Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Life events

1. Born — 1906

   Born on 4 February 1906 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), the sixth of eight children of psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer and Paula Bonhoeffer, a teacher and granddaughter of Protestant theologian Karl von Hase. His twin sister was Sabine Bonhoeffer Leibholz.

2. Educated — 1927

   Completed his Doctor of Theology degree from Humboldt University of Berlin on 17 December 1927, graduating summa cum laude, with a dissertation titled Sanctorum Communio. He had begun theological studies at Tübingen before transferring to Berlin.

3. Ordained — 1931

   Ordained at Old-Prussian United St. Matthew in Berlin-Tiergarten on 15 November 1931, at age 25. Around the same time he became a lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Berlin and was appointed as one of three European youth secretaries by the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches.

4. Other — 1933

   Two days after Hitler was installed as chancellor on 30 January 1933, he delivered a radio address attacking Hitler and warning Germany against the idolatrous cult of the Führer, arguing the leader might turn out to be a Verführer — German for 'misleader' or 'seducer'. The broadcast was abruptly cut off. Later that autumn he accepted a two-year pastoral appointment at two German-speaking Protestant churches in London: the German Lutheran Church in Dacres Road, Sydenham, and the German Reformed Church of St Paul's, Goulston Street, Whitechapel.

5. Other — 1935

   Returned to Germany in 1935 to head an underground seminary at Finkenwalde training Confessing Church pastors, having declined an opportunity to study nonviolent resistance under Gandhi. The Gestapo closed the seminary in September 1937; by November twenty-seven pastors and former students had been arrested, and Bonhoeffer's authorization to teach at the University of Berlin had been revoked in 1936 after he was denounced as a 'pacifist and enemy of the state'.

6. Wrote — 1937

   Published The Cost of Discipleship (German: Nachfolge) in 1937, a study of the Sermon on the Mount in which he attacked 'cheap grace' — preaching of forgiveness without repentance, grace without discipleship or the cross — and argued for 'costly grace' that calls a person to follow Jesus Christ and costs a man his life.

7. Imprisoned — 1943

   Arrested by the Gestapo on 5 April 1943 alongside his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi and imprisoned at Tegel Prison in Berlin for a year and a half. He had worked under cover of the Abwehr military intelligence service as a courier for the German resistance and had participated in efforts to help German Jews escape to Switzerland; his uncensored letters, smuggled out by sympathetic guards, were later published as Letters and Papers from Prison.

8. Died — 1945

   Sentenced to death on 8 April 1945 by SS judge Otto Thorbeck at a drumhead court-martial held without witnesses, evidence, or defense records. Executed by hanging at dawn on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp, together with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, General Hans Oster, General Karl Sack, Theodor Strünck, and Ludwig Gehre.

Relationships

Documented claims

• During his 1930 Sloane Fellowship year at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Frank Fisher, a Black seminarian, introduced him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where he taught Sunday school and heard Adam Clayton Powell Sr. preach the 'Gospel of Social Justice', shaping his later theological ethics. (likely)
• In June 1939 he traveled to the United States at Union Theological Seminary's invitation to avoid German military conscription, but after two weeks of inner turmoil returned to Germany, writing to Reinhold Niebuhr: 'I must live through this difficult period in our national history along with the people of Germany.' (certain)
• He was a key founding member of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church). The Confessing Church's Barmen Declaration, drafted by Karl Barth in May 1934, insisted that Christ — not the Führer — was the head of the Church; only about twenty percent of German pastors supported it. (certain)
• Commemorated on 9 April in several Christian traditions: Anglican provinces mark the date, sometimes as a martyr and sometimes not; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America uses liturgical white — the color for non-martyred saints — at his commemoration; in 2008 the United Methodist Church formally recognized him as a 'modern-day martyr', the first such recognition for anyone who lived after the Reformation. (certain)
• Shortly before his execution he wrote the poem 'Von guten Mächten' ('By Gentle Powers' or 'By Gracious Powers'), which became a widely-sung funeral hymn. In 2021 it was voted the most popular hymn in Germany; the best-known melody was composed by Siegfried Fietz in 1970. (certain)