The swastika has become a symbol of German hope.
Whoever reviles this symbol of ours is reviling our Germany.
The swastika round the altar radiates hope.
The day that is at last about to dawn.
In the church we have only one altar and that is the altar of the Most High.
He who seeks anything other than this must keep away.
And in the church we have only one pulpit and from that pulpit faith in God will be
preached and no other faith.
On April 9, 1945, SS officers in the Flossenberg concentration camp carried out
Hitler's orders to execute some of the last remaining enemies of the Reich.
Among those executed that day was the 39-year-old theologian, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, who went to his death according to a witness.
Brave and composed, I've hardly seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of
God.
For still our ancient foe Doth seek to work us more His craft and power are great
And armed with cruel hate Yet our God doth prevail.
Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy word, and defend thee.
Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.
Honor anew, all ye almighty men do, who with His love doth befriend thee.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's family immigrated from Nijmegen, Holland in the 16th century
and settled in the town of Schwabisch Hall, residing at 7 Klosterstrasse.
First as goldsmiths, and then from the 17th century as clergy, doctors,
counselors, and burgomasters.
Today their portraits adorn the walls of St. Michael's in Schwabisch Hall.
On his mother's side, Bonhoeffer's grandfather, Karl Alfred von Hasse,
married the countess Clara von Kluckreuth.
Emperor William II nominated him as court preacher in Potsdam.
Two and a half years later, in 1894, he resigned and moved to Breslau as
professor of practical theology.
As a young woman, Dietrich's mother, Paula von Hasse, insisted on taking a
teacher's examination and earned her diploma in 1894.
Later in life, she would homeschool her children in their early years.
Meanwhile, in 1893, having qualified as a psychiatrist from the University of
Tübingen, Dietrich's father, Karl von Hoeffer, also immediately said goodbye to
Tübingen, moved to Breslau as an assistant to the famous psychiatrist, Karl Wernicke.
Four years later, in 1898, he married the love of his life, Paula von Hasse.
He had met her a few months earlier at the home of the physician, Oskar Mayr.
A blonde, blue-eyed young girl who, on her first entry into the room,
captivated me with her easy, natural manner and her open gaze.
This first sight of the woman who was later to become my wife has become etched
on my memory as an almost mystical moment that decided my life.
In Breslau, Dietrich's father, Karl von Hoeffer, first worked as a
university teacher and then as head of a clinic.
Dietrich and his twin sister, Sabine, were born in Breslau on February 4th,
1906.
They were the sixth and seventh out of eight children.
The parents were not enthusiastic Christians.
They did not send their children to attend any church services.
For occasions like baptisms, they invited grandfather von Hasse or other clergy in
the family to conduct the ceremonies at home.
The children were particularly fond of playing let's pretend and their favorite
game, performing baptisms.
In 1912, Karl von Hoeffer was called to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in
Berlin.
As director of the university nerve clinic, the Charité, he took over the
leading chair of psychiatry and neurology in Germany.
In spite of his busy schedule, Karl von Hoeffer always found time to be
with his children, playing with them and reading to them.
After early years of homeschooling, Dietrich entered the grammar school in
1913.
But the summer of 1914 brought an end of an era and at the same time, a farewell to
childhood.
Dietrich von Hoeffer was 8 years old when the First World War began on August 2,
1914.
Two years later in 1916, the family moved to the Grunwald area of Berlin and resided
at 14 Bungenheimstrasse.
Nine-year-old Dietrich was very interested in the war and kept a record of German
advances.
We heard of the deaths of the grown-up cousins and fathers of our classmates,
so we would lie awake long after our prayers and singing and try to imagine
being dead and of eternal life.
Every evening we tried to get nearer to eternity.
It seemed to us to be very long and eerie.
Soon the war was approaching their home and family.
Dietrich's brothers Karl Friedrich and Walter were drafted.
Dietrich had a special message for Walter on the eve of his departure.
Now as you leave, we say, God speed you on your journey.
As Walter got ready to leave, the mother whispered words of love.
It's only space that separates us.
