The darker it becomes around us , the more we ought to open our hearts to the light that comes from on high. -- Edith Stein
Edith
Stein was a remarkable Jewish woman. Born in Breslau, Germany on 12 October
1891, the youngest of eleven children of a very devout Jewish family, she
died in the Auschwitz gas chamber on 9 August 1942, having been sent to
the death camp when she refused to deny her Jewish heritage.
In
the intervening 50 years, she was a remarkably successful woman in a male
dominated world. became a convert to Catholicism and a devout Carmelite
nun who, as anti-Semitism spread and intensified in Germany and Holland,
wished to offer her life for world peace and the preservation of her Jewish
people.
She
was a brilliant student, first enrolling at the University of Breslau in
1911, and later transferring to the University of Gottingen to pursue her
studies under the mentorship of the famed founder of phenomenology, Edmund
Husserl. Husserl eventually chose Edith Stein to be his teaching assistant
at the University of Freiburg, and declared her to be the best doctoral
student he ever had -- even more able than Heidegger who was also a pupil
of Husserl's at the same time Edith was. In 1916 she completed her doctoral
dissertation and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree summa cum
laude.
As
the draft began calling up many of her friends for service in World War
I, Edith volunteered together with a number of other women students for
duty in military hospitals. She requested an assignment in a hospital for
infectious diseases, and devotedly cared for soldiers of the Austrian Army
who were suffering from typhus, dysentery and cholera. On completion of
her term as a volunteer at the military hospital, Edith was awarded the
medal of valor in recognition of her selfless service.
She
next became Husserl's assistant at the University of Freiburg, where he
had been called to a Full Professorship, and there her religious struggle
began as, in her pursuit of truth, she turned to reading the New Testament
and began her gradual movement back towards a faith which she had earlier
abandoned. On January 1, 1922 -- New Year's Day -- Edith Stein was baptized
a Catholic, taking the name Teresa as her baptismal name. She continued
to attend the Synagogue with her mother, praying the psalms of the service.
At
this point in her life, Edith discontinued her scholarly career as a student
and accepted a position teaching German at the Dominican Sisters' school
in Speyer. Here, for eight years, she labored as a teacher, and balanced
her day between work and prayer. She was known to be a sympathetic and
accomodating teacher who worked hard to convey her material in a clear
and systematic manner, and whose concern extended beyond the transmission
of knowledge to include the formation of the whole person. Sne believed
education to be an apostolic work.
Throughout
this period, Edith continued her philosophical writings and translations,
and took on speaking engagements that took her to cities such as Heidelberg,
Zurich, Salzburg. In the course of her lectures she frequently addressed
herself to the role and significance of women in contemporary life as she
developed themes treating "The Ethos of Women's Professions," "The Separate
Vocations of Man and Woman According to God and Nature," "The Spirituality
of Christian Woman," "Fundamental Principles of Women's Education," "Problems
of Women's Education," "The Church, Woman and Youth," and "The Significance
of Woman's Intrinsic Value in National Life."A reading of the texts of
these lectures clearly reveals Edith Stein's radical feminist stance and
her strong commitment to the recognition and advancement of women, and
to the value she attached to the mature Christian life of a woman as a
source of healing for the world.
In
1931 Edith left the convent school to devote herself full-time to writing
and the publication of her works. In 1932, she accepted a lectureship position
at the University of Munster, but a year later was told that she would
have to give up her position because of her Jewish background. A sympathetic
university administration suggested that she work on her projects privately
until the situation in Germany improved, but Edith declined. An offer to
teach in South America was also made, but after giving the matter serious
consideration, Edith became convinced that the time had come for her to
fulfill her ambition to enter the convent. AOn October 14, 1933, at age
42, Edith Stein entered the Carmelite Convent in Cologne and took the religious
name, Teresa, Benedicta a Cruce -- Teresa, Blessed of the Cross, reflecting
her special devotion to the Passion of Christ and her gratitude for the
spiritual patronage of Teresa of Avila.
In
the convent, Edith continued to study and write, completing the text of
her book, Finite and Being, her magnum opus, authoring Ways of
Knowing God and The Symbolic Theology of the Areopagite, a two-volume
translation of St. Thomas' works, and working on The Science of the
Cross.
