Dietrich Bonhoeffer
German theologian
| Date of Birth | : | 04 Feb, 1906 |
| Date of Death | : | 09 Apr, 1945 |
| Place of Birth | : | Wrocław, Poland |
| Profession | : | German Theologian |
| Nationality | : | Germany |
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a major founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on the role of Christianity in the secular world have become hugely influential; His 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship has been described as a modern classic. In addition to his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his strong resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Adolf Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of Jews. He was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1943 and imprisoned for a year and a half in Tegel prison. Later, he was transferred to Flossenberg concentration camp.
On July 20, Bonhoeffer was accused of involvement in the assassination plot against Hitler and tried along with other alleged conspirators, including former members of the Abwehr (German military intelligence office). He was hanged on April 9, 1945 during the fall of the Nazi regime.
First half of life
Childhood and family
Bonhoeffer was born on 4 February 1906 in Breslau, Germany (now Poland) into a large family. In addition to his other siblings, Dietrich had a twin sister, Sabine Bonhoeffer Leibolz: he and Sabine were the sixth and seventh of eight children. His father was Karl Bonhoeffer, a psychiatrist and neurologist, famous for his criticism of Sigmund Freud; and his mother Paula Bonhoeffer was a teacher and the granddaughter of Protestant theologian Carl von Hess and painter Stanislaus von Kalkruth. Bonhoeffer's family dynamics and His parents' values enabled him to pursue a high level of education and fostered his curiosity, which influenced his ability to lead others around him, especially in a church setting. He learned how to play the piano at the age of 8 and composed songs performed at the Philharmonic at the age of 11. Walter Bonhoeffer, the second born of the Bonhoeffer family, was killed in action at the age of 12 during World War I.
At age 14, Bonhoeffer decided to pursue his education in theology despite criticism from his older brother Klaus, a lawyer, and Karl, a scientist. He took Hebrew as an elective at school and attended many evangelical meetings, starving as a result of the war and Orphans are affected by many hardships as children. Bonhoeffer began his studies in Tübingen and eventually moved to the University of Berlin, where he submitted his successful dissertation: Sanctorum Communio. At the age of 21, on 17 December 1927, he went on to complete his Doctor of Theology degree at Humboldt University in Berlin, graduating summa cum laude.
Study in America
In 1930, Bonhoeffer moved to America with the intention of earning a Sloane Fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Bonhoeffer was not heavily influenced by American theology. He would describe the students as lacking interest in theology and would "laugh out loud" when learning a passage from Luther's Sin and Forgiveness. During his time there, he met Frank Fisher, a black fellow seminarian who introduced him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where Bonhoeffer taught Sunday school and developed a lifelong love of 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 United States, as well as the inadequacy of the church. Through the oppressed Negro Church, he recognized that God's commandments were carried out and was always enthralled by the sermon. Originally a patriot, Bonhoeffer later changed his views after watching a film showing the horrors of war. In later life he advocated the views of pacifism because of love for all and the high value of each individual life. He became involved in the ecumenical Christian movement, which eventually led him to resist Hitler and the Nazis.
working life
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on a retreat weekend with confirmation of Zion's church congregation (1932)
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 as one of the three European youth secretaries of the World Alliance for the Promotion of International Friendship through Churches (forerunner of the World Council of Churches). He appears to have undergone a personal conversion at this time, as he went from being a theologian initially drawn to the intellectual side of Christianity to a devoted man of personal faith, determined to follow the teachings of Christ literally in the Gospel November 15, 1931, aged 25 , he was appointed to the Old-Prussian United St. Matthew in Berlin-Tiergarten.
Church confession
Bonhoeffer's promising academic and religious career was dramatically cut short by the Nazis' rise to power on 30 January 1933. He was a staunch opponent of the regime from day one. Two days after Hitler was installed as chancellor, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against falling into an idolatrous sect of the Führer (leader), who could very well become a Verführer (seducer, or seducer). . His broadcasts were abruptly stopped, although it is unclear whether the newly elected Nazi regime was responsible. In April 1933, Bonhoeffer became the first to voice the church's resistance to Hitler's persecution of the Jews, declaring that the church should not simply "bandage victims under the wheel, but jam a spoke into the wheel itself".
In November 1932, two months before the Nazi occupation, an election was held for presbyters and synodal (church officials) in the German Landskirche (Protestant historic churches). The election was marked by a struggle between the ultra-patriotic nationalist German Christian (Deutsche Kristen) movement within the Old-Prussian Union Evangelical Church and the young reformers, who were eager to follow the Gospel teachings of Jesus—a struggle that threatened to explode. Schism In July 1933, Hitler unconstitutionally imposed new church elections. Bonhoeffer put all his efforts into elections, campaigning for the election of independent, non-Nazi officials who were dedicated to following Christ.