Walter was wounded by a mortar on the western front and was moved to a field
hospital.
My dearest ones, I am thinking of you with great longing, my dearest ones,
minute by minute of the long days and nights so far away.
Yours, Walter.
This letter was written only three hours before Walter died on April 28th,
1918.
Dietrich was given the Bible Walter had received at his confirmation.
From then on, Dietrich never let this Bible out of his possession.
As the war dragged on, Germany became a spectacle of deprivation and despair.
The German army and its allies had collapsed and were in retreat on all
fronts.
By November, the Kaiser had become increasingly unpopular.
On 9 November, 1918, he abdicated the throne, paving the way for the Weimar
Republic.
The offer of peace must be transmitted immediately.
The army cannot wait another 48 hours.
Two days later, Germany surrendered to an agonizing defeat.
Followed by the Versailles Treaty, which imposed humiliating terms on a proud
people who could not believe that they had reached their nadir.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer began his way toward theology in a very secular atmosphere.
Unlike theologians who came from the homes of ministers and theological teachers and
later discovered that there is a world outside, Bonhoeffer one day set out from
the world to discover the church.
Surprisingly, this happened at the age of 14.
He declared to his family in a very matter-of-fact manner that he decided to
become a theologian and join the ministry.
His family reacted with a mixture of consternation, loathing and pity.
What a contrast to his brothers, a physicist and the other, a lawyer.
When pressed to defend his decision and subjected to ridicule, Dietrich vehemently
declared, You may chop off my head, but I shall still believe there is a God.
His father would write at a later date concerning this decision of Dietrich.
When you decided to devote yourself to theology, I sometimes thought to myself
that a quiet, uneventful minister's life, as I knew it, would really almost be a
pity for you.
In 1921, Dietrich bought the first two volumes of Edward Myers, The Origin and
Beginnings of Christianity.
Although he was still at school, he put Theol before his name.
Dietrich, at the age of 17, left for Tübingen to follow his commitment.
And according to his twin sister, Sabine, Our childhood was now over,
and our paths diverged.
Dietrich's grandmother resided in Tübingen.
His father and older brothers had studied there.
It was a family custom.
Dietrich studied at the seminary in Tübingen for a year before moving on to
the University of Berlin.
However, his study in Tübingen began under the shadow of inflation.
He wrote to his father on October 27, 1923.
Every meal costs a thousand million marks.
Dietrich stayed in Tübingen only till the spring of 1924.
Von Heffer's career is inconceivable without Berlin as its center.
All the other places in his life, Breslau, Tübingen, Barcelona, New York,
London, doubtless influenced him.
But Berlin of the 20s and 30s, with all its variety, shaped him.
In 1924, during his doctoral work at the University, Dietrich von Heffer discovered
the writings of the eminent theologian Karl Barth, who in later years would join
him in the struggle against the Nazification of the Church.
Though studying to become a theologian, von Heffer was a pastor at heart with a
deep passion for parish work.
He preached his first sermon on October 18, 1925 at the Stamsdorfer Church in
Berlin.
His mother was in the audience, eagerly waiting to hear her 19-year-old
son deliver his first sermon.
But she was astonished to hear him attack the spirituality and the piety they were
accustomed to.
He preached the futility of good works when scrutinized by the Most High God.
Christianity means decision, change, denial, yes, even hostility to the past.
We are unprofitable servants.
We have done that which was our duty to do.
His doctoral thesis, The Communion of Saints, laid the foundation of his
theology by declaring that the Church is Christ, existing as community.
God established the reality of the Church, of mankind, pardoned in Jesus Christ.
Not religion, but revelation.
Not a religious community, but the Church.
That is what the reality of Jesus Christ means.
That 1927 Christmas was very special for the von Heffer family.
In the space of a year, Carl Friedrich qualified as a lecturer.
Klaus completed his civil service training.
And Dietrich, at the very young age of 21, gained his doctorate.
This all happened in 1927.
For the first time since Walter's death, Carl von Heffer wrote in the New Year's
Diary again.
This Christmas we had all the surviving children together again.
The Schleissers and the Donanes are with us.
