Edith  Stein

LIFE  IN  A  JEWISH  FAMILY  1891 - 1916


Washington, D.C. ICS Publications. 1999.
Paperback: 548 pages.
ISBN-10: 0935216049

Reviewed by Patrick Killough




(1) biblio.com 03/01/2011

Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes

review:

The scholarly framework of the 1986 translation from the German, EDITH STEIN - LIFE IN A JEWISH FAMILY 1891 - 1916: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY is close to perfect. This autobiography is Volume One of the Collected Works of Edith Stein: Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Discalced Carmelite 1891-1942. Publisher is ICS  Publications of Washington, D.C. ICS is the Institute of Carmelite Studies, which publishes exclusively books by or about men and women of the aforenamed Roman Catholic religious order, such as Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross. Edith Stein, gassed at Auschwitz August 9, 1942, was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1998.

Paradoxically, in the years 1891 - 1916, Stein's first 25 of a life cut short at age 50, there is no hint that in 1922 Stein will be baptized Catholic and eleven years later become a Carmelite nun. Edith Stein was born into a Jewish family in Breslau (Prussian Silesia). Her widowed mother was very religious, but none of the seven surviving Stein children were Orthodox. By her early teens, Edith Stein had stopped praying and had thought her intellectually rebellious way into a quiet form of atheism.

The scholarly apparatus surrounding Stein's autobiography is massive: from Preface to the Unabridged German Editon, through Editor's Foreword, Chronology 1916 - 1942, Translator's Afterword, 235 End Notes to Photo Credits, Index, List of Places and a final fold out map: An Approximate Guide to Edith Stein's World. If there is a better scholarly approach to recreating and translating the barely surviving, fragmentary manuscript of a work written in haste mainly in 1933, I have never seen it.

Then there is Stein's narrative itself: ten chapters spread over 485 pages. Edith Stein's memory for detail is prodigious. Once she mistitles a work by Goethe with the name of a similar work by BIsmarck. Once again when writing of her nursing-assistant patients in an  World War One infectious disease ward for Austrian soldiers, she confesses that she cannot remember the name of a certain Italian civilian, so she calls him Mario. Otherwise recall of names, dates, places, incidents, schoolroom activities and on and on seems photographic and very accurate. In any case every important factual claim is run down in notes by the very able translator, Carmelite nun Josephine Koeppel.

I found the first three chapters (to page 114) rather general and uninteresting: family memories of ancestors by Frau Augustine Stein, Edith's mother plus current relationships among the extended paternal (Stein) and Courant (mother) relations, as well as kindergarten and grade school years of youngest child Edith and her older sister Erna. The final seven chapters are increasingly fascinating as it becomes clear that Edith Stein had an IQ that would go off any chart. She absorbed languages like a sponge, read widely and thought for herself. Curiously, although Breslau had a distinguished Jewish research institute, Edith Stein's friends of all ages were overwhelmingly secularized, assimilated German Jews. She also showed no curiosity before her university years either about the beautiful Catholic and Protestant churches of Silesia or the Christian religion.

Some months ago I returned to reading academic philosophy after a fifty year absence. I chose the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1838) as my re-entry point. In short order I discovered his gifted research assistant and star philosophy student Edith Stein. Her AUTOBIOGRAPHY essentially stops in 1916 when she was awarded a PhD degree for a dissertation written for Husserl, with an extremely rare summa cum laude commendation from the University of Freiburg im Breisgau.  Dissertation's subject was Empathy. And there, still only a philosophical "apprentice," Stein broke new ground. She may, in the process, have made herself the first philosopher of consciousness to begin from the point of view of a thinker who is tired and distracted! You can't imagine Rene Descartes ("I think, therefore I am") starting anywhere but total lucidity.

Edith Stein's AUTOBIOGRAPHY is no Life of Saint. She had been a Christian for 11 years when she wrote most of the manuscript in 1933. But she describes the life of a somewhat priggish, judgmental but friendly non-practicing Jewish atheist. She was rather reserved and detached, but beloved by her high school students. For them she learned to dress well. But Edith Stein's is a ladylike, far from rambunctious "Saint Augustine before his conversion" kind of confession. Extraordinarily fascinating -- if only for all the young philosophers she interacted with such as Martin Heidegger.  -OOO-

http://www.biblio.com/books/380387217.html
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(2) lunch.com 03/01/2011

name of review:  Young Woman Edith Stein: Observer and Autobiographer Par Excellence

rating: * * * * *

review:


Edith Stein was born into a loving Jewish family in 1891. In August 1942, with her older sister Rosa, she was executed by Nazis at Auschwitz. In 1933 she sketched beyond 98% of the contents of her autobiography up to the year 1916: LIFE IN A JEWISH FAMILY. That book covers the prehistory of her father's family (Stein) and her mother's (Courant) in the Prussian Silesian city of Breslau as well as the first half of her own life till age 25. In 1916 she ended her apprenticeship as a philosopher and phenomenologist with a doctoral dissertation at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau on "empathy." The autobiography essentially ends there.

