Appendix C: The Lieber-Hegel Document
In 1936 a book entitled Mrs. Eddy Purloins from Hegel by Walter M. Haushalter was printed in Boston by A. A. Beauchamp and in London by the Rationalist Press.1 Recognizing the impossibility of explaining Mrs. Eddy’s metaphysics by Quimby’s psychology, the author proposed a different explanation. She had stolen her ideas, he announced, from a manuscript entitled “The Metaphysical Religion of Hegel” by Francis Lieber, the respected nineteenth-century German-American political scientist. The manuscript thus described was printed in the book in full.
In the April 3, 1937, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel the following “item of interest” was published:
In 1930–1933, The Mother Church was invited to buy what was offered as proof that Mary Baker Eddy got some two hundred lines for “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (which contains eighteen thousand lines) from an admirer of Hegel’s philosophy. The alleged proof consisted of two handwritten papers: (1) a purported article or essay headed “The Metaphysical Religion of Hegel by Christian Herrmann”; (2) a purported letter dated April 21, 1866, addressed “Friend Hiram” and signed “Christian Herrmann.” The ● ● ●
1 [Walter M. Haushalter, Mrs. Eddy Purloins from Hegel: Newly Discovered Source Reveals Amazing Plagiarisms in “Science and Health” (Boston: A. A. Beauchamp, 1936).]