Margareta Svjagintsev

June 14, 1922-October 18, 2019

Margareta was born in Germany between the two World Wars and was very proud to descend from Germanic-Slavic peasant stock. Orphaned by her father’s early death, she became poverty’s child. God taught her to be compassionate.

Her gift was to be a Mother, caring for dolls and animals, mothering her playmates, classmates and everyone else. And she became a grandmother and a great-grandmother in her later years.

Her other natural talent was in the Fine Arts and she gravitated toward painting, music, and poetry. At eighteen she was overwhelmed by her deep desire “to save the human soul -- the spirit, not the psyche.” In her words: “But how to fulfill it?? As a nun? But I never would have chosen to live with several other women under one roof! For lack of a totally satisfying choice, I chose medicine. By touching bodies, I would also touch their souls.”

Margareta started medical school in 1939 in her hometown of Erlangen/ Nueremberg, during the Third Reich, Hitler’s Germany. In her words: “Blitzkrieg…the beginning of WW II. Listen you young ones! Read history as written by historians of different nationalities. And by people who have actually lived through it!”

At the end of WWII in 1946, Europe was a heap of bricks and ashes and thousands of refugees from the East flooded into Germany.

In 1947 German universities reopened. She met a poverty-stricken Russian refugee, a son of the Tsar’s nobility. Most of his family had already been destroyed by the Bolshevik Revolution. He was fleeing further toward the west where the Americans had entered Germany. His name: Jueri Juerivich Svjagintsev. They made peace at once. She the Roman Catholic who stood up to the Nazis – Jueri, the son of Mother Russia son of martyrs for Orthodoxy.

During the next seven years, 1946-1953, they finished their medical degrees and Margareta earned an additional doctorate in Hematology. Margareta and Jueri married and had two children – Larissa Maria and Jueri Hermann. Their official titles were Herr Svjagintsev, Arzt dr. med., and Frau Svjagintsev, Aerztin, dr. med.

In 1953, the family immigrated to the USA under the sponsorship of Alexandra Toltsoy, daughter of the famous writer, and a Russian immigrant herself. In 1956, Jueri was drafted by the US Army Medical Corps. Their third child, Tamara Margareta, was born in Fort Riley, KS.

Jueri’s career life becomes, by necessity, the family’s life. As a result of the transient service life, Margareta was deprived of practicing her own profession and suffered great pain because she could not pursue her career. She strove to be an officer’s wife and that was not easy for her.

In 1970 the whole family found a home in Austin. From 1972 through 1997, Margareta served as Spiritual Director of the Catholic diocese of Austin, also giving retreats and lectures both in Texas and in other states. Her main themes: prayer, meditation, contemplation, the mystical life. She became a Carmelite (OCDS) and founded the OCDS community of St. Edith Stein, Austin, TX. During that time, she gained many friends (and foes), for those were the sifting times of contradiction within the Church.

Although she was constantly aware that each day she was moving closer to her death, she wanted to encounter the awesome presence of God. In her words: “I want to see God! I have pursued Him with a great hunger for truth and necessity to love. I want see his splendor.”

Margareta was preceded in death by her husband Jueri Jueri Svjagintsev. She leaves behind her daughter Larissa and husband Bob White; her son Jueri Svjagintsev and daughter-in-law Mara Eurich; her daughter, Tammy Svjagintsev; her grandchildren, Shannon Sandrea and husband Igor; Yuri Andre Svjagintsev; and great-granddaughter, Sofia Sandrea.

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