Barth may refer to:

• Barth (name), a surname (and list of people with that name)
• Karl Barth, (1886-1968) seminal Swiss Reformed Theologian.
• Barth, Germany, a town in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany
  • Barth (Amt), administrative subdivision
• Barth Classic, a golf tournament on the LPGA Tour from 1974 to 1980
• Barth Island, Nunavut, Canada
• Barth (character), a character from the television show "You Can't Do That on Television"
• Barth Custom Coaches, a former (1963-1998) manufacturer of premium Class A motor homes

See also[link]

• Barth syndrome, a metabolic disorder
• Barthes (disambiguation)
• Barthe (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the German Wikipedia. (July 2010) Don't speak German? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the German article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|de|Mario Barth}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Mario Barth
Born	(1972-11-01) 1 November 1972 (age 39) Berlin-Mariendorf, West Germany
Website
Official website

Mario Barth(*1. November 1972 in Berlin) is a German comedian who mainly deals in his programs with the interactions between men and women.

Life[link]

Barth was born as one out of six children in a Berlin family in Berlin-Mariendorf. His parents sent him to a Catholic private school. He is a Catholic and when he was young he volunteered as an altar boy. After finishing an apprenticeship as telecommunication electrician at Siemens in Berlin he started an education as actor, which he also finished successfully.

During several comedy-workshops, for example at the Comedy School in Cologne, he met actors and comedians such as Diether Krebs, Anka Zink and Thomas Hermanns. When he performed on TV shows such as NightWash and Quatsch Comedy Club, he gained a lot of experience on stage. Since the beginning of 2001 he has been on the road with his stage show "Männer sind Schweine, Frauen aber auch!" (Men are pigs, but women are too). In 2003 he came up with his own comedy question-programm called "keine ahnung?" (no clue). The second season was broadcast in 2005. Barth was an occasional guest in the comedy show Schillerstraße, where amongst other things he could be seen as a heating engineer, an insect eliminator, a master potter and as a funeral director. Furthermore he took part in the RTL- show "Typisch Frau – Typisch Mann" right from the beginning.

On 28 October 2005 his Live-DVD "Männer sind Schweine, Frauen aber auch!" was published after it had been recorded on June 24 and 25 in Berlin. The DVD reached the third place of the German album-charts and in the meantime it has been awarded ten times with platinum for being sold over two million times.

On 16 February 2006 Barth started his new program Männer sind primitiv, aber glücklich! and for that he received the German Comedy Award in the category best live-comedy in October 2006. RTL broadcast on the 1 and 8 December 2006 the program Mario sucht das Paradies aus, where he travelled around in Dubai, as a cowboy in Texas, as a fireman in Dallas, as a pilot à la Top Gun as well as in Hollywood with Ralf Möller. Since the 30th November 2007 RTL has shown the ten-part, new entertainment program Mario Barth präsentiert. 2009 Mario Barth produced his own first movie, the comedy Männersache, where he eleborated on the relationship between man and woman just as in his comedy-programs. Moreover the audio book Männersache came out in April of the same year. On 12 July 2008 Barth established a new world record in the category "live-comedy with the largest audience" as he performed in front of 70,000 people in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. Until then the record was 15,900 comedy-visitors at a show by the US-comedian Chris Rock in London. With the performance he also published his single Mensch Berlin which he recorded with Paul Kuhn. In September 2008 the DVD "Die Weltrekord-Show: Männer sind primitiv aber glücklich!" was published which included the whole performance in the Olympic Stadium.

Mario Barth was elected out of 100 candidates to the „most embarrassing man“ of Berlin by the Berlin journal "tip" by the end of 2008. On 2 May 2009 Barth started up his new stage program entitled "Männer sind peinlich, Frauen manchmal auch!". In September 2009 the matching live-cd was published. Since 2009 he is host to the comedy-show "Willkommen bei Mario Barth" on RTL. In March 2010 the cd-compilation "Die Trilogie" was released, which included his live on stage performances of the programs "Männer sind Schweine, Frauen aber auch!", "Männer sind primitiv, aber glücklich!" as well as "Männer sind peinlich, Frauen manchmal auch!". In September 2010 the DVD of his on stage performances "Männer sind peinlich, Frauen manchmal auch!" was published. In December 2010 Barth registered the quotation „Nichts reimt sich auf Uschi“ by the Cologne Lawyers Office Jonas as a protected expression although this quotation was noted by Oliver Kalkhofe and Dietmar Wischmeyer as presenters of the show Frühstyradio at Radio ffn. A t-shirt producer who had printed this quotation on t-shirts was officially warned by the lawyer office Jonas whereby a value of claim of 100,000 € was set. Barth lives both in Berlin and in Düsseldorf where his entertainment company is settled.

References[link]

• German Album Charts

External links[link]

• Official website (German)
• Mario Barth at the Internet Movie Database

Karl Barth
Born	(1886-05-10)May 10, 1886 Basel, Switzerland
Died	December 10, 1968(1968-12-10) (aged 82) Basel, Switzerland
Occupation	Theologian; Author
Tradition or movement	Reformed
Notable ideas	Dialectical theology
Notable works	The Epistle to the Romans; Church Dogmatics
Influences	Athanasius of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Hermann Kutter, Christoph Blumhardt, Franz Overbeck, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Herrmann, Hermann Cohen
Influenced	Neoorthodoxy, Barthianism, Thomas Torrance, Hans Wilhelm Frei, Eberhard Jüngel

Karl Barth ((1886-05-10)May 10, 1886 – December 10, 1968(1968-12-10)) (pronounced "Bart") was a Swiss Reformed theologian whom many scholars hold to be among the most important thinkers of the 20th century; Pope Pius XII described him as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas.^[1] Beginning with his experience as a pastor, he rejected his training in the predominant liberal theology typical of 19th-century European Protestantism.^[2]

Instead he embarked on a new theological path initially called dialectical theology, due to its stress on the paradoxical nature of divine truth (e.g., God's relationship to humanity embodies both grace and judgment).^[3] Other critics have referred to Barth as the father of neo-orthodoxy^[2] — a term emphatically rejected by Barth himself.^[4] The most accurate description of his work might be "a theology of the Word."^[5] Barth's theological thought emphasized the sovereignty of God, particularly through his interpretation of the Calvinistic doctrine of election.

