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Some would say later that theology was in his blood. His father was a
professor at the university in Breslau, in the east of Germany; he was also a leading authority on
psychology and neurology (though not enamored of the theories of Dr. Freud or
Adler or Jung, it seems). Among his distant relations on his father’s side were
several theologians, as well as numerous artists and scholars. On his mother’s
side, with aristocratic roots deep in German history, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
grandfather had been chaplain to the Kaiser—a post he eventually resigned due to
political differences with the government. His great-grandfather, Carl von Hase,
had been a protégé of Goethe, and one of the leading German church historians of
all time. Von Hase had also ended up in prison for a time due to political views
deemed “subversive” by those in authority.
So it was that even by the age of 14, while still in lyceum, or high
school, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had made up his mind that he would become a
theologian. Three years later, at the age of 17, he entered the university at
Tubingen, transferring a year later to
Berlin
University, where he studied under
some of the great theological minds of the 20th century, including
Adolf von Harnack and Karl Barth.
His doctoral thesis, On the
Communion of the Saints, was a masterpiece, which caught the notice of
far-older and better-trained theologians. In 1928, still just 21 years old, he
graduated with a doctoral degree (summa
cum laude, of course), and, still too young to be ordained, traveled to Spain to become curate of a German-speaking
parish there. During a year in Spain, he witnessed a nation on the brink of
civil war, descending into social chaos. He also saw firsthand in Spain
a church insensitive to the social need all around it, instead burying its faith
in a heap of overblown religiosity and privilege.
Once he had finished his tenure in Spain,
Bonhoeffer was still too young to be ordained, so he then traveled to the United States, where he became a teaching fellow at Union
Theological Seminary in New York City.
He was not impressed with the rigors of the American seminary compared to those
in Germany. (“There is no theology here,” he
wrote to a friend.) But he became a close friend of the influential American
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and developed a lifelong love for the spirituality
of the African American church, including the preaching of Rev. Adam Clayton
Powell, Sr. His eyes were opened to the call of the Social Gospel, and in his
own words, he began to view faith “from below”, from the perspective of those
who face oppression and marginalization by society. It was during his time in
America, Bonhoeffer said, that his faith
“turned from phraseology to reality”. After touring
America (as well as Mexico and Cuba),
Bonhoeffer returned to Germany
in 1931 (by way of Libya).
Back in Germany, he accepted
a post as lecturer at the
University
of Berlin, and also was
appointed to a leadership position in the World Alliance for Promoting
International Friendship (a forerunner of the World Council of Churches). His
time abroad had taught Bonhoeffer the value of ecumenism in spreading the
Christian gospel. On
November 15, 1931, at the age of 25, he was finally ordained to the
Evangelical Lutheran ministry at St. Michael’s Church in
Berlin.
A little more than a year later, in January of 1933, Adolf Hitler took
power in Germany, and
almost from Day One of the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer was its outspoken opponent.
Just two days after Hitler became chancellor, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio
address in which he warned Germans against slipping into an idolatrous cult of a
Fuhrer who puts himself above God.
This leader, this Fuhrer, Bonhoeffer
warned, could very easily turn into a Verfuhrer—which can be translated as Mis-ruler, or Deceiver. His broadcast
was cut off by the authorities in mid-sentence. In a sermon two months later,
Bonhoeffer likened Germany under Hitler to a cart being driven
by a mad man. In such a case, he said, it was not the responsibility of
witnesses merely “to bandage the victims under the wheels”, but rather to “jam
the spoke in the wheel itself” and overturn the whole cart. Bonhoeffer was among
the first (and the few) German churchmen to speak out openly against the Nazi’s
persecution of the Jews in particular.
Hitler moved quickly to squelch all opposition within the German church.
He demanded a conference to reorganize the regional and local churches in Germany into one national church—with
bishops appointed on the recommendation of the fascist government. Many within
the German church even welcomed the advent of Hitler as a new day of possibility
for the church in Deutschland and the realization of the full potential of the
Aryan Volk. After Hitler took power, a
leading Lutheran theologian wrote: "Our Protestant churches have welcomed the
turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God."