Despite Bonhoeffer's efforts, an overwhelming number of key church positions went to Nazi-backed Deutsche Christians in the July elections. The Deutsche Christen Old-Prussian Union holds a majority in the general assembly of the Evangelical Church and in all its provincial synods except Westphalia, and the synods of all other Protestant churches except the Lutheran churches of Bavaria, Hanover, and Württemberg. Anti-Nazi Christians considered these bodies to be uncorrupted "intact churches" in contrast to other so-called "destroyed churches".
In opposition to Nazisification, Bonhoeffer called for a ban, to stop offering all clerical formal services (baptism, confirmation, marriage, funeral, etc.), but Karl Barth and others advised against such a radical proposal. In August 1933, Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse were commissioned by opposition church leaders to draft the Bethel Confession, as a new statement of faith for opponents of the Deutsche Christen movement. Noted for affirming God's loyalty to the Jews as His chosen people, the Bethel Confession was ultimately so watered down to make it more palatable that Bonhoeffer ultimately refused to sign it.
In September 1933, the Nationalist Church Synod of Wittenberg passed a resolution to voluntarily apply the Arya Clause within the church, which meant that priests and church officials of Jewish origin were to be removed from their positions. Considering this an affront to the principles of baptism, Martin Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors' Emergency League). In November, a rally of 20,000 nationalist Deutsche Christians demanded the removal of the Jewish Old Testament from the Bible, seen by many as heresy, further swelling the ranks of the clergy's Emergency League.
Within weeks of its founding, more than a third of the German clergy had joined the Emergency League. It was the forerunner of the Bekenende Kirche (Confessing Church), which aimed to preserve historic, biblical Christian beliefs and practices. The Barmen Declaration, drafted by Barth in May 1934 and adopted by the Confessing Church, emphasized that Christ, not the Führer, was the head of the Church. Adoption of the Declaration is often seen as a victory, although, according to estimates, only 20% of German clergy supported the Confessing Church.
Ministry in London
When Bonhoeffer was offered a parish post in East Berlin in the autumn of 1933, he rejected it in protest of nationalist policies and accepted a two-year assignment as pastor of two German-speaking Protestant churches in London: the German Lutheran Church. Dacres Road, Sydenham, and St Paul's German Reformed Church, 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 "it was time to go into the desert for a while." Barth sees it as an escape from real war. He reprimanded Bonhoeffer sharply, saying, "I can only answer all the reasons and excuses you present: 'And what will happen to the German Churchmen now?'" Barth accused Bonhoeffer of abandoning his post and ruining his "excellent theologian." Armory” when “your church house is on fire,” and scolds him to return to Berlin “on the next ship.”
Bonhoeffer, however, did not go to England merely to avoid trouble at home; He hoped for a universal movement to act in the interests 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. At international gatherings, Bonhoeffer rallied people to oppose the Nationalist Deutsche Kristen movement and attempts to conflate Nazi nationalism with Christianity. When Bishop Theodor Haeckel—the German Lutheran Church's official in charge of foreign affairs—traveled to London to warn Bonhoeffer to refrain from any ecumenical activities not directly approved by Berlin, Bonhoeffer refused to budge.
Underground seminaries
In 1935, Bonhoeffer was offered a coveted opportunity to study non-violent resistance under 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, 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 arrested 27 pastors and former students. 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 not only 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 houses 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, a distant estate (vorwerk) of the von Kleist family in Wendish Tycho. In March 1940, the Gestapo closed the underground seminary there after the outbreak of World War II. Bonhoeffer's semi-monastic communal life and teaching at the underground Finkenwalde seminary formed the basis for his book, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.
Bonhoeffer's sister, Sabine, with her Jewish-class husband Gerhard Leibolz and their two daughters, fled 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 Dohnany introduced him to the Abwehr, the German military intelligence agency, with a team working to overthrow Hitler.
Bonhoeffer also learned from Dohnani that war was imminent. He was particularly concerned about the prospect of being admitted to the service. As a committed Christian pacifist opposed to the Nazi regime, he could never swear an oath to Hitler and never engage in any violence or combat in Hitler's army, even though refusing to do so would have been a serious crime. He was worried about what consequences his refusal of military service might have for the Confessing Church, as it was a move that would have been frowned upon by most nationalist Christians and their churches at the time.