Early life and education[link]

Born on 10 May 1886 in Basel, Switzerland, to Johann Friedrich "Fritz" Barth and Anna Katharina (Sartorius) Barth. Fritz was a theology professor and clergyman who would greatly influence his son’s life. In particular, Fritz was fascinated by philosophy, especially the implications of Friedrich Nietzsche’s theories on free will. Barth spent his childhood years in Bern. From 1911 to 1921 he served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton Aargau. In 1913 he married Nelly Hoffmann, a talented violinist. They had a daughter and four sons, one of whom was the New Testament scholar Markus Barth (October 6, 1915 – July 1, 1994). Later he was professor of theology in Göttingen (1921–1925), Münster (1925–1930) and Bonn (1930–1935) (Germany). While serving at Göttingen he met Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who became his long-time secretary and assistant; she played a large role in the writing of his epic the Church Dogmatics.^[6] He had to leave Germany in 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Barth went back to Switzerland and became professor in Basel (1935–1962).

Barth was originally trained in German Protestant Liberalism under such teachers as Wilhelm Herrmann, but reacted against this theology at the time of the First World War. His reaction was fed by several factors, including his commitment to the German and Swiss Religious Socialist movement surrounding men like Hermann Kutter, the influence of the Biblical Realism movement surrounding men like Christoph Blumhardt and Søren Kierkegaard, and the effect of the skeptical philosophy of Franz Overbeck.

The most important catalyst was, however, his reaction to the support most of his liberal teachers had for German war aims. The 1914 "Manifesto of the Ninety-Three German Intellectuals to the Civilized World"^[7] carried the signature of his former teacher Adolf von Harnack. Barth believed that his teachers had been misled by a theology which tied God too closely to the finest, deepest expressions and experiences of cultured human beings, into claiming divine support for a war which they believed was waged in support of that culture–the initial experience of which appeared to increase people's love of and commitment to that culture. Much of Barth's early theology can be seen as a reaction to the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

[edit] The Epistle to the Romans

In his commentary The Epistle to the Romans (Ger. Der Römerbrief), particularly in the thoroughly re-written second edition of 1922, Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the cross of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures, achievements, or possessions. Many theologians and religious historians^[who?] believe this work to be the most important theological treatise since Friedrich Schleiermacher's On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers.

In the decade following the First World War, Barth was linked with a number of other theologians–actually very diverse in outlook–who had reacted against their teachers' liberalism, in a movement known as "Dialectical Theology" (Ger. Dialektische Theologie). The members of the movement included Rudolf Bultmann, Eduard Thurneysen, Emil Brunner, and Friedrich Gogarten.

Barmen Declaration[link]

In 1934, as the Protestant Church attempted to come to terms with the Third Reich, Barth was largely responsible for the writing of the Barmen declaration (Ger. Barmer Erklärung) which rejected the influence of Nazism on German Christianity–arguing that the Church's allegiance to the God of Jesus Christ should give it the impetus and resources to resist the influence of other 'lords'–such as the German Führer, Adolf Hitler. Barth mailed this declaration to Hitler personally. This was one of the founding documents of the Confessing Church and Barth was elected a member of its leadership council, the Bruderrat.

He was forced to resign from his professorship at the University of Bonn in 1935 for refusing to swear an oath to Hitler. Barth then returned to his native Switzerland, where he assumed a chair in systematic theology at the University of Basel. In the course of his appointment he was required to answer a routine question asked of all Swiss civil servants: whether he supported the national defense. His answer was, "Yes, especially on the northern border!" In 1938 he wrote a letter to a Czech colleague, Josef Hromádka, in which he declared that soldiers who fought against the Third Reich were serving a Christian cause.

Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics

[edit] Church Dogmatics

Barth's theology found its most sustained and compelling expression through his thirteen-volume magnum opus, the Church Dogmatics (Ger. "Kirchliche Dogmatik"). Widely regarded as one of the most important theological works of the century, if not ever, the Church Dogmatics represents the pinnacle of Barth's achievement as a theologian. Church dogmatics, which stands at over six million words and eight thousand pages in length, is one of the longest works of systematic theology ever written.^[8][9][10]

The Church Dogmatics address four major doctrines: Revelation, God, Creation, and Atonement or Reconciliation. Barth had initially also intended to complete his dogmatics addressing the doctrines of Redemption and eschatology, but decided not to complete the project in the later years of his life.^[11]

Later life[link]

After the end of the Second World War, Barth became an important voice in support both of German penitence and of reconciliation with churches abroad. Together with Hans-Joachim Iwand, he authored the Darmstadt Statement in 1947–a more concrete statement of German guilt and responsibility for the Third Reich and Second World War than the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt of 1945. In it, he made the point that the Church's willingness to side with anti-socialist and conservative forces had led to its susceptibility for National Socialist ideology. In the context of the developing Cold War, that controversial statement was rejected by anti-Communists in the West who supported the CDU course of re-militarization, as well as by East German dissidents, who believed that it did not sufficiently depict the dangers of Communism. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950.^[12] In the 1950s, Barth sympathized with the peace movement and opposed German rearmament.