What is revealed is a brilliant girl and woman whose IQ was probably off any chart ever created. She absorbed knowledge, mathematics, languages like a sponge. From her earliest years, Edith Stein had one enduring love: she simply wanted to find, recognize and base her life upon truth. What makes our knowledge of others work as well as it does? Why do we depend so much on the insights of others even to understand ourselves and our own interior life?

In her early teens, Jewish Edith stopped praying. She thought herself into atheism. But she kept her new convictions quiet and continued attending synagogue and keeping Sabbath with her mother. She matured steadily. Until age seven she was wild, given to temper tantrums and full of herself. Suddenly, she never understand why, Edith decided to trust her mother and an elder sister. She settled down. Never again did she indulge in temper outbursts. And so it would be throughout life. Suddenly a new vision would take possession of her: to study psychology, then to abandon psychology for philosophy, then to volunteer to nurse Austrian soldiers in World War I, then to teach in a girls' high school. She would make up her mind to do something and then do it, with no looking back, with no regrets.

LIFE IN A JEWISH FAMILY 1891 - 1916 is a treasure trove for sociologists and social anthropologists of secular Jewish and Prussian educational, artistic and occupational values at the turn of the 20th Century. Despite her brilliance, young Edith was denied access to a professor's track in philosophy at any German university. Why? First, she was a woman. Second, she was Jewish. And that was well before Hitler came to power in 1933.

Edith Stein rubbed shoulders and dealt as an intellectual equal with some of the greatest German philosophers: with her "dear Master," Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology, with slightly older Martin Heidegger and others who have left their impact on 21st century philosophizing. It is hard to detect signs by Autobiography's end in 1916 that she will be baptized a Roman Catholic in 1922, become a Carmelite nun in 1933, be gassed at Auschwitz by Nazis in 1942 or be canonized a Saint in 1998 by fellow philosopher and phenomenologist Pope John Paul II.

Some scholars see a natural progression from lower to higher stages of truth in her life. Some, by contrast, see inexplicable leaps in every turning point: from age seven conversion to self-control and damping down temper outbreaks, to resisting family pressure to study medicine. In any event, it was her life to live. And live it she did! The mystery is how the first 25 secular, this-worldly years led to the final 25 years of increasing passion for revealed religion, for unity with Christ crucified, for equal rights for professional women and for a plea in 1933 to Pope Pius XI to denounce Hitler's persecution of German Jews.

-OOO-

http://community.cafelibri.com/reviews/d/UserReview-Edith_Stein_LIFE_IN_A_JEWISH_FAMILY
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(3) bn.com 03/02/2011

title of review: "In Goettingen that's all you do: philosophize day and night"

rating: * * * * *

review:

The world knows Edith Stein first as a canonized Jewish Catholic saint, executed in 1942 at age 49 in Auschwitz. But she was also a brilliant linguist and professional philosopher before she became a lecturer on women's rights and, at age 42, a Carmelite nun.

Her autobiography, LIFE IN A JEWISH FAMILY 1891 - 1916, written mainly in 1933 after the Nazis came to power, lays out in great detail Stein's first 25 years. Her family were nationalistic German (Prussian) Jews, making the most of the Napoleonic Era and later emancipation laws to advance themselves. In her Protestant high school class in Breslau, Edith was one of nine Jewish girls, with only one Catholic. With the exception of her pious, observant mother Auguste, her combined Stein-Courant families were non-religious. Edith herself stopped praying in her early teens. When she became a Catholic in 1922, she converted not from Judaism but from atheism.

We receive large dollops of information about each of the seven surviving Stein siblings, especially Erna, less than two years Edith's senior. They were raised as twins and were inseparable friends. Erna became an M.D. and emigrated to the USA.

