Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, neo-orthodox theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential; his 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship is described as a modern classic. Apart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Adolf Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of Jews. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel Prison for 1½ years. Later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp. Bonhoeffer was accused of being associated with the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler and was tried along with other accused plotters, including former members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office). He was hanged on 9 April 1945 during the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Childhood and family

Bonhoeffer was born on 4 February 1906 in Breslau, Germany (now Poland), into a large family. Dietrich had a twin sister, Sabine Bonhoeffer Leibholz: he and Sabine were the sixth and seventh children out of eight. His father was Karl Bonhoeffer, a psychiatrist and neurologist, noted for his criticism of Sigmund Freud; his mother Paula Bonhoeffer was a teacher and the granddaughter of Protestant theologian Karl von Hase and painter Stanislaus von Kalckreuth. Bonhoeffer's family dynamic and his parents' values enabled him to receive a high level of education and encouraged his curiosity, which impacted his ability to lead others around him, specifically in the church setting. He learned how to play the piano at age 8 and composed the songs performed at the Philharmonic at age 11. Walter Bonhoeffer, the second born of the Bonhoeffer family, was killed in action during World War I when Bonhoeffer was 12 years old. At age 14, Bonhoeffer decided to pursue his education in theology despite the criticism of his older brothers Klaus (a lawyer) and Karl (a scientist). He took Hebrew as an elective in school and attended many evangelical meetings, moved by the many sufferings that resulted from war such as food insecurity and orphaned children. Bonhoeffer began his studies at Tübingen and eventually moved to the University of Berlin, where he submitted his successful dissertation: "Sanctorum Communio." At age 21, on 17 December 1927, he went on to complete his Doctor of Theology degree from Humboldt University of Berlin, graduating summa cum laude.

Early life

Studies in America

In 1930, Bonhoeffer moved to America with the intent of attaining a Sloane Fellowship at New York City's Union Theological Seminary. Bonhoeffer was greatly unimpressed with American theology. He described the students as lacking interest in theology and would "laugh out loud" when learning a passage from Martin Luther's "Sin and Forgiveness." During his time there, he met Frank Fisher, a black seminarian who introduced him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where Bonhoeffer taught Sunday school and formed a lifelong love for the African-American church. He heard Adam Clayton Powell Sr. preach the "Gospel of Social Justice" and became sensitive to the social injustices experienced by racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. as well as the ineptitude of churches to bring about integration. Through oppressed Negro churches, he was captivated by the sermons, and he formed the belief that God's commandments were carried out. The originally nationalist Bonhoeffer later changed his views after seeing All Quiet on the Western Front, which shows the horrors of war. Later in life he favored the views of pacifism because of love for all and a high value on each individual life. Bonhoeffer became involved with the ecumenical Christian movement, which eventually led him to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

Return to Germany

After returning to Germany in 1931, Bonhoeffer became a lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Berlin. Deeply interested in ecumenism, he was appointed by the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches (a forerunner of the World Council of Churches) as one of its three European youth secretaries. At this time he seems to have undergone a personal conversion, as he changed from being a theologian primarily attracted to the intellectual side of Christianity, to being a dedicated man of personal faith, resolved to literally carry out the teachings of Christ, revealed in the Gospels. On 15 November 1931, at age 25, he was ordained at Old-Prussian United St. Matthew, Berlin-Tiergarten in Berlin-Tiergarten.

