Women's Portraits

Gisela Maiß

Gisela Maiß – Mother Superior of the Order of St. Francis in Bonlanden – Sr. Angelika

Childhood

Gisela Maiß is born in 1941 in Breslau. Her father is a pharmacist. Gisela is the youngest of five children. She has got three brothers and one sister. In January 1946 mother Maiß and her five little children are expelled from Breslau like all the other Germans. They are sent to Germany in a cattle-truck. In Wolfenbüttel near Braunschweig farmers wait for people who could be helpful, but Frau Maiß and her children are not welcomed. So the mayor decides who has to give them accomodation.

With the help of The Red Cross and relatives mother Maiß and the children learn, that their father is alive in a camp in France. He comes for a visit and by the end of the year he is released. He takes his family to Southern Germany, where they can find a new home in his sister‘s house. In Esslingen the pharmacist Maiß can rent a chemist’s shop.

Memories of Little Gisela

Sr Angelika gets to know her father when she is six years old. She remembers a tall bearded man giving each child an apple. Little Gisela doesn’t dare to eat her apple, just looks at it until her mother asks her to take a bite.

Another memory relates to a meeting when a strange man kneels down to her height and shakes hand with her and her dirty doll. It was such a wonderful warm clasp of the hand that every feeling of strangeness vanished.

Education and Studies

In Schorndorf the children visit the primary school. The secondary school is for boys and the two girls are only allowed to attend up to year six. They have to change to a girls’ secondary in Esslingen. Gisela doesn’t like to remember her time in this school. The headmistress like the other inhabitants has a personal dislike of expellees and catholoc citizens. But finally as Mr. Maiß, the pharmacist, can help the farmers with their sick cattle, he is well accepted.

In October 1953 the family can move to their own house in Esslingen, where the father opens his own chemist’s shop.

While her sister leaves the school with O-levels or GCSE standard, Gisela repeats year 12 in St. Hildegard‘s, the private Catholic secondary school in Ulm. She passes the equivalent of A-Levels in 1960.

She studies education at a teacher training college and becomes a pimary school teacher.

Vocation and profession

Her wish to become a nun arises when Gisela is still at school. Her family is not happy about it. So first she completes her studies, works for a year in primary class outside the convent and then moves to the Convent of Bonlanden with its integrated school. In 1965 she starts her life as a nun. She receives her habit and the new name Angelika. During the time of preparation for the final vow in 1972, she teaches in the integrated primary school in Bonladen convent. For six years she is a simple teacher, for twelve years the headmistress.

In 1996 Bonlanden school has to close. It means, Sr. Angelika has to change to St. Hildegard in Ulm. Here she teaches the girls in the middle school.

Retirement with New Responibilities

The first job in her time of retirement is to teach six-year-old girls to read and write. It is a great challenge because until then she has never taught girls of that age. With the support of older colleagues and the parents she succeeds.

Next she goes to collect objects and money for the children in the war regions of Yugoslavia.

Then she manages the cafeteria of the boarding school and once a week she is the „kitchen mother“

In addition the priest of the men’s prison asks her to help with pastoral care.

Last but not least she organizes weekends in Bonlanden where the girls can meditate on subjects they have chosen on their own, for instance: „How important is God in your life?“

Called into the Direction of the Congregation

Sr. Angelika is called to be the Mother Superior of the Order of St. Francis in Um, Schwenningen and South America, on June 13^th 2011. Her duties are not only spiritual guidance but she is also responsible for the administration of the order. She can count on her Sisters and the priest‘s support. In Germany she is already known, but this year she has to visit the convents of South America in Argentina, Brazil and Parguay.

Without knowing that some day she should understand and speak Spanish, she started learning the language together with the beginners in St. Hildegard’s this year. She is not afraid of meeting her sisters because she knows that in South America there are people able to translate either into German, Spanish or Portuguese.

On the question what religion means to her, she answers that it is central in her life. She has seen some sisters die and she is sure to see God, when she is dead. In some way she is happy about the moment when she can meet God in his Glory.

Sr. Angelika is a happy person. She represents someone sure of herself. She starts her new duties happily encouraged by her friends. We wish her God‘s blessings.

Erdmute Dietmann-Beckert und Barbara Heinze