Switzerland in the Interwar Period - Dialectical Theology and Philosophical Emigration
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Karl Barth and the Break with Liberal Protestantism
Karl Barth’s “Epistle to the Romans” (1919, radically revised 1922) was one of the most influential theological writings of the twentieth century – and at the same time a fundamental rejection of Hegel.
The context: nineteenth-century liberal theology had tried to reconcile Christianity with modern culture. Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Harnack – all of them sought mediation between faith and reason, religion and science, gospel and education. This mediation was Hegelian in spirit, even where it did not invoke Hegel.
The collapse: the First World War shook this project. German theologians – including Barth’s own teachers – had shared the war enthusiasm of 1914, signed the “Manifesto of the 93,” confused the German spirit with the Christian spirit. For Barth, this was the proof: liberal theology had failed. It had adapted the gospel to culture – and when culture turned into barbarism, it had nothing more to say.
The counter-thesis: Barth set the “wholly other” God against all mediation. God is not the absolute that realizes itself in history (Hegel). God is not the depth of human experience (Schleiermacher). God is the stranger who breaks into history without being absorbed into it. Revelation is not the crowning of reason, but its crisis.
The critique of Hegel: Hegel’s reconciliation of God and world appeared to Barth as the subtlest form of humanity’s self-deification. The dialectic that sublates all oppositions also sublates the opposition between creator and creature – and thereby misses the essence of faith. Faith is not knowledge, but venture; not synthesis, but leap.
The impact: dialectical theology (Barth, Emil Brunner, Friedrich Gogarten, Rudolf Bultmann) became the dominant Protestant current of the interwar period. It influenced the Confessing Church, which resisted National Socialism. Barth’s “Barmen Theological Declaration” (1934) was a theological and political document at once.
The paradox: dialectical theology reacted against Hegel – but remained shaped by him. The conceptuality (dialectic, sublation, mediation), the problem itself (the relation of the finite and the infinite), the intensity of systematic thinking – all this came from the Hegelian tradition, even where it turned against it. Barth became one of the most productive critics of Hegel in the twentieth century – because he took Hegel seriously enough to fight him.
(Treated extensively in Volume II, Part II)
The Philosophical Emigration after 1933
Switzerland became an important refuge for persecuted intellectuals after 1933 – less so than France, England, or the USA, but significant for certain constellations.
The limits of neutrality: Switzerland took in refugees, but not without limit. The restrictive refugee policy – especially toward Jews – is a dark chapter of Swiss history. Those who were admitted could work; many were turned away.
Karl Jaspers did not come to Basel until 1948, after surviving the Nazi period in Heidelberg (his wife was Jewish, he himself was banned from teaching). In Basel he taught until 1961 and wrote his late works, including “The Great Philosophers” – in which Hegel too is treated extensively.
Continuity: Swiss universities enabled a continuity of philosophical work that was interrupted in Germany. While philosophy in Germany was decimated by emigration and forced conformity [Gleichschaltung], seminars could still be held, dissertations written, books published in Switzerland. This continuity became important for reconstruction after 1945.