Klaus, Carl Friedrich and Dietrich.
Next year he will probably be in Barcelona.
In 1928, von Heffer began his vicariate as an assistant pastor to a German-speaking
congregation of the German Evangelical Church in Barcelona, Spain.
As part of the internship requirement toward ordination.
Von Heffer was shocked at the state of apathy of his congregation, which was made
up of German businessmen and their families, who lived self-centered lives,
totally blind to the abject poverty that surrounded them.
He tried to stir his parishioners to compassion.
God wanders among us in human form, speaking to us in those who cross our
paths, be they stranger, beggar, sick, or even in those nearest to us in
everyday life.
Becoming Christ's demand on our faith in Him.
In December 2nd, 1928, von Heffer introduced his sermon on the text of
Revelation 3.20.
Behold, I stand at the door and mock.
To von Heffer, the Advent season was the season of joy and hope that he had
experienced each year at home with his family.
When the Advent comes and we sing and hear again the old Christmas carols,
then gently there steals upon us a special feeling.
It is a kind of homesickness.
And it is a longing for a home beyond the clouds, for our eternal Father's home.
For He has promised that He will come.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
And we call to Him, Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus.
Amen.
On February 17th, 1929, Dietrich von Heffer returned to Berlin to begin work on
his habilitation thesis.
This was a necessary step to a career as an academic theologian.
In 1930, his thesis, Act and Being, was accepted.
God is not free of man, but for man.
Christ is the word of God's freedom.
A letter from the dean at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, dated 1st August 1930,
inducted Dietrich von Heffer as a lecturer.
Von Heffer was only 24.
Meanwhile, in 1929, Joseph Goebbels was appointed head of propaganda for the
National Socialist Party, which at that time commanded a meager 2.8% of the votes.
At the end of March 1930, Heinrich Brüning became chancellor for the first time.
This marked the beginning of the emergency measures.
It was the last attempt to save the Weimar Republic.
On September 5th, 1930, von Heffer set sail on a voyage to America, bound for the
Union Theological Seminary in New York.
The seminary had offered him the Sloan Fellowship.
On his arrival, von Heffer was overwhelmed with New York.
If you really try to enjoy New York to the full, you can wear yourself out.
However, he soon saw the other side, the distress of unemployment.
Since the crash of 1929, the Great Depression was in full swing, leaving the
economy in ruins.
His experience here in America was very different from his student days in
Germany.
Unemployment was much higher than what he had seen in Germany.
There was abject poverty, and homelessness was real.
In the streets, crime and fighting was rampant.
One sensed a general air of disillusionment.
Von Heffer cultivated a deep friendship with Reverend Frank Fisher, a black
student from Alabama, whose experiences exposed von Heffer to the reality of
racism.
He was very deeply impressed by the vibrant faith and spirituality of these
black Christians in the ghetto of Harlem, where he taught Sunday school at the
Abyssinian Baptist Church, and discovered how Christianity was related to the
struggle for human rights.
It was here in New York that something decisive happened, which reshaped von
Heffer's life and vocation.
He met John Le Serre, a French pastor and deeply committed pacifist.
We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives.
He said he would like to become a saint, and I think it's quite likely that he did
become one.
At the time, I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him and said,
in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith.
Under Le Serre's influence, von Heffer began to look beyond nationalism and
became an ardent worker for international peace and friendship through the churches
in Europe.
Therefore, the church knows nothing of any sanctity of war.
War is a struggle for life using dehumanized means.
The church that prays to our Father appeals to God only for peace.
Through more conversations with Le Serre, von Heffer was drawn afresh to the Sermon
on the Mount.
This led to the major transition in his life.
Von Heffer progressed from being a theologian to becoming a Christian.
For the first time, I discovered the Bible I had often preached.
I had seen a great deal of the church and talked and preached about it, but I had
never become a Christian.
I had never prayed, or prayed only very little.
I was quite pleased with myself.
Then the Bible, and in particular the Sermon on the Mount, freed me from that.
Since then, everything has changed.
It was a great liberation.
