Edith Stein

Breslau

She was born on 12 October 1891, the youngest of eleven children in a Jewish merchant family.

💡 Did you know? Her birthday fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Her mother always saw it as a special sign.

Edmund Husserl

She sorted his manuscripts, for example on the “Ideas” and on inner time-consciousness, but left the post in 1918.

💡 Did you know? Her successor as Husserl's assistant was Martin Heidegger.

Phenomenology

In Göttingen she belonged to the circle of young phenomenologists around Adolf Reinach and Hedwig Conrad-Martius.

💡 Did you know? Her doctoral thesis “On the Problem of Empathy” (1916) earned the top grade, summa cum laude.

1920

Göttingen had rejected her habilitation in 1919 because she was a woman.

💡 Did you know? Stein herself never obtained a professorship despite the decree, but it opened the way to universities for many women after her.

Teresa of Ávila

On 1 January 1922 she was baptised in Bergzabern in the Palatinate.

💡 Did you know? After reading it she is said to have closed the book and said: “This is the truth.”

Pius XI

She asked him to speak out publicly against the persecution of the Jews.

💡 Did you know? The letter lay in the Vatican Archives for decades and was only published in 2003.

Carmelites

Her mother, a devout Jewish woman, felt the step as a heavy blow.

💡 Did you know? Carmel is a strictly contemplative order: the sisters live in enclosure and devote themselves above all to prayer.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

The name joins Teresa of Ávila, Saint Benedict and the Cross.

💡 Did you know? She is venerated as a saint under this name today; her feast day is 9 August.

Finite and Eternal Being

In it she combines phenomenology with the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.

💡 Did you know? The book could not appear in her lifetime because Jews were barred from publishing; it only came out in 1950.

Netherlands

After the November pogroms she no longer wanted to endanger her sisters in Cologne.

💡 Did you know? Her sister Rosa, who had also become a Catholic, followed her to Echt in 1940.

Auschwitz

A week earlier the SS had arrested her and her sister Rosa in Echt, in retaliation for a pastoral letter of the Dutch bishops.

💡 Did you know? As they were taken away she is said to have told Rosa: “Come, we are going for our people.”

Europe

A year earlier, on 11 October 1998, he had canonised her in Rome.

💡 Did you know? She had already been beatified in 1987 in Cologne, at a Mass in the Müngersdorf stadium.

Edith Stein

Edith Stein (1891 to 1942) was a German philosopher of Jewish origin who became a Carmelite nun and died in Auschwitz.

💡 Did you know? The photo was taken around 1938 in the Cologne Carmel for her identity papers, shortly before she fled to the Netherlands.