Edith Stein

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Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross<tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;"> Image:EdithStein.jpg </td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" style="text-align: center;background-color:gold;">Martyr</td></tr>
Born	October 12, 1891 in Breslau, then part of Germany
Died	August 9, 1942 in Auschwitz concentration camp, Nazi-occupied Poland<tr><td>Venerated in</td> <td>Roman Catholicism</td></tr><tr><td>Beatified</td> <td>May 1, 1987, Cologne, Germany by Pope John Paul II</td></tr><tr><td>Canonized</td> <td>October 11, 1998 by Pope John Paul II</td></tr>
Feast	August 9<tr><td>Attributes</td> <td>Yellow Star of David</td></tr><tr><td>Patronage</td> <td>Europe; orphans; martyrs</td></tr>
Image:Gloriole.svg Saints Portal

Edith Stein (October 12, 1891 – August 9, 1942) was a philosopher, a Carmelite nun, martyr, and saint of the Catholic Church, who died at Auschwitz. She was born in Breslau, Silesia, German Empire (now Wrocław, Poland) into an Orthodox Jewish family. In 1922, she converted to Christianity, was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church and was received into the Discalced Carmelite Order in 1934. In 1998, she was canonized as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (her Carmelite monastic name) by Pope John Paul II.

At the University of Göttingen, she became a student of Edmund Husserl, whom she followed to the University of Freiburg as his assistant. In 1916, she received her doctorate of philosophy there with a dissertation under Husserl, "On The Problem of Empathy." She then became a member of the faculty in Freiburg.

While she had earlier contacts with Catholicism, it was her reading the autobiography of the mystic St. Teresa of Ávila on a holiday in 1921 that caused her conversion. Baptized on January 1, 1922, she gave up her assistantship with Husserl to teach at a Dominican girls' school in Speyer from 1922 to 1932. While there she translated into German Thomas Aquinas' De Veritate (On Truth) and familiarized herself with Catholic philosophy in general. In 1932 she became a lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster, but anti-Semitic legislation passed by the Nazi government forced her to resign the post in 1933. She entered the Carmelite monastery at Cologne in 1934 and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. There she wrote her metaphysical book Endliches und Ewiges Sein which tries to combine the philosophies of Aquinas and Husserl.

Image:Edith-Stein-Tafel.jpg

To avoid the growing Nazi threat, her order transferred her to the Carmelite monastery at Echt in The Netherlands. There she wrote Studie über Joannes a Cruce: Kreuzeswissenschaft ("The Science of the Cross: Studies on John of the Cross").

However, she was not safe in The Netherlands—the Dutch Bishops' Conference had a public statement read in all the churches of the country on July 20, 1942, condemning Nazi racism. In response, on July 26, 1942, Adolf Hitler ordered the arrest of all Jewish converts, who had previously been spared. Edith and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were captured and shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they died in the gas chambers on August 9, 1942.

Today, there is a school named in tribute to Edith Stein in Darmstadt, Germany [1], as well as one in Hengelo, The Netherlands [2]. The University of Tübingen has a women's dormitory named for her as well [3].

Some Jewish groups^{[citation needed]} have challenged the beatification of Edith Stein. They point out that a martyr is, according to Catholic doctrine, someone who died for his or her religion; whether Stein was killed for her Jewish ethnicity, her faith, or both, is, for them, open to debate. The position of the Catholic Church in this matter is that Edith Stein also died because of the Dutch hierarchy's public condemnation of Nazi racism in 1942—in other words, that she died to uphold the moral position of the Church, and is thus a martyr.

James Carroll points out that Stein was to be beatified as a confessor (which required two confirmed miracles), but that was changed to "martyr" (which only requires one). Carroll further states that the miracle attributed to Edith Stein was in fact the result of medicine alone, and testimony exists to confirm that statement<ref>Carroll, James. Constantine's Sword</ref>.

In 2008, her bust is going to be introduced to the Walhalla.

[edit] The Writings of Edith Stein

Life in a Jewish Family: Her Unfinished Autobiographical Account, translated by Josephine Koeppel, 1986
On the Problem of Empathy, Translated by Waltraut Stein 1989
Essays on Woman, translated by Freda Mary Oben, 1996
The Hidden Life, translated by Josephine Koeppel, 1993
The Science of the Cross, Translated by Josephine Koeppel, 1998
Knowledge and Faith
Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt to an Ascent to the Meaning of Being
Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities
Self-Portrait in Letters, 1916-1942