By Marianne Mauti
Bonhoeffer: A Portrait of Faith and Courage
A hero is one who is admired for their courage, achievements and noble qualities. How many of you have heard some of the stores of our great American heroes? I know I have! I love to read about men and women all over the world who have risen to the challenge of their time. Brave soldiers who faced their enemy in battle and those who stood in defiance. Many of these true hero's faced persecution, prison and even death. One of those hero's was a German Pastor who stood against the tyranny of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler himself. This modern day hero was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Germany in 1906, the 6th of 8 children born into privilege. He was a brilliant academic theologian who graduated sums cum laude from Berlin University. Still too young to be ordained, the 24 year old went to the United states in 1930 for post-graduate study and a teaching fellowship at New York City”s Union Theological Seminary. It was here that he had what he often referred to as a “life changing” experience when he met a black, fellow seminarian who introduced him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Bonheoffer formed a lifelong love for black spirituals, a collection of which he took back to Germany with him when he returned. While in America he heard Adam Clayton Powell preach a Gospel of social justice and became sensitive to not only social injustices experienced by minorities but also the ineptitude of the Church to bring about integration. Bonhoeffer began to see things quite differently from the perspective of the privilege he had grown up in and associated himself with. He observed, "Here one can only truly speak and hear about sin and grace and the love of God. It is here that the Gospel is preached with rapturous passion and vision.” Bonhoeffer refers to this time in his personal faith, as the point at which, "It turned from phraseology to reality.”
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| Adam Clayton Powell, Abyssinian Church soup kitchen |
From his earliest academic work Bonhoeffer exhibited great interest in the Church. If Christ is the “center,” as he said, "Christ takes form in the church, the community of saints.” Bonhoeffer’s theological view was unusual for his day. He believed that the marriage between the Church and state in Europe had weakened and corrupted both. Like all Germans, and many around the world, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was deeply troubled by World War I and the cultural and political crisis that afflicted his nation after the war and yet he never gave in to “the politics of cultural despair.” It was probably because he felt that belief in the Bible and the message of the Gospel was more powerful and liberating than the nature of man over the span of history.
He viewed the cultural despair of Germany at that time as a toxic brew of reaction against secularism, anger related to the loss of World War I, distress over cultural disorientation and confusion, fears about the future of Germany, hatred of the victorious powers and of those who supposedly stabbed Germany in the back, and of course the search for scapegoats (mainly the Jews)—that motivated many Germns to adopt a reactionary, authoritarian, and nationalistic ethic that fueled their support for Hitler's rise to power. This toxic brew appealed to the masses and Adolf Hitlers passionate narrative of national revenge and his promise of a utopian unity in a new Fuhrer State he would establish.
In January of 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. Two days after Hitler was installed, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be Verführer (mis-leader, or seducer). He was cut off the air in the middle of a sentence, though it is unclear whether the newly elected Nazi regime was responsible. In April 1933, Bonhoeffer raised the first voice for church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews, declaring that the church must not simply "bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam the spoke in the wheel itself."
Bonhoeffer’s promising career was soon dramatically altered with the Nazi ascension to power. He became a determined opponent of the regime from the very beginning . Even though the state Church of Germany had just had it’s election process, Hitler unconstitutionally imposed a new Church election. Despite Bonhoeffer's efforts to elect non-Nazi officials, the rigged election resulted in a majority of key church positions being filled by Nazi- supporters. Bonhoeffer urged a prohibition on all Pastoral services (weddings, baptisms, funerals, etc.) which was met with great opposition and seen as a radical proposal.
In August of 1933 he along with other Church leaders drafted the “Bethal Confession” which was a statement in opposition to the new church order and affirmed God’s faithfulness to the Jews as His historical chosen people. But before it was issued, out of fear, it became so watered down that in the end Bonhoeffer refused to sign it. So in September of 1933 he and a few others formed the “Pfarrernotbund” a forerunner to the “Confessing Church” that represented a major source of Christian opposition to the Nazi government. They insisted that Christ and not the Fuhrer was the head of the Church.
The state run Church prohibited non-Aryans from taking parish posts , so when Bonhoeffer was offered a post in East Berlin, he refused it in protest to national policy. Disheartened by the the German Churches complacency to withstand and speak out against the Nazi regime Bonhoeffer, 27, accepted a 2 year appointment as a Pastor of 2 German speaking Churches in London. He referred to this time as, “Going out for awhile into the desert. "Dissappointed by his departure, he was accused of “abandoning his post”. Bonhoeffer, however, used his time in London to have international gatherings, and rallied people to oppose the state church of Germany and the Nazi nationalism of the the Christian Gospel. His success in London caused one of the German State Church officials to travel to London to warn Bonhoeffer to stop his activity but Bonhoeffer refused. Bonhoeffer was driven by his convictions as a Christian.