It became clear to me that the life of a servant of Jesus Christ must belong to the
church.
And step by step, it became plainer to me how far that must go.
My strength, my life, my all.
To
the surprise of Dietrich Von Heffer, most Americans blamed their country's
economic problems on the First World War.
They harbored resentment against the Germans and were suspicious that Germany
was gearing for another war.
Von Heffer was also astonished to see that the Americans gave credence to reports of
Hitler's popularity.
Buried in his theological pursuits, Von Heffer had been oblivious of the
changing political scene in Germany.
Humiliated by the Versailles Treaty, Germany was looking for its redemption
through self-assertion.
National socialism was attracting both the populace and the intelligentsia by its
promises of deliverance, and had competed successfully against other ideas of
national resurgence.
There was talk about the struggle for freedom, the restoration of the empire
under a Kaiser, racial purity and anti-Semitism, communism and the
opposition to it.
Earlier, the Nazis were insignificant and were regarded as an extreme fringe group
that would soon wither away.
While Von Heffer was away from Germany in March 1930, Brüning became chancellor.
But in a bitter dispute with the Reichstag, he dissolved it and set new
elections for September 14th.
With Joseph Goebbels as their spokesperson, the National Socialists
increased their representation from 12 to 107 seats.
They were now second only to the Social Democrats.
Von Heffer's family disliked and mistrusted Hitler and the Nazis.
They were especially repulsed by the horrors of Nazi-instigated anti-Semitism.
For Dietrich, anti-Semitism was intensely personal.
His beloved twin sister, Sabine, had married Gerhard Liebholz, whose father
was a Jew.
Dietrich remembered how at the engagement in 1924, his mother had prepared Sabine
for the pain that she would feel as a wife to see Gerhard's Jewish background impede
his advancement as a lawyer.
Being a Jew in Germany was a disadvantage even in the pre-Nazi period.
In one of the letters, Sabine described a nasty incident in the marketplace.
My father-in-law had gone on an excursion with us.
The AS pressed insolently against the windows and took up a pretty threatening
attitude of which my father-in-law was the object.
Very quickly, I took our four-year-old Marianne, who at that time was
flaxen-haired and blue-eyed, from my lap and put her on grandfather's knee.
This saved the situation and we were able to drive on undisturbed.
Klaus Bonhoeffel confirmed these political changes in a letter to Dietrich dated
November 3rd, 1930.
Politically, the scene has changed a great deal since you left.
The successes of the National Socialists have convinced the widest circles that the
democratic regime of the last ten years has failed.
Domestic politics are used as an explanation for the consequences of the
world economic crisis.
People are flirting with fascism.
I'm afraid that if this radical wave sweeps over the educated classes,
all is up for the poets and the thinkers.
Amidst all the intense rivalries between political parties of all shades,
Germany was in a state of chaos, which was further aggravated by the
collapse of one of the largest German banks in July 1931.
Millions lost their jobs and the country plunged into economic despair.
The National Socialists exploited this discontent by appealing to the national
pride of the German people.
Unlike the atheistic Communist Party, which most vehemently opposed it,
the Nazi Party supported the churches.
While orchestrated popular demonstrations were staged, attracting large crowds,
Germany seemed to have changed completely.
There was a new wave of nationalistic pride and excitement.
The actual events in Germany were far worse than the reports that Bonhoeffer had
received.
National Socialism was no longer an insignificant fringe group.
There must be no tenderness in you.
I want to see in their eyes the gleam of the beast of prey.
It had emerged as a popular mass movement, instilling the young people with a renewed
sense of national pride and patriotism.
With Joseph Goebbels as its chief spokesperson, this was a false gospel of
hatred-induced nationalism that went about in Christian clothing.
Bonhoeffer knew that he must return to Germany to fight this tidal Nazi evil.
Within a few days after his return from America, Bonhoeffer met the 45-year-old
Karl Barth for the first time.
I was even more impressed by his discussion than by his writings and
lectures.
That's the complete Barth.
I've never seen anything quite like it.
Although the two forged a close alliance in church politics, their relationship was
characterized by both intimacy and distance.
