Born on this day 1906, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, pastor, and political dissident.

A photograph of Dietrich Bonhoeffer taken in 1932 at Gland near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Berlin State Library.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on 4 February 1906 in the city of Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland), the sixth child of a middle class, intellectual family. His father was the psychiatrist and neurologist Karl Bonhoeffer, while his mother, Paula Bonhoeffer was a teacher and the granddaughter of both the Protestant theologian Karl von Hase and the painter Stanislaus von Kalckreuth. As such he was always destined to gain an education and enter a profession, settling on theology following the death of his older brother, Walter Bonhoeffer, during the First World War.

Bonhoeffer studied theology at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin, before completing a doctorate at Humboldt University at the age of 21 in December 1927. He then travelled to Barcelona, where he served as assistant pastor to a German-speaking congregation for two years. In 1930 he travelled to New York to study at the Union Theological Seminary for a year. Bonhoeffer appears to have been somewhat unimpressed by the quality of academic study at the seminary, but during this time he did discover the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where he worked as a Sunday school teacher and became an advocate of ecumenical Christianity (co-operation between different Christian churches and traditions).

Upon returning to Germany in 1931, Bonhoeffer took up a lectureship at the University of Berlin, and was appointed as a youth secretary to the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, a precursor to the World Council of Churches, and ordained as a pastor of the Prussian Union of Churches.

In  November 1932, a group calling themselves the Deutsche Christen (German Christians), who sought to align the church with the nationalist views of the rising Nazi Party, won a third of the elections for officials within the Prussian Union of Churches. One of the notable policies of the Deutsche Christen movement was that Jews (defined by the religion of their grandparents) could not become Christians through baptism, but remained a separate racial group, excluded from the church. This brought the organisation close to a schism, due to factional fighting with the Young Reformers, a group who sought to bring the church closer to the teachings of Christ. 

In January 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and shortly after ordered new elections at all German Protestant Churches. Bonhoeffer was involved in trying to organise opposition to the takeover of the church, campaigning for the election of non-Nazi aligned officials, but in the event Deutsche Christen were able to take over all churches except the Westphalian Union and the Baptist churches of  Bavaria, Hanover, and Württemberg.

Alarmed by this development, Bonhoeffer tried to organise a theological strike, advocating for pastors to refuse to conduct all ceremonial services, including baptisms, conformations, weddings, and funerals, although he was eventually persuaded against this. He then went on to co-author a document called the 'Bethel Confession' which asserted primacy of the scriptures in defining the Christian faith, in opposition the idea that church doctrine can be redefined to suit the political situation of any given period. In the event, this document underwent substantial revision by different authors before being published, with Bonhoeffer refusing to sign the final version, which he felt had been altered to avoid risking offending the Nazi regime. 

In September 1933 the church formally accepted the Deutsche Christen position on Jewish conversion to Christianity, and all church officials of Jewish descent were expelled. In response to this, Lutharian theologian and pastor Martin Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund (Emergency League of Pastors) to defend the principle of baptism as a means of conversion. The following month Deutsche Christen passed a resolution demanding that the Old Testament be removed from the Bible. deeming it a Jewish document, leading to thousands more pastors joining the Pfarrernotbund.

Around this time Bonhoeffer turned down the offer of a parish in Berlin, instead travelling to London for a two year appointment as a pastor to two German-speaking churches in Sydenham and Whitechapel. Although accused by some of running away from the battle in Germany, Bonhoeffer acted as an agent for the Pfarrernotbund, which in 1934 became the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), remaining in contact with Martin Niemöller, and using his contacts through the ecumenical movement to develop a network of allies among the Christian community in England.

In 1935 his stint in London came to an end, and although offered a chance to study at Mahatma Ghandi's ashram in India, Bonhoeffer chose to return to Germany where he he resumed teaching at the University of Berlin, as well as setting up an underground seminary for the Bekennende Kirche. In August 1936 Bonhoeffer lost his position at the university, having been denounced as a pacifist by Theodore Heckel, a newly appointed bishop and supporter of Deutsche Christen. 

Following this, Bonhoeffer dedicated all of his time to the Bekennende Kirche, operating largely from the estate of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, Countess of Zedlitz-Trützschler, a German noblewoman, supporter of the Kirche, and opponent of the Nazi regime. In August 1937 the Bekennende Kirche was officially banned and a number of members were arrested. Bonhoeffer moved further underground, travelling from village-to-village to teach, and running an underground seminary at Groß Schlönwitz in what is now northern Poland. In 1938 Bonhoeffer was banned from entering Berlin, and moved his seminary to Tychow, also now in Poland. 

