Correspondence with a fellow phenomenologist and godmother in faith
What the Work Is
This is a collection of Edith Stein’s letters to Hedwig Conrad-Martius. The source material identifies Conrad-Martius as a significant figure in Stein’s life: she was Stein’s godmother at her baptism into the Catholic Church on 1 January 1922, and both women were associated with the phenomenological movement. The letters belong to Stein’s extensive correspondence, though the source material does not specify when the letters were written, when they were first published, or in what language they appear.
What the Book Is About
The letters document Stein’s relationship with Conrad-Martius, a fellow philosopher who shared her background in phenomenology and who served as her sponsor at her baptism. The correspondence provides insight into Stein’s intellectual and spiritual development during a period when she was moving from her early phenomenological work toward her embrace of Catholic faith and eventually her life as a Carmelite nun.
Key Ideas and Themes
The source material does not provide detailed information about the specific content, arguments, or themes developed in these particular letters. What can be said with certainty is that the correspondence connects two women who were both trained in phenomenology—the philosophical method developed by Edmund Husserl, under whom Stein studied and worked as an assistant. Stein’s early philosophical work, including her dissertation on empathy, was rooted in this tradition, and Conrad-Martius was a fellow practitioner of phenomenological philosophy.
The letters would have been exchanged during a period of significant transition in Stein’s life. She was baptized in 1922, taught at a Dominican nuns’ school in Speyer from 1923 to 1931, and later became a lecturer at the Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in Münster before being forced to resign in 1933 due to antisemitic legislation. She entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne in October 1933.
Significance and Influence
The source material does not describe the reception, influence, or scholarly significance of this specific collection of letters. What is clear is that Stein’s correspondence more broadly is considered valuable for understanding her philosophical and spiritual development, given her importance as both a philosopher and a religious figure. She was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1998 and is one of six patron saints of Europe.
Stein was murdered in the gas chamber at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp on 9 August 1942. She was canonized as a martyr of the Catholic Church. She was beatified as a martyr on 1 May 1987 in Cologne, Germany, by Pope John Paul II, and canonized by him 11 years later on 11 October 1998 in Rome. The miracle that was the basis for her canonization is the cure of Benedicta McCarthy, a little girl who had swallowed a large amount of paracetamol (acetaminophen), which causes hepatic necrosis. The young girl’s father, Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, a priest of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, immediately called together relatives and prayed for Teresa’s intercession. Shortly thereafter, the nurses in the intensive care unit saw her sit up, completely healthy. Ronald Kleinman, a pediatric specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who treated the girl, testified about her recovery to church tribunals, stating: “I was willing to say that it was miraculous.” McCarthy would later attend Sr. Teresa Benedicta’s canonization.
Veneration and Commemoration
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena. Today there are many schools named in tribute to her, for example in Lubliniec, Poland, Darmstadt, Germany, Hengelo, Netherlands, and Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Also named for her are a women’s dormitory at the University of Tübingen and a classroom building at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Lubliniec in Poland hosts the Edith Stein Museum (Muzeum Pro Memoria Edith Stein) localised on the first floor of the Courant family house (Edith Stein’s grandparents’ family home). Wrocław hosts a museum called Edith Stein House localised in the house Edith’s mother bought for the family in 1910 on the street then called Michaelisstrasse 38 (today Nowowiejska 38). In Vienna, the Edith-Stein-Haus at Ebendorferstraße 8 is the main location of the Catholic University Chaplaincy and the university pastoral care of the Archdiocese of Vienna. In the spirit of Karl Strobl’s model of the “Catholic Student House”, the house is also home to a chapel consecrated to Edith Stein as well as a dormitory for about 90 students.
Controversy and Interpretation
Some questioned the beatification of Teresa Benedicta as a martyr, with Daniel Polish saying that the beatification seemed to “carry the tacit message encouraging conversionary activities” because “official discussion of the beatification seemed to make a point of conjoining Stein’s Catholic faith with her death with ‘fellow Jews’ in Auschwitz.” The position of the Catholic Church is that Teresa Benedicta also died because of the Dutch episcopacy’s public condemnation of Nazi racism in 1942; in other words, she died because of the moral teaching of the Church and thus, she is a true martyr.
Depictions in Literature, Film, and Music
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre published a book in 2006 titled Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913–1922, in which he contrasted her living of her own personal philosophy with Martin Heidegger, whose actions during the Nazi era, according to MacIntyre, suggested a “bifurcation of personality.” Playwright Arthur Giron wrote Edith Stein, a play that was inspired by Stein’s life. It was produced at the Pittsburgh Public Theater in 1988. In 1991, the Italian musician Juri Camisasca released a song inspired by the life of Edith Stein, Il carmelo di Echt (The carmelite convent of Echt) on the album of the same name. The song was later recorded by Giuni Russo and Franco Battiato. In 1995, Hungarian film director Márta Mészáros made a movie about the life and death of Edith Stein with the title A hetedik szoba (The Seventh Room/Chamber), starring Maia Morgenstern. In 2007, Stein’s life and work was dramatised in the novel Winter Under Water (Picador, London) by author James Hopkin. In 2014, the book Edith Stein and Regina Jonas: Religious Visionaries in the Time of the Death Camps, by Emily Leah Silverman, was published. In 2018, American film director Joshua Sinclair made a movie about the life and death of Edith Stein with the title A Rose in Winter, starring Zana Marjanovic.
Memorials and Honors
In 1988, Edith Stein was pictured on a German postage stamp with Rupert Mayer SJ in honor of their beatification. In 1999, a memorial statue by German sculptor Bert Gerresheim was dedicated in Cologne, Germany. The statue comprises three different views of Stein reflecting her Jewish and Christian faith, and a pile of empty shoes representing the victims of the holocaust. In 2008, the first Stolperstein (Polish: kamienie pamięci) that was ever laid in Poland was placed near Edith Stein’s childhood home at 38 ul. Nowowiejska (formerly the Michaelisstraße) in Wrocław. Other Stolpersteine for her are in Cologne (several) and Freiburg. In 2009, her bust was installed at the Walhalla Memorial near Regensburg, Germany. In June 2009, the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein (IASPES) was founded, and held its first international conference at Maynooth University, Ireland, in order to advance the philosophical writings of Stein. On 6 June 2014, the 70th anniversary of D-Day, a bell dedicated to her was named by Prince Charles at Bayeux Cathedral. In April 2024, during a private audience Pope Francis received a formal request from the superior general of the Discalced Carmelites, Miguel Márquez Calle, to declare Stein a Doctor of the Church. The Discalced Carmelites had first launched an international commission to gather the necessary documentation required for the declaration in 2022, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Stein’s conversion to Catholicism and the 80th anniversary of her martyrdom.
