D.G. Schumacher | German pastor Bonhoeffer opposed Third Reich

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian and an outspoken critic of Hitler’s Third Reich, died at Flossenburg prison 70 years ago, just days before Allied troops liberated Flossenburg as World War II came to an end in Europe.

Bonhoeffer is a towering figure, as a still widely quoted theologian and as a courageous man who early in the Nazi years (1933-1945) saw and outspokenly opposed the evils of Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship. Bonhoeffer “was willing to speak out not just about Hitler’s dictatorship but also his euthanasia programme and the Jewish Holocaust. Bonhoeffer had many opportunities to escape Germany, yet deliberately chose to continue his work serving the Confessing Church, a group of churches that refused to allow their pulpits to be used for Nazi propaganda,” writes Krish Kandiah, a contributing editor to Christian Today. Kandiah is president of the London School of Theology.

“Through his writings he remains a powerful prophetic voice to the church. Alongside CS Lewis he is one of the world’s most quoted theologians; his personal courage and martydom bring authenticity to his challenging words,” Kandiah writes in an article at http://www.christiantoday.com

Bonhoeffer was the sixth of eight children in a prominent family; his father was a well-known psychiatrist. At age 13, Dietrich announced “his intention to become a theologian,” Randall Balmer writes in The New York Times Book Review in an article about “Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” by Charles Marsh, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia.

“Few theologians witnessed the juggernaut of Nazi depravity at closer range than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. …Marsh renders Bonhoeffer’s life and thought in exquisite detail and with sympathetic understanding, …and we see Bonhoeffer’s transformation from pampered scion and theological dilettante to energetic churchman and Christian martyr, all against the backdrop of cataclysmic changes in Germany.”

In 1930, Bonhoeffer studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York and became a pastoral assistant at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The Lutheran church in Germany capitulated to the Nazi regime. “Nazi banners ornamented the churches; one minister declared, ‘Christ has come to us through Adolf Hitler,’ ” Balmer writes.

Bonhoeffer was a leader in the Confessing Church and organized a school at Finkenwalde for dissident seminarians. The Gestapo closed the school in 1937. Bonhoeffer returned to New York but stayed only a short time, feeling he needed to be in Germany. He had an appointment in the German military intelligence unit and was in a plot to assassinate Hitler. “His principal involvement lay in providing moral justification for tyrannicide,” Balmer writes.

That led to his arrest in 1943 and imprisonment for a year and a half, then a brief trial. He was hanged April 8, 1945 by piano wire. From an earlier book, I recall the report of a doctor who witnessed the execution, saying he had never seen anyone so calmly face execution.

The 70th anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death reminds us that some Germans did speak out against the Nazi depravities, and opposition cost many their lives. In prison, near the end of his life at age 39, Bonhoeffer wrote: “We still love life, but I believe that death can no longer surprise us.”

This story was originally published April 9, 2015 at 5:43 PM with the headline "D.G. Schumacher | German pastor Bonhoeffer opposed Third Reich."