Edith Stein and the University of Wrocław
Today is the 80th anniversary of the death of Edith Stein, who died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on 9 August 1942. The German philosopher of Jewish origin, atheist, convert, Discalced Carmelite nun and patroness of Europe, who began her scientific work at the University of Wrocław, is the only woman among the several alumni of the Wrocław Alma Mater who have been raised to the altars.
Edith Stein came from a large Jewish family that had lived in Breslau since 1890. She was born on 12 October 1891 as the eleventh, but seventh surviving, child of the well-known Breslau timber merchant Siegfrid Stein (1844-1893) and his wife Augusta Stein, née Courant (1849-1936). When Edith was just two years old, her father died and the upkeep of the entire family fell to her mother, who, however, managed very well and in 1910 bought a house at Michaelistrasse 38 (now ul. Nowowiejska 38).
Edith went to school a year earlier than her peers. From 1897 she attended the Empress Victoria Gymnasium for Girls, located in the former palace of the Dukes of Opole at Ritterplatz 1 (today pl. Nankiera 1 – the building of the Medical University). In 1909, the school was moved to a newly constructed building at Blücherstrasse 9 (now ul. Poniatowskiego 9, the seat of the First High School). Despite the vibrant faith of her entire family, Edith – at the age of 14 – declared herself an atheist.
In 1911, on 3 March to be precise, she passed her matriculation exam and enrolled at the University, which had just celebrated its centenary as a state university and took the name Schlesische Friedrich Wilhelm Universität (Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University). Being one of the few women, she was among the 1,087 students in the Faculty of Philosophy. Even before classes began, on 3 August 1911, she was entertained at a banquet held at Schloßplatz (now pl. Wolności) for lecturers and students of the University to celebrate its anniversary.
In her “Autobiography”, Edith wrote: “In the narrow corridor of our dear old University of Wrocław, there were whole rows of wall plaques hanging. They were covered with small white pieces of paper on which the docents gave notice of the topic, time and place (…) of the start of their lectures. This is where I put together a plan for my studies”.* Edyta enrolled in classes in Indo-Germanic, Old German, German grammar, the history of German drama, the history of Prussia under Frederick the Great and the history of English legislation, among others. She also attended a Greek course for beginners and classes in psychology and philosophy. She wrote: “I studied at the University of Wrocław for four semesters. I have taken such an active part in the life of this Alma Mater as probably few others, and it seemed that I had grown so much into it that I would not leave of my own accord. But even now, and still later in life, I was able to break the strongest bonds with a light movement and fly away like a bird that had broken free from a snare.”
Most of Edith’s time was spent in the main university building. “The old grey building on the Oder (recently repainted in yellow “period style”) soon became beloved and close to me. In my spare hours, having found an empty lecture, I liked to sit on one of the wide window boards filling the deep niches in the wall and work there. From this height, I could look out over the river and the University Bridge, where life was boiling, and I felt like I was a princess in a castle. I felt similarly at home in the adjacent convent [St Joseph’s Convent, ul. Kuźnicza 35 – note by KJ] (…) and also in the university library” [library building in Piasek].
Edith was a pupil of, among others, William Stern (1871-1938), psychologist and philosopher, one of the founders of psychological personalism and the psychology of individual differences, creator of the concept of the intelligence quotient and the IQ scale. However, Edyta did not speak very complimentarily about her teacher: “The psychology lecture was the first one I ever listened to. This can be taken as an omen, as in my four semesters of study in Wrocław I was primarily involved in psychology. Stern’s lectures were very simple and understandable. I sat through them as if they were having a nice chat and I was a bit disappointed.”
Professor Stern’s psychology and philosophy seminar and other classes were held in the building of today’s Collegium Anthropologicum at ul. Kuźnicza 35. One of these rooms is now named after Edith Stein, and on the façade of the building is a marble trilingual plaque with a copy of her signature.
