Newly Refound Transfer Document of Edith Stein

MISCELLANY NEWLY REFOUND TRANSFER DOCUMENT OF EDITH STEIN BY John Sullivan, O.C.D.* Troubled Times When the infamous outbreak of violence against Germany's Jews that became known as Kristallnacht shattered much more than just the store windows ofJews, Edith Stein was not surprised. In spite of the real spiritual joy she felt earlier on April 21, 1938, when she made her profession of final vows, for many months in that year which preceded the outbreak of World War II she had kept an apprehensive eye on a progression of threatening events all around her and her family.1 She was much aware of a strident crescendo of unjust persecution within her country that would soon spread far beyond German borders. But she had hopes, too, and quickly put together plans to move out of harm's way. The text we are publishing here gives rediscovered evidence of the most important step she took at that time, acting on hope. It showed her desire both charitably to relieve her beloved community of Köln-Lindenthal of the threat of Nazi persecution because of her Jewish ancestry, and also assure herself of untrammeled exercise of her Carmelite contemplative vocation.2 •Father Sullivan is second general definitor of the Order of Discalced Carmelites at the Casa Generalizia in Rome. 'See Letters nos. 260, 271, 272, 273, 274, 277, 278, 280, 281, 282, and 285 (penned the day after, and referring guardedly but most definitely to, the ravages otKristallnacht) in Self-portrait in Letters 1916-1942, Vol. 5 of "The Collected Works of Edith Stein," trans. Josephine Koeppel (Washington, 1993). ^Before she died in Auschwitz-Birkenau she learned of the Nazis' closure of four Carmelite monasteries in Luxembourg, Pützchen, Aachen, and Düren, all in 1941—see Teresia Renata Posselt, O.C.D., Edith Stein, trans. Cecily Hastings and Donald Nicholl (New York, 1952), p. 193. Her own words attest to the fact that her "family is scattered all over the world," and that her niece, Anni Gordon, left Germany for Norway the same day she went into exile in the Netherlands at the age of 47—see Letter 293 sent from Echt on January 22, 1939, in Self-portrait, p. 301. The actual date of her own departure is well documented: it occurred just five days after the date on this petition. For anyone who realizes she made a stop in Cologne on that New Year's Eve, 1938, to pray at the chapel of the seventeenth-century Carmelite monastery in Cologne's Schnurgasse, the poignancy of her gesture is quite apparent: 398 400 MISCEUANY The Text A mere forty-six days after the November 9- 10 Kristallnachtpogrom Edith's signature appeared on two copies of a document that would be taken from Germany to Rome to enable her in turn to leave Germany with the "blessing of obedience."5 She signed this typed petition stating her request to transfer from her monastic home on the Rhine to another monastery in the village of Echt in the Dutch province of Limburg.4 Canonical procedures required that the nun wishing to make such a transfer had to express her own willingness to move from one community to another. Other documents, such as attestations of the nuns' votes in the respective house chapters would have had to accompany it, but they would not have had her own signature affixed to them.5 The full file would be transmitted first to the General House of her Order, then from there to the Vatican Congregation for Religious, whose permission was being sought. The Congregation was delegated by the Pope to decide on authorizing transfers of enclosed nuns. This explains the direct address, "Most Holy Father," required by protocol, though the Pope himself would neither have read nor seen it. The document bore her firm and clear signature, in faded black ink, at the end of the simple Latin text. In translation it reads: Most Holy Father, Sr. M. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, nun of the Cologne Carmel with perpetual vows and under the bishop's jurisdiction, humbly prostrates herself at your Holiness' feet and requests permission to transfer to the Echt Carmel in...