Karl Barth in 1956.

Barth wrote a 1960 article for The Christian Century regarding the "East-West question", in which he denied any inclination toward Eastern communism and stated he did not wish to live under Communism or wish anyone to be forced to do so; he acknowledged a fundamental disagreement with most of those around him, writing: "I do not comprehend how either politics or Christianity require or even permit such a disinclination to lead to the conclusions which the West has drawn with increasing sharpness in the past 15 years. I regard anticommunism as a matter of principle an evil even greater than communism itself."^[13]

In 1962, Barth visited the US and lectured at Princeton Theological Seminary; University of Chicago; Union Theological Seminary; and San Francisco Theological Seminary. He was invited to be a guest at the Second Vatican Council, after which he wrote a small volume, Ad Limina Apostolorum [At the Threshold of the Apostles] (Karl Barth, a Theological Legacy, page 26). Also in 1962, Barth was featured on the cover of the April 20 issue of Time, showing that his influence reached out of academic and ecclesiastical circles and into mainstream American religious culture.

Theology[link]

Barth tries to recover the Doctrine of the Trinity in theology from its putative loss in liberalism. His argument follows from the idea that God is the object of God’s own self-knowledge, and revelation in the Bible means the self-unveiling to humanity of the God who cannot be discovered by humanity simply through its own intuition.

Election[link]

One of the most influential and controversial features of Barth's Dogmatics was his doctrine of election (Church Dogmatics II/2). Barth's theology entails a rejection of the idea that God chose each person to either be saved or damned based on purposes of the Divine will, and it was impossible to know why God chose some and not others.

Barth's doctrine of election involves a firm rejection of the notion of an eternal, hidden decree. In keeping with his Christo-centric methodology, Barth argues that to ascribe the salvation or damnation of humanity to an abstract absolute decree is to make some part of God more final and definitive than God's saving act in Jesus Christ. God's absolute decree, if one may speak of such a thing, is God's gracious decision to be for humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Drawing from the earlier Reformed tradition, Barth retains the notion of double predestination but makes Jesus himself the object of both divine election and reprobation simultaneously; Jesus embodies both God's election of humanity and God's rejection of human sin. While some regard this revision of the doctrine of election as an improvement^[14] on the Augustinian-Calvinist doctrine of the predestination of individuals, critics, namely Brunner,^[15] have charged that Barth's view amounts to a soft universalism.

Barth, liberals and fundamentalists[link]

Although Barth's theology rejected German Protestant liberalism, his theology has usually not found favour with those at the other end of the theological spectrum: confessionalists and fundamentalists. His doctrine of the Word of God, for instance, holds that Christ is the Word of God, and does not proceed by arguing or proclaiming that the Bible must be uniformly historically and scientifically accurate, and then establishing other theological claims on that foundation.

Karl Barth's desk with painting of Matthias Grunewald’s crucifixion scene.

Some fundamentalist critics have joined liberal counterparts in referring to Barth as "neo-orthodox" because, while his theology retains most or all of the tenets of their understanding of Christianity, he is seen as rejecting the belief which is a linchpin of their theological system: biblical inerrancy. Such critics believe the written text must be considered to be historically accurate and verifiable and see Barth's view as a separation of theological truth from historical truth.^[16] Barth could respond by saying that the claim that the foundation of theology is biblical inerrancy is to use a foundation other than Jesus Christ, and that our understanding of Scripture's accuracy and worth can only properly emerge from consideration of what it means for it to be a true witness to the incarnate Word, Jesus.

The relationship between Barth, liberalism, and fundamentalism goes far beyond the issue of inerrancy, however. From Barth's perspective, liberalism, as understood in the sense of the 19th century with Friedrich Schleiermacher and Hegel as its leading exponents and not necessarily expressed in any particular political ideology, is the divinization of human thinking. This, to him, inevitably leads one or more philosophical concepts to become the false God, thus attempting to block the true voice of the living God. This, in turn, leads to the captivity of theology by human ideology. In Barth's theology, he emphasizes again and again that human concepts of any kind, breadth or narrowness quite beside the point, can never be considered as identical to God's revelation. In this aspect, Scripture is also written human language, which bears witness to the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Scripture cannot be considered as identical to God's self-revelation, which is properly only Jesus Christ. However, in his freedom and love, God truly reveals himself through human language and concepts, with a view toward their necessity in reaching fallen humanity. Thus Barth claims that Christ is truly presented in Scripture and the preaching of the church, echoing a stand expressed in his native Swiss Reformed Church's Helvetic Confession of the 16th century.

He opposes any attempts to closely relate theology and philosophy. His approach in that respect is predominantly Christocentric, and is thus termed "kerygmatic," as opposed to "apologetic".

Relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum[link]

When Barth first met Charlotte von Kirschbaum in 1924 he had already been married for 12 years to his wife, Nelly, with whom he had also had five children.^[17] In 1929, von Kirschbaum, with Barth's consent, moved into the Barth family household. This arrangement–described by one scholar as "convoluted, extremely painful for all concerned, yet not without integrity and joys"–lasted for 35 years.^[18]

A kind of household of three relationship developed between Barth, von Kirschbaum and Barth's wife, Nelly. The long-standing situation was not without its difficulties. "Lollo",^[19] as Barth called the 13-year-younger von Kirschbaum, once wrote to Barth's sister Gertrud Lindt in 1935, where she expressed her concern about the precarious situation:

"The alienation between Karl and Nelly has reached a degree which could hardly increase. This has certainly become accentuated by my existence."^[20]

The relationship caused great offence among many of Barth's friends, as well as his own mother.^[21] Barth's children suffered from the stress of the relationship.^[21] Barth and von Kirschbaum took semester break vacations together.^[21] While Nelly supplied the household and the children, von Kirschbaum and Barth shared an academic relationship. Barth has fallen victim to criticism for his relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum. One critic has written: "Part of any realistic response to the subject of Barth and von Kirschbaum must be anger."^[22] Hunsinger summarizes the influence of von Kirschbaum on Barth's work: "As his unique student, critic, researcher, adviser, collaborator, companion, assistant, spokesperson, and confidant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum was indispensable to him. He could not have been what he was, or have done what he did, without her."

German stamp depicting Barth.

In literature[link]

In John Updike's Roger's Version, Roger Lambert is a professor of religion. Lambert is influenced by the works of Karl Barth. That is the primary reason that he rejects his student's attempt to use computational methods to understand God. Harry Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven makes mentions of Barth's Church Dogmatics, as does David Markson's The Last Novel. In the case of Mulisch and Markson, it is the ambitious nature of the Church Dogmatics that seems to be of significance. In the case of Updike, it is the emphasis on the idea of God as "Wholly Other" that is emphasized.

In Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, the preacher John Ames reveres Barth's "Epistle to the Romans" and refers to it as his favorite book other than the Bible.

Whittaker Chambers cites Barth in nearly all his books: Witness (p. 507), Cold Friday (p. 194), and Odyssey of a Friend (pp. 201, 231).

Center for Barth Studies[link]

Princeton Theological Seminary, where Barth lectured in 1962, houses the Center for Barth Studies, which is dedicated to supporting scholarship related to the work of Karl Barth. The center was established in 1997 and sponsors seminars, conferences, and other events. It also holds the Karl Barth Research Collection, which contains nearly all of Barth's works in English and German, several first editions of his works, and an original handwritten manuscript by Barth.^[23]

Quotations[link]

This section is a candidate to be copied to Wikiquote using the Transwiki process.

• Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is Himself the way.

• The best theology would need no advocates: it would prove itself.

• Belief cannot argue with unbelief, it can only preach to it.

• There is a notion that complete impartiality is the most fitting and indeed the normal disposition for true exegesis, because it guarantees complete absence of prejudice. For a short time, around 1910, this idea threatened to achieve almost a canonical status in Protestant theology. But now, we can quite calmly describe it as merely comical.
  • Church Dogmatics 1:2, 469

• The center is not something which is under our control, but something that controls us.
  • Church Dogmatics

• Barth’s dedication to the sole authority and power of the Word of God was illustrated for us… while we were in Basel. Barth was engaged in a dispute over the stained glass windows in the Basel Münster. The windows had been removed during World War II for fear they would be destroyed by bombs, and Barth was resisting the attempt to restore them to the church. His contention was that the church did not need portrayals of the gospel story given by stained glass windows. The gospel came to the church only through the Word proclaimed. …the incident was typical of Barth’s sole dedication to the Word.
  • Elizabeth Achtemeier, writing about Barth

• To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.

• In the Resurrection the new world of the Holy Spirit touches the old world of the flesh, but touches it as a tangent touches a circle, that is, without touching it.
  • Barth 1933, p. 30

• What expressions we used — in part taken over and in part newly invented! — above all, the famous ‘wholly other’ breaking in upon us ‘perpendicularly from above,’ the not less famous ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between God and man, the vacuum, the mathematical point, and the tangent in which alone they must meet.
  • Barth 1960, p. 42

• It may be that when the angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart and that then too our dear Lord listens with special pleasure.

• His groundbreaking 1919 commentary on Romans “fell like a bombshell on the playground of the theologians."
  • Karl Adam (in Das Hochland (June 1926), 276-7)

• I haven't even read everything I wrote.
  • (possibly apocryphal response to a student who claimed to have read everything Professor Barth had written)

See also[link]

Saints portal

• Karl Barth's views on Mary

Writings[link]

• The epistle to the Romans By Karl Barth, E. C. Hoskyns, 1933, 1968 ISBN 0-19-500294-6
• Karl Barth: centenary essays By Karl Barth, Stephen Sykes, 1989
• Prayer and Preaching
• Preaching Through the Christian Year ISBN 0-8028-1725-4
• God Here and Now
• Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God in the Context of His Theological Scheme, John Knox (1960); reprinted by Pickwick Publications (1985) ISBN 0-915138-75-1
• Evangelical Theology: An Introduction
• Church and State
• The Humanity of God, 1960, John Knox Press, ISBN 0-8042-0612-0
• The Christian Life , posthumous lecture fragments, ISBN 0-567-09320-4, ISBN 0-8028-3523-6
• The Word in this World: Two Sermons by Karl Barth. Edited by Kurt I. Johanson. Regent Publishing (Vancouver, BC, Canada): 2007
• "No Angels of Darkness and Light", The Christian Century, 20 January 1960, p. 72 (reprinted in Contemporary Moral Issues, Second Edition, Harry K. Girvetz, editor. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1968)
• The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, Vol 1: ISBN 0-8028-2421-8: Text of Barth's Lectures in Göttingen
• The Word of God and The Word of Man., 1978, Gloucester, Mass. ISBN 978-0-8446-1599-8

