science

Therese Neumann

Therese Neumann is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Therese Neumann rather than just read about it. In short: Therese Neumann (9 April 1898 – 18 September 1962) was a German Catholic mystic and stigmatic. Neumann has been considered a Servant of God by the Catholic Church since 2005.

Key takeaways

Therese Neumann belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Therese Neumann to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Therese Neumann from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Therese Neumann (9 April 1898 – 18 September 1962) was a German Catholic mystic and stigmatic. Neumann has been considered a Servant of God by the Catholic Church since 2005. She was born in the village of Konnersreuth in Bavaria, Germany, where she lived all her life. She was born into a large family with little income. She was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis.

Ailments On 11 March 1918, Therese Neumann was partially paralyzed after falling off a stool while attending to a fire in her uncle's barn. She sustained more falls and injuries during this period. After one particular fall she claimed to have lost much of her eyesight, and in 1919 she claimed to have been blinded completely. Bedridden, she reportedly developed horrible bed sores that sometimes exposed bone. Therese reported that her eyesight was restored on 29 April 1923—the day Therese of Lisieux was beatified in Rome. Therese Neumann had been praying novenas in advance of this day. Therese Neumann said the saint called to her and then cured her of her paralysis and bed sores. On 7 November 1925, Neumann took to her bed again, and on 13 November claimed to have been diagnosed with appendicitis. According to her account, while prepared for surgery she convulsed violently and stared at the ceiling finally saying, "Yes." She asked her family to take her to the church to pray immediately. She then announced that she had been cured of all traces of appendicitis. Physicians and skeptics have disputed Neumann's claims of miraculous cures. According to skeptical investigator Joe Nickell, on one occasion Neumann claimed to have healed herself from blindness, but whilst "blind" she was examined and her pupils responded normally to light. Nickell suspected that Neumann's claims were performed by "hysterical hypochondria" or "outright fakery". In 1951 scholar Hilda Graef published a widely-reviewed monograph arguing against its veracity.

Stigmata

Therese would later apparently develop the stigmata. She said that on 5 March 1926, the first Friday of Lent, a wound had appeared slightly above her heart, but that she had kept this secret. However, she did report a vision of Jesus at Mount of Olives with three Apostles. On 12 March, she said she had another vision of Christ at the Mount of Olives, along with the crowning of thorns. She also claimed that the wound above her heart reappeared on this day, and she spoke to her sister about it. She claimed the wound also reappeared on Friday of the following week. By 26 March, she was claiming the same wound accompanied by a vision of Christ bearing the cross and a similar wound on her left hand. Blood was observed on her clothing, and she no longer attempted to keep the information to herself. On Good Friday, Neumann, according to her own testimony witnessed the entire Passion of Christ in her visions. She displayed wounds on her hands and feet accompanied by blood apparently coming from her eyes. Blood poured from the wounds; however - according to Josef Hanauer's book The Swindle of Konnersreuth - onlookers did not actually see the bleeding in action, only the blood itself. On Easter Sunday, she claimed a vision of the resurrection of Christ. For several consecutive Fridays after that, she stated she was experiencing the Passion of Christ, apparently suffering in her own body along with all his historic agonies. She claimed to have especially suffered the Passion on Good Friday each year. Doctors directly observed the blood streaming from her wounds during her ecstasies, and confirmed that it was human blood by examining it under a microscope. H. W. Hynek concluded that "the evidence effectively disposes of any idea of fraud, and of any supposition that it is animal blood used in artificial wounds." Gottfried Ewald also conceded that they could not be explained by conscious fraud, and suggested that they may be caused by a poorly understood psychological mechanism. In a 2008 review article, Seidl agreed that the stigmata bled spontaneously and could not have been self-inflicted. Like Ewald, he suggested that they might be psychosomatic in origin. On 22–23 March 1928, Neumann's stigmata claims were investigated at her home by a group of observers, including bishops and physicians. Professor Martini, the director of the University Hospital Bonn, observed Neumann and wrote a report about her stigmata. He found her behaviour suspicious, as the blood would only appear from her wounds when he was asked to leave the room. According to Martini:

"The fact that two or three times the observers were made to go out just at the moment when a fresh effusion of blood evidently came to cover the wounds arouses the suspicion, on the contrary, that during this time something happened which needed to be hidden from observation. It was for the same reason that I disliked her frequent manipulations behind the raised coverings." A psychoanalytic study of Neumann has suggested that her stigmata resulted from post-traumatic stress symptoms expressed in unconscious self-mutilation through abnormal autosuggestibility.

Inedia

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Therese Neumann

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Therese Neumann claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Therese Neumann before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Therese Neumann ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Therese Neumann

In research: Therese Neumann appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Therese Neumann in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Therese Neumann is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1898 births, 1962 deaths, 20th-century Christian mystics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Therese Neumann outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Therese Neumann in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Therese Neumann means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Therese Neumann out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Therese Neumann in simple terms?

Therese Neumann (9 April 1898 – 18 September 1962) was a German Catholic mystic and stigmatic. Neumann has been considered a Servant of God by the Catholic Church since 2005.

Why does Therese Neumann matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Therese Neumann?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Therese Neumann.