Anti-Nazism

Bonhoeffer's promising academic and ecclesiastical career was dramatically knocked off course by the Nazi ascent to power on 30 January 1933. He was a determined opponent of the regime from its first days. Two days after Hitler was installed as chancellor, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be verführer (misleader, seducer). His broadcast was abruptly cut off, though it is unclear whether the newly elected Nazi regime was responsible. In April 1933, Bonhoeffer raised the first voice for church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews, declaring that the church must not simply "bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam a spoke in the wheel itself." In November 1932, two months before the Nazi takeover, there had been an election for presbyters and synodals (church officials) of the German Landeskirche (Protestant mainstream churches). This election was marked by a struggle within the Old-Prussian Union Protestant Church between the pro-Nazi Deutsche Christen (German Christian) movement and Young Reformers, who were interested in following the Gospel teachings of Jesus—a struggle that threatened to explode into schism. In July 1933, Hitler unconstitutionally imposed new church elections. Bonhoeffer put all his efforts into the election, campaigning for the selection of independent, non-Nazi officials who were dedicated to following Christ. Despite Bonhoeffer's efforts, in the July election an overwhelming number of key church positions went to the Deutsche Christen. The Deutsche Christen won a majority in the Old-Prussian general synod and all its provincial synods except Westphalia, and in synods of all other Protestant church bodies, except for the Lutheran churches of Bavaria, Hanover, and Württemberg. The anti-Nazi Christian opposition regarded these bodies as uncorrupted "intact churches", as opposed to the other so-called "destroyed churches". In opposition to Nazification, Bonhoeffer urged an interdict to stop offering all pastoral ceremonial services (baptisms, confirmations, weddings, funerals, etc.), but Karl Barth and others advised against such a radical proposal. In August 1933, Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse were deputized by opposition church leaders to draft the "Bethel Confession," as a statement of faith in opposition to the Deutsche Christen movement. Notable for affirming God's fidelity to Jews as His chosen people, the "Bethel Confession" was eventually so watered down to make it more palatable that ultimately Bonhoeffer refused to sign it. In September 1933, the nationalist church synod at Wittenberg voluntarily passed a resolution to apply the Aryan paragraph within the church, meaning that pastors and church officials of Jewish descent were to be removed from their posts. Regarding this as an affront to the principle of baptism, Martin Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors' Emergency League). In November, a rally of 20,000 Deutsche Christens demanded the removal of the Jewish Old Testament from the Bible, which was seen by many as heresy, further swelling the ranks of the Pastors Emergency League. Within weeks of its founding, more than a third of German pastors had joined the Emergency League. It was the forerunner of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), which aimed to preserve historical, Biblically based Christian beliefs and practices. The Barmen Declaration, drafted by Barth in May 1934 and adopted by the Confessing Church, insisted that Christ, not the führer, is the head of the Church. The adoption of the declaration has often been viewed as a triumph, although only about 20% of German pastors supported the Confessing Church.

Ministries in London

When Bonhoeffer was offered a parish post in eastern Berlin in the autumn of 1933, he refused it in protest at the Nationalist policy, and he accepted a two-year appointment as a pastor of two German-speaking Protestant churches in London: the German Lutheran Church in Dacres Road, Sydenham, and the German Reformed Church of St Paul's, Goulston Street, Whitechapel. He explained to Barth that he had found little support for his views on devotion to literally following the words of Jesus—even among friends—and that "it was about time to go for a while into the desert." Barth regarded this as running away from a real battle. He sharply rebuked Bonhoeffer, saying, "I can only reply to all the reasons and excuses which you put forward: 'And what will now happen to the people of the German Church?'" Barth accused Bonhoeffer of abandoning his post and wasting his "splendid theological armory" while "the house of your church is on fire", and chided him to return to Berlin "by the next ship". Bonhoeffer, however, did not go to England simply to avoid trouble at home; he hoped to put the ecumenical movement to work in the interest of the Confessing Church. He continued his involvement with the Confessing Church, running up a high telephone bill to maintain his contact with Martin Niemöller. In international gatherings, Bonhoeffer rallied people to oppose the Deutsche Christen movement and its attempt to amalgamate Nazi nationalism with Christianity. When Bishop —the official in charge of German Lutheran Church foreign affairs—traveled to London to warn Bonhoeffer to abstain from any ecumenical activity not directly authorized by Berlin, Bonhoeffer refused to abstain.