There are flashes of conflict in Stein's autobiography between Orthodox and secular Jewish practices and ideals. One Orthodox male friend of hers is shown splitting hairs with her about whether he violated the Sabbath prohibition of carrying things. A curious passage also contrasts Jewish/Christian attitudes toward death. A sister-in-law introduced much tension into the family when she demanded a greater personal share of the wealth produced by the family lumber business started by Edith's deceased father. Stein wrote:

"According to Jewish sensibility, it is a sign of heartlessness to regard the death of a beloved one as an inevitable future event, to keep it soberly in view, to discuss it, and to make provisions for it. Such measures are left to the 'goyim' to whom one ascribes as characteristic the lack of tender feelings and of compassion. ... we never even permitted ourselves to think of a time when Mother would no longer be with us" (Ch. 3).

At the University of Breslau, Edith had a good older friend, Georg Moskiewicz, who had both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. One day in psychology seminar, he found Edith absorbed in critical reviews of Goettingen philosophy professor Edmund Husserl. He persuaded her to dive into Volume Two of Husser's LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS, which she devoured, coming to consider Husserl the greatest living philosopher. Georg had studied a semester with Husserl and longed to return to Goettingen. He said:

"In Goettingen that's all you do: philosophize day and night, at meals and in the street, everywhere. All you talk about is 'phenomena'" (Ch. 5).

Soon Stein was in Goettingen. When Husserl transferred to the University at Freiburg im Breisgau, Edith Stein went with him. For him she wrote her 1916 doctoral thesis on "Empathy," which merited a rare summa cum laude citation.

Edith Stein tried but failed to make a career teaching philosophy in a German University. There were no women philosophy professors in Germany, much less Jewish women philosophers. She did not break that glass ceiling but went on to produce much original philosophic writing: about the human person, society and politics. -OOO-

recommended reading:

-- Waltraud Herbstrith - EDITH STEIN

-- Alisdair MacIntyre - EDITH STEIN: A PHILOSOPHICAL PROGLOGUE 1913 - 1922

-- Edith Stein - ON THE PROBLEM OF EMPATHY

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Edith-Stein/Josephine-Koeppel/
e/9780935216042/?itm=1&USRI=edith+stein+-+life+in+a+jewish+family
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(4) amazon.com 03/03/2011


title of review: "... an objective outer world could only be experienced intersubjectively"

rating: * * * * *

review:

PRELIMINARY NOTE BY REVIEWER: after a 50 year absence from studying and doing academic philosophy (an intense seven year period in my then young life) I have recently re-entered the field, starting with "phenomenology." Naturally, I began with phenomenology's founder Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938). Almost immediately, however, I discovered and was immediately attracted to Husserl's student Edith Stein (1891 - 1942) and the glass ceilings she bumped up against, first as a woman and secondly as a Jew, trying in vain to make a career in philosophy in pre-Hitler German universities. In 1998 Pope John Paul II declared Catholic convert and professed Carmelite nun Edith Stein a model of holiness and canonized her as a Roman Catholic saint, Teresa Benedict of the Cross. But the first 25 years of Stein's life are the subject of her Autobiography. She was a decent, at times prissy, but life-loving young woman who was a good dancer, intended to marry, but was intensely this-worldly and remarkably uninterested in any revealed religion. END NOTE.

There are two biographies of Edith Stein that you may want to read before tackling her own autobiography. That by Waltraud Herbstrith is a good (but not great) survey of Stein's entire life: Jewish, atheist and Catholic. The outstanding intellectual biography by Notre Dame philosophy professor Alasdair MacIntyre is subtitled "A PHILOSOPHICAL PROLOGUE 1913 - 1922" and focuses on the background of German philosophy (mainly neo-Kantian) after the 1860s and Stein's earliest years as one of Europe's most promising young philosophers.

With the Herbstrith and MacIntyre biographies under your belt, you are well prepared for Edith Stein - LIFE IN A JEWISH FAMILY 1891 - 1916. In the year 1916 Edith Stein was awarded a PhD degree in philosophy summa cum laude by the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. Her thesis, directed by the great Husserl himself, was on the subject of the "empathy" that one human feels for another and what makes it both necessary and possible. The insights that Stein developed in writing her dissertation were foundational for her life's work and ongoing project: later writings on the human person, natural and private organizations and associations and finally the State itself (all reviewed in the MacIntyre biography).

