Karl Barth, who was born on May 10, 1886, at Basel and who died there 82 years later (on December 10, 1968), was one of the most important Protestant theologians of the 20th century. His father, Fritz, was a disciple of A. Schlatter at Bern, his mother a descendant of H. Bullinger and a relative of J. Burckhardt. The philosopher Heinrich Barth and the Calvin ¶ scholar Peter Barth were his brothers. In 1913 he married Nelly Hoffmann, and they had five children, of whom Markus became a NT scholar and Christoph an OT scholar.

Studying theology at Bern, Berlin, Tübingen, and Marburg, Barth br…