In Gabriel’s day, the map of Europe was very different from now. Gabriel actually thought of himself as a native of Bohemia. It will help explain Gabriel’s world to know a little of the history of Bohemia, which after World War II was part of Czechoslovakia.

As is true in most centuries and countries, politics and religion intertwined in history. Because the ruling powers (Germanic peoples) were also the church hierarchy, what might appear to be religious movements were often also resistance to cultural or political domination. The situation of the Czech peoples was a little bit like a middle child between two assertive siblings – on the east was the Slavic peoples and on the west the Germanic peoples. And the Czechs (Bohemia and Moravia) were between, making alliances for their own protection or, sometimes, coming under the influence of stronger powers.

By the time Gabriel was born in the early 1800’s, the Czech people had a rich heritage that went back to the 14th century, when Prague was the cultural capital of central Europe. There had also been centuries of repression or neglect of Czech culture under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and later the Austro-German nobility. Religion had been used for political purposes and Catholicism was often identified with foreign oppression.

With this background, we will present Gabriel’s story. The story of his life is presented from his point of view, as he might have spoken it in modern terms. These are not the actual words of Gabriel Schneider, but a dramatic interpretation of the events of his life imagined from his viewpoint. Sr. Mary Ann Zimmer presented this theatrical “Life of Fr. Gabriel Schneider” as part of a study of the history of the Notre Dame Sisters.

Gabriel speaks:
I was born in Kremze in 1812 and really spent a good part of my life in the relatively small area on the Bohemian border. I died at St. Ann’s in 1867 – the year the Territory of Nebraska became a state in the United States of America.

My father was a clockmaker and owner of a general store. I know you may not find much written about my mother but six children and the store kept her very busy. Our family name had been Krejci meaning “tailor” but one of the “reforms” of Joseph II, a Hapsburg, was to force the translation of many names into their German equivalents, so we became Schneider. We still spoke Czech, but anyone who wanted to go very far in the education system had to know the German language.

Two things made education difficult for me. My sight in one eye was damaged due to a childhood accident. The second difficulty was money. My family was not extremely poor but raising six children is an expensive proposition. We could not presume that there would be money for higher education.

I did have a very good thing happen, though. After my five years in our village school where I was fortunate enough to have an excellent schoolmaster, a pastor took an interest in my education. I got to go to Czech Budweis for a year as an exchange student in my final year of elementary school. I lived with a German family in order to learn the German language. This opened up for me the whole world of further studies…except for the issue of money.

After my basic schooling I was supposed to study clock making as an apprentice to my uncle Francis in Netolice but Francis considered me too frail for the clock making business and persuaded my father to let me study instead. When you look at my later life, I think it might have been less strenuous if I had just stuck to clock making! But Uncle Frank’s opinion was my ticket to further schooling. It was back to Czech Budweis for secondary school. I knew that my education would only last as long as my father felt he could afford it so I pinched my pennies until they squealed.

Between what my parents managed to send me and the gifts of the sponsors I found, I was able to complete a seminary education by the time I was 25. In my biography, Father Beran goes into detail about my grades – which were good enough, but what probably influenced me as much as my classes were the friends that I made and my spiritual director. These are the people who really shaped my spirituality and my convictions about ministry.

My spiritual director, Father Mokry, was far ahead of his time when it came to the sacrament of the Eucharist. In a time when frequent communion was unheard of he encouraged his directees to participate often. I know it seems strange looking back now, but we even had to go around to Mass at different churches on different days of the week so we wouldn’t get “caught” receiving communion too frequently.

After ordination to the priesthood I got shuffled around to a number of small villages until 1842 when I was finally settled as assistant in Hirschau, a tiny place of spiritual and material poverty. People had a terrible spiritual hunger and didn’t even know what it was. I opposed (some said a little too fervently) the drinking and dancing that went on, and instead offered positive opportunities for young people to be together. We had picnics, pilgrimages and song fests. Since there was so little worthwhile to sing, I had to make up songs for us. There were no sources of spiritual guidance. I had to write my own pamphlets and prayers for the young people’s groups. And it wasn’t long before I became convinced that there was one step that would make the most difference – Christian education for the young women.

At the time, another reformer – in Germany – was having the same thought.