The Nazis were fine with anyone saying they were a Christian as long as they didn’t interfere with the agenda, including the Holocaust. But if you opposed Hitler, as Bonhoeffer did, by opposing the State Church and teaching at an illegal seminary, they would take away your civil liberties. Bonhoeffer wrote to Erwin Sutz on September 11, 1934, “We must finally stop appealing to theology to justify our reserved silence about what the state is doing,for that is nothing but fear. ‘Open your mouth for the one who is voiceless’, for who in the church today still remembers that it is the least of the Bible’s demands in times such as these?” Bonheoffer decided to return to Germany, but in 1937 his authorization to teach at the University of Berlin was revoked and he was denounces as a “pacifist and enemy of the state.” Bonhoeffer subsequently became deeply involved with the underground seminary and aided in the effort of securing funds for their survival.
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| Maria von Wedemeyer |
By August 1937, Himmler decreed the education and examination of Church ministry candidates illegal. In September 1937, the Gestapo closed all the seminary's and arrested 27 pastors and former students. It was around this time that Bonhoeffer published his best-known book, “The Cost of Discipleship.” in which he not only attacked "cheap grace" as a cover for the lack of ethics but also preached "costly grace". Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly traveling from one eastern German village to another to conduct "seminary on the run" supervision of his students. In times of trouble, Bonhoeffer's former students and their wives would take refuge in von Kleist-Retzow's Pomeranian estate, and Bonhoeffer was a frequent guest. It was there that he fell in love with Kleist-Retzow's granddaughter Maria von Wedemeyer, to whom he became engaged three months before his arrest.
In 1938, the Gestapo banned Bonhoeffer from Berlin. In February of 1938 Bonhoeffer made an initial contact with members of the German resistance when his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi introduced him to a group seeking Hitler's overthrow at Abwehr. Bonhoeffer also learned from Dohnanyi that war was imminent and was particularly troubled by the prospect of being conscripted. As a committed pacifist opposed to the Nazi regime, he could never swear an oath to Hitler and fight in his army. Not to do so was potentially a capital offense.
Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer was further harassed by the Nazi authorities as he was forbidden to speak in public and was required to regularly report his activities to the police. He was also forbidden to print or to publish. In 1940, Bonhoeffer began work as an agent for Military Intelligence, supposedly using his ecumenical contacts to help the cause of the Reich. In reality, he used his contacts to spread information to the resistance movement. In trips to Italy, Switzerland, and Scandinavia (1941-1942), he informed them of resistance activities by Germans against the Nazi's and tried to gain foreign support for the German resistance. Dohnanyi and others put great hopes in Bonhoeffer’s foreign contacts, particularly in Bishop George Bell’s ability to carry messages to the high levels of British government. Bonhoeffer tried to convince his foreign contacts that an allied signal of support for the German conspiracy was crucial, since only this would convince the German military to move against Hitler. The allied governments ,however, did not trust those behind the conspiracy. Churchill and Roosevelt announced that only the unconditional military defeat of Germany would eradicate Nazism, they were however not opposed to Hitlers assassination.
Despite these rebuffs, the conspirators continued to plan Hitler’s downfall. But, as prospects for an early coup dimmed, some also searched for ways to help the victims of Nazism. On September 5, 1941, all Jews in the Reich were ordered to wear the yellow star; the first deportations to the East from Berlin occurred on October 15. On October 17 or 18, Bonhoeffer and Friedrich Perels, wrote a memo giving details of these first deportations.The memo was sent to trusted German military officials in the hope that it might move them to action, as well as the US State Department. In Dohnanyi’s office, a plan was conceived to get Jews out of Germany by giving them papers as foreign agents. The plan was not that far-fetched: in several cases, Nazi intelligence offices had used Jewish agents as a cover. There was also a steady underground business that helped Jews emigrate in exchange for large sums of money. The effort, termed “Operation Seven,” eventually helped fourteen Jews out to Switzerland. Bonhoeffer used his ecumenical contacts to arrange visas and sponsors for the group.
Bonhoeffer was arrested and charged with conspiring to rescue Jews; of using his travels abroad for non-intelligence Matters. The Gestapo report on Bonhoeffer described hims as “completely in the opposition.” For a year and a half, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned at Tegel military prison awaiting trial. There he continued his work in religious outreach among his fellow prisoners and guards. Sympathetic guards helped smuggle his letters out of prison to his close friend, Eberhard Bethge and his fiancé Maria. The uncensored letters were posthumously published in Letters and Papers from Prison and his personal letters to Maria were kept private till many years later. A guard named Corporal Knobloch even offered to help him escape from the prison and "disappear" with him, and plans were made for that end. But Bonhoeffer declined it fearing Nazi retribution on his family, especially his brother Klaus and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi who were also imprisoned. While at Tegel Prison, Bonoeffer was able to have books left for him. often by his fiancé Maria. Maria was also able to bring clothes and blankets.
