With the recent death of Anne Lindbergh, the collection of letters and documents that she and her husband Charles gave to the University are set to be released March 29.
The documents were given to the University in 1941, and the six boxes of material were to be released only after both of the Lindberghs passed away.
"There's nothing in the papers that actually solves any mysteries," University trustee and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the 1998 biography "Lindbergh," A. Scott Berg '71 said.
But according to Berg, the Lindbergh papers should be quite a collection of interesting documents regarding the Lindberghs and their involvement in the American debate over whether to intervene in World War II.
"This is the most celebrated living person who ever walked the Earth," Berg said, adding that unlike most celebrated historical figures, Lindbergh was actually popular while he was alive. "It's almost a relic. You have drafts of a very important book that Anne Lindbergh wrote called 'Waves of the Future,' " Berg said.
"Waves of the Future" is a treatise on why the United States should not become involved in the second world war.
"That's quite a little treasure — you get to see a writer's mind and hand at work," Berg added.
Charles Lindbergh also worked in the anti-interventionist movement.
Berg noted that the papers should contain the two dozen speeches and the dozen articles that Lindbergh wrote between 1939 and 1941 in opposition to America's participation in what he saw as a European war, including the drafts of "A Letter to America," which appeared in Colliers magazine.
"Just to hear some of the innerworkings of the mind of the man who spearheaded this movement," Berg said, would be engaging.
There are myriad letters to the Lindberghs that will also be unsealed with the documents. Within them are reactions from celebrities and the general public that show the impact of the controversy and the Lindberghs on the United States.
"It really brings alive that great debate in this country," Berg explained.
He said the documents would have historical, literary and sociological impact.
Though the University has thousands of documents sealed in the collection in Firestone Library, they represent only a fraction of the documents the Lindberghs saved and catalogued.
"What they left here is more or less a footnote," Berg said, especially in comparison to what they left to Yale University.
Berg said Firestone Library probably received the files as a result of the Lindberghs' constant moving and their slight connection to the library.
Anne's family, the Morrows, lived in Englewood, N.J., and the Lindberghs lived just outside of Hopewell, N.J., for a few years.
Looking for a place to store some of the documents they had saved, they took librarian Julian Boyd up on his offer to store some of the papers on campus, giving only the condition that the papers were not to be unsealed until both Lindberghs had died.
The files were opened by Berg in 1993, with the permission of Anne Lindbergh, but after he had seen the documents they were separated into six parts and resealed.
"They saved everything," Berg said, adding that the documents were perfectly filed and accurately labeled.
Berg said the Lindberghs had several reasons to keep and store these documents.
"Both of them had a sense of their place in history," he explained. "The Lindberghs' lives were so publicized in their lifetimes."
After his world-famous trans-Atlantic flight, Lindbergh realized that he would be written about for the rest of his life, and that most of that writing would be inaccurate. He thought it would be important to keep a paper trail of his life.
In addition, both Charles and Anne were "packrats" and did not like to part with their things, Berg said.
The Princeton papers will be the first to be released, though there are several other collections of papers throughout the country.
The Lindbergh family is currently considering whether and when to release the largest collection of documents that are at Yale.
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