Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism. He was involved in plots planned by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was arrested in March 1943, imprisoned and eventually hanged, just before the end of the Second World War in Europe.

Family and youth

Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) into a middle to upper-class professional family. He and his sister Sabine were twins and the sixth and seventh of eight children. His brother Walter was killed during World War I. His sister was married to Hans von Dohnanyi and was mother of the conductor Christoph von Dohnanyi and a former mayor of Hamburg, Klaus von Dohnanyi. His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was a prominent German psychiatrist in Berlin; his mother, Paula, home-schooled the children. Though he was initially expected to follow his father into the field of psychology, Dietrich decided at an early age to become a minister. His parents supported his decision. He attended college in Tübingen, received his doctorate in theology from the University of Berlin and was ordained. He then spent a post-graduate year abroad studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. During this time, he would often visit the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where he became acquainted with the musical form that ethnomusicologists call the African-American Spiritual. He amassed a substantial collection of recordings of these spirituals, which he took with him back to Germany.

Return to Germany

Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1931, where he lectured on theology in Berlin and wrote several books. A strong opponent of Nazism, he was involved, together with Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth and others, in setting up the Confessing Church. Between late 1933 and 1935, he served as pastor of two German-speaking Protestant churches in London. St. Paul and Sydenham. He returned to Germany to head an illegal seminary for Confessing Church pastors, first in Finkenwalde and then at the von Blumenthal estate of Gross Schlönwitz, which was closed on the outbreak of war. The Gestapo also banned him from preaching; then teaching; and finally any kind of public speaking. During this time, Bonhoeffer worked closely with numerous opponents of Adolf Hitler.

During World War II, Bonhoeffer played a key leadership role in the Confessing Church, which opposed the anti-semitic policies of Adolf Hitler. He was among those who called for wider church resistance to Hitler's treatment of the Jews. While the Confessing Church was not large, it represented a major source of Christian opposition to the Nazi government in Germany.

In 1939, Bonhoeffer joined a hidden group of high-ranking military officers based in the Abwehr, or Military Intelligence Office, who wanted to overthrow the National Socialist regime by killing Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943 after money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced to him. He was charged with conspiracy and imprisoned in Berlin for a year and a half. After the unsuccessful July 20 Plot in 1944, Bonhoeffer's connections to the conspirators were discovered. He was moved to a series of prisons and concentration camps ending at Flossenbürg. Here, he was executed by hanging at dawn on 9 April 1945, just three weeks before the liberation of the city. Also hanged for their parts in the conspiracy were his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher. At the sadistic whim of the SS staff present, all four men were humiliated, stripped, and forced to walk totally naked from their cells to the gallows.

Bonhoeffer's legacy

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is considered a martyr for his faith; in the mid-1990s, the German Government officially absolved him of any "crimes" he might have committed pursuant to the positive law of the National Socialist regime. The calendars of the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorate him on April 9, the date on which he was hanged in 1945.

An oft-quoted line from one of his more widely read books, The Cost of Discipleship (1937), foreshadowed his death. "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." His books Ethics (1949) and Letters and Papers from Prison (1953) were published posthumously.

The theological and political reasons behind his shift from Christian pacifism, which he espoused in the mid-1930s, to participation in planning the assassination of Hitler are much debated.

Bonhoeffer's last writings, as found in his fragmentary Letters and Papers from Prison, continue to intrigue theologians. In them he introduced the concepts of "religionless Christianity" and "a world come of age", which in turn became incorporated into both John A.T. Robinson’s controversial 1963 book "Honest to God" and the "Death of God" movement. Bonhoeffer is one of the few theologians embraced by both liberal and conservative Christians, but each group interprets his prison theology differently. Conservatives see those writings as simply another expression of his earlier traditional theology, although in an updated language. Liberals interpret his prison writings as a radical new expression of a much more secular understanding of the basic Christian message. Before his death Bonhoeffer himself frequently commented on the radical nature of his late thought.

There are some who feel Liberation theology was first articulated by Bonhoeffer in the late 1930s.

Works

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Letters and Papers From Prison, New Greatly Enlarged Edition. ed. by Eberhard Bethge. New York: Touchstone Simon & Shuster (1997).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke (18 Bände), ed. by Eberhard Bethge. Gütersloher Verlagshaus (1986-1999); English edition (as yet incomplete): Minneapolis: Fortress Press (1995-).
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Translated from the German Nachfolge first published 1937 by Chr. Kaiser Verlag München. New York: SCM Press Ltd. (1959).
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Translated from the German Gemeinsames Leben. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. (1954).
Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. SCM (1955).

Works about Bonhoeffer

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Books

Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Man for His Times: A Biography Rev. ed. (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2000).
Denise Giardina, Saints and Villains (Ballantine Books, 1999). A Fictional Account of Bonhoeffer's life.
Stephen R. Haynes,The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Post-Holocaust Perspectives (Fortress Press, 2006). "Haynes now trains his theological and investigative talents on one of the thorniest problems in Bonhoeffer interpretation: his stereotypical but offensive-to-Jews statements on Judaism, his stance on the anti-Jewish legislation in Nazi Germany, and his place in postwar Holocaust studies." — Geffrey B. Kelly, Ph.D., LL.D. Professor of Systematic Theology, La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA Former President of the International Bonhoeffer Society

Films

Bonhoeffer Martin Doblmeier, 2005
Bonhoeffer - Agent of Grace Eric Till, PBS, 2000
Hanged on a Twisted Cross: The Life, Convictions and Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. T.N. Mohan, 1996
Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Freedom Focus on the Family Radio Theatre, 2005
A View From The Underside - The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Al Staggs

External links

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