Charlotte von Kirschbaum
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Charlotte von Kirschbaum (June 25, 1899-July 24, 1975) was a German theologian and a pupil of Karl Barth.
Charlotte von Kirschbaum was born in Ingolstadt. In 1916 her father died in the war. This induced her to be trained as a nurse. She become acquainted with Neo-Orthodoxy from Karl Barth. In 1924 the two met personally and in 1929 moved in with Nelly and Karl Barth and their five children in Münster.
This situation would last forty years. While Nelly supplied the household and the children, Charlotte and Barth worked together. She was the secretary and prepared his lectures. For the sake of the work she learnt Latin, Greek and Hebrew. She also visited the philosophical lectures of Heinrich Scholz. She made an important contribution to the production of Barth's Church Dogmatics.
In 1935 Barth moved to Basel. Charlotte followed into Switzerland. From there they supported the German Resistance.
In 1949 her theological book Die wirkliche Frau (The Real Woman) was published. It discussed the role of woman.
In the early 1960s she came to be ill from a cerebral disturbance. She moved to a nursing home in Riehen, where she died ten years later. She was buried in the family grave of the Barths.
[edit] Writings
- The Question of Woman: The Collected Writings of Charlotte Von Kirschbaum, Eerdmans Publishing Company (1996), ISBN 0802841422
[edit] Further reading
- Suzanne Selinger, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology, Penn State University Press (1998), ISBN 0-271-01824-0 - reviewed by George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary[1]
- Renate Kobler, In the Shadow of Karl Barth: Charlotte Von Kirschbaum, Westminster John Knox Press (1989), ISBN 0664250726