[edit] The Church Dogmatics in English translation

• Volume I Part 1: Doctrine of the Word of God: Prolegomena to Church Dogmatics, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09013-2, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05059-9
• Volume I Part 2: Doctrine of the Word of God, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09012-4, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05069-6
• Volume II Part 1: The Doctrine of God: The Knowledge of God; The Reality of God, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09021-3, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05169-2
• Volume II Part 2: The Doctrine of God: The Election of God; The Command of God, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09022-1, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05179-X
• Volume III Part 1: The Doctrine of Creation: The Work of Creation, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09031-0, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05079-3
• Volume III Part 2: The Doctrine of Creation: The Creature, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09032-9, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05089-0
• Volume III Part 3: The Doctrine of Creation: The Creator and His Creature, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09033-7, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05099-8
• Volume III Part 4: The Doctrine of Creation: : The Command of God the Creator, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09034-5, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05109-9
• Volume IV Part 1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09041-8, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05129-3
• Volume IV Part 2: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ the Servant As Lord, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09042-6, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05139-0
• Volume IV Part 3, 1st half: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ the True Witness, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09043-4, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05189-7
• Volume IV Part 3, 2nd half: Doctrine of Reconciliation: Jesus Christ the True Witness, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09044-2, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05149-8
• Volume IV Part 4 (unfinished): Doctrine of Reconciliation: The Foundation of the Christian Life (Baptism), hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09045-0, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05159-5
• Volume V: Church Dogmatics: Contents and Indexes, hardcover: ISBN 0-567-09046-9, softcover: ISBN 0-567-05119-6
• Church Dogmatics, 14 volume set, softcover, ISBN 0-567-05809-3
• Dogmatics in Outline, (1947 lectures), Harper Perennial, 1959, ISBN 0-06-130056-X
• Church Dogmatics: A Selection, with intro. by H. Gollwitzer, 1961, Westminster John Knox Press 1994 edition, ISBN 0-664-25550-7
• Church Dogmatics, dual language German and English, books with CDROM, ISBN 0-567-08374-8
• Church Dogmatics, dual language German and English, CDROM only, ISBN 0-567-08364-0

• On Religion. Edited and translated by Garrett Green. London: T & T Clark, 2006.

Audio[link]

• Evangelical Theology, American lectures 1962 - given by Barth in Chicago, Illinois and Princeton, New Jersey, ISBN 978-0-9785738-0-5 and ISBN 0-9785738-0-3

Secondary bibliography[link]

• Bradshaw, Timothy. 1988. Trinity and ontology: a comparative study of the theologies of Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Rutherford House Books (reprint edn. Lewiston; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press for Rutherford House, Edinburgh, 1992).
• Bromiley, Geoffrey William. 1979. An introduction to the theology of Karl Barth. Grand Rapids, Mich. : William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.,
• Busch, Eberhard. Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts. Fortress Press, 1976
• __________. The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth's Theology. Eerdmans, 2004.
• Chung, Paul S., Karl Barth: God's Word in Action. James Clarke & Co, Cambridge (2008), ISBN 978-0-227-17266-7
• Clark, Gordon. 1963. Karl Barth's Theological Method., Trinity Foundation, (1997), ISBN 0-940931-51-6.
• Fiddes, Paul. 1990. 'The status of women in the thought of Karl Barth', in Janet Martin Soskice, ed., After Eve [alternative title After Eve: women, theology and the Christian tradition], pp. 138–55. Marshall Pickering
• Mark Galli (2000). "Neo-Orthodoxy: Karl Barth". Christianity Today.
• Gorringe, Timothy Karl Barth: Against Hegemony, (Oxford: OUP, 1999)
• Hunsinger, George. How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology‎. Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Jae Jin Kim, Die Universalitaet der Versoehnung im Gottesbund. Zur biblischen Begruendung der Bundestheologie in der kirchlichen Dogmatik Karl Barths, Lit Verlag, 1992.
• McCormack, Bruce Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909–1936 : Oxford University Press, USA (March 27, 1997), ISBN 978-0-19-826956-4
• McKenny, Gerald. "The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth's Moral Theology." Oxford: OUP, 2010. ISBN 0-19-958267-X.
• Mangina, Joseph L., Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004.
• Webster, John, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• _________. Barth. 2nd ed., Continuum, 2004.

• "Witness to an Ancient Truth". TIME. April 20, 1962. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873557,00.html. 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Karl Barth

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Karl Barth

• Top Ten Theologians: Karl Barth Parchment & Pen
• The Center for Barth Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary
• Barth Literature Search Project Complete Bibliography of Literature by and about Karl Barth
• Karl Barth Reading Room, with extensive links to on-line primary and secondary sources, Tyndale Seminary.
• April 20, 1962 Time Magazine Cover story on Karl Barth
• Karl Barth-Archiv
• Primer on Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics
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Painting of Marianne Weber.

Marianne Weber, (born Marianne Schnitger on August 2, 1870 in Oerlinghausen, died March 12, 1954 in Heidelberg), sociologist, women's rights activist and wife of Max Weber.

Life[link]

Girlhood, 1870-1893[link]

Marianne Schnitger was born on August 2, 1870 in Oerlinghausen to medical doctor Eduard Schnitger and his wife Anna Weber, daughter of a prominent Oerlinghausen businessman Karl Weber.^[1] After the death of her mother in 1873 she moved to Lemgo and was raised for the next fourteen years by her grandmother and aunt. During this time, both her father and his two brothers went mad and were institutionalized.^[2] When Marianne turned 16, Karl Weber sent her off to fashionable finishing schools in Lemgo and Hanover, from which she graduated when she was 19. After the death of her grandmother in 1889, she lived several years with her mother's sister Alwine in Oerlinghausen.