Underground seminaries

In 1935, Bonhoeffer was offered a coveted opportunity to study non-violent resistance under Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram. However, remembering Barth's rebuke, Bonhoeffer decided to return to Germany instead, where he was the head at an underground seminary in Finkenwalde for training Confessing Church pastors. As the Nazi suppression of the Confessing Church intensified, Barth was driven back to Switzerland in 1935; Niemöller was arrested in July 1937; and in August 1936, Bonhoeffer's authorization to teach at the University of Berlin was revoked after he was denounced as a "pacifist and enemy of the state" by Theodor Heckel. Bonhoeffer's efforts for the underground seminaries included securing necessary funds. He found a great benefactor in Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. In times of trouble, Bonhoeffer's former students and their wives would take refuge in von Kleist-Retzow's Pomeranian estate, and Bonhoeffer was a frequent guest. Later he fell in love with Kleist-Retzow's granddaughter, Maria von Wedemeyer, to whom he became engaged three months before his arrest in 1943. By August 1937, SS leader Heinrich Himmler had decreed the education and examination of Confessing Church ministry candidates illegal. In September 1937, the Gestapo closed the seminary at Finkenwalde, and by November 27 pastors and former students were arrested. It was around this time that Bonhoeffer published his best-known book, The Cost of Discipleship, a study on the Sermon on the Mount in which he attacked "cheap grace" as a cover for ethical laxity against the virtues of "costly grace". Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly traveling from one eastern German village to another to conduct a "seminary on the run" supervising the continuing education and work of his students, most of whom were working illegally in small parishes within the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania. The von Blumenthal family hosted the underground seminary on its estate of Groß Schlönwitz. The pastors of Groß Schlönwitz and neighbouring villages supported the education of young men who voluntarily housed these seminarians (among whom was Eberhard Bethge, who later became his best friend and edited Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison) and employing them as vicars in their congregations. In 1938, the Gestapo banned Bonhoeffer from Berlin. In the summer of 1939, the seminary was able to move to Sigurdshof, an outlying estate (Vorwerk) of the von Kleist family in Wendisch Tychow. In March 1940, the Gestapo shut down the underground seminary there following the outbreak of World War II. Bonhoeffer's semi-monastic communal life and teaching at the underground Finkenwalde seminary formed the basis of his books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. Bonhoeffer's sister, Sabine, along with her Jewish-classified husband Gerhard Leibholz and their two daughters, escaped to England by way of Switzerland in 1938.

Return to the United States

In February 1938, Bonhoeffer made an initial contact with members of the German resistance when his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi introduced him to a group seeking Hitler's overthrow at the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. Bonhoeffer also learned from Dohnányi that war was imminent. He was particularly troubled by the prospect of being conscripted. As a committed Christian pacifist opposed to the Nazi regime, he could never swear an oath to Hitler and would never commit any violence or fight in Hitler's army, though refusal to do so was potentially a capital offense. He worried also about consequences his refusing military service could have for the Confessing Church, as it was a move that would be frowned upon by most nationalist Christians and their churches at the time. It was at this juncture that Bonhoeffer left for the United States in June 1939 at the invitation of Union Theological Seminary in New York. After much inner turmoil, he soon regretted his decision and returned after only two weeks despite strong pressures from his friends to stay in the United States. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr: "I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America this time. I must live through this difficult period in our national history along with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people ... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that a future Christian civilization may survive, or else willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization and any true Christianity. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from a place of security."

Abwehr agent

Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer was further harassed by the Nazi authorities as he was forbidden to speak in public and was required regularly to report his activities to the police. In 1941, he was forbidden to print or to publish anything. In the meantime, Bonhoeffer had joined the Abwehr. Dohnányi, already part of the Abwehr, brought him into the organization on the claim that his wide ecumenical contacts would be of use to Germany, thus protecting him from conscription to active service. Bonhoeffer presumably knew about various 1943 plots against Hitler through Dohnányi, who was actively involved in the planning. In the face of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and other minorities, the full scale of which Bonhoeffer learned through the Abwehr, he concluded that "the ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself from this whole affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to survive and live for Truth." He did not justify his action but wrote, "When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it... Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace." (In a 1932 sermon, Bonhoeffer said, "The blood of martyrs might once again be demanded, but this blood, if we really have the courage and loyalty to shed it, will not be innocent, shining like that of the first witnesses for the faith. On our blood lies heavy with guilt, the guilt of the unprofitable servant who is cast into outer darkness." ) Under cover of the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer served as a courier for the German resistance movement to reveal its existence and intentions to the Western Allies in hope of garnering their support. Through his ecumenical contacts abroad, he hoped to secure possible peace terms with the Allies for a post-Hitler government. In May 1942, he met Anglican Bishop George Bell of Chichester, a member of the House of Lords and an ally of the Confessing Church, contacted by Bonhoeffer's exiled brother-in-law Leibholz; through him feelers were sent to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. However, the British government ignored these, as it had all other approaches from the German resistance, considering all Germans to be the enemy. In addition, British war policy was to conduct area bombing of civilian cities, which Bell opposed, a view that had become unpopular in Britain. Dohnányi and Bonhoeffer were also involved in Abwehr operations to help German Jews escape to Switzerland. During this time, Bonhoeffer worked on his book Ethics and wrote letters to keep up the spirits of his former students. He intended Ethics as his magnum opus, but it remained unfinished when he was arrested. On 5 April 1943 Bonhoeffer and Dohnányi were arrested and imprisoned.

