Edith Stein – Geschichte einer Ankunft

On the 80th anniversary of her death: The biography of an extraordinary woman

On August 9, 2022, the death of Edith Stein will be commemorated for the eightieth time. Edith Stein died as a born Jew and converted Christian in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. For her tireless efforts to reconcile Judaism and Christianity, she was beatified as Teresia Benedicta of the Cross in 1987 and canonized in 1998. However, Edith Stein was not only a nun who was killed in the concentration camp due to her Jewish heritage, but also an intellectual. She studied philosophy, history, German studies, and psychology in Göttingen and Freiburg, earning her doctorate under Edmund Husserl. Her habilitation was denied to her four times because of her gender. Her habilitation thesis, in which she engages with Thomas Aquinas, Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, could only be published posthumously after the war. Due to the discrimination she personally experienced, Edith Stein actively advocated for women's rights. Historian Klaus-Rüdiger Mai approaches the multifaceted life of Edith Stein, who has unjustly remained in the shadow of her male contemporaries. He compellingly narrates the story of the life of this extraordinary woman, the wild child of modernity.