In 1891, Marianne began to spend time with the Charlottenburg Webers, Max, Jr. and his mother Helene in particular. She became very close to Helene, who she would refer to as being "unaware of her own inner beauty.^[3]" In 1893 she and Max Weber married in Oerlinghausen and moved into their own apartment in Berlin.

Marriage, 1893-1920[link]

Marianne and Max Weber, 1894

During the first few years of their marriage, Max taught first in Berlin, then, in 1894, at University of Heidelberg.^[4] During this time, Marianne pursued her own studies. After moving to Freiburg in 1894 she studied with leading neo-Kantian philosopher Heinrich Rickert. She also began to engage herself in the women's movement after hearing prominent feminist speakers at a political congress in 1895. In 1896, in Heidelberg, she co-founded a society for the circulation of feminist thought. She also worked with Max to raise the level of women students attending the university.

In 1898, Max suffered a psychological collapse, possibly brought on after his father's death, which happened shortly after Max confronted him regarding abuse of Helene.^[5] Between 1898 and 1904, Max withdrew from public life, moving in and out of mental institutions, traveling compulsively and resigning from his prominent position at University of Heidelberg.^[5] During this time, their roles reversed somewhat; as Max worked toward recovery and rested at home, Marianne attended political meetings, sometimes until late at night, and published her first book in 1900: Fichtes Sozialismus und sein Verhältnis zur Marxschen Doktrin ("Fichte's Socialism and its Relation to Marxist Doctrine").^[6]

In 1904, the Webers toured America.^[7] In America, Marianne met both Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, both staunch feminists and active political reformers ^[8] Also during that year, Max re-entered the public sphere, publishing, among other things, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Marianne also continued her own scholarship, publishing her landmark work in 1907: Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung ("Marriage, Motherhood and the Law").

In 1907, Karl Weber died, and left enough money to his granddaughter Marianne for the Webers to live comfortably.^[9] During this time, Marianne first established her intellectual salon. Between 1907 and the start of World War I, Marianne enjoyed a rise in status as an intellectual and scholar as she published "The Question of Divorce" (1909), "Authority and Autonomy in Marriage" and "On the Valuation of Housework" (both in 1912), and "Women and Objective Culture" (1913). While the Webers presented a united front in public life, as Max defended his wife from her scholarly detractors, Max carried on an affair with Else Jaffe, a mutual friend.^[10]

In 1914, World War I broke out. While Max busied himself publishing his multiple volume study of religion, lecturing, organizing military hospitals, serving as an adviser in peace negotiations and running for office in the brand-new Weimer Republic, Marianne published many works, among which were: "The New Woman" and "The Ideal of Marriage" (both 1914) "War as an Ethical Problem" (1916), Changing Types of University Women" (1917), "The Forces Shaping Sexual Life" and "Women's Special Cultural Tasks" (both 1919).^[11]

In 1919, Marianne Weber became a member of the German Democratic Party and shortly thereafter, the first woman elected as a delegate in the federal state parliament of Baden^{[citation needed]}. Also in 1919, she assumed the role of chairwoman of the Bund deutscher Frauenverine (German National League of Women's Associations), an office she would hold until 1923^[12] Also in 1920, Max's sister Lili suddenly committed suicide, and Max and Marianne adopted her four children.^[13] Shortly thereafter, Max Weber contacted pneumonia and died suddenly, on June 14, 1920, leaving Marianne a widow with four children to raise.

Widowhood, 1920-1954[link]

Following Max's unexpected death, Marianne withdrew from public and social life, funneling her physical and psychological resources into preparing ten volumes of her husband's writing for publication.^[13] In 1924, she received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Heidelberg, both for her work in editing and publishing Max's work as well as her own scholarship. Between 1923 and 1926, Weber worked on Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Max Weber: A Biography), which was published in 1926. Also in 1926, she re-established her weekly salon, and entered into a phase of public speaking in which she spoke to audiences of up to 5,000. During this phase, she continued to raise Lili's children, with the help of a close-knit circle of friends.^[14]

Marianne Weber in Nazi Germany[link]

Weber's career as a feminist public speaker ended abruptly in 1935, when Hitler dissolved the Federation of German Women's Organizations. During the time of the Nazi regime up until the Allied Occupation of Germany in 1945, she held a weekly salon.^[15] While criticisms of Nazi atrocities were sometimes subtly implied, she told interviewer Howard Becker in 1945 that "we restricted ourselves to philosophical, religious and esthetic topics, making our criticism of the Nazi system between the lines, as it were. None of us were the stuff of which martyrs were made." Weber did claim, however, to know people who were involved in the 20 July plot.

Weber continued to write during this time, however, and published Frauen und Liebe ("Women and Love") in 1935 and Erfülltes Leben (The Fulfilled Life) in 1942.

Work[link]

Main Themes of Marianne Weber's Work[link]

1. The basis for Weber's sociology was that of a woman in a patriarchal society. Weber wrote about the experiences of German women of her time, many of whom were entering the workforce for the very first time. This new exposure of women to the outside world led to shifting gender-based power dynamics within the household.^[16] The male-created and male-dominated institutions of law, religion, history and the economy provide a framework for the lives of women, whose autonomy suffers as a result.

