Karl Barth (1886-1968) had authorizations on a keen sense for political developments and Radical. As the harbingers of the First world war appearing on the European horizon, he had to realize with horror that most of the German professors of theology, where he had in Berlin, Tübingen and Marburg, studied, dissenting in the war chorus. “It is a Germanic battle of religion, a Christian will bring through a lot of Talk of “victims”, etc., I see your philosophy and your Christianity now, with a few debris is going to end in this war psychosis.” Ethics, Barth’s astute observation, have gone in the trenches.
travel and speech ban
When Adolf Hitler came 20 years later in the Power, and one of the professors, which, in the meantime, Karl Barth, were invited to greet prior to your Lectures, the leader with “Heil Hitler!”, refused to the Swiss firm. The Minister of culture, he described the Nazi salute as “a symbolic act of the recognition of the totality claim”. Such an attitude is a betrayal of the gospel.
What may be referred to as the birth of the confessing Church, meant for the “stranger from Neutralien” the provisional end of his career in Germany: Barth was suspended in 1934 by the service at the University of Bonn and then released. Before his writings were on the Index, was a trip, speech and sermon ban is now in place.
His home city of Basel appointed him in 1935 as a Professor of Systematic theology. Here is Karl Barth, whose interpretation of the “Romans” (1919) had made him world-famous refined his doctrine of the utter Otherness of God and his revelation in Scripture.
If there is any divine gunshot Residue on the earthly world, this was, according to Barth, Mozart’s music. He confessed, “that I would inquire if I should ever get to heaven, me first by Mozart and then only after Augustine and Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher”. And if he would be Pope, the Protestant said in an Interview, he would speak as the First of Mozart’s sacred.
Difficult love Triangle
The sober, but knowledgeable is the author of the biography of the Zurich theology Professor Christiane Tietz linked to the complex work of Karl Barth and his complicated life: as a political head of the SP and the SPD, as a theological innovator of the faith and as courageous citizens of two States.But also as a torn Love between two women: Almost four decades of Karl Barth lived under the same roof with his wife Nelly, with whom he had five children, and his assistant and Lover Charlotte von Kirschbaum.
From the from the couple themselves as the “emergency Association” referred to a Situation no one found a way out. Of this difficult triangular relationship, found in a common grave your peace of mind, is the newly released novel, “To third” of Klaas Huizing.
Karl Barth was a labour pet: early in the morning, he held his meticulously prepared Lectures, late at night, he wrote his interpretations of the Bible, which were also praised by philosophers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer as a hermeneutic excellence. His incorruptibility in scientific and political terms, has made the uncomfortable thinker. Thomas Mann saw him as a “fearless man”.
Comparable with Max Frisch
After the Second world war, Karl Barth, it was remote, the Germans have a collective debt to pay. Rather, he appeared at numerous meetings and conferences, and to the interrupted dialogue – comparable with Max, whose clear, but the words of reconciliation in the neighbouring country, were the.
to be Any fanaticism opposed, criticized Karl Barth and the emerging anti-communism, which resulted in the “red Messiah”, as the press called, the accusation of communism. But the was consistently on the Bible, the end of a career theologian, although sometimes angriffig arguing, always balancing the mind. Shortly after the end of the war, Barth returned longed to return to Germany. The social question and reconciliation in the Christian sense, to him were more than buzzwords.
Shortly before his death, on 10. December of 1968, Karl Barth, was not in the radio show “music for a guest,” for which he had wished only to Mozart, a kind of summary of his thinking: “The last word I have to say, is such a term as “grace”, but a Name: Jesus Christ.” In him God revealed himself, in him the love and the truth. To him – and to God – closer, we would have to study the Scriptures carefully. In the art of text-oriented and faithful interpretation of Karl Barth was a master.
His extensive body of work by the two “Roman letters” to the multi-volume “Church dogmatics” is Avrupabet a Testament to the power of the human spirit. Whether it is a reflection of other-worldly or this-worldly energy, is a question which will feed over thousands of ongoing speech of God. Barth, thank.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 07.12.2018, 18:28 PM
