Adele Kibre

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Adele Kibre
Born1898
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died1974 [1]
Andalusia, Spain
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley (M.A.); University of Chicago (PhD)
Occupation(s)scholar, document microphotographer
Years active1939-1945
EmployerInterdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC)
Relatives Pearl Kibre

Adele Kibre (1898-1974) was an American medieval scholar who became a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. She was trained in Latin and had a PhD in medieval studies, she lived in Europe most of her adult life, supporting herself by filming academic and archived documents before and after the conflict, using her expertise in microphotography. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Adele Kibre was born in Philadelphia in 1898, but her parents moved to California, so she grew up in Los Angeles. [3] Her family was involved in Hollywood life. Her parents designed sets, and one of her sisters was married to a silent film star. [2] Her sister Pearl Kibre was also a well-known academic in medieval studies. Adele studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and taught Latin there after receiving her master's degree. She later earned a PhD at the University of Chicago. Kibre began teaching in New York at Hunter College in 1937, after earning her PhD, and retired in 1971. However, she did continue on with her research and helping graduate students. [3] Her dissertation was a study of the text of the Carolingian scholar Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel's Liber in partibus Donati, [4] and was incorporated, after her death, into a critical edition by Bengt Löfstedt. [5]

Documentation research

Kibre obtained a postdoctoral fellowship at the American Academy of Rome after completing her PhD. She lived most of the 1930s in Europe, supporting herself by doing research for American academics by photographing materials in European libraries. It was at these European libraries that she was exposed to microfilm technology. [2]

In 1939, she met microfilm entrepreneur Eugene Power and acted as his interpreter at the Vatican library. [6] Power recommended her to work freelance with the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC), a United States agency that had an office in Stockholm. [6] In fact, she was recruited for this role. [7] The role of the agency was to obtain and transmit mostly public documents originating in Europe, in particular from areas under Axis control.

In 1942, Kibre was posted to Stockholm to head the Anglo-American microfilm operation of the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC). [8] Agents were meant to keep their identities secret while collecting the periodicals, even if it was a neutral country. [9] Through the IDC, Kibre is credited with sending either 182 or 192 reels of microfilm to the British Ministry of Information. [10] [11] She also continued to make copies and photograph materials for US faculty and for her own studies, and in 1941 is reported to have journeyed from Europe to the United States with 17 pieces of luggage containing research materials. [2] Kibre was also an agent in the OSS acquisition program, wherein she produced over 3,000 reels of microfilm and gave many books to London and Washington. [12] Kibre stands out for her careful documentation and record-keeping of the materials she photographed. [13]

Kibre arrived in Stockholm in August 1942, and moved into the Grand Hotel there. She stayed in Sweden until the end of World War II. [11] Sweden was officially was a neutral county, but many government officials sympathized with Germany, and the King often expressed a dislike of Soviet Russia. Kibre listed her work address as the American Legation (embassy), where she was an attaché. She described herself as a book-finder for the Library of Congress and as a press-reader (collecting newspapers and more scientific publications for transfer home in diplomatic pouches). [14] Adele Kibre had begun work as an overseas agent for the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications, a branch of the OSS, the wartime predecessor to the CIA, which sought to acquire documents in Europe that the Allies could use to develop intelligence and plan covert operations. [15] Her mission was the first one specifically intended to collect documents for a small branch of the OSS [16] . Kibre bought materials from news stands, bookshops, and antique dealers. She also visited many libraries (including the Karolinska Institute) and microfilmed archive material for transfer to the United States. [14]

Later life, death and legacy

After the war, Kibre, who never married, became a freelance archival photographer. [14] "Private, mysterious and comfortable with her anonymity, Kibre’s last known research was published in 1986. It’s believed that she died in Andalusia, Spain in 1997." [17] Some of her letters from Europe are in the U.S. National Archives. [14]

Publications

References

  1. ↑ https://buscandolapiedrafilosofal.wordpress.com/2025/09/02/adele-kibre/
  2. 1 2 3 4 Peiss, Kathy (2019). Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0190944612.
  3. 1 2 "Kibre family papers, 1923-1986 - Philadelphia Area Archives". findingaids.library.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2025-09-10.
  4. ↑ Kibre, Adele (1930). Prolegomena to the unpublished text of Smaragdus' commentary on Donatus, De partibus orationis (PhD). University of Chicago. OCLC   835587.
  5. ↑ Löfstedt, Bengt; Holtz, Louis; Kibre, Adele (1986). Liber in partibus Donati. Turnholti: Typographi Brepols. ISBN   2503036821.
  6. 1 2 Power, Eugene B. (1990). Edition of one: the autobiography of Eugene B. Power. Ann Arbor, Mi: University Microfilms International. ISBN   978-0835708982.
  7. ↑ McBride Moench, Katie (2023-11-29). "How American Librarians Helped Defeat the Nazis". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 2025-09-27.
  8. ↑ Peiss, Kathy (2020). Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780190944612.
  9. ↑ Richards, Pamela Spence (1989). "Aslib at War: The Brief but Intrepid Career of a Library Organization as a Hub of Allied Scientific Intelligence 1942-1945". Journal of Education for Library and Information Science. 29 (4): 279. doi:10.2307/40323598.
  10. ↑ Richards, Pamela Spence (June 1988). "Great Britain and Allied Scientific Information: 1939-1945". Minerva. 26 (2): 177–198. doi:10.1007/BF01096695. JSTOR   41820723. PMID   11621564. S2CID   43475999.
  11. 1 2 Quiring, Ana (2024). "Fingerprints of British Book History: A Feminist Labor History of EEBO". Digital Humanities Quarterly. 18 (1). ISSN   1938-4122.
  12. ↑ "Librarians at War". AMERICAN HERITAGE. Retrieved 2025-03-10.
  13. ↑ Peiss, Kathy (2020). Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780190944612.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Graham, Elyse (2024-09-17). Book and Dagger. Ecco Press. ISBN   978-0-06-328084-7.
  15. ↑ Galvin, Annie (2021-03-25). "The Spy Who Came In from the Carrel". Public Books. Retrieved 2025-01-30.
  16. ↑ Graham, Elyse (2024). Book and Daggar (1st ed.). NY: Harper Collins. pp. 89–90. ISBN   9780063280847.
  17. ↑ Look, Alice. "Adele Kibre: Academic Scholar and Wartime Intelligence Agent" . Retrieved 21 Jan 2025.
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