Edith Stein Collection

http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c86w9ckx Online items available Inventory of the Edith Stein Collection David Stiver Graduate Theological Union Archives Graduate Theological Union 2400 Ridge Road Berkeley, California, 94709 Phone: (510) 649-2523 Email: [email protected] URL: http://library.gtu.edu/archives/ © 2013 Graduate Theological Union. All rights reserved. Inventory of the Edith Stein GTU 2002-9-02 1 Collection Inventory of the Edith Stein Collection Collection number: GTU 2002-9-02 Graduate Theological Union Archives Graduate Theological Union Berkeley, California Processed by: David Stiver Date Completed: August 28, 2013; June 12, 2015 Encoded by: David Stiver © 2013 and 2015 Graduate Theological Union. All rights reserved. Descriptive Summary Title: Edith Stein collection Dates: 1890-2005 Bulk Dates: 1942-2005 Collection number: GTU 2002-9-02 Creator: Stein, Edith, Saint, 1891-1942 (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) Collector: Batzdorff, Susanne M. Collection Size: 6 linear feet (5 record boxes, 1 5" box, 1 map folder), and 251 books, pamphlets and articles13 videos Repository: The Graduate Theological Union. Library. Berkeley, CA 94709 Abstract: This collection contains both original and photocopy material. The donation is from Susanne M. Batzdorff, niece of Edith Stein, who was canonized on October 13, 1998. Batzdorff assumed the role of her mother, Dr. Erna Stein Biberstein (1890-1978), the last surviving sibling, in responding to researchers, collecting and contributing to these materials. Batzdorff became one of the foremost Edith Stein scholars and translators. The collection documents Stein's life and the activities to memorialize and honor her through beatification, canonization, conferences, buildings, guilds, publications, and art. A significant part of the collection is in German. Physical location: 7/I/1-2, Archivist Office Languages: Languages represented in the collection: EnglishGermanHebrewPolish http://gtu.edu/library/special-collections/archives/featured-collections-1/edith-stein-st-teresa-benedicta-cross-collection Access Collection is open for research. Publication Rights Copyright has not been assigned to The Graduate Theological Union. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Graduate Theological Union as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader. Preferred Citation Edith Stein collection, GTU 2002-9-02. Graduate Theological Union Archives, Berkeley, CA. Acquisition Information Susanne M. Batzdorff, niece of Edith Stein, donated the collection on June 19, 2013. The materials were collected by her and her mother, the last surviving sibling, Dr. Erna Stein Biberstein (1890-1978). GTU Dean Margaret Miles and her assistant Eloise Rosenblatt were instrumental in bringing the collection to the GTU. The arrangements were made in 2001-2002. A few materials were donated by Ernest Biberstein, nephew of Edith Stein, in October 2013. Batzdorff donated additional materials on January 29, 2014, and in November 2014. Biography / Administrative History Inventory of the Edith Stein GTU 2002-9-02 2 Collection Edith Stein (1891-1942), St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, born Jewish, became a teacher, philosopher, phenomenologist, translator and nun. She was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church in 1922. During the next decade, while continuing to teach, she promoted women's education at conferences throughout Europe. In 1933, she joined the Discalced Carmelites in Cologne. Arrested as a Jewish Catholic in the Netherlands, she was taken to Auschwitz and killed there in 1942. She was canonized in 1998 and is one of the six patron saints of Europe. Stein was born into a Jewish family on Yom Kippur in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), the youngest of eleven children. Four of the children died in childhood. Her father, Siegfried Stein, died before her second birthday. Her mother, Auguste Stein (nee Courant), took over the family's lumber business. A brilliant student, Stein followed an academic career, receiving a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Göttingen in 1916. Her dissertation was On the Problem of Empathy. She continued teaching as an assistant to Edmund Husserl (born Jewish but became a Lutheran at 27), who was the founder of the school of phenomenology. Stein was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church on January 1, 1922. While the precise reasons for the event at this time are not known, many different events contributed to the conversion. These include her reading the life of St. Teresa of Ávila at a friend's house, her experiences during World War I and that many Jews in her academic circle had converted to Christianity. Her conversion greatly upset her mother. She left her assistantship and became a teacher at St. Magdalena in Speyer, a girl's