By
1938 the situation in Germany had grown steadily worse, and the S.S. attack
of November 8 (Kristallnacht) removed any lingering doubts about
the true state of affairs of Jewish citizens. The Convent Prioress arranged
for Edith to be transferred to the Dutch convent at Echt, and on New Years
Eve, 31 December 1938, Edith Stein was driven across the border under the
cover of darkness to Holland. There, at the Convent in Echt, Edith composed
three acts of self-oblation, offering her life up for the Jewish people,
the averting of war (i.e., peace) and for the sanctification of her Carmelite
family. She then settled into a life of teaching the postulants Latin and
writing a book on St. John of the Cross.
As
the crematoria and gas chambers rose in the East, Edith, along with thousands
of Jews in Holland, began receiving citations from the S.S. (Hitler's "Protection
Squadron") in Maastricht and the Council for Jewish Affairs in Amsterdam.
She
applied for a Swiss visa, along with her sister Rosa who had joined her
at Echt, that they might transfer to the Carmelite Convent of Le Paquier.
The Le Paquier community informed the Echt community that while they would
be glad to receive Edith, they could not accomodate Rosa. This was unacceptable
to Edith, and she refused to go to Switzerland preferring to remain with
her sister at Echt. Determined to finish The Science of the Cross,
she used every available moment for research, often working to the point
of exhaustion.
In
the Dutch Carmelite community at Echt, Edith Stein's protection against
the growing persecution of Jews was only temporary. While the Nazi policy
of exterminating Jews was rapidly implemented once Holland was occupied,
Jews who professed Christianity were initially left alone. However, when
the Catholic bishops in the Netherlands issued a pastoral letter in which
they sharply protested against the deportation of the Jews, the Nazi rulers
reacted by ordering the extermination of baptized Jews as well.
That
is the reason why on Sunday, August 2, 1942, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon,
after Edith Stein had spent the day in her usual manner, praying and working
on the unfinished manuscript of her book on St. John of the Cross. At 5:00
o'clock in the afternoon, the S.S. officers came to the Convent and led
away Edith and Rosa Stein. Frightened by the crowd and unable to absorb
fully the situation, Rosa began to grow disoriented. A witness has related
that Edith took Rosa by the hand and said reassuringly, "Come Rosa, We're
going for our people." Together they walked to the corner and got into
the waiting police van. There are a number of eye witness accounts of Edith's
behavior during her days of imprisonment at Amersfoort and Westerbork,
a central detention camp in the north of Holland -- her silence, her calm,
her composure, her self-possession, her comforting and consoling of other
women, her caring for the little ones, washing them and combing their hair
and making sure that they were fed.
In
the middle of the night before the dawn of August 7, 1942, the Westerbork
prisoners, including Edith Stein, the Carmelite nun, were placed in trains
and deported to Auschwitz. In 1950, the Dutch Gazette published
the official list of names of all Jews who had been deported from Holland
on 7 August 1942. There were no survivors from the transport. Among the
listing is the following entry:
Number 44070: Edith Theresa Hedwig Stein, Echt Born: 12 October 1891, Breslau Died: 9 August 1942
On
May 1, 1987, Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun and a victim of the Holocaust
at Auschwitz, was beatified, along with Father Rupert Mayer, a Jesuit priest
known for his resistance to the Nazis, during a Mass celebrated by Pope
John Paul II in Cologne, West Germany. In the course of his homily, the
Pope noted that Edith Stein, the philosopher, was preoccupied in life with
the search for truth, and her life was one illuminated by the cross.
"In the years when she studied...at the universities of Breslau, Gottingen and Freiburg," the Pope said, "God did not play an important role, at least initially. Her thinking was based on a demanding ethical idealism. In keeping with her intellectual abilities, she did not want to accept anything without careful examination, not even the faith of her fathers. She wanted to get to the bottom of things herself. As such she was engaged in a constant search for the truth. Looking back on this period of intellectual unrest in her life, she saw it an important phase in a process of spiritual maturation. 'My search for truth,' she said, 'was a constant prayer' --... a comforting bit of testimony for those who have a hard time believing in God. The search for truth is itself in a very profound sense a search for God."
The
playwrite, Arthur Giron, who wrote the first draft of his play, called
simply Edith Stein, while finishing his Master of Arts degree in
playwriting at Hunter College, has said, "The real Edith Stein was a dark,
fine-boned beauty. She had something, some quality, that naturally
attracted people to her. She was very feminine, yet very strong, very tough
under the surface. She was very smart about getting what she wanted out
of life." When asked if he ever feels that Edith Stein may be present in
spirit during performances of his play, Giron replied, I feel Edith is
here with me now. I feel the presence very strongly as you and I are talking."
