Adele Kibre

Adele Kibre
Born	1898 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	1997 Andalusia, Spain
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley (M.A.); University of Chicago (PhD)
Occupation(s)	scholar, document microphotographer
Years active	1939-1945
Employer	Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC)
Relatives	Pearl Kibre

Adele Kibre (1898-1997) was an American medieval scholar who became a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. Trained in Latin and with 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.[1]

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. Her family was involved in Hollywood life. Her parents designed sets and one sister was married to a silent film star. [1] 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. Her dissertation was a study of the text of the Carolingian scholar Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel's Liber in partibus Donati,[2] and was incorporated, after her death, into a critical edition by Bengt Löfstedt.[3]

Documentation research

Kibre obtained a postdoctoral fellowship to the American Academy of Rome after completing her PhD. She lived for 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.[1]

In 1939 she met microfilm entrepreneur Eugene Power and acted as his interpreter at the Vatican library.[4] Power recommended her to work freelance with the Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC), a United States agency which had an office in Stockholm.[4] The role of the agency was to obtain and transmit mostly public documents originating in Europe, in particular from those areas under Axis control. Through this agency Kibre is attributed with sending 182 reels of microfilm to the British Ministry of Information.[5] 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.[1]

In August 1942, Kibre arrived in Stockholm and moved into the Grand Hotel in that capital city. Sweden officially was a neutral county, but many government officials sympathized with Germany, and the King often expressed 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).[6] Actually she 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.[7] Kibre bought materials from news stands, bookshops and antique dealers, and also visited many libraries (including the Karolinska Institute) and microfilmed archive material for transfer to the United States.[6]

Later life, death and legacy

After the war, Kibre, who never married, became a freelance archival photographer.[6] "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."[8] Some of her letters from Europe are in the U.S. National Archives.[6]

Publications

• Prolegomena to the unpublished text of Smaragdus' commentary on Donatus, De partibus orationis. Thesis, University of Chicago, 1930
• "Microphotography in European libraries." Journal of Documentary Reproduction 4, no. 3 (1941): 158–163.

References

1. Peiss, Kathy (2019). Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190944612.
2. Kibre, Adele (1930). Prolegomena to the unpublished text of Smaragdus' commentary on Donatus, De partibus orationis (PhD). University of Chicago. OCLC 835587.
3. Löfstedt, Bengt; Holtz, Louis; Kibre, Adele (1986). Liber in partibus Donati. Turnholti: Typographi Brepols. ISBN 2503036821.
4. Power, Eugene B. (1990). Edition of one: the autobiography of Eugene B. Power. Ann Arbor, Mi: University Microfilms International. ISBN 978-0835708982.
5. 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.
6. Graham, Elyse (2024-09-17). Book and Dagger. Ecco Press. ISBN 978-0-06-328084-7.
7. Galvin, Annie (2021-03-25). "The Spy Who Came In from the Carrel". Public Books. Retrieved 2025-01-30.
8. Look, Alice. "Adele Kibre: Academic Scholar and Wartime Intelligence Agent". Retrieved 21 Jan 2025.