Imprisonment

On 13 January 1943 Bonhoeffer had become engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, the granddaughter of his close friend and Finkenwalde seminary supporter, Ruth von Kleist Retzow. Ruth had campaigned for this marriage for several years, although up until late October 1942, Bonhoeffer remained a reluctant suitor despite Ruth being part of his innermost circle. He considered that his responsibilities during wartime made it the wrong time to marry. A large age gap loomed between Bonhoeffer and Maria: he was 36 to her 18. Bonhoeffer had first met her when she was his confirmation student at age 11. As was considered proper at the time, the two had spent almost no time together alone prior to the engagement and did not see each other between becoming engaged and Bonhoeffer's 5 April arrest. Once he was in prison, however, Maria's status as his fiancée became invaluable, as it meant she could visit Bonhoeffer and correspond with him. While their relationship was troubled, she was a source of food and smuggled messages. Bonhoeffer made Eberhard Bethge his heir, but Maria, in allowing her correspondence with Bonhoeffer to be published after her death, provided an invaluable addition to this scholarship. For a year and a half, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned at Tegel Prison awaiting trial. There he continued his work in religious outreach among his fellow prisoners and guards. Sympathetic guards helped smuggle his letters out of prison to Bethge and others, and these uncensored letters were posthumously published in Letters and Papers from Prison. One of those guards, a corporal named Knobloch, even offered to help him escape from the prison and "disappear" with him, and plans were made for that end; eventually Bonhoeffer declined it, fearing Nazi retribution against his family, especially his brother Klaus and brother-in-law Dohnányi, who was also imprisoned. On 4 April 1945, the diaries of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, were discovered, and in a rage upon reading them, Hitler ordered that the other Abwehr members be executed. Bonhoeffer was led away just as he concluded his final Sunday service and asked an English prisoner, Payne Best, to remember him to Bell if Best should ever reach his home: "This is the end—but for me it is the beginning of Life!"

Execution

Bonhoeffer was sentenced to death on 8 April 1945 by SS judge Otto Thorbeck at a drumhead court-martial without witnesses, without any evidence against him, with no records of the proceedings or a defense. He was executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp by hanging at dawn on 9 April 1945. Bonhoeffer was stripped of his clothing and led naked into the execution yard where he was hanged with five others: Canaris; General Hans Oster, Canaris's deputy; General Karl Sack, a military jurist; businessman Theodor Strünck; and German resistance fighter Ludwig Gehre. Eberhard Bethge, a student and close friend of Bonhoeffer, writes of a man who saw the execution: "I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God." This is the historical account of Bonhoeffer's death, which over the decades went unchallenged; however, some recent biographers see problems with the story because of Bethge's source. The purported witness was a doctor at Flossenbürg concentration camp, Hermann Fischer-Hüllstrung, who may have wished to minimize the suffering of the condemned men to reduce his own culpability in their executions. J.L.F. Mogensen, a former prisoner at Flossenbürg, cited the length of time it took for the execution to be completed (almost six hours), plus departures from camp procedure that may not have been allowed to prisoners so late in the war, as jarring inconsistencies. Considering that the sentences had been confirmed at the highest levels of Nazi government, by individuals with a pattern of torturing prisoners who dared to challenge the regime, Craig J. Slane posits that "the physical details of Bonhoeffer's death may have been much more difficult than we earlier had imagined." Other recent critics of the traditional account are more caustic. It also appears in some instances that "Fischer-Hüllstrung had been given the job of reviving political prisoners after they had been hanged until they were almost dead, in order to prolong the agony of their dying." Another critic charges that Fischer-Hüllstrung's "subsequent statement about Bonhoeffer as kneeling in wordy prayer ... belongs to the realm of legend," although without evidence to the contrary. The disposition of Bonhoeffer's remains is not known. His body may have been cremated outside the camp along with hundreds of other recently executed or dead prisoners, or American troops may have placed his body in one of several mass graves in which they interred the unburied dead of the camp.