Bonhoeffer labored mightily to elect anti-fascist, non-nationalist,
delegates to the national synod, but to no avail. Throughout
Germany, pro-Hitler churchmen were elected to
positions of power, and a declaration was passed calling for “a vital national
Church that will express all the spiritual forces of our people." Restrictions
were immediately placed on the clergy throughout
Germany. Ministers and priests had to be
"politically reliable" and accept the superiority of the Aryan race. Jewish
Christians were to be expelled from the ministry. Hitler was
fuhrer over the German church—as over
other aspects of German life-- and German clerics were to teach of a Christ who was not even Jewish, but who
was uniquely and unassailably Aryan.
But some German Protestant pastors, led by Martin Niemöller in Berlin,
and including Bonhoeffer of course, stood in opposition to these so-called
"German Christians". Niemöller sent
a letter to clergymen throughout
Germany, inviting them to join a Pastors’
Emergency League, which would pledge itself to teaching only the true gospel
message, as taught in the Scriptures. In April 1934, opposition churchmen from
several religious groups formed the Confessing Church of Germany, so called
because its members had pledged themselves to affirm the great historic
Confessions of the Church, rather than any later impositions of the Nazi regime.
Disheartened by the co-opting of the German church by the fascists,
Bonhoeffer accepted a two-year appointment as pastor of two German-speaking
Protestant churches in London. He wrote Karl Barth that he
had become so discouraged by the situation within Germany
that “it was about time to go for a while into the desert.” In England, too, he hoped, he would be able to drum up
support for the German
Confessing Church
among members of the ecumenical movement in the West. When officials of the
pro-Nazi national church in Germany
ordered him to stop any ecumenical activity not explicitly ordered by
Berlin, Bonhoeffer ignored them, and instead stepped up his
efforts speaking out in favor of the
Confessing Church.
When his two year stint in England
was up, Bonhoeffer was offered the chance of returning to America—or—something he wanted even more—an opportunity
to travel to India
and study non-violent resistance with Mahatma Gandhi himself. Some friends urged
him to accept such enticing offers; others, including Karl Barth, said that to
do so would be to run away from the battle German Christianity now faced. Barth
(whom the Nazis had expelled from Germany
back to his native
Switzerland) remonstrated with Bonhoeffer: “I
can only reply to all the reasons and excuses which you put forward: ‘And what
of the German church?’” Not to return to Germany, Barth
said, would be to waste his “splendid theological armory” while “the house of
your church is on fire.” No, according to Barth, Bonhoeffer must not go to
India or America, but must return to Germany “by the next ship”.
In 1937, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to
Germany
on the last scheduled steamer to cross the Atlantic.
“I shall have no right,” Bonhoeffer wrote Niebuhr before leaving America, “to
participate in the reconstruction of German Christianity after the [coming] war
if I do not share in the trials of this time with my people.” Back in Berlin, he found that his
authorization to teach had been revoked by the German government, which now
labeled him a “pacifist and enemy of the state”. Instead, Bonhoeffer decided to
go underground, and founded an illegal seminary for training new ministers in
the Confessing
Church.
The Nazis, for their part, had stepped up pressure on their religious opponents.
Pastor Niemoller had been arrested. The seminary at Finkenwalde had been closed,
and 27 teachers and students arrested as well. With the seminary closed,
Bonhoeffer instead decided to establish a “seminary on the run”; for the next
two years, he would travel secretly from village to village in eastern Germany, supervising a cadre of students,
most of whom worked illegally at small parishes scattered about the countryside.
During this time, too, Bonhoeffer wrote his most famous work,
The Cost of Discipleship, a mediation
on the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount in a corrupt world. The work was based
largely upon his experience teaching in the illegal seminary. In
The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer
developed the contrast between “cheap grace”—that in which faith is merely an
outer garment covering over ethical laxity and acceptance of evil—and genuine or
“costly grace”, which has to be sought through a person’s full engagement in
confronting powers and principalities of evil in the world, even, if need be, at
the cost of one’s own life.
Bonhoeffer’s faith called him to do all he could to bring down the Nazi
regime. It was the duty of all Germans, he believed, not just to stand back
passively, but actively to oppose their dictators—to overturn the Nazi cart-- by
whatever means necessary-- even including
working actively for Germany’s
defeat, once war came in 1939. “Christians in Germany… face the terrible alternative,” he
wrote, “of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian
civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby
destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose.”
