In 1927, during a trip to San Bernardino, Switzerland, some friends of von Speyr introduced her to the University of Basel historian Emil Dürr, a widower with two young sons. Dürr and von Speyr married, living on the Münsterplatz near the historic Basel Minster church. Von Speyr, who took the name of Dürr, became an adoptive mother to the two boys, Niklaus and Arnold, and played an active role with her husband in upper-class Basel society. She had three miscarriages and bore no children of her own. The couple “seriously considered becoming Catholic”, but Emil died suddenly in a tram accident in 1934, after seven years of marriage. The untimely death of her husband led Adrienne into an interior crisis, provoking her to contemplate suicide until her friend Franz Merke intervened.