At the age of 25, Bonhoeffer received an appointment as a lecturer in systematic
theology at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin.
The fanatical nationalism of the now popular National Socialists mesmerized the
faculty and the students.
Increasing isolation because of his opposition to Nazism reinforced
Bonhoeffer's desire not to limit himself to being a theologian.
He was a pastor at heart.
He wanted once again to serve and work in the local church.
Since his license dated June 12, 1931, entitled him to serve as an
assistant minister in the city of Berlin.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was ordained at St. Matthias Church in Tiergarten,
a district of Berlin, on November 13, 1931.
Otto Debelius, general superintendent of the Kulmark, had asked for a student
chaplain to be appointed to the Technical University in Charlottenburg.
Dietrich served in that capacity from 1931 to 1933.
By 1932, a circle of students had formed around Bonhoeffer, which was to produce a
series of close collaborators in the church struggle yet to come.
In 1932-33, Bonhoeffer conducted a seminar on creation and fall.
The lectures proved so popular that Bonhoeffer's resident students persuaded
him to have the manuscript published.
We must observe, too, that God does not simply call man forth out of non-being as
he has called forth everything else.
Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.
In man, God creates his image on earth.
In addition to all these enormous responsibilities, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was
also asked to take over the confirmation class at Zion Church, which had got out of
control.
It's about the worst area of Berlin and with the most difficult social and
political conditions.
Their home conditions are generally indescribable, poverty, disorder,
immorality, and yet the children are still open.
So that he could be near his confirmation candidates, Bonhoeffer rented a room at 61
Oderstrasse.
The boys were very impressed that he had left instructions with the landlady to
open his room to any of them at any time, even in his absence.
Ironically, on the same Sunday of March 11, 1932, when Hitler made the first bid
to become chancellor and lost to Hindenburg, Dietrich Bonhoeffer confirmed
his candidates and preached his confirmation sermon about Jacob meeting
his brother Esau.
And now, Jacob sees the face of his brother Esau not as a face of an enemy,
but as though he saw the face of God.
He sees in his brother God himself and his love.
Have you understood or right?
He who has found God has also found his brother.
And he who does not find his brother does not find God either.
For God has become our brother in Christ, in order that we might see him behind
every brother.
At the beginning of June 1932, when von Papen became chancellor,
many Germans expected new stability from the Christian conservative government.
But in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on June 12, 1932, Bonhoeffer preached a
pointed sermon against the misuse of the name of God by the von Papen government.
Do not our religious tendencies in fact conceal an unbridled impulse in the name
of God to do what we want, and in the name of the Christian worldview to play off one
people against another and excite one people against another?
Encouraged with the results of his confirmation class and his church work,
Bonhoeffer wanted to enter the pastoral work full time.
But by then Nazism had influenced the church, and he was not acceptable at any
parish.
However, Bonhoeffer found an opportunity to open a youth club in the autumn of 1932
in the Schlossstrasse in Charlottenburg.
It was funded by Anneliese Schnurmann, a school friend of Bonhoeffer's sister
Susanne.
After Hitler's accession on January 1933, some visitors to his club were molested on
the streets.
Bonhoeffer gave them refuge for a while in his hut at Biesenthal.
The youth club had to be closed down, and Anneliese Schnurmann, being of Jewish
origin, had to emigrate.
The National Socialist Party gained steadily in the elections.
In September 1930, this spectacular gain had been a jump from 12 to 107 seats in
the Reichstag.
Now, on July 31st, 1932, they had 230 seats.
At noon on January 30th, 1933, Hindenburg handed over responsibility for
government to Hitler.
That evening, Rüdiger Schleicher, Dietrich's brother-in-law, came home and
said, Hitler means war.
All the Bonhoeffers agreed, including Dietrich.
Hitler was extremely popular with Germans who wanted the pride of nationhood
restored.
He promised much.
Discipline to a nation that had almost disintegrated.
Dignity to a people whom the other countries in Europe despised and
humiliated.
Germans wanted to be proud of their country again, and Hitler promised it a
future, a destiny, after he had purged it of foreign elements.
