Page History

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I always scan the index to a book before reading it. Barth was of course mentioned in the introductory section of Streit um die Frauenordination as a key founding member of the BK in the 1930s. Unexpectedly, I found an index reference to the main section, "Quellentexte," for Charlotte von Kirschbaum. Hooray--- but what was she doing amidst these documents and this debate?

Wiki MarkupFootnote 48 expands upon a postscript in Document 82, which is a letter of November 1942, on the BK deliberations written by committee member Hermann Diem to Ernst Wolf, both of them colleagues and trusted friends of Karl and Charlotte. Diem is disgusted with the rigid anti-ordination stance of the dominant voices in the assembly. In the postscript, he tells Wolf he is sending him an informative contribution to the debate by a non-committee member, "Tante \ [Aunt\] L." This is code for Charlotte von Kirschbaum---her nickname was Lollo, and the Barth children called her Tante Lollo after she moved into the Barth household. The footnote provides this identification and the title of her piece: "_Einige Anmerkungen zu Abschnitt II des Protokolls. Der Dienst der Frau im NT_ \ [Remarks on section II of the Committee's protocol: The roles of women in the New Testament.\]." Diem found persuasive von Kirschbaum's "positive" reading of scriptural passages he had previously dismissed as irrelevant outside their historical context. But it was too late for anyone to influence the debate. The committee had decided that, at the end of the war and upon the return , or resupply, of the 'real' rectors, women were to relinquish preaching and administering the sacrament, and confine their activities to those of curate.

So von Kirschbaum had participated in this interesting debate. And so a biographer had stumbled upon another invisible strand in her life, recorded in another unpublished text. I had to find that text! This turned out to be reasonably easy, after satisfyingly causing some confusion in the Barth-Archiv in Basel . I e-mailed the archivist, a fine, highly respected scholar with whom I had become acquainted on a visit to Basel , and asked for a copy of von Kirschbaum's essay for the BK. He e-mailed back that he didn't think it existed. I said it certainly did, and faxed him Footnote 48. Within a few days, he sent me an e-mail with two versions of the text. A research mini-coup! I later got a third copy, from the women's history group that had published Streit um die Frauenordination.⁴ 

Wiki MarkupAs I read von Kirschbaum's commentary, I realized it was also an early version of one of the major parts of the work we know as _Die Wirkliche Frau_, the collection of her essays based on a lecture series she gave.^5^ ⁵ The argument of the BK piece paralleled that of the essay, "_Der Dienst der Frau in der Wortverkhndigung_" \ ["The Role of Women in the Proclamation of the Word"\]. Here, too, was von Kirschbaum's uncommon way of proceeding from the key Scriptural passages that were typically used to enforce gender stereotypes, and demonstrating contextual and especially intratextual exegesis which leads to different conclusions. Many of her core ideas were recognizable in this text, while some were new to me and seem not to have appeared after this presentation. One, on the roles of women and men in the church, was of particular interest in its trenchant and creative revision of tradition. The church roles are different, just as men and women are different and their respective spiritual gifts are different. Men proclaim the Word (the Teaching church); women listen (the Hearing church). However, the roles are not essentialist but _representative_. While clearly defined roles and their interrelations, as such, are necessary for order, and the church roles generally hold as described, they _can_ and _should_ be interchanged from time to time. There is nothing like this in von Kirschbaum's later published texts, or in Barth. Would that there were.

The Second Footnote
At about the same time, I encountered another arresting footnote, one that supplied a different kind of information. It did not widen the sphere of von Kirschbaum's life; rather, it opened up a text to strata I had not seen and processes I had only hypothesized. In the note, Charlotte explained how Die Wirkliche Frau had come into existence and evolved as it did. In doing so, she provided a map of her collaboration with Barth, which was always the heart of my subject.unmigrated-wiki-markup

The footnote was in an article by Regine Munz on Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Simone de Beauvoir.^6^ ⁶ In the note, Munz quoted a letter from Charlotte to a friend in 1946, as evidence of von Kirschbaum's long-standing interest in the subject of gender. Charlotte writes to her friend that she and Barth are focusing on humanity in preparation for book III, volume 2, of the _Church Dogmatics._ Barth defines humanity as "_being with_ one's fellow human," the original and primary form of which is the being \ [with each other\] of man and woman. In the course of their work, Charlotte relates, she retrieved her own past work on the subject, of which we have just seen a significant part. She showed the work to Barth, and it "found grace in his eyes." Now she sees the possibility of bringing it to a completed form\! However, since she last worked on it, _CD_ III/1, with its excellent exegesis of Gen.2:18ff on the creation of woman, which is an important focus of her work, has appeared, and she must consider her exegesis anew. Then she will write a Protestant answer to Gertrud von Le Fort's book, _Die Ewige Frau._ Perhaps as such a specifically delineated task, written "in more concise and readable form," she can say what she had over the years produced in exegetical work on this topic.

Close readers of CD III are aware that Barth cites von Kirschbaum's WF several times. He also refers to his foundational exegesis of Gen.2 in III/1: I think he is, properly, both crediting and limiting von Kirschbaum's contribution on his subject. Readers of my book may also remember a remark I quoted that von Kirschbaum made to Barth from time to time in their work on male and female humanity: "...you stole that from me."⁷ Unaware, at the time, of her commentary of 1942, for the BK debate on ordination, or of other exegetical writings prior to WF --at least on Genesis 2, which the Munz footnote strongly implies--I had assumed that von Kirschbaum's remark to Barth about taking her ideas referred only to their ongoing dialogue as Barth produced the Dogmatics. When I tried to describe their collaboration, I called it an exchange and used the image of a thick braid, the strands of which can't be sorted out and measured. I'd still say that, generally, but in at least one central instance, we now have a definite record of exchange and a much closer, longer cross-temporal view than before.

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