The daughter of Charles and Fanny (Brandeis) Nagel, Hildegard Nagel was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. Her early years were marked by the death of her brother Alfred and the suicide of her mother, FBN, the sister of Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Her father, a lawyer and Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Taft, was a founder of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and was active in German relief work following World War I. In 1895 he married Anne Shepley; they had four children.
Following her graduation from Bennett College in Millbrook, New York, HN worked with a psychoanalyst at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where she met her lifelong friend, Ellen Thayer, a magazine editor. A student of Carl Jung and Gerhard Adler, HN spent most of her professional life as a psychiatric social worker in New York City. She was a member of the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology and served as president of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York. An editor, translator, and writer, HN helped to disseminate Jungian ideas in this country, publishing a critique of Jung's essay, "Answer to Job," as well as other papers delivered to the APCNY. HN died on February 16, 1985, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.
From the guide to the Papers, 1868-1886, 1932-1985 (scattered), (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
