Life in a Jewish Family

An Autobiography, 1891-1916

By Edith Stein

1965

First Published

4.49

Average Rating

428

Number of Pages

13H04M

Audio Length

Edith Stein: Life in Jewish Family - The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. One By Edith Stein, translated by Josephine Koeppel, OCD. Edith Stein's autobiography, with map and 11 pages of photos. This initial volume of the Collected Works offers, for the first time in English, Edith Stein's unabridged autobiography depicting herself as a child and a young adult. Her text breaks abruptly because the Gestapo arrested and deported her to Auschwitz in 1942. Edith Stein is one of the most significant German women of our century. At the age of twenty-five she became the first assistant to the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. She was much in demand as a writer-lecturer after her conversion from atheism to Catholicism. Later, as a Carmelite nun, she maintained her intellectual pursuits, until she died along with so many other Jewish people in the Holocaust. By making this story available in English, the Institute of Carmelite Studies provides an eye-witness account of persons and activities on the scene at the time when psychology and philosophy became separate disciplines. A preface, foreword, and afterword to Edith's text brings out many background details of the rich story she has left us. "A splendid translation, filled with a deep understanding of Edith Stein." - Cistercian Studies

Avg Rating

4.49

Number of Ratings

159

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68%

4 STARS

16%

3 STARS

13%

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Edith Stein

Author · 13 books

Edith Stein, also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD, (German: Teresia Benedicta vom Kreuz, Latin: Teresia Benedicta a Cruce) (12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942), was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to the Roman Catholic Church and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church. She was born into an observant Jewish family, but was an atheist by her teenage years. Moved by the tragedies of World War I, in 1915 she took lessons to become a nursing assistant and worked in a hospital for the prevention of disease outbreaks. After completing her doctoral thesis in 1916 from the University of Göttingen, she obtained an assistantship at the University of Freiburg. From reading the works of the reformer of the Carmelite Order, St. Teresa of Jesus, OCD, she was drawn to the Catholic Faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Roman Catholic Church. At that point she wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite nun, but was dissuaded by her spiritual mentors. She then taught at a Catholic school of education in Speyer. As a result of the requirement of an "Aryan certificate" for civil servants promulgated by the Nazi government in April 1933 as part of its Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, she had to quit her teaching position. She was admitted to the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne the following October. She received the religious habit of the Order as a novice in April 1934, taking the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross ("Teresa blessed by the Cross"). In 1938 she and her sister Rosa, by then also a convert and an extern Sister of the monastery, were sent to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands for their safety. Despite the Nazi invasion of that state in 1940, they remained undisturbed until they were arrested by the Nazis on 2 August 1942 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they died in the gas chamber on 9 August 1942.