Volume 24, Issue 1

The group of Dialectical Theology (also known as Neo-Orthodoxy) included some of the most well-known theologians of the 20 th century – Karl Barth, Rudolf Bultmann, Friedrich Gogarten, Eduard Thurneysen, Georg Merz und Emil Brunner. In the summer of 1922 they founded the journal Zwischen den Zeiten , which launched Dialectical Theology as the most influential avant-garde movement in Protestantism during the Weimar Republic. Due to internal strife and theological disagreements, the group began to lose strength in the early 1930s and eventually split up and ceased publishing Zwischen den Zeiten in 1933. The individual members later became fierce critics of each other’s theological works. Gogarten and Barth became arch enemies during the so-called “church struggle” (Kirchenkampf), and Bultmann and Barth became each other’s nemesis in the Federal Republic of Germany. In this article I examine the rise and fall of this movement. I argue that the concept “generation” was central to the early self-understanding and selfjustification of the group. It allowed the group to forge an alliance and oppose an antagonistic group of influential theologians. The claim to speak up for a young generation of theologians and pastors – in opposition to an older, liberal generation – became the rallying cry for Dialectical Theology. Further, I argue that conferences, not only the theological writings, played a central, constitutive role in establishing the group as a theological movement. It was at conferences that the members of Dialectical Theology could challenge the older generation and assert their own theological stance. Instead of merely concentrating on the published theological writings of each of the members, I thus argue that one must additionally focus on the applied concepts and the role of conferences to understand the history of Dialectical Theology. It is only when we include these additional contexts that we understand how Dialectical Theology was able to be launched and sustained as a theological movement despite the irreconcilable differences amongst the members.

In an opinion piece penned at the Great War’s onset yet apparently unpublished until now, the historian of religion Hermann Gunkel outlined the opportunities he saw for the German people in anticipation of their triumph. He believed this war could consummate what the Napoleonic Wars and the Unification of Germany had not. Gunkel hoped for true German unity, more liberal domestic politics, and spiritual restoration. Further still, he referred to a resurgence of piety on account of the conflict. On the Great War’s centenary, this documentation speaks to the mobilizing, nationalist activities of Gunkel in particular and of academicians and theologians more generally.