| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
| Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross | |
|---|---|
| Martyr | |
| Born | October 12, 1891, Breslau, Germany |
| Died | August 9, 1942, Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | May 1, 1987, Cologne, Germany |
| Canonized | October 11October 11 is the 284th day of the year (285th in Leap years). There are 81 days remaining. Events 1600-1899 1614 Adriaen Block and 12 Amsterdam merchants petition the States General for exclusive trading rights in the New Netherland colony. 1776 American, 19981998 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar), and was designated the International Year of the Ocean''. Events January January 1998 A massive ice storm, caused by El Nino, strikes New England, southern Ontario and Quebec, resulting |
| Feast | August 9 |
| Attribute | Yellow Star of DavidThe Star of David Magen David or Mogen David in Hebrew, Shield of David Solomon's Seal or Seal of Solomon is a generally recognized symbol of Judaism and Jewish identity. It is also known as the Jewish Star . With the establishment of the State of Israel |
| PatronageIn several forms of Christianity, a patron saint has special affinity for a trade or group. St Florian is the patron saint of firefighters, and Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travellers, for example. Eastern Orthodoxy generally doesn't associate | Europe; orphans, martyrs |
Edith Stein ( October 12, 1891 - August 9, 1942), known after her reception into the Carmelite Order as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and canonized under the latter name in 1998, was a philosopher, feminist, Carmelite nun, and martyr who died at Auschwitz.
Stein was born in Breslau ( Wroclaw), Silesia (then in Germany), into an Orthodox Jewish family. In 1904 she renounced that faith and became an atheist. 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 Roman Catholicism, it was her reading the autobiography of the mystic St. Theresa of Avila 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 ( 1922- 1932). While there she translated into German Thomas Aquinas' De veritate (On Truth) and familiarized herself with Roman 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 convent 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.
To avoid the growing Nazi threat, her order transferred her to the Carmelite convent 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 Jewish converts (who had previously been spared) there. 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.
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