2. The framework and structures of marriage can be used as a case-study for the larger society. Marriage, and the destiny of women to be married, is central to the lives of women, and this can be seen across the spectrum of law, religion, history and economy^[17]". While marriage can restrict the lives of women, it is in itself a form of protection for women, serving to undermine "the brutal power of men by contract.^[18]" Weber's work, especially Marriage, Motherhood and the Law(1907), was devoted to the analysis of the institution of marriage. Her conclusion was that marriage is "a complex and ongoing negotiation over power and intimacy, in which money, women's work, and sexuality are key issues.^[17]"

3. Women's work can be used to "map and explain the construction and reproduction of the social person and the social world.^[19]" Human work creates cultural products ranging from small, daily values such as cleanliness and honesty to larger, more abstract phenomena like philosophy, and language.^[19] Between the two extremes lies a vast, unexplored middle territory called "the middle ground of immediate daily life," in which women, being the caretakers, child-rearers, and everyday economic actors of the family, have a large part. This middle ground is where the self is created, for the most part, Weber argued, and that self then affects other people in its daily actions in the world.

• The continual struggle between the spiritual and the animal is what makes us human.

Rather than being a crisis to be resolved, the conflict between the natural and the moral forms the basis of human dignity. This "millenial struggle of human beings for the subordination of instinctual life under the dominion of morally free human will" is a cultural product, production of which women are largely responsible.^[20]

4. Differences such as class, education, age, and base ideologies, have an enormous effect on the day to day existences of women. There are profound differences between not just rural and urban women, but among different types of rural, and different types of urban women^[21]". Urban women, of whom Weber was a part, are distinguished not just by their husbands' occupations, but by their own as well. Within the class of working women, women's occupations (traditional women's work versus the elite: academics, artists, writers, etc) has an everyday affect on patterns of daily life, and leads to differences in needs, lifestyle and overall ideologies.

Georg Simmel and Marianne Weber[link]

Some mention has been made of Georg Simmel and scholarly connection to Max Weber, particularly in terms of their influence on the Frankfurt School, but Marianne Weber, too, was a colleague of Simmel's.^[22] In addition to a more than 20 year friendship, in which Weber and Simmel conversed and wrote letters often, Marianne Weber wrote a critical response to Simmel's 1911 essay, "The relative and the absolute in the problem of the sexes, in which she criticized his "concept of gender relations.".^[23] Both sociologists dealt with the "woman question" and, more broadly, "the interrelation between gendered modes of individuation, social differentiation and gender difference.^[24]"

Footnotes[link]

Works Cited[link]

• "Marianne Weber (1870- 1954): A Woman-Centered Sociology," Patricia M. Lengermann and Jill Niebrugge-Brantley. The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory, 1830-1930 : a Text/reader. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998.
• Weber, Marianne. 1975. Max Weber: a biography. New York: Wiley.
• Scaff, Lawrence A. 1998. "The `cool objectivity of sociation': Max Weber and Marianne Weber in America." History Of The Human Sciences 11, no. 2: 61. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed November 11, 2011)
• "History of the German Women's Movement". Translated by Robert Burkhardt, assisted by members of the Translation Workshop organized by the Goethe-Institut. Boston, January–March, 1998. http://www.trip.net/~bobwb/gwmtext/index.htm
• Becker, Howard and Marianne Weber. "Max Weber, Assassination and German Guilt: An Interview with Marianne Weber." American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol 10, No. 4 (July, 1951), pp 401–405.
• Wobbe, Theresa, 2004. "Elective affinities: Georg Simmel and Marianne Weber on gender and modernity." Engendering the Social: Feminist Encounters with Sociological Theory. eds. Barbara L. Marshall and Anne Witz. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press. pp 54–68.
• Weber, Marianne, 1913. "Authority and Autonomy in Marriage." trans. Craig R. Bermingham. Sociological Theory, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 2003), pp. 85–102.
• Dickinson, Edward Ross. 2005. "Dominion of the Spirit over the Flesh: Religion, Gender and Sexual Morality in the German Women's Movement before World War I." Gender & History 17, no. 2: 378-408. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 12, 2011). 382.

Partial list of published works[link]

• Fichtes Sozialismus und sein Verhältnis zur Marxschen Doktrin ("Fichte's Socialism and its Relation to Marxist Doctrine", 1900)
• Beruf und Ehe ("Occupation and Marriage", 1906)
• Ehefrau und Mutter in der Rechtsentwicklung ("Marriage, Motherhood and the Law", 1907)
• Die Frage nach der Scheidung ("The Question of Divorce") (1909)
• Autorität und Autonomie in der Ehe ("Authority and Autonomy in Marriage", 1912)
• Über die Bewertung der Hausarbeit ("On the Valuation of Housework" 1912)
• Frauen und Kultur ("Women and Objective Culture" 1913)
• Max Weber. Ein Lebensbild ("Max Weber: A Biography", 1926)
• Die Frauen und die Liebe ("Women and Love", 1935)
• Erfülltes Leben ("The Fulfilled Life", 1942- republished in 1946)
• Lebenserinnerungen ("Memoirs", 1948)

See also[link]

• History of feminism
• Max Weber
• Allied-occupied Germany
• Weimar Republic
• German Women's Movements, 20th century
• Federation of German Women's Movements
• Georg Simmel
• Gender

External links[link]

• [1] (in German) (broken as of 11/27/2011)

John Simmons Barth (born May 27, 1930) is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.

Life[link]

John Barth, called "Jack", was born in Cambridge, Maryland. Barth has an older brother, Bill, and a twin sister, Jill. He briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard^[1] before attending Johns Hopkins University, from which he received a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952 (for which he wrote a thesis novel, The Shirt of Nessus).