It was at this time that Bonhoeffer moved to the United States in June 1939 at the invitation of Union Theological Seminary in New York. After much internal turmoil, he soon regretted his decision and returned after only two weeks despite strong pressure 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 have to live with the people of Germany through this difficult period of our national history. I shall have no right to take part in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share with my people the trials of this time ... The Christians of Germany must face the terrible alternative of wanting to defeat their nation so that a future Christian civilization may survive, or else their nation willing to conquer and thereby destroy our civilization and true Christianity. I know which of these options I must choose but I cannot make that choice from a place of safety.
Imprisonment
On 13 January 1943, Bonhoeffer became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, granddaughter of his close friend and seminary supporter at Finkenwalde, Ruth von Kleist Retzow. Ruth campaigned for this marriage for several years, although as late as October 1942, Bonhoeffer remained a reluctant suitor despite Ruth being part of his inner circle. He considered that his duties during the war made it the wrong time to marry. A large age gap appeared between Bonhoeffer and Maria: he was 18 to 36. Bonhoeffer first met his fiancée Maria when she was eleven years old as his confirmed student. As was considered correct at the time, the two spent almost no time alone before the engagement, and did not see each other between the engagement and Bonhoeffer's April 5 arrest. Once she was in prison, however, Maria's status as his fiancée became invaluable, as it meant she could meet and communicate with Bonhoeffer. Their relationship was troubled, he was a source of food and smuggled messages. Bonhoeffer made Eberhard Bethge his successor, but Maria, by allowing her correspondence with Bonhoeffer to be published after his death, provided an invaluable addition to the scholarship.
For a year and a half, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned in Tegel prison awaiting trial. There he continued to preach among his fellow prisoners and guards. Sympathetic guards helped smuggle her letters out of prison to Eberhard Bethge and others, and these uncensored letters were published posthumously in Letters and Papers from Prison. One of these guards, a corporal named Knobloch, even offered to help him escape from prison and "disappear" with him, and plans were made to that end, but Bonhoeffer ultimately refused for fear of Nazi reprisals against his family, especially his brother Klaus. did and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnany, who was also imprisoned.
On April 4, 1945, the diaries of Abwehr Chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris were discovered, and after reading them, a furious Hitler ordered that other Abwehr members be exterminated. Bonhoeffer was taken away just as he finished his last Sunday service and an English prisoner asked Paine Best to recall him to George Bell, Bishop of Chichester if he ever reached 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, without any record of proceedings or defense at Flossenberg concentration camp. He was hanged there on 9 April 1945. Bonhoeffer was stripped and taken naked to the execution grounds where he was hanged along with six others: Admiral Wilhelm Canaris; General Hans Auster, Deputy of the Canaries; General Carl Sack, a military jurist; businessman Theodore Strunk; and German resistance fighter Ludwig Gehre.
Eberhard Bethge, a student and close friend of Bonhoeffer, wrote of a man who witnessed the execution:
I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this loving man prayed, so devout and so sure that God had heard his prayer. At the gallows, he again said a short prayer and then climbed a few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. He died a few seconds later. In the nearly fifty years I have worked as a doctor, I have rarely seen a man die so obedient to God's will.
This is the historical account of Bonhoeffer's death, which went unchallenged for decades; but some recent biographers see problems with the story not in Beth but in its source. The alleged witness was a doctor at the Flossenberg concentration camp, Hermann Fischer-Hulstrong, who sought to alleviate the suffering of the condemned in order to alleviate his own guilt by executing them. J.L.F. Mogensen, a former prisoner at Flossenberg, cited the time it took to carry out the executions (about six hours), as well as the departures from camp procedures that prisoners were not allowed so late in the war, as reprehensible inconsistencies. The sentence was confirmed at the highest levels of the Nazi government by individuals with a pattern of torture for prisoners daring to challenge the regime, considering that "the physical details of Bonhoeffer's death were far more difficult than we had ever imagined."
Other recent critics of the traditional account are more caustic. One Fisher-Hulstrong called the story "an unfortunate lie", noting additional factual inconsistencies; For example, the doctor described Bonhoeffer climbing the steps of the gallows, but there was no immediate step on the outer gallows at Flossenberg. In some cases it also appears that "Fischer-Hüllstrung was tasked with reviving political prisoners until they were almost dead, in order to prolong their death agony. Another critic complained that Fischer-Hüllstrung's "sound Later statements about Bonhoeffer kneeling in prayer ... belong to the realm of legend," although there is no evidence to the contrary.
The location of Bonhoeffer's remains is unknown. His body may have been cremated outside the camp with hundreds of recently executed or deceased prisoners, or American soldiers may have placed his body in one of several mass graves where they buried the camp's unburied dead.
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