Dietrich Bonhoeffer Biography
German Theologian, Lutheran Pastor and Opponent of Nazism
Dietrich Bonhoeffer became deeply involved in the German resistance movement. He was known for Ethik (Ethics, 1949) and Letters and Papers from Prison (1953.)
Early Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau, Silesia, Germany, (now Wroclav, Poland), on February 4, 1905 and died in Flossenbürg, Bavaria, April 9, 1945. He came from an academic family in which his father was an eminent psychiatrist.
Bonhoeffer studied theology at Tubingen and Berlin universities. During travels in late 1920s and early 1930s to Barcelona as pastor of the Confessing church, to New York's Union Theological Seminary as a graduate student, and as pastor in London, his interest in associating theology with politics became clear. He was profoundly influenced by Theologian Karl Barth.
German Confessing Church and Anti-Nazism
In 1931 he took up a position as professor of systematic theology at the University of Berlin. Active in protests against the Nazi regime from the earliest days of its rise to power, he particularly criticized its anti-Semitism. In 1935 he was appointed head of the new seminary at Finkenwalde for the German Confessing church, which continued undercover even after the Gestapo closure in autumn 1937.
Bonhoeffer experimented with practices of prayer, private confession, common discipline and celibacy. At this time he described his views on international relations as "conditional pacifism" which was unique in German theological circles at that time. He also remained a vigorous ecumenist despite growing nationalism in Germany. Events in the late 1930s led to increased political involvement and his brother-in-law introduced him to the group seeking Hitler's overthrow.
He went to the US in 1939 and could have just taken refuge there but he returned to Germany after only two weeks if only to share in the trials with his people. Forbidden to publish or to speak publicly, Bonhoeffer continued to work underground for the church.
Last Years
In April 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo, first imprisoned in Berlin and then Bechenwald. Subsequent discovery of documents linking him with the unsuccessful attempt to kill Hitler on July 20 1944 led to his hanging at Flossenbürg, shortly before the liberation of the region by the American army.
Bonhoeffer's Works and Philosophy
Unfinished manuscripts of a volume on Christian ethics on which Bonhoeffer worked on from 1940 to 1943 were published posthumously as Ethik (Ethics, London, 1953). In this book, he rejected the dualistic separation of church and world, sacred and profane, instead, he called for a united earthly ethic based on Christology in which work, family life and institutions are mandates from God.
In his prison writings, Letters and Papers from Prison (London, 1953,) he welcomed the coming together of Christian belief and the concept of Christ in the modern world.
Sources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers, 2002
Dictionary of Modern Thinkers, edited by Alan Bullock and R.B. Woodings, London: Fontana Press, 1983
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by E. Bethge Munich, 1967; tr. T. Mosbacaher et al., London, 1970
World Come of Age, edited by R. GRegor SmithLondon, 1967
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologian
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