Ich war ein Fremdling
in der Welt geworden ...
('I had become an alien
in the world...')
Edith Stein's fate in the
'Third Reich'
She had always dreamed of a brilliant future, of happiness and glory, as she was convinced that she was destined for greatness and did not belong into the restricted bourgeois world she had been born into, Edith Stein wrote in her unfinished autobiographical account Life in a Jewish Family.
The champion of women's rights, psychologist and philosopher was born in Wroclaw in 1891, completed her PhD under Edmund Husserl, and contributed significantly to the history of modern philosophy. Edith Stein may not be as well-known as Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt, but she also belonged to Husserl's Freiburg circle, and was certainly equal to her two more famous colleagues. She established her own, original philosophy. However, despite the fact that she passed her PhD examination with distinction, she was not given a doctorate.
Edith Stein was born into a Jewish family and converted to the Catholic faith in 1922, and subsequently taught at Church-affiliated institutes for educational studies in Speyer and Münster. Persecuted by the Nazis, she adopted the religious name of Teresia Benedicta a Cruce and sought refuge in the Carmelite monastery 'St. Maria vom Frieden' in Cologne in 1933. In 1938, she emigrated to a Carmelite monastery in Echt in the Netherlands, where she was arrested by the SS in 1942. Edith Stein was murdered in Auschwitz on 9 August 1942. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1987 and canonised her in 1998; she was subsequently declared one of the patron saints of Europe in 1999.
The theatre actress Tina Engel has appeared on all of the great stages in the German-speaking countries in memorable productions by the most famous contemporary directors. She was a regular member of the Schaubühne Berlin company for 25 years. She has also repeatedly stood in front of the camera, and won the Bundesfilmpreis for her performance as the bank robber in Margarethe von Trotta's major feature film The Second Awakening of Christa Klages. She worked with M. v. Trotta several times, and also appeared in Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum, as well as in numerous other film and TV productions. Since 2002, Tina Engel has also staged productions at various theatres.
Udo Samel has been a member of the cast at Berlin's Schaubühne theatre and at the Burgtheater in Vienna, where he delivered celebrated performances under directors such as Peter Stein, Luc Bondy, Klaus Michael Grüber and Andrea Breth. Udo Samel also regularly appears in films and on television, most recently, for example, as the head of the murder squad in the TV series Babylon Berlin, or in the film Serviam – I Will Serve.