During her time as a student in Wrocław, Edyta became an active member of several student associations. “I considered all the small privileges that the student card provided us with as the loving care of the state over its distinguished children; it awakened in me the desire to repay the nation and the state later through my professional work. I was irritated by the indifference with which most students showed towards such problems. It was from the same strong motives of responsibility that I spoke out strongly for the right of women to vote, something that was not yet understood among the bourgeois women’s movement at the time. (…) I entered a circle of young people to whom I certainly owed what was most valuable during my period of study in Wrocław. They called themselves the Pedagogical Group and consisted mainly of pupils and students of Stern’s seminary. (…) Stern generously gave us the premises of the psychological seminary for our meetings. At the time, it was located on the second floor of the former convent” [ul. Kuźnicza 35].
Edith was primarily fascinated by philosophy and psychology. “All my studies in psychology have led me to the conviction that this science is still in its infancy, that it still lacks the necessary foundation of clear concepts and that it is incapable of developing these concepts on its own. And what I have learned so far from phenomenology has delighted me so much precisely because phenomenology was based in quite a peculiar way on this kind of research work and that here, from the beginning, one forged the necessary tools of thought oneself”.
During her two-year studies in Breslau, Edith, already an atheist at the time, once visited the university church adjacent to the main university building, which was given the invocation of St. Matthias after secularisation in 1810. In her “Autobiography”, Edith wrote: “One sole time, during some spare hour, I was with Julia Heimann in St Matthew’s Church, adjacent to the university and once belonging to it; the bricked-up door still betrays the former connection.”
Intrigued by the phenomenological publications of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), she decided to continue her philosophical studies in Göttingen with the master and founder of phenomenology himself, joining his disciples in 1913. “In Göttingen, one just philosophises – day and night, over food, on the street, everywhere. They only talk about phenomena,” she wrote.
After a year of study and passing her final exam with honours, Edith began work on her PhD, but her academic plans were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. She therefore returned to Wrocław and here, at the Allerheiligen Hospital, or All Saints’ Hospital (until 2007 J. Babiński Voivodship Specialist Hospital at the present pl. Jana Pawła II) she underwent sanitary training and was then sent to work in the lazarette in Hranice in Moravia. When she returned to Breslau in 1916, she took up a teaching post at her former gymnasium in Blücherstrasse (now ul. Poniatowskiego 9, home of the First High School), teaching Latin, German, history and geography there. At the same time, she was working on her doctorate, which she defended summa cum laude in Göttingen later that year.
When her work with Husserl ended, she tried to get a job at a university, but all attempts failed, as this was a time when German universities did not yet employ women. Although dr Stein was not able to work at the university, she was well known in the scientific community of Western Europe, especially among philosophers. Through Max Scheller, an agnostic philosopher who converted to Catholicism, she began to take an interest in Christianity and Catholic philosophical and theological thought. She was also friends with, among others, Adolf Reinach, a Jew who converted to Evangelicalism. This familiarity had a major impact on her subsequent decision to convert.
After moving to Wrocław, Edith was in constant contact with friends she had met in Göttingen, including Roman Ingarden (1893-1970), a Polish philosopher who had received his doctorate from Husserl in 1918. It was Ingarden, with whom Edith actively corresponded, who witnessed her spiritual transformation.
After many transitions and turmoil in her life and spirit, at the age of 30, in the summer of 1921 Edith decided to convert to Catholicism. This came about through reading a biography of St Teresa of Avila. After closing the book, she said: “This is the truth” and shortly afterwards, on 1 January 1922, she was baptised.
At that time, she was already contemplating entering a monastery, but with the encouragement of her friend Fr Josef Schwindt, she decided not to take such a radical step and in 1923 began working at the Dominican-run secondary school in Spira. She continued to dedicate herself to her studies, also thinking about habilitation. She published further treatises, translations of the works of St Thomas Aquinas, among others. She still dreamt of working at the university, but the Non-Aryan Act implemented in 1933 derailed her plans. It was then that she made the decision to join a religious order. Carmel in Cologne–Lindenthal took her in, even though she was Jewish by origin and already 42 years old.