After the failure of the 20 July Plot on Hitler's life in 1944 and the discovery of secret Abwehr documents relating to the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer's connection with the conspirators was discovered. He was transferred from the military prison Tegel in Berlin, where he had been held for 18 months, to the detention cellar of the house prison of the Reich Security Head Office, the Gestapo's high-security prison. In February 1945, he was secretly moved to Buchenwald concentration camp. Maria, drove from prison to concentration camps, trying to find him. She never did. Great as their love was, they would never be married, nor see each other again in this life. Maria didn’t even know he’d been killed until two months after the war.
Bonhoeffer was finally moved to Flossenburgh concentration camp. On April 4, 1945, the diaries of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, were discovered, and in a rage upon reading them, Hitler ordered that all the Abwehr conspirators be executed. Bonhoeffer was condemned to death on April 8, 1945 by SS judge Otto Thorbeck at a drumhead court-martial, without witnesses, records of proceedings or a defense. Bonhoeffer was stripped of his clothing and was led away just as he concluded his final Sunday service and asked an English prisoner Payne Best to remember him to Bishop George Bell of Chichester, if he should ever reach his home to tell him, "This is the end — but for me the beginning of life." He was executed there by hanging at dawn on April 9, 1945, just two weeks before soldiers from the United States 90th and 97th Infantry Divisions liberated the camp, three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the capitulation of Nazi Germany.
Eberhard Bethge, writes of the SS doctor who witnessed Bonhoeffers death, "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. 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." Ironically both Bonhoeffer and the Adolf Hitler died in April 1945. Bonhoeffer on the ninth, Hitler on the thirtieth. Exactly three weeks apart, both men faced God.
The rise and appeal of the German Pro-Nazi Christian Movement is impossible to understand apart from the intense desire of at least some German Christians to regain greater influence on their own culture. Part of the appeal was that they promised to support “positive Christianity.” They would bring back “traditional”Christian values. The SA brownshirts would march into swastika-draped Churches for weddings and ritualizing occasions. Worried Christian traditionalists thought with relief, “Good, at least the young people are back in church again, communism has been defeated, and the secularists are on the run.” Others believed that Germany’s Christian population were anxious to exercise influence in the culture and their alliance with Hitler would be an indication of that and a re-establishment of their historic power and cultural privileges. They believed the false promises of the Nazis and were deceived by the appearance of influence in the form of young men wearing brownshirts occupying their pews.
It is certainly clear from The Cost of Discipleship that Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood that following Jesus would be costly. Jesus taught a particular way of life that stands in opposition to the practices of most worldly powers. To say yes to Jesus is to say no to the secular policies of these powers. Such resistance was and will be costly. The enduring power of Bonhoeffer’s example is that his life reflected his teachings. From the very first time their lives intersected, he resisted Hitler and the influence of Nazism and in the end, it cost him his life.
The following hymn was written by Bonhoeffer in the concentration camp, shortly before his death:
By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
And confidently waiting come what may,
We know that God is with us night and morning,
and never fails to greet us each new day.
Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
Still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;
Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.
And when this cup You give is filled to brimming
With bitter suffering, hard to understand,
We take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good and so beloved a hand.
Yet when again in this same world You give us
The joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,
We shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall be yours alone
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FORGING YOUR FAITH
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Thank You and God Bless,
Marianne Mauti
Founder and CAO
'Forging Your Faith' is the online Christian publication of 'Christ the King Church' in Bellevue, Pa.
About Marianne Mauti: Marianne is a writer and blogger as well as a Pastor at "Christ the King Church" in Bellevue, Pa. She is currently the Dean and Chief Operating Officer of "Christ the King Seminary" a full time Bible Institute. For more information about us please contact us at: crowncntr@aol.com
About Marianne Mauti: Marianne is a writer and blogger as well as a Pastor at "Christ the King Church" in Bellevue, Pa. She is currently the Dean and Chief Operating Officer of "Christ the King Seminary" a full time Bible Institute. For more information about us please contact us at: crowncntr@aol.com ***********************************************************
ARTICLE RESOURCES
ARTICLE RESOURCES
* The Bible
*Dr. George R. Beninate: Is Bishop of "Christ the King Church" in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. A Doctor of Theology, Biblical Apologist, conference speaker, lecturer and my spiritual father.He is also the Author of several books including,"The Age of Glory", Thank you for your relentless pursuit of truth!
* “Detrich Bonhoeffer Autobiography”, Rasmussen, Larry L. (2005). Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality And Resistance. Westminster John Knox Press, Christian History, Issue 32, "Bonhoeffer: Did You Know?", Michael Balfour, Withstanding Hitler, Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Elizabeth Raum, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, David Ford, The Modern Theologians, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works: London 1933–1937, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "After Ten Years", Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography,Plotting Hitlers Death:The German Resistance to Hitler 1933-1945, Weidenfield & Nicholson, Peter Hoffman (1996). The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945. McGill-Queen's Press, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Theological Education Underground:1937-1940.
