70th anniversary of the death of this great man this week - April 9th.

1. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
A brief life (1906-1945)
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him
come and die.”
(p.99. “The cost of discipleship” Macmillan, 1963)

2. Family background
• Born (a twin) Feb. 4, 1906
• Breslau, Germany
• Father Professor of Psychiatry
& Neurology moves to Berlin
in 1912
• Mother (devoted Christian
& teacher of her children)
• Two grandfathers, theologians
• Grandmother Julie’s influence
• Middle class family

3. Childhood & youth (1906-1923)
• 6th
of 8 children
• Always surrounded by books, music & games (learns piano)
• Baptized in Lutheran church (one of fav. games = “baptisms”)
• Children receive personal bibles at confirmation
• Brother Walter dies on Western front (Dietrich receives his bible)
• Studies at Grunewald Grammar School (love of learning)
• Purchases Meyer’s Origin & Beginnings of Christianity (age 15)
• Studies at Tubingen University

4. Study of theology (1923-27)
• Historical influence of Tubingen
• Adolph Schlatter (NT Theology)
• “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?”
• 1924: Trip to Rome (& Libya)
• Berlin (Adolph von Harnack)
• Karl Barth (“Lord of our life”)
• Sanctorium Communio dissertation
• 1927: Completes doctorate (by 21)

5. Travels (1928-32)
• Barcelona (year internship at
German church)
• Children & Youth ministry
• “Greetings from the matador”
• Berlin studies (“Act & Being”)
• Union Theo. Seminary (NY)
• Storefront black churches
• Social Gospel Movement
• “Sermon on the Mount”

6. Developments (1931-32)
• From Theologian to
Christian
• Encounter with Barth
• The Bonhoeffer Circle –
lectures on ecclesiology
• Youth secretary for World
Alliance ecumenical mvmt.
• Cambridge & Geneva
• “Unity & Peace”
• Letter from Klaus, warning
of situation back home

7. The Nazi Era (1933)
• Post WWl & civil unrest
• Weimar Republic
• Crippling debt & inflation
• “Golden era”
• Great Depression
• National Socialists (Nazi)
• Rise of Hitler to power
• Chancellor (Jan. 1933)
• Reichstag fire
• Targetting of Communists &
Jews.
• Enabling Act (dictatorial power)

8. “Into the desert” 1933-34
• Deutsche Christen (Voice of Nazi
ideology within Evangelical Church)
• Widespread anti-Semitism
• “Der Fuhrer, der Verfuhrer” radio
talk. Cut short.
• Formation of “Confessing Church”
• Trip to Sofia, Bulgaria
• A year in London (aid to refugees)
• Bishop George Bell
• “Peace speech” (Fano, Denmark)

9. Finkenwalde 1935-37
• Leader of Confessing
Church seminary
• Attempt to visit Ghandi
• “Life Together”
• Opposition from
Gestapo
• Ministry declared illegal,
seminary closed. Moves
underground
• 1940 forbidden to speak

10. Friends
• Eberhard Bethge (marries
Dietrich’s niece, Renate)
• Later compiled letters
• Franz Hildebrandt (half Jew)
• Gerhard Leibholz (flees to
England, helps intelligence)
• Hans von Dohnanyi (key to
resistance movement, one of
assassination conspirators)

11. Second trip to America
• Drafted for military service
• Invited to lecture in America
• Goes to NY via London
• Regrets leaving friends after
6 weeks.
• Returns to Germany
• Becomes “V man” (travels
for Intelligence Service)
• Visits Switzerland, Norway,
Sweden & Italy

12. A letter to Reinhold Niebuhr
“I have come to the conclusion that I
made a mistake in coming to America.
I shall have no right to take part in the
restoration of Christian life in
Germany after the war unless I share
the trials of this time with my people.”
(p.736 Eberhard Bethge “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography”)

13. Resistance 1940-44
• Tension between theological
ethics & plotting against govt.
• Ettal Benedictine Abbey, Bavaria
• Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
(Head of Counter-Espionage,
Abwehr - yet secretly supported
resistance movement)
• “Operation 7” – secret deportation of Jews
• Discovered, through financial irregularities

14. Prison (1943-45)
• Tegel military interrogation centre
• Isolated in dirty cell
• Allowed contact with parents & Maria
• Poem: “Who am I”?
• Develops friendship with guards
• Aware of impending attempt on
Hitler’s life. Coup fails, July ’44.
• Geheime Staatspolizei (Berlin)
Gestapo “Secret State Police“
• Only 3 letters get out (Jan. ’45)
• Poem: “Powers of Good”

15. Flossenberg 1945
• Parents attempt to contact
• Transferred to Buchenwald
Von Dohnanyi executed
• Brother Klaus & brother in law
Rudiger Schleicher shot
• April 5 decision to execute
• April 8 transferred to Flossenberg.
• Sunday after Easter – preaches for prisoners on
Is. 53:5.
• Hanged at dawn, April 9
• “This is the end, but for me the beginning of life.”

16. “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.”

17. Bonhoeffer on film

18. Bonhoeffer in print
Volume 1 Sactorum Communio:
A Theological Study of the
Sociology of the Church.
Volume 2 Act and Being:
Transcendental Philosophy
and Ontology in Systematic
Theology.
Volume 3 Creation and Fall.
Volume 4 Discipleship.
Volume 5 Life Together and The
Prayer book of the Bible: An
Introduction to the Psalms.
Volume 6 Ethics.
Volume 7 Fiction from Tegel
Prison.
Volume 8 Letters and Papers
from Prison.
Volume 9 The Young Bonhoeffer:
1918-1927.
Volume 10 Barcelona, Berlin,
New York: 1928-1931.
Volume 11 Ecumenical,
Academic and Pastoral Work:
1931-1932.
Volume 12 Berlin: 1933.
Volume 13 London: 1933-1935.
Volume 14 Theological
Education at Finkenwalde:
1935-1937.
Volume 15 Theological
Education Underground:
1937-1940.
Volume 16 Conspiracy and
Imprisonment: 1940-1945.