Editing Edith Stein (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Bad Bergzabern-St Martin-36-Edith Stein-2019-gje.jpg|thumb|right|Icon in [[Bad Bergzabern]]. The scroll shows a quote from her works: "The innermost essence of love is self-offering. The entryway to all things is the Cross"]]
Edith Stein was born in [[Breslau]] (now [[Wrocław]], Poland), [[Lower Silesia]], into an observant [[Jewish]] family. She was the youngest of 11 children and was born on [[Yom Kippur]], that important Jewish festival of the [[Hebrew calendar]]; these facts combined to make her a favorite of her mother.<ref name=VNS>{{cite web |url=https://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_19981011_edith_stein_en.html |title=Teresa Benedict of the Cross Edith Stein |work=Vatican News Service}}</ref> She was a very gifted child who enjoyed learning, in a home where her mother encouraged critical thinking, and she greatly admired her mother's unwavering religious faith. By her teenage years, however, Stein had become an agnostic.

Though her father died while she was young, her widowed mother was determined to give her children a thorough education and consequently sent Edith to study at the [[Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität]] in Breslau. At age 19, Stein moved with her family to Breslau to a house bought by her mother, which she later described in her ''Autobiography''. Today, Edith Stein House hosts a museum dedicated to the history of the Stein family.