(6:00 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Book Review: Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth by Suzanne Selinger

Selinger's book is subtitled "A Study in Biography and the History of Theology." Rather than offering a detailed chronicle of the relationship in the title, she presents a brief historical overview, which I will summarize. In his youth, Karl Barth fell in love with a young woman who seemed to be a potential soulmate; his family disapproved, and he gave up on the idea of marrying her, and the idea of finding true companionship as well. He married Nelly, by whom he had several children, but with whom he did not have a very deep bond.

After a period during his early ministry as pastor in Safenwil when he had a very intimate and intellectually productive relationship with Eduard Thurneysen, he met Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who completely changed his life. He paid for her to go to secretarial school in order to be his assistant, and the two came to be inseparable -- much to almost everyone's consternation, von Kirschbaum even moved into Barth's house and shared meals with his family. (At one point, Barth asked his wife for a divorce in order to marry von Kirschbaum, but she refused.) She travelled with him, served as his emissary, did much of the hard work of research for his theological writings, and became an indispensible dialog partner (one friend of both said she was "more Barthian than Barth"). The photographs in the book are remarkable, and it's a shame that the cover image is apparently not available online in a large size: the two worked day after day facing each other at the same small desk.

Selinger is a skillful historian, introducing the possibilities, but avoiding coming down too hard in favor of any one theory in those areas about which we just cannot know -- for instance, whether there was a sexual element to the relationship. At the same time, she never allows her work to degenerate into an indiscriminate vagueness, but illustrates very clearly the intensity of Barth and von Kirschbaum's intellectual relationship:

Think of yourself as two people, or of a day that has forty-eight hours. As you sit down, on schedule, to take the next step in your major work, which is also your lecture preparation, you have on your desk detailed notes and relevant extracts from all the texts you will address in this step, references to kindred sources, and notes on the historiography of the subject and on current discussion of it. You also know you've done a thorough job and have overlooked nothing that could help clinch your argument or function as a trap for you. You know too that you can't overlook any of the note-cards: they have been screened for redundancy.

Barth, of course, achieved this state of preparedness by way of von Kirschbaum, who had some help from successive student research assistants. In addition, in the course of his work he availed himself of his sounding board and dialogue partner, always ready in the study next door. Von Kirschbaum, able to serve these functions because of her intellectual communion with Barth, because she was even more Barthian than Barth, knew, nevertheless, that Church Dogmatics was Barth's work, and she was frequently in great suspence to see how it would turn out. (76)

The bulk of the book is devoted to an analysis of Barth and von Kirschbaum's deeply similar, yet distinctive views on human sexuality, the one theological project that von Kirschbaum thought of as "her own," separate from her work with Barth. This becomes, of necessity, an exploration of feminist thought in Germany (relatively unknown in the English-speaking world) and of the dialogical philosophy of Buber et al. that was to so deeply influence Barth. Both of these aspects of the work are very valuable, but even more fascinating was the careful bringing to bear of feminist and psychoanalytic criticism on Barth's relationship to von Kirschbaum -- including some insightful, yet non-reductive, comments on Barth's relationship to his mother.

In the end, Selinger is deeply critical of Barth for smothering and exploiting von Kirschbaum, while at the same time she remains a great admirer and exponent of his theology. Clearly, the Church Dogmatics as we have them would have been impossible to accomplish without von Kirschbaum's extreme overwork. In fact, Selinger even theorizes that Barth's extreme need to have von Kirschbaum with him at all times actually produced his "need" for her unceasing theological work -- such that (in my view), Church Dogmatics could be considered a direct product of their relationship, even if it was not co-authored in the normal sense. The fact that the work remained Barth's indicates the lack of symmetry in the relationship:

Von Kirschbaum's job was to be freely herself for Barth--a perfect realization of the I-Thou relationship. And she did choose it--it was her calling; it was Barth's work to which she said "That's it!" But Barth did not see as his job or calling to be himself for her. That is the unfreedom in their relationship, a Proustian captivity made by Barth and modern, post-Cartesian culture combined. The job description--the assignment of roles--served, I think, to contain and channel--and harness--the explosiveness in their relationship. It functioned as a model for both of them, and as such it had healthy and unhealthy, positive as well as deceptive and self-deceptive, aspects. Its one-sidedness... made it exploitative, as did its manipulative deflection from other possible responses to the tensions in their relationship. Part of the exploitativeness was that von Kirschbaum was confined by cultural boundaries, whereas Barth could experiment in his role-casting as he wished. But in the most genuine way, their relationship was theology. (190)

Surely such a deeply felt and intimate relationship helped to contribute to the gradual "softening" of Barth's theology, as seen in such later texts as The Humanity of God or the extant parts of Church Dogmatics IV -- but I propose that it may also have aggravated some of the worst parts of Barth's personality and perhaps even damaged his possible contribution to theology in the long term. Having as first reader an absolutely sympathetic reader, completely engulfed in his concerns, obviously contributed to the depth and richness of the analysis we find in Church Dogmatics, but it also contributes to the "black hole effect" of Barth's theology.

Despite his intention to open up new doors for theology and the church, it is clearly very difficult to engage deeply with Barth's theology without becoming a Barth fundamentalist -- not only because of a desire to justify to oneself the immense effort of reading the vast tracts of Church Dogmatics (parallel with the process of learning Lacan, perhaps), but also because of the seductiveness of his writing. Barth is a theologian who wants all of his reader, on Barth's own terms -- and perhaps we are poorer for his having gotten what he wanted from his first and best reader.

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