In 1933, she came to Wrocław for a short time. Her family, especially her mother, did not accept her conversion and her decision to join a religious order. Interestingly, her footsteps were soon followed by Sister Rose, who, after converting to Catholicism in December 1936 – after the death of her mother, also joined the Carmelite order. On 12 October, Edith escorted her mother to the White Stork Synagogue on Wallstrasse (now ul. P. Włodkowica) and, as in the past, attended the service with her. However, it was not without a dramatic and upsetting conversation. In the midst of the conflict, on 13 October 1933, departing at around 8:00 from Breslau’s Hauptbahnhof, or main railway station, Edith left Breslau, to which – as it turned out – she was never to return. It was then that she saw her mother for the last time, as Augusta died in 1936 and was buried where she had laid her husband’s body more than forty years before, i.e. in the Jüdischer Friedhof an der Lohestrasse (Jewish cemetery on what is now ul. Ślężnej, now the Museum of Cemetery Art). The graves of Edith Stein’s parents are still preserved at this site today.
In April 1934, after a six-month probationary period, Dr Edith Stein received the habit of a Discalced Carmelite nun and took the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She chose the greatest Carmelite mystics, namely St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, as her spiritual mentors. For some time, she had been considering the possibility of moving to a branch of the monastery in Wrocław-Pawłowice, but the move did not materialise. With the permission of her superiors, she continued her academic work in the privacy of the monastery walls. It was then that her major work “Finite Being and Eternal Being” was written. In 1938, she made her perpetual vows.
From 1933 onwards, after the Nazis came to power, persecution of the Jews began in Germany, which increased in intensity with each passing year. In November 1938, after the events of the so-called Kristallnacht, the Carmel authorities decided to move Edith to a monastery in Echt in the Netherlands, which at the time still seemed a safe place. Edith crossed the Dutch border on New Year’s Eve 1938. Less than a year later, in autumn 1939, Rosa Stein was also transferred to the convent in Echt.
Despite the outbreak of war and the imminent threat to the Stein sisters after the Germans entered the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, Edith continued to devote herself to intensive scholarly work and writing. Between 1941 and 1942, her second great work was prepared for the 400th anniversary of the birth of St John of the Cross and was an interpretation of the teachings of this Doctor of the Church. Unfortunately, “The Knowledge of the Cross” was not given to Edith to finish.
During the height of the German terror and in the face of the threat posed to the Stein sisters by their Jewish origins, the Carmel authorities again decided to relocate the sisters, this time to Switzerland. Unfortunately, the formalities took too long and before the approval for their departure reached the monastery in Echt, SS men entered with orders to arrest the non-Aryan inhabitants. On 2 August 1942, at around 17:00, the two Stein sisters were arrested. They were transported to a camp in Westerbork in the north of the Netherlands, from where they were taken on 7 August – probably via Breslau – to the German concentration camp at Auschwitz. One Auschwitz survivor remembered Edith and recalled years later that during her two days in the camp she “walked among the women like an angel, comforting, helping and reassuring”. Edith and her sister died in the gas chamber on 9 August 1942.
After the end of the war, numerous accounts began to arrive at Edith Stein’s mother convent, confirming her supernatural intercession. In July 1957, the authorities of the Cologne Carmel began efforts to initiate her beatification process. The diocesan trial was closed on 9 August 1972, exactly on the 30th anniversary of her death. Fifteen years later, on 1 May 1987, Pope John Paul II beatified Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross during a Mass in a stadium in Cologne. After a further twelve years, on 11 October 1998, i.e. on the eve of the 107th anniversary of her birth, Edith Stein was canonised, and on 1 October 1999, the Pope proclaimed Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross the patron saint of Europe. Her liturgical commemoration in the Catholic Church is set for 9 August, the day of her death.
Traces of Edith Stein in Wrocław
Two years after the beatification of Edith Stein, i.e. in 1989, the Society named after her was founded in Wrocław, which to this day is a centre for cultural dialogue and carries out lively activities.