Stein's autobiography, dashed off almost entirely in 1933 just after the Nazis took power in Germany, looks back from age 42 to the first 25 years of her life. She grew up in the frontier city of Breslau (Prussian Silesia) the seventh and youngest surviving child in a successful Jewish mercantile (lumber trade) family of Steins and also embedded in her mother's family, the Courants. Edith's energetic, resourceful, much adored mother Auguste Courant Stein paid off current debts, kept the lumber firm going  and led it to new heights of prosperity after her husband Siegfried unexpectedly died young, Edith being then only two years old. My impression from Edith's autobiography is that within her extended family, all of the males were secularized, non-believing Jews, as were all of the younger women. The clearest exception as a religious family member was Frau Auguste Stein, always a very pious, observant Jew, but persuaded by relatives over the years to leave off some Orthodox practices and traditions. All family members were intensely proud to be Prussian Germans.

In her early teens, during an extended visit to her oldest sister and her dermatologist husband in Hamburg, Edith Stein ceased praying and became a convinced but non-demonstrative atheist. She continued quietly attending synagogue with her mother, even after she was baptized a Roman Catholic on New Year's Day 1922.

"Empathy" (German "Einfuehlung") is the starting point of Stein's claim to orginality as a philosopher. From the earlier philosophical writings of Edmund Husserl Edith took over and developed what philosophers call "realism": the belief that our common sense appreciation of the world of our senses is essentially correct. That is, there is a "real" world of time, space, bodies and ensouled bodies (humans) "out there," with whose essences we are in real contact. Our mind does not create that world. It receives it, interacts with it. That is what is meant by philosophical "realism." Later, Husserl seemed to retreat from "realism" back towards either the then dominant neo-Kantianism or Hegelian Idealism -- to the discomfort of Stein and other younger phenomenologists. In later years, after her conversion to Christianity, Stein would attempt a synthesis between the ideas of Husserl, Saint Thomas Aquinas and other medieval Aristotelian "realists."

But Edith Stein and many other young phenomenologists themselves remained staunch realists. Stein notably believed not only in a knowable external world but that the very act of knowing that "outside our minds" world of bodies in time and space is cooperative, inter-subjective. This puts her brand of philosophical phenomenologiy very much in the camp of modern science as a co-operative venture. We cannot even know ourselves without the helpful insights given us by other sympathetic, instructing humans. Stein herself in autobiography Ch. 7 ("1913-1914") tells how Husserl's insights led her toward her very original 1916 doctoral dissertation, EMPATHY:
"Husserl had said that an objective outer world could only be experienced intersubjectively, i. e., through a plurality of perceiving individuals who relate in a mutual exchange of information. Accordingly, an experience of other individuals is a prerequisite."

But Husserl additionally required Stein to base her dissertation on preliminary massive readings into everything already written on all forms of "empathy," especially the very different views of philosopher Theodor Lipps.

But before she describes her earliest years in philosophy, Edith Stein in her autobiography, tells at considerable length and in detail the prehistory elsewhere of her Breslau family, what it meant to grow up among achieving Steins and Courants of both sexes, of her primary and secondary school years and above all of her passion "to know the truth." We also learn of her several months as a World War I volunteer nurse's aide in a hospital ("Lazaretto") for Austrian solidiers with infectious diseases. Here she picked up a smattering of eight languages used by the polyglot Austro-Hungarian army, spoke Latin with Hungarian and Polish doctors (she found their grammar atrocious), smoked, drank much coffee and learned much hands-on "empathy."

Before she decided to take herself quietly in hand at age seven, Edith had indulged in temper tantrums and mean pranks. But one day, for reasons never entirely clear to her, she put that negative phase decisively behind her. One consistent mark of Edith Stein's life is its series of obvious turning points with no looking back at what might have been: conscious atheism as a religious choice, psychology as a university major, only two years later to be decisively rejected in favor of philosophy and working with Professor Husserl, and on and on.

Edith Stein's was a great life. Some see her as the patron saint of atheists. And her genial, open-minded, atheistic, this-worldly life phase is very much the focus of her autobiography. The book's editorial and translational qualities are very high. There are helpful photographs of Edith Stein, her family and friends. The end notes are abundant and detailed. A fold-out map of the world she lived is also invaluable. This is as good and as scholarly and as easy to read a book on Edith Stein as you are ever likely to find.

