The Martin Rumscheidt Collection on Karl Barth and the Karl Barth Exhibition

Biography of Karl Barth:

Karl Barth (1886-1968) was the most significant Reformed theologian of the twentieth century. He wrote The Epistle to the Romans (1919, 1922) while pastor in the Swiss village of Safenwil. That publication led to professorships in Göttingen, Münster, and Bonn. He protested the rise of National Socialism by, among other things, authorizing the Barmen Declaration in 1934. After being ejected from Germany by the National Socialists in 1935, he became a professor of theology at Basel University, where he remained until his retirement in 1962. His major publication was the monumental Church Dogmatics, which he left unfinished at his death.



Biography of Martin Rumscheidt:

Theologian Hans Martin Rumscheidt is an ordained minister and professor retired from Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His particular research interests include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Adolf von Harnack, Karl Barth, and how theology deals with war, genocide, guilt, and repentance. Raised in Third Reich Germany, he became a Canadian citizen in 1957 and studied under Karl Barth in 1961 and 1962 at the Basel University. He was responsible for the creation of the English version of the Karl Barth exhibition in the early 1970s and he arranged the exhibition schedule and other details for its display at dozens of universities and seminaries in Canada and the United States in the early and mid 1970s.