Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Life and work

Bonhoeffer earned his doctorate in theology at 21 and studied briefly at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where exposure to the Black church in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church profoundly shaped his theology of solidarity and lived faith. Returning to Germany as Hitler rose to power, Bonhoeffer was an early and outspoken critic, broadcasting a radio address just two days after Hitler's 1933 appointment as chancellor that warned against the dangers of a leader who could become an idol — a broadcast that was cut off before he finished.

As part of the Confessing Church resisting Nazi control of German Protestantism, Bonhoeffer led an illegal seminary at Finkenwalde training pastors outside the Nazi-aligned official church structures, an experience that produced his influential books on Christian community and radical discipleship, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.

By 1939, Bonhoeffer, despite the safety of an offer to stay in the United States, chose to return to Germany, reasoning he could not credibly help rebuild German Christian life after the war if he had not shared in its trials. He subsequently joined the Abwehr (military intelligence) resistance circle involved in plots against Hitler's life, a decision that placed him well outside traditional Christian pacifist ethics and which he wrestled with theologically as an extraordinary, tragic necessity.

Arrested in 1943 for his resistance activities, Bonhoeffer continued writing in prison, producing the fragmentary reflections later published as Letters and Papers from Prison. After the failed July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler implicated him further, he was executed by hanging at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945, just weeks before the camp's liberation and Germany's surrender.

Historical evidence

In their own words

"When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."The Cost of Discipleship

Reflections written during his final two years of imprisonment before execution.Letters and Papers from Prison

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Dietrich Bonhoeffer