In November of the same year, ul. Starcza, which Edith Stein once followed from her family home to the nearby church (then Waisenhausstrasse), was renamed ul. bł. Edyty Stein. This happened on the initiative of the Wrocław History Lovers Society with the support of the TMW Street Naming Committee. Interestingly, to this day the name still formally includes the element ‘blessed’, despite the fact that nine years after its naming, the street’s patroness was declared a saint. However, changing the name would involve, among other things, the cost of replacing the documents of the residents of this street, something that the city authorities do not want to expose them to.
On the centenary of the birth of the eminent Wrocław resident, Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz consecrated the chapel of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Church of St Michael the Archangel, where Edith Stein prayed during each of her stays in Wrocław after her conversion to Catholicism in 1922. In 2008, a European Peace Cross was erected near this church, at the junction of ul. Prusa and ul. Wyszyńskiego. Its creator is the Austrian artist Helmut Strobel, who made a pilgrimage to seven cities associated with Edith Stein with a prototype of this cross. After the pilgrimage, a cross stood in Patch near Insbruck and an identical one in Wrocław.
A marble bust of Edith Stein, funded by the then mayor of Wrocław, Bogdan Zdrojewski, and his wife Barbara, was erected in 1997 in the Gallery of Great Wroclawers in the Old Town Hall. The bust, like many others presented in the Gallery, was made by Tomasz Rodziński, a well-known sculptor from Wrocław. During the 46th International Eucharistic Congress held in Wrocław in May/June 1997, they were viewed by Pope John Paul II, accompanied among others by the then President of the Republic of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Since the same year, a Mass chalice with the image of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross bent over the cross has been kept in the chapel of the Metropolitan Major Seminary at pl. Katedralny. It was this chalice that the Pope used when celebrating Mass at the end of the congress.
Also in 1997, the illustrated guidebook “Wrocław Edyta Stein” by Danuta Mrozowska and Halina Okólska was published. The authors guide readers through the places Edith mentions in her “Autobiography”. Thanks to this book, one can learn, among other things, that of all the houses in which the Stein family lived in Wrocław, there is still one at ul. Nowowiejska 38, on which a commemorative plaque in three languages – Polish, German and Hebrew – was hung in August 1992, on the 50th anniversary of Edith Stein’s death. Since 1995, the house has been owned by the Edith Stein Society and is an international centre for German-Polish-Jewish reconciliation and Christian-Judaic dialogue. The tenement house at Kohlenstrase 13 (now ul. S. Dubois), where Edith Stein was born, survived the war and existed at number 29 until 1988, when it was demolished.
Since 2010, a two-metre-high sandstone statue depicting Edith Stein as a nun with a cross in her hand has been located on the south tower of St John the Baptist Cathedral on Ostrów Tumski. In the same year, a mosaic funded by the school depicting Edith Stein as a nun caring for children during her deportation to Auschwitz was placed on the building of the Salesian middle school located at ul. Prusa 78. Also in the Church of the Protection of St Joseph at ul. Ołbińska is a painting of Edith Stein by Lidia Witwicka, and in front of the church is a Cross on a black marble plinth, the right side of which, with the inscription “Witness of Truth and Sign of Reconciliation”, is dedicated to St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
Edith Stein is the only woman and also the only saint among the ex-students of the University of Wrocław who have been raised to the altar. Among the blessed are two Poles who studied here before the war – Edmund Bojanowski and priest Emil Szramek – and a German – priest Bernard Lichtenberg. Alumni of the University of Breslau also included candidates for the altar, such as priest Robert Spiske and priest Jan Schneider.
Kamilla Jasińska
* The statements are taken from Edith Stein’s letters and writings, including “Dzieje pewnej rodziny żydowskiej oraz inne zapiski autobiograficzne”, Kraków 2002; “Autoportret z listów”, część 1 (1916-1933), Kraków 2002.