Legacy

Bonhoeffer is commemorated in the liturgical calendars of several Christian denominations on the anniversary of his death, 9 April. This includes many parts of the Anglican Communion, where he is sometimes identified as a martyr and other times not. His commemoration in the liturgical calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America uses the liturgical color of white, which is typically used for non-martyred saints. In 2008, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, which does not enumerate saints, officially recognized Bonhoeffer as a "modern-day martyr". He was the first martyr to be so recognized who lived after the Reformation and is one of only two as of 2017. Bonhoeffer is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 9 April. The Deutsche Evangelische Kirche in Sydenham, London, at which he preached between 1933 and 1935, was destroyed by bombing in 1944. A replacement church was built in 1958 and named Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Kirche in his honor. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's text 'Von guten Mächten' (translated as 'By Gentle' or 'By Gracious Powers') is known to a large audience as a worship song. The song is often sung at funerals. In 2021 it was voted the most popular hymn in Germany. The best-known melody was written by Siegfried Fietz in 1970.

Theological legacy

Bonhoeffer's theology is subject to diverse and contradictory interpretations, sometimes necessarily based on speculation for example, while his Christocentric approach appeals to conservative, confession-minded Protestants, other commentators note his commitment to justice, and ideas about "religionless Christianity". He also argued that Christians should not retreat from the world but act within it. He believed that two elements were constitutive of faith: the implementation of justice and the acceptance of divine suffering. His book The Cost of Discipleship famously discusses the concept of cheap grace against costly grace. He contends that Christians have relied so much on Christ's forgiveness that they do not challenge themselves enough in actually following his word to their best ability, instead relying on God's grace to save them when they fall. Bonhoeffer says that Christians are instructed to strive to follow the Word of God. Only then – after they strive to the best of their ability – should God's grace come into play. He contrasts cheap grace with costly grace, writing: "Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.[...] Costly grace is the gospel which must be again and again, the gift which must be for, the door at which a man must . Such grace is because it calls us to follow, and it is because it calls us to follow . It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is because it cost God the life of his Son[...]" Continuing with this idea, Bonhoeffer discusses the idea of simple obedience. He admonishes Christians who come too quickly to the conclusion that God could not possibly have meant his commands literally. Bonhoeffer cites the example of the rich man who asks Jesus how he can enter the kingdom of heaven. He writes that people often simply assume that Jesus did not mean literally to leave everything and follow him and that instead it was a matter of faith or a command to be inwardly detached. Bonhoeffer writes that God says exactly what he means and that Christians need to follow simple obedience to him by following divine commands as they are written. He writes "only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes". Years after Bonhoeffer's death, some Protestant thinkers such as Richard L. Rubenstein developed his critique into a thoroughgoing attack against traditional Christianity in the "Death of God" movement, which briefly attracted the attention of the mainstream culture in the mid-1960s. However, some critics—such as Jacques Ellul—have charged that those radical interpretations of Bonhoeffer's insights amount to a grave distortion, that Bonhoeffer did not mean to say that God no longer had anything to do with humanity and had become a mere cultural artifact. More recent Bonhoeffer interpretations are more cautious in this regard, respecting the parameters of the neo-orthodox school to which he belonged. Bonhoeffer also influenced the Comboni missionary Father Ezechiele Ramin.

Portrayals in media

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Verse about Bonhoeffer

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Writings

English translations of Bonhoeffer's works, most of which were originally written in German, are available. Many of his lectures and books were translated into English over the years and are available from multiple publishers. These works are listed following the Fortress Press edition of Bonhoeffer's writings. All sixteen volumes of the English Bonhoeffer Works Edition of Bonhoeffer's Oeuvre had been published by October 2013. A volume of selected readings entitled The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Reader which presents a chronological view of Bonhoeffer's theological development became available by 1 November 2013. Fortress Press editions of Bonhoeffer's works Various works in the Bonhoeffer corpus individually published in English