this letter, a new glimpse of the contact between Hillesum and Spier is brought to light.

The Most Terrible of All Terrible Men Writes

The rediscovered sheet of paper, dated 12 August 1941, is Julius Spier's reaction to a letter from Etty Hillesum. Hillesum copied most of this particular letter into her diary on Sunday, 10 August 1941. Spier's response of 12 August 1941, begins with a citation from Hillesum's letter: “Ja, Ja, Ja, ‘der Schwerpunkt der Frau liegt in dem Mann, im Haus, in den Kindern!’”; it is Hillesum's statement that a “woman's centre of gravity lies in her man, in her house, in her children, that is in the substantial, the tangible, as you put it.” The last three words – “as you put it” – show that Hillesum reacts to a previous letter from Spier, namely the one that she received 8 August 1941. On that particular day, Hillesum wonders if a woman could displace her centre of gravity “without losing her own power, without doing violence to her real being?” She shares this thought, and others, with Spier in the letter she posts in Deventer on 10 or 11 August 1941.