This could be the biography we have been waiting for: Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict by Christiane Tietz. Karl Barth died in 1968 and until now we have not had a full and critical biography. Many books contain a brief overview of his life, and most of these draw on Eberhard Busch’s 1976 Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts.

The work by Busch, Barth’s last assistant, is justly regarded as a classic and is in itself an immensely important resource. Despite its quality and wealth of biographical data, however, it is not a critical biography. Hopefully Tietz’ volume will fill this lacuna.

I came across the German edition in Dresden in 2019 and didn’t know it existed. It was published in 2018. I bought it as a reading goal for when my German has been recovered sufficiently. To have it in English, though, is a blessing. (On a side note, I owe an incalculable debt to translators of theological works, especially G.W. Bromiley – and Bible translators, of course! May their tribe increase.)

Christiane Tietz is Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Zurich. Before that she was Professor of Systematic Theology and Social Ethics at the University of Mainz. The book has been translated by Victoria J. Barnett, one of the general editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition.

The book has gone to the top of my reading list for the winter break. At 488 pages it may be the only book I read over the break! But, it comes with pictures.