Teresa Gerhardinger 1797-1879
I know that there are people who felt that Mother Teresa went back on her promises to me. I don’t know that I would put it like that now – though at the time my efforts to staff a school with her Sisters nearly drove me to despair. The trouble was, Mother Teresa was trying to found a new kind of religious order and that almost always leads to some kind of friction with the hierarchy. It’s fortunate that she was a person of great persistence. Looking back, during the years we tried to collaborate she was often in trouble in Rome and in trouble with the Bavarian government.

The Notre Dame community begun by Blessed Alix LeClerc and St. Peter Fourier in France had flourished, but finally fell victim to the French Revolution and related secularizing movements in other parts of Europe. Religious schools were close and convents disbanded – at least their public manifestations – though many continued to operate underground. The one school of Alix’s Congregation of Our Lady in Bavaria survived until 1809. Then the Sisters were all given dispensations from their vows, their property was confiscated and they were given a month to find someplace else to go. Some joined other convents. Some remained together in small groups and supported themselves through needlework and private instruction.

At the time of the suppression of the Congregation of Our Lady school, Caroline Gerhardinger was a twelve year old student there. Eventually she started living and teaching with three other young women in their twenties in hopes of reviving the order. Ten years later, with the support of Bishop Michael Wittmann, she founded a new order in the spirit of Alix and Peter. The foundation of the new order carried out the longtime dream of Wittmann, who had been planning for it almost from the day the original school was suppressed. Mother Teresa (the name taken by Caroline) was especially worried about the education of village girls. She wanted to shape her order for that purpose. And that is really where her trouble began.

The model for religious congregations at that time was the cloistered monastery, each as a separate, self-governing entity. Teresa knew that it was totally impractical to think that this model could serve each of the villages where girls needed to be educated. Who would support this proliferation of large convents? Beside, the village girls could not afford to board at a cloister to get an education. Teresa wanted for found small, affordable homes of two or three Sisters who would be united to a central Motherhouse – and she wanted to do away with strict enclosure of the Sisters.

Political unrest hampered Teresa’s work, the communication between us, travel, the permissions she needed to found institutions. There were whole periods when Rome forbade her to receive candidates or found missions. And my project got caught here.

I had actually tried to get Sisters from the Franciscans in Austria – even sending candidates there but war broke out and all foreign candidates were dismissed. When I sent candidates to Mother Teresa I had some luck at first, even (after many delays – while donors asked when their money was going to be put to the use they intended for it; building funds, funds for training, etc.) got a couple of Sisters to begin the school. I won’t bore you with the many false starts and misunderstandings this involved. This came in the middle of Mother Teresa’s worst difficulties and we soon lost the Sisters and were once again at the beginning. I know that she had her own mission and her own priorities. Finally, in 1853, after trying so hard not to have to found something new, we began the Notre Dame congregation in Hirschau. The area bishops had become convinced that going ahead on our own was the only solution.

We began with two novices and six postulants on August 15, 1853. One huge comfort to me was that my long-time director, Father Mokry, was sent by the bishop to officiate. He had stood by me through all my difficulties.

Very soon (1854) we expanded to an abandoned monastery in Horazdovice.

In 1860 the Superior General, Mother Teresa Franz, her assistant and a dozen other Sisters began to staff a boarding school in Kalocsa, Hungary. Conditions there were so much better that Mother Teresa soon decided that the Motherhouse should be transferred to Hungary. I, of course, did not feel that we could abandon our commitment to Bohemia. Mother Teresa and all her companions elected to stay in Kalocsa and for the remainder of her four year term, I became Superior General for the Sisters who remained in Bohemia. Cardinal Beran, in his biography of me, pays the congregation the compliment of saying that there were never any hard feelings between the two groups. You can imagine, though, how this loss tore at our hearts.

After being Superior General for four years, I was glad to see things get back to normal. The bright point during that time was the opening of St. Anne’s in Prague, the very first teacher training institution to train teachers in Czech. I was very happy when we accomplished that.

But I didn’t last long after that, retiring in 1864. My health problems caught up with me and I died a year later. If you asked me what I would emphasize about my work, or what I was most proud of, I would tell you that I am most proud of my insistence from our first days that those of different cultural backgrounds – Czechs and Germans – would have equal opportunities in the order and that every home where Czech and German speaking Sisters lived would have a superior who could communicate with each Sister in her own language. I never imagined the day when three Notre Dame Sisters would be in Omaha Nebraska, working with Father Flanagan at his new Boy’s Home – and while two of those Czech Sisters spoke no English, the third new Irish Sister spoke no Czech. I like to imagine, though, that they could all picture my smile of approval.

Return to Fr. Gabriel Schneider's brief biography page