At this time Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, who was married to Bobhoeffer's older sister Christel, was working at the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence). Although essentially a civil servant, von Dohnayi was familiar with many senior members of the Nazi Party, and was convinced that a major war was about to break out. Along with other members of the Abwehr, von Dohnayi had been involved with the German resistance movement for several years, ensuring that the crimes of the Nazi Regime were carefully recorded so that they could one day be held to account, and helping a number of Jewish Berliners to escape to Switzerland. 

With war looming, von Dohnayi was concerned that Bonhoeffer would be conscripted into the army, and that the idealistic pastor would refuse to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler or bear arms, both of which could earn him a death sentence. To avoid this von Dohnayi recruited Bonhoeffer into the Abwehr, arguing that his contacts through the ecumenical movement as evidence that Bobhoeffer would make an excellent agent.

In June 1939 Bonhoeffer was dispatched to the Union Theological Seminary in New York, although he returned to Germany two weeks later, despite pressure from his friends to remain, citing a need to be in Germany during the coming war if he was to have any part in rebuilding the country during its aftermath. 

Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer continued to be harassed by the authorities, despite being a member of the Abwehr. while the resistance movement within the Abwehr tried to use him to make contact with the governments of the Weston powers, in order to gain their support. In 1942 he flew to (neutral Sweden to meet with  George Bell, Bishop of Chichester and a friend of Bonhoeffer, hoping to gain the support of the British Government, for coup attempt and planned assassination of Adolf Hitler. However, by this time the British Government was only interested in an unconditional surrender from Germany, and was unwilling to enter into negotiations on any other matter. This was probably not helped by the fact that Bell was an outspoken opponent of the British policy of bombing civilian populations in Germany, which had made him suspect in the eyes of the Churchill government.

In January 1943, Bonhoeffer became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, the granddaughter of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, although this does not been a love match so much as a way of assuring the continued support of the noblewoman. At the time of the engagement Bonhoeffer was 36-years-old, while von Wedemeyer was only 18, and they did not meet again after the celebration, with Bonhoffer citing the war as a reason not to marry soon. 

Bonhoeffer and von Dohnayi continued to be involved with efforts to smuggle Jews and other dissidents out of Germany, and von Dohnayi additionally became involved with Henning von Tresckow's failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in February 1943. In April 1943 the Gestapo uncovered evidence of von Dohnayi's involvement in the aiding of Jews to escape to Switzerland, and he, Christine, and Bonhoeffer were all arrested, although Christel was later released. 

While both men should in theory have been quickly brought to trial, proceedings were held up by military judge Karl Sack, another member of the resistance, and Bonhoeffer spent the next year-and-a-half in Tegel Prison, where he ministered to both prisoners and guards (one of whom is claimed to have offered to help him escape, though Bonhoeffer reputedly refused).

In February 1944, acting on the advice of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler disbanded the Abwehr, and placed its head, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, under house arrest. A subsequent investigation into the organisation revealed diaries kept by Canaris, linking the organisation to a number of plots. Confronted with this evidence Hitler is reported to have flown into a rage and ordered the execution of all Abwehr members.

Bonhoeffer was taken from Tegel Prison and brought before SS judge Otto Thorbeck, who convicted Bonhoeffer and sentenced him to death at a trial with no evidence, witnesses, or defence. He was taken to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was executed on 9 April 1945 alongside Admiral Canaris, General Hans Oster, General Karl Sack, Theodor Strünck; and Ludwig Gehre. Von Donayi was executed the same day at the Sachsenhausen camp.

A doctor at the Flossenburg camp, Hermann Fischer-Hüllstrung, recorded that Bonhoeffer knelt before the gallows and prayed, before going calmly to his fate. However, later accounts by inmates of the camp contradicted that, suggesting that Bonhoeffer may have died in a more brutal and protracted fashion, with Bonhoeffer being repeatedly hung until nearly dead, then taken down, given time to recover, then hung again. His body was never recovered, and is presumed to have been either incinerated or thrown in one of the mass graves at the camp.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is today recognised as a martyr by the Methodist Church and some Anglican congregations. The anniversary of his death is marked by a number of protestant christian denominations. The German church in Sydenham was bombed during the war, but was rebuilt after and reconsecrated under the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer Kirche. Many of Bonhoeffer's writings are still considered important works of theology, particularly those on the importance of the church remaining separate from, and able to remain critical of, the state. A poem by Bonhoeffer, Von guten Mächten, was set to music by Siegfried Fietz in 1970, and voted Germany's most popular hymn in 2021.

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