A Troubled “Ménage à Trois”

The closeness of the relationship between Barth and Charlotte von Kirschbaum remained publicly unknown for a long time. Only the third volume the Barth-Thurneysen correspondence (published 2000) and the first volume of the letters between Barth and Kirschbaum (published 2008) revealed the love between Barth and Kirschbaum as well as the conflicts this generated in Barth’s marriage. Barth met Kirschbaum in August 1925, and they soon fell in love with each other. Barth wrestled with the implications of the relationship for his family, feeling particularly guilty toward his wife. But after a few years in which Kirschbaum started to work with Barth, he felt he could not live without her. In October 1929, Kirschbaum moved into the Barth household, the beginning of an almost forty-year long “Notgemeinschaft”.