Barth was a professor at The Pennsylvania State University from 1953 to 1965. During the "American high Sixties," he moved to teach at SUNY/Buffalo from 1965 to 1973. In that period he came to know "the remarkable short fiction" of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, which inspired his collection Lost in the Funhouse.^[2]

He then taught at Boston University (visiting professor, 1972–73) and Johns Hopkins University (1973–95) before retiring in 1995.

Literary work[link]

Barth began his career with The Floating Opera and The End of the Road, two short "realist"^[3] novels that deal wittily with controversial topics, suicide and abortion respectively. They are straightforward realistic tales; as Barth later remarked, they "didn't know they were novels."^{[citation needed]}

The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), was initially intended as the completing novel of a trilogy comprising his first two "realist" novels, but, as a consequence of Barth's maturation as a writer, it developed into a different project.^[3] The novel is significant as it marked Barth's discovery of Postmodernism.^[4]

Barth's next novel, Giles Goat-Boy (about 800 pages), is a speculative fiction based on the conceit of the university as universe. A boy raised as a goat discovers his humanity and becomes a savior in a story presented as a computer tape given to Barth, who denies that it is his work. In the course of the novel Giles carries out all the tasks prescribed by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Barth kept a list of the tasks taped to his wall while he was writing the book.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]}

The short story collection Lost in the Funhouse (1968) and the novella collection Chimera (1972) are even more metafictional than their two predecessors, foregrounding the writing process and presenting achievements such as a seven-deep nested quotation. Chimera shared the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.^[5]

In the novel LETTERS (1979), Barth interacts with characters from his first six books.

His 1994 Once upon a Time: A Floating Opera, reuses stock characters, stock situations and formulas.^[4]

Styles, approaches and artistic criteria[link]

Barth's work is characterized by a historical awareness of literary tradition^[6] and by the practice of rewriting typical of postmodernism. He said: "I don't know what my view of history is, but insofar as it involves some allowance for repetition and recurrence, reorchestration, and reprise [...] I would always want it to be more in the form of a thing circling out and out and becoming more inclusive each time."^[7][8] In Barth's postmodern sensibility, parody is a central device.^[9]

Around 1972, in an interview, Barth declared that "The process [of making a novel] is the content, more or less."^[10][11]

Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and wordplay and the sympathetic characterization and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling.^{[citation needed]}

Essays[link]

While writing these books, Barth was also pondering and discussing the theoretical problems of fiction writing.

In 1967 he wrote a highly influential^[12] and to some controversial^[13] essay considered a manifesto of postmodernism, The Literature of Exhaustion (first printed in The Atlantic, 1967). It depicts literary realism as a "used-up" tradition; Barth's description of his own work, which many thought illustrated a core trait of postmodernism, is "novels which imitate the form of a novel, by an author who imitates the role of author".^[14]

The essay was widely considered a statement of "the death of the novel,"^{[citation needed]} (compare with Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"). Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing, and pointing to possible directions from there. He later (1980) wrote a follow-up essay, "The Literature of Replenishment", to clarify the point.

Awards[link]

• 1956 — National Book Award finalist for The Floating Opera.^[15]
• 1966 — National Institute of Arts and Letters grant in literature.
• 1965 — The Brandeis University creative arts award in fiction.
• 1965-66 — The Rockefeller Foundation grant in fiction.
• 1968 — Nominated for the National Book Award for Lost in the Funhouse.
• 1973 — Shared the National Book Award for Chimera with John Edward Williams and Augustus.^[5]
• 1974 — Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
• 1974 — Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[16]
• 1997 — F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Fiction.
• 1998 — Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 1998 — PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.
• 1999 — Enoch Pratt Society's Lifetime Achievement in Letters Award.
• 2008 — Roozi Rozegari, Iranian literature prize for best foreign work translation The Floating Opera.^[17][18]

Selected works[link]

Fiction[link]

• The Floating Opera (1956)
• The End of the Road (1958)
• The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
• Giles Goat-Boy, or, The Revised New Syllabus (1966)
• Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice (stories) (1968)
• Chimera (three linked novellas) (1972)
• LETTERS (1979)
• Sabbatical: A Romance (1982)
• The Tidewater Tales (1987)
• The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991)
• Once upon a Time: A Floating Opera (memoirish novel) (1994)
• On with the Story (stories) (1996)
• Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative (2001)
• The Book of Ten Nights and a Night: Eleven Stories (2004)
• Where Three Roads Meet (three linked novellas) (2005)
• The Development (2008)
• Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons (2011)

Nonfiction[link]

• The Friday Book (1984)
• Further Fridays (1995)
• Final Fridays (2012)

Notes and references[link]

Further reading[link]

• Rovit, Earl The Novel as Parody: John Barth, in Critique, VI (Fall. 1963)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Barth

• George Plimpton (Spring 1985). "John Barth, The Art of Fiction No. 86". Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2910/the-art-of-fiction-no-86-john-barth. 
• John Barth Information Center
• Scriptorium - John Barth
• Reading John Barth: an essay by Charles Harris (from CONTEXT Quarterly at CenterforBookCulture.org)^{[dead link]}
• North American Postmodern Fiction: John Barth
• Barth audio goodies at the Lannan site
• Two-part interview on KCRW's radio program 'Bookworm' with Michael Silverblatt (also at the Lannan site)
• click!, a short story by John Barth centered on hypertextuality
• National Book Awards Acceptance Speech