-OOO-

tags: edith stein, phenomenology, goettingen, breslau, lazaretto, freiburg im breisgau, edmund husserl, auguste stein


http://www.amazon.com/Life-Jewish-Family-Unfinished-
Autobiographical/dp/0935216049/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298978164&sr=1-2
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(5) epinions.03/05/2011

Review Title: Edith Stein: "Deliberately and consciously, I gave up praying"

Product Rating:  * * * * *

Pros: Relive the intellectual excitement of pre-Hitler Germany. Watch a young European philosopher take shape.

Cons: Some of Stein's minute description of Jewish family life can feel like watching grass grow.

The Bottom Line: At age 42, Edith Stein reviewed the first 25 years of her life,  culminating in her 1916 PhD dissertation on "empathy." Two Jewish families in great detail. Great European philosophers.

aohcapablanca's Full Review:  Edith Stein - Life in a Jewish Family 1891-1916

Edith Stein was born the eleventh and last child of Siegfried Stein and Auguste Stein nee Courant. Birthplace was the Prussian Silesian frontier town of Breslau. In 1933 at a great pace Stein reviewed in writing her first 25 years ending in 1916, when she took an extremely rare summa cum laude doctorate at the southern German University of Freiburg im Breisgau. Her doctoral subject was EMPATHY (German: "Einfuehlung"), how humans not only as isolated individuals but also cooperatively, as "ensouled bodies," know and explore together the sensed world of time, space and bodies as well as one another. In later years Stein would extend her insights from empathy into small groups both traditional and ad hoc and analyze the political state itself.

Edith Stein both as child and young adult remained enigmatically uninterested in religion. Her mother Auguste had taken over a debt-ridden family lumber company when her husband died, soon managed it into prosperity and gave her seven surviving children, including Edith, a comfortable life. Frau Auguste was an observant Jew, the only member of the numerous Stein - Courant tribe that I recall being so described by Edith.

During her first 25 years and later, the life of Edith Stein is characterized by a dozen or so "turning points," points of no return. She took vital, life-altering decisions and never looked back. Some scholars see her as being therein led step by step by Providence, as if she were almost passively "clicking on" or checking off decisions on a pre-destined list of steps to take in order to move up spiritually. Others do indeed notice the turning points pattern but cannot explain it.

Thus, until age seven, Edith was a rowdy, disrespectul, impudent, noisy child. Then for no reason that she could ever make clear to herself, she decided one day to trust her mother and oldest sister, obey them and rein in her anti-social impulses, which would never again be serious problems. Self-control: click!

Later Fraeulin Stein decided to take a long time out (to become a dropout?) from school when she should have entered the local "Gymnasium" to prepare for university. Some time out: click!

During that phase Edith spent ten months in Hamburg with her oldest sister and the latter's dermatologist husband. There, as Edith wrote,

"I heard and also read much that was not good for me. ... some of the books that found their way into his house were hardly intended for a fifteen year old girl. Besides, Max and Else were totally without belief; religion had no place whatsoever in their home. Deliberately and consciously, I gave up praying here. I took no thought of my future although I continued to live with the convicion that I was destined for something great" (Ch. 4: "The Two Youngest Grow Up  1907 - 1910)."

Goodbye, religion: click!

Edith Stein later spent two years at the University of Breslau immersed in literature and history, but planning to take a PhD in psychology. Psychology as an academic field, however,  Stein found too immature and uncertain. So she decided to abandon it for study in Goettingen with a man whom she soon regarded as the greatest living philosopher. He became Edith's "dear Master," Professor Edmund Husserl (1869 - 1928), the brilliant inventor of the "phenomenological" method in German philosophy. That school thumbed its nose at both the dominant German neo-Kantians and the still powerful Hegelian Idealists. Farewell, psychology. Enter  phenomenological philosophy as lifelong passion: click!

What Edith most liked about the phenomenological method was its painstaking, precise attention to the details of objects presented us by our senses, plus its eschewing of all preconceptions and all earlier philosophical hypotheses and models, especially the theories of knowledge of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. What Stein and some of her other young colleagues especially valued about the early views of Husserl was their "realism." That is, Husserl taught that human knowers accurately and truly perceive bodies existing in real time and space. All knowledge of the world outside our minds is, in other words, experienced not just by me but equally by others as well.
"Husserl had said that an objective outer world could only be experienced intersubjectively, i. e., through a plurality of perceiving individuals who relate in a mutual exchange of information. Accordingly, an experience of other individuals is a prerequisite"  (Ch. 7, "Student Years in Goettinger 1913 - 1914).

