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 The
darker it becomes around us,
the more we ought to open
our hearts
to the light that comes from on high.
— Edith Stein
Saint
Edith Stein
Excerpted
from an address delivered by the Holy Cross President Emeritus,
Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J., on the occasion of the formal dedication
of Edith Stein Hall, May 6, 1988.
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 40th
anniversary of Edith's death, Fr. Nota celebrated a memorial
Mass in Tubingen with the Carmelite nuns.
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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