high school and teacher's training institute for Dominican nuns, where she taught until 1931. During this time she continued her intellectual work. She translated the letters of John Henry Cardinal Newman from English to German, translated Thomas Aquinas' De Veritate (Of Truth) into German, and in general applied her philosophical observations to her Catholic writings. In 1932 she became a lecturer at the Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in Munster. She was required to resign in 1933 due to anti-Semitic legislation. Alarmed by the actions of the Nazi government, she attempted to arrange a meeting with Pope Pius XI to voice her concerns. This turned out to be impossible, especially as this was a Jubilee year. Her letter in late 1933 was forwarded to the pope by her spiritual director, Archabbot Raphael Walzer of Beuron Abbey, urging that the pope condemn the actions of a German government that claims to be Christian. Stein received a letter in response with a blessing from the Pope for her and her family but no other acknowledgement. The letter from Stein was released from the Vatican Archives in 2003. On October 14, 1933, Stein entered the Carmelite monastery of Cologne. She completed her work Potency and Act. She revised it as Finite and Eternal Being: A Survey of the Philosophia Perennis in 1936. Concerned for the safety of her community, she requested that she go to the Carmelite monastery in Echt in 1938. A friend smuggled her partially completed autobiographical account of her Jewish family to her in 1939. She began writing her final work, The Science of the Cross. Her sister Rosa, who converted to Catholicism after their mother died in 1936, arrived in 1940. In retaliation for a statement read throughout the Catholic churches in the Netherlands, both Edith and Rosa were arrested as Catholics of Jewish origin, sent to Auschwitz and executed upon arrival on or around August 9, 1942. There deaths were not confirmed until after the war. The first biography of Edith Stein was written in 1947 by Teresia Renata of the Holy Spirit (Posselt), once the novice mistress of Stein. Efforts to canonize Stein began in 1961. Beatification took place in Cologne on May 1, 1987. Canonization took place in 1998, following the acceptance of a miracle in Edith Stein's name. In 1999 she was declared one of the three women Catholic patronesses of Europe (with St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Catherine of Sienna) to join the three male patron saints. Considerable controversy arose over her sainthood, especially as a Jew who converted to Catholicism and then was killed as a Jew at Auschwitz. At the beatification ceremonies, Pope John Paul II said, "We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein, an outstanding daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of the Carmelite Order, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds that are still hurting ... and also the synthesis of the full truth about man. All this came together in a single heart that remained restless and unfulfilled until it finally found rest in God." Susanne Batzdorff, a niece of Edith Stein who knew her aunt while she was growing up in Breslau, donated this collection. Susanne's family escaped Germany in 1939 and moved to the United States. Her mother, Dr. Erna Biberstein, who had been very close to Edith, assumed the task of responding to scholars and researchers regarding Edith Stein and her family. After Biberstein passed away, Susanne took over her mother's role of clarifying and correcting misinformation. She writes: "I inherited my involvement with Jewish-Catholic dialogue years ago, from my mother. As the only surviving sibling of Edith Stein, she had maintained a vast international correspondence with many persons interested in Edith Stein…After my mother died in January 1978, at the age of almost 88, her interfaith correspondence and her Edith Stein connections fell into my lap, and I have been dealing with this heritage ever since." Inventory of the Edith Stein GTU 2002-9-02 3 Collection A librarian, poet and author now living in Santa Rosa, she became one of the foremost authorities on Edith Stein. Batzdorff assisted as editor/translator of a new edition of Teresa Renata Posselt's book, Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite. Her article on her aunt's beatification in the New York Times Magazine ("A Martyr in Auschwitz," April 12, 1987) touched many people. She has participated in many conferences and events and has written numerous introductions to books on Edith Stein. Her other books include Edith Stein: Selected Writings, Aunt Edith: The Jewish Heritage of a Catholic Saint, and two collections of poetry, In the beginning: poems inspired by the book of Genesis (1983) and In every generation: poems inspired by the Haggadah for the Passover holiday (1991).

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