Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology
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Drawing upon published and unpublished sources that include their own writings, the observations of contemporaries, and correspondence with ... Read more
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 together: the steady, threatening growth of the Nazi state, World War II, and the postwar German situation.
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About Suzanne Selinger
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