For her 1916 doctoral project under Husserl (now suddenly transferred to the University of Freiburg im Breisgau), Edith Stein did original work on the subject of "Einfuehlung," empathy. Stein judged that we perceive (do not reason to)  outside ourselves other "ensouled bodies" like our own. We can also see things with their eyes, feel their fatigue and pain. They, for their part, can also walk in our shoes. Together with those others we explore the world. There are aspects even of our individual selves that are revealed to us only through our interactions with others.

When World War I broke out, Stein quickly demoted her doctoral project to second place and trained as a volunteer nurse. She was accepted in 1915 for work near the Russian front at Maehrisch-Weisskirchen, employed in a 4,000 bed hospital/lazaretto (formerly an Austrian army riding academy) created, staffed with nurses and funded by the German (not Austrian) Red Cross. This hospital was in Austrian territory, however, and the patients were Hungarians, Ruthenians, Germans, Italians and others of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire.

See you later, academic philosophy! Click!

Scholars think Stein's 1915 stint as a nurse decisive for its hands-on insights into human empathy, the role of gestures, communicating in many languages and such like. A brilliant linguist, Edith did her nursing while speaking basic versions of eight languages of the Austrian Empire. She also spoke medical Latin with Hungarian, Moravian and Czech doctors, and thought little of their mangled grammar. She held the hands of the dying in a typhoid ward. Then a German army  offensive drove the Russians back toward Warsaw. And the hospital was closed down.

Given a medal for her service and at all times subject to recall (which never happened), Stein decided her time would now be better spent back getting her doctorate. But while working toward that degree, she accepted an urgent request to teach high school girls at her old Breslau alma mater. The war had taken younger men away from schools, universities and the law. Suddenly there were brief opportunities for women in previously closed professions. Absent wartime demands, a Jewish woman would not have been invited to teach at a Protestant high school. Farewell nursing. Re-enter PhD research in scant free time while teaching girls Latin, German and history. Click!

This was her first teaching assignment. It taught her to dress smartly and to command the respect of very critical girls not much younger than she. This teaching experience later stood her in good stead as a much-in-demand lecturer in various European cities on the vocation of women in the professions and their equality with male counterparts.

By the time her autobiography fell silent with events of the year 1916, Edith Stein had become a favorite student as well as research assistant of Professor Husserl. She had also met many rising young philosophers, including the slightly senior Martin Heidegger. She would try but fail to become the first woman as well as first Jewish woman to make a career as a philosopher in a German university. But she at the same time continued to write and publish brilliantly and innovatively on the human person and the psychic need of humans to be active in various groups and organizations in order to realize their potential and to form just civil States.

In passing, but in great detail, we meet as well all of Edith's siblings and many Stein and Courant cousins and their spouses. Notably close was first cousin Richard Courant, later to become a disinguished professor of mathematics in New York. From very young days, Edith Stein showed talent as a ballroom dancer. She had beaux. She expected to get married. She had even sized up a couple of eligible mates at University. As an overworked typhoid ward nurse she learned to drink coffee and smoked, but had already given up drinking alcohol under any circumstances. By 1916 Edith Stein was clearly one of the most promising young philosophers in Germany, indeed, in Europe.

At age 25 in 1916, Edith Stein was still showing virtually no interest in religion, though surprisingly many of her fellow phenomenology students were fervent Jews, Lutherans or Catholics. Edith Stein's next great "click" would not come until 1921 when a night spent reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila convinced her that for her the Carmelite way of life was what God wanted Edith to embrace: Click! And there were no Lutheran Carmelites. Hence, came her baptism as a Roman Catholic on January 1, 1922: Click! By that year she had already written and published a half dozen more important essays in phenomenology.

The externals of this autobiography are uniformly good. The translation from the German original is lucid and readable. The end notes are abundant (235) and detailed. The index is complete. There is even a large fold-out map, "Edith Stein's World." The handful of black and white photographs of Stein, her family and friends are wistful. Alas, how seldom she was caught smiling or with her hair let down!

-OOO-

p.s. Thank you DramaStef for making EDITH STEIN reviewable for epinions!

Recommended: Yes!!


http://www.epinions.com/review/Edith_Stein_Life_in_a_Jewish_Family_1891_1916
_epi/content_543054990980

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http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/stein_autobio.html