On
October 14, 1987, Giron squeezed his eyes shut against the pain as the
surgeons began screwing a metal brace into his skull -- without anesthesia
and prior to an injection of cobalt into his brain. It was then that Giron
saw a vision of radiant white light, and out of the light emerged the figure
of a nun. Giron was not surprised to see her. After all, he had been obsessed
with this woman for nearly thirty (30) years. He had written his first
play about her. A decade later, he rewrote it. He had been rewriting the
script yet again, this time for a Pittsburgh Public Theatre production
scheduled to open on January 5, 1988, when a dime-sized web of veins in
his cerebellum began leaking blood. As he lay on the operating table, Giron
knew the spirit of the nun he was seeing in his mind was somehow, literally,
in that operating room with him. He greeted her by name "Edith Stein,"
Giron said to himself as the surgeon's screws bore into his skull, "this
is for you."
This
same Edith Stein, now presented to us as a blessed martyr and an heroic
follower of Christ, is present to us this afternoon as we dedicate this
magnificent academic building in her name and in her honor. In the words
of Pope John Paul II,
"Let us open ourselves up for her message to us as a woman of the spirit and of the mind, who saw in the science of the cross the acme of all wisdom..."Edith Stein is a gift, an invocation and a promise for our time. May she be an intercessor before God for our faculty, our students, our administrators, our staff, our alumni, our benefactors, and for all people throughout the world. Blessed Edith Stein, Sister Teresa Benedicta a Cruce, a true worshipper of God -- in spirit and in truth -- pray for us and for all your people!
The following material, which discusses Edith Stein's association with several Jesuits, has been excerpted from a 1986 Address to the Faculty of Holy Cross delivered by the (then) President of Holy Cross, the Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J.
In
1925, Fr. Erich Przywara, the Jesuit philosopher of religion, was introduced
to Edith Stein, and had high regard for her as a teacher, an educator.
Early on, he asked her to translate some of the letters of Cardinal Newman,
and this was the beginning of a lively intellectual friendship between
the two. He also recommended that she translate St. Thomas, up to then
terra
incognita to the phenomenologists. He put her in touch with the Benedictine
Abbey of Bueron where she was able to satisfy her thirst for prayer. Beginning
in 1927, he assumed the responsibility of setting up regular lecture tours
for Edith.
In
1933, very much aware of the catastrophe threatening the Jewish people
in Germany, Edith had requested Pope Pius XI to write an encyclical in
defense of the Jews. Unfortunately, this request was not complied with
at the time--due in large part to faulty handling of the request. But shortly
thereafter, the Pope did commission two Jesuits, Fathers LaFarge and Grundlach,
to compose a document condemning racial persecution. The outbreak of World
War II and the death of the Pope prevented the publication of these efforts,
but parts of their work later appeared in the speeches of Pius XII.
In
1941, Fr. Jan H. Nota, S.J., Professor of Philosophy and Phenomenology
at McMaster University in Hamilton , Ontario, met Edith Stein in Echt,
Holland. He was, at the time, a young Dutch Jesuit, who had recently moved
to Valkenberg as a result of the 1940 commandeering of the Jesuit house
at Maastricht by the Nazis.
Edith's
philosophical study, Finite and Eternal Being, had been set for
publication in 1936, but anti-Jewish laws in Germany prevented it, and
eventually the plates had been destroyed. The superior at the Convent in
Echt decided to consult the Valkenberg Jesuits about the feasibility of
having the work published in either Holland or Belgium. They also asked
if a Jesuit priest would be available to collaborate with Edith Stein.
Fr. Nota was recommended, having just finished his own dissertation on
Max Scheler.
This
was the beginning of a brief but profound friendship that developed between
Fr. Nota and Edith Stein, as he came to know her as a person who "had continued
to be a great philosopher after having become a Carmelite nun."
He
last saw her on 16 July 1942. On 9 August 1982, the 40
It
is Fr. Nota's hope that Edith Stein's thought will become more accessible
to a wider audience, both among students and the general public, so that
people will appreciate her understanding of human existance and be helped
to live out that existance themselves, meaningfully and fraternally, in
the midst of a troubled world.
For
all these reasons Edith Stein Hall has been named
in honor of a remarkable woman who was a brilliant philosopher and lecturer,
a productive researcher and author, a fine teacher, a mystic, an exemplary
feminist, a victim of the Holocaust and a friend of several Jesuits.
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