Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology

by Suzanne Selinger

Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth is the first concentrated study of the collaboration of the towering theologian Karl Barth and his secretary and theological assistant for more than three decades, Charlotte von Kirschbaum. Barth always maintained that he could not have produced his theological oeuvre without her. Von Kirschbaum was also his constant companion. Discussion of the two has long been aswirl in rumor and speculation, with regard both to their personal relationship and to von Kirschbaum’s part in Barth's theological achievement. Drawing upon published and unpublished sources that include their own writings, the observations of contemporaries, and correspondence with people who knew them, Suzanne Selinger seeks to describe the collaboration in a multidimensional way. Von Kirschbaum gave a series of lectures in 1949, published in the same year, on women in the perspective of Scripture, theology, and the church. In the three volumes of Barth's Church Dogmatics that deal with humankind, including the male-female relationship as the locus of the image of God, Barth cites von Kirschbaum's scholarship. The subject inevitably reflects upon their own relationship. Moreover, it is just this subject―the anthropology of gender―that has been the source of the categorical rejection of Barth by many feminists. The author―a Barthian, a feminist, and a trained historian―addresses the concerns of Barth's critics by agreeing deeply with them in part but also by insisting upon understanding Barth and von Kirschbaum contextually. This means biographically and in relation to early German feminism (a phenomenon little known in the English-speaking world), the intellectual movement known as dialogical personalism, and the background of everything Barth and von Kirschbaum wrote or thought in their work the steady, threatening growth of the Nazi state, World War II, and the postwar German situation.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Amie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just included Barth's discussion of marriage and parent-child relationships (plus his Christology and anthropology in which specific relationships are grounded) as a chapter in my thesis, this was a very interesting companion to my own struggles with his view of the place of women. Knowing more of the background out of which his theology grew on this issue, including his relationship and dialogue with von Kirschbaum, I see him now in a better light, especially compared with his contemporaries. It was quite an interesting read for me, and mitigates (even though it doesn't change or negate) my criticisms of his insistence on my subordination to men.

[Daniel]

Review on JSTOR.