Nor could his choice be that of pacifism alone, in spite of the fact that
such is the road down which his gentle, amiable, and peace-loving personality
would have led him in ordinary times. Rather, Bonhoeffer realized that he would
be called to take up the means of war in order to end the war which Hitler had
launched upon civilization itself. It was not a choice he made easily, nor was
it a choice without cost. Killing any man—even Hitler—Bonhoeffer acknowledged,
would be a terrible sin, a direct contradiction in the face of the teachings of
Jesus. But not to do so, he continued, in the light of the truth of the world as
it is, would be an even more heinous crime of omission. Living out one’s faith
fully, on this side of eternal life,
would mean committing acts for which one would stand in need of God’s
forgiveness and grace.
In 1941, Bonhoeffer joined the Abwehr, a German military intelligence
unit, obstensibly working in support of the Hitler regime. In reality, he was a
double agent and spy, traveling throughout Europe,
cultivating Western support for a new German government which would follow
Hitler’s overthrow. As a member of the German intelligence service, he was privy
to classified government information, including the truth about Germany’s “final solution” policy against
the Jews—which he passed along to authorities in the West. Bonhoeffer had no
illusions about the danger in which he was now putting himself; but there could
be no turning back. At times such as these, he wrote, “the ultimate question for
a responsible man to ask is not how to extricate himself heroically from the
affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live.”
In April of 1943, Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi,
were arrested by the Nazi SS when their efforts to transport Jews out of Germany into neutral Switzerland were discovered. In the course
of their investigation, authorities found evidence linking both men to the
Valkyrie plots to assassinate Hitler at his Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia the month before.
For over a year, Bonhoeffer was held awaiting trial at the Tegel military
prison outside Berlin. At Tegel, he continued
his work as a Christian pastor, ministering to his fellow prisoners and even to
the prison guards. Everyone he met there was impressed by his goodness, his
unfailing courage, and his unselfishness—so impressed, indeed, that his guards
even helped him to smuggle out copies of his sermons and poetry, for publication
on the outside.
According to witnesses after the war, in every one of his actions in prison,
Bonhoeffer sought to exhibit the calmness and self-control with which, he felt,
a true Christian must face the certainty of death. “Christ calls the true
Christian,” he had written, “to death.” For our actions in this world serve as
merely the bridge to life eternal—that realm of truth which exists when the
things of this world pass away.
In February of 1945, Bonhoeffer was secretly moved from Tegel to the
Buchenwald concentration camp, and then to the camp at Flossenburg, east of
Nuremberg, near the Czech border.
Even here, he continued to minister to his fellow prisoners with a brave and
even cheerful bearing. But according to other witnesses, he had changed, as
well: a spirit of perfect concord and peace now seemed to fill his soul; his
eyes shone as though they were fixed on some place beyond this world.
On Sunday, April 7, he conducted his final Sunday service with the
prisoners, and asked one of the worshippers, an English prisoner named Payne
Best, to remember him to Bishop George Bell, whom he had known when he was in England. “This is the end,” Bonhoeffer said.
But then he added, “For me—the beginning of life.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was condemned to death before a military tribunal on April 8, 1945. Like other
participants in the Valkyrie plot, his final treatment would be especially
harsh. The next day, April 9,
1945, his clothes were stripped off of him, and then led naked across
the execution yard at Flossenburg. A thin metal wire for strangulation was hung
around his neck. He was executed by hanging at Flossenburg on April 9—just three
weeks before the fall of Berlin, less than a
month before Germany’s
final capitulation.
History has taught us that in the face of modern totalitarianism, revolt
in any form can mean certain death. The majority of people in any nation in any
period of time does not consist of heroes. But that heroes exist at all under
such dire circumstances is an amazing thing, and a reason to rejoice in the
potential that lies await in our human spirit.
It is the quiet heroism of men like Bonhoeffer (and so many other brave
men and women) that can give us hope. Their quiet inspiration, accepted as a
great gift from the God who created them, may yet remind us to keep our eyes
affixed, too, not upon those things which are seen, but upon those deeper truths
which are often unseen; for that which is seen will pass away; the unseen will
abide through all history and all memory—even in the silent memory of God.
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