Georg Maria Stenz (Chinese: 薛田资; pinyin: Xuē Tiánzī, 22 November 1869[1] – 23 April 1928[2]) was a Catholic missionary of the Society of the Divine Word in Shandong during the period from 1893 to 1927.

The Juye incident (1897) was an attack on Stenz's mission station in Zhang Jia Village in which two German missionaries were killed.

In the Jietou incident, Stenz and a group of Chinese Christians were mistreated and held prisoner in the village of Jietou (Chinese: 街头镇; pinyin: Jiētóu zhèn, Rizhao) for three days (8–11 November 1898) resulting in German military intervention and compensation claims.

[2] In the autumn of 1881, he entered the second year (quinta) of a secondary school (gymnasium) in Montabaur where he lived in a residence (konvikt) of the Diocese of Limburg.

[2] Since the degree from the Styler Lyzeum was not recognized by the German state, he also gained a high-school diploma from the Montabaur secondary school in 1889 as an external student.

[2] He became a novice and studied theology at the St. Gabriel mission house of the Divine Word Missionaries in Maria Enzersdorf to the southwest of Vienna.

He stayed there until early 1895, when he was sent to work as an assistant to Franz-Xavier Nies in the mission station at Jiaxiang (嘉祥镇),[2] a town about 25 km to the west of Jining.

There he was held captive and mistreated in the Jietou Incident until the magistrate of Rhizhao intervened and had him freed around noon on 11 November.

[2] Although the article was published anonymously, Stenz was suspected to be the author and as a consequence was moved from Qingdao to Jining in early 1900 and was forbidden to write by the Vicar Apostolic of Southern Shandong, Johann Baptist von Anzer.

[4] In particular, he describes them as cunning ("verschmitzt") and with few exceptions incapable of true friendships ("gediegene Freundschaften"), as well as irascible ("Zorn"), cruel ("Grausamkeit"), cowardly ("Feigheit"), arrogant ("Stolz"), thankless ("Undankbarkeit"), and superstitious ("abergläubisch").

[4] Joseph Esherick has characterised Stenz as a "particularly obnoxious missionary" with "a strikingly unattractive character" who "thoroughly typified the militancy of the S.V.D.