Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
In short -A German Lutheran theologian who became actively involved in the German Resistance movement against Hitler during the Second World War and who was hanged for high treason during the closing months of that war.
Bonhoeffer was born into an affluent and privileged upper middle-class family in Breslau on 4 February 1906. His father Karl was a successful neurologist who became Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Berlin, moving the family there in 1912 to take up his new post. Cultured and sophisticated, the Bonhoeffer family was not particularly religious in terms of their diligent attendance to Christian worship. Despite this, Bonhoeffer’s decide to pursue a religious career though with his elder brother’s disapproval
Bonhoeffer, however, was not to be dissuaded, and at the age of 17 he went to Tübingen to begin his study of theology. In 1924 he returned to Berlin to study under some of the leading figures of German theology,
Bonhoeffer completed his doctoral dissertation entitled Sanctorum Communion in 1927 and by 1931 hired by the University in Berlin.
Before taking up his post as lecturer, however, Bonhoeffer went to Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1930 for a period of postdoctoral study. Here he was influenced through the friendship and teaching of Reinhold Niebuhr to take seriously the demand to relate the gospel to the needs of the poor in the form of social action. Student friends also took the young Bonhoeffer to witness the conditions of black Americans in nearby Harlem. Bonhoeffer visited and worshipped in the black churches on a regular basis and in the spring of 1931 taught Sunday school at the Abyssinian Baptist church in Harlem.
Bonhoeffer's career was dramatically altered with Nazi ascension to power on January 30, 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 attacking Hitler, in which he warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be Verführer (mis-leader, or seducer).
The life-and-death struggle for the church in Germany was underway. Did the church live from the gospel only, or could the church lend itself to the state in order to reinforce the ideology of the state? Bonhoeffer argued that the latter would render the church no church at all. As the struggle intensified it was noticed that Bonhoeffer's sermons became more comforting, more confident of God's victory, and more defiant. The struggle was between the national church (which supported Hitler) and the confessing church . The Barmen Declaration, drafted by Karl Barth and adopted by the Confessing Church, insisted that Christ, not the Führer, was the head of the church.
Lutheran bishops remained silent in the hope of preserving institutional unity. Most ministers refused to support the confessing church, whispering that there was no need to play at being confessing heroes. In the face of such ministerial cowardice Bonhoeffer warned his colleagues that there was no chance of converting Hitler; what they had to ensure was that they were converted themselves
To assist in the preparation of parish pastors, the Confessing Church established five seminaries in Germany to be supported by free-will offerings Bonhoeffer was invited to return to Germany from England in the spring of 1935 to direct one of these illegal seminaries. 23 pastoral candidates convened at Zingst on the coast of the Baltic Sea. A few weeks later in June they moved to an old manor house near a small rural town, Finkenwalde, just east of the Oder River and about 250 kilometres from Berlin. Most of those who came to the seminary had already received a university education and were well on their way to ordination. During the six months that they shared life together under the tutelage of 'Brother Bonhoeffer”, as most referred to him, their lives were indelibly influenced by him.
Bonhoeffer's classic book Life Together reflects the spiritual and corporate atmosphere of the Finkenwalde community. Written in 1938 at his sister Sabine's home in Gottingen in only four weeks, it brought together the basic components of the seminarians' experience – personal and corporate meditation, prayer, solitude, Bible study, fellowship, singing, recreation, ministry, worship, the eucharist, confession and spiritual care.
Life Together is about the implications of understanding the church as the context out of which individual faith and life are to be lived and understood.
At the same time as he was writing this foundational work; his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, was assembling his 'Chronicle of Shame', a day-by-day account of Nazi policies and actions. As a member of the
Ministry of Justice staff under Franz Guertner, von Dohnanyi was privy to information on the injustices and persecutions perpetrated by the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer consequently knew far more than the average German Citizen about Nazi criminality.
In September 1937 the seminary was closed by order of the Gestapo. By the end of that year twenty-seven of the students had been arrested and imprisoned. Nevertheless the teaching and the learning continued, albeit in a new form. For the next three years, 1938-40, the backwoods of Pomeranian housed 'the collective pastorate'. Co-operating superintendents in two districts, Schlawe and Gross-Schlonwitz, appointed the seminarians as assistant clergy. By March 1940, all of the seminarians had been summoned to military service. There was no exemption for servants of the church, nor was there any provision for conscientious objection.
At this time North American and British church leaders were impatient with any discussion of theology, preferring to concentrate on the church's politics. Bonhoeffer irked them by insisting that they were preoccupied with symptoms only. While the political compromises were dreadful indeed, the root problem, the disease, was theological: the church was infested with heresy. For this reason Bonhoeffer tirelessly addressed the issue of heresy, maintaining that the church can live only by its confession of Jesus Christ as the one Word of God which it must hear and heed and proclaim.
Two American professors coaxed him into returning to the US in 1939 and to a teaching position in NYC. As soon as the boat docked Bonhoeffer knew he had made a mistake. He knew that Germany would shortly be at war, knew that the devastation of his native land would be indescribable. He was convinced he would have no credibility in assisting with its recovery and restoration unless he himself endured the devastation first-hand. He was in the US only four weeks.
While he had been a pacifist only a few years earlier, Bonhoeffer's pacifist convictions were receding. He saw that untold suffering among the German people (especially civilians), as well as among the allies, would swell unless Hitler were removed. He quietly met with several high-ranking officers of German military intelligence who were secretly opposed to Hitler. Together they conspired to assassinate Hitler. Unbeknown to them, the intelligence arm of the secret police was spying on the intelligence arm of the army. The conspiracy was discovered. Bonhoeffer was arrested and assigned to a prison in Berlin. It was April, 1943. He was to be in prison for two years. He was allowed to read, including 19th century cultural heritage of Germany and also managed to reread the Bible 2.5 times
In July, 1944, the hidden bomb which was meant for Hitler did explode, but exploded while he was out of the room. The incriminating files which the secret police turned up pointed to Bonhoeffer directly, as well as others like General Oster and Admiral Canaris. Underground plans were being made to help Bonhoeffer escape when it was learned that his brother Klaus, a lawyer, had been arrested. Bonhoeffer declined to escape lest his family be punished. (He was never to know that Klaus was to be executed in any case, along with a brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi.) It was at this time particularly that Bonhoeffer ministered to his fellow-prisoners awaiting execution. Payne Best, an office in the British Army wrote of Bonhoeffer "Bonhoeffer was different, just quite calm and normal, seemingly perfectly at his ease… his soul really shone in the dark desperation of our prison. He was one of the very few men I have ever met to whom God was real and ever close to him." Bonhoeffer was removed from prison and taken to Flossenburg, an extermination camp in the Bavarian forest. On the 9th of April, three weeks before American forces liberated Flossenburg, he was executed. The tree from which he was hanged bears a plaque today with only ten words inscribed on it: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness to Jesus Christ among his brethren.”