It was the young who were most enthusiastic.
They wanted to restore the greatness their fathers had surrendered in defeat.
They did not believe that Germany had been beaten on the field of battle,
rather stabbed in the back by cowardly civilians.
There was a widespread belief that victorious allies intended to reduce
Germany to a non-entity in Europe.
There was widespread consensus against the Versailles Treaty, which they despised as
being iniquitous and unjust.
The German political and economic situation today is extremely difficult.
This is the result not only of having lost the World War, but above all the outcome
of the fact that Germany's former enemies are oppressing her above and beyond.
Germany's fate is the fate of the world.
Germany's distress is the distress of the world.
The prosperity of individual nations is the prosperity of all.
Bonhoeffer's family was unable to be a passive bystander in the affairs of the
state.
On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag was set on fire.
Dietrich's brother-in-law, Hans von der Neunen, was an observer for the Ministry
of Justice.
At the judicial hearing against Marinus van der Lubbe, he was accused of setting
fire to it.
When van der Lubbe went on hunger strike, Dietrich's father, Karl Bonhoeffer,
was called in by the investigating judge to give a psychiatric opinion.
The following day, after the burning of the Reichstag on February 28, Hitler used
the pretext of a communist revolution to round up his opponents and promulgated his
most ominous emergency decree, the Reich President's Edict for the
Protection of People and State.
Signed by Hindenburg, the edict abolished the personal rights granted by the
Constitution.
It made possible concentration camps and was also the basis for the closure of
Bonhoeffer's seminary at Finkenwald four years later.
While the country was still under the grip of hysteria, terror and violence,
elections to the Reichstag were held as scheduled on March 5, 1933.
In the streets of every city and town, Hitler exhorted Germans to hold their
heads high and proudly once more as Germans.
Doubling the election day as the day of national awakening, Hitler played upon the
German fear of a communist revolution.
Almost 90% of the eligible voters took part in the election.
Though Hitler received only 44% of the votes, undeterred, he came to power by
striking a deal with Von Papen and other conservative parties.
Soon the Nazi party grew in popularity and Franz von Papen found his status being
reduced to that of a spectator.
The new Reichstag opened on March 21, 1933, with a service presided over by Otto
de Billius.
On March 24, 1933, the Reichstag took the drastic step of passing the Enabling Act,
allowing Hitler to govern by decree and even change the Constitution.
Laws were passed declaring it an act of treason to speak against the Nazis,
and these were rapidly turned into anti-Jewish propaganda.
When a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933 was declared, Dietrich's
91-year-old grandmother, Julie Bonhoeffer, defied the SA guards posted at the
entrance of the store by breaking through their cordon.
A few days later, after this initial boycott of Jewish businesses, the Civil
Service Law was passed, effectively purging the civil service of all Jews.
Hitler was anxious to retain support of the churches.
On the eve of this act, his speech was an attempt to win that support.
We will secure for them the influence which is their due, for Christianity is
the unshakable foundations of our people's ethical and moral law.
The church was also enthusiastic about the ascendancy and supremacy of Hitler.
They had been disenchanted with the Weimar Republic, which had done nothing to
restore the church to its former place of power and influence.
Church leaders viewed the November 1918 revolution and the consequent abdication
of Kaiser Wilhelm II as an unparalleled disaster.
Church leaders hated the Weimar Republic for accepting the humiliating peace terms
of the Versailles Treaty and alleged that the Weimar Republic was dominated by
liberals and Jews who, with the complicity of foreigners, were taking the country to
destruction and moral decay.
The church desired that Germany's honors be vindicated and old moral values of
authority, family, home and church be restored.
The message that Hitler gave to the people was, lift up your heads, it's good to be
German.
He promised to restore Germany to its former glory.
The time is fulfilled for the German people in Hitler.
It's because of Hitler that Christ, God, the helper and redeemer, has become
effective among us.
Therefore, National Socialism is positive Christianity in action.
Hitler is the way of the spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter
the church of Christ.
As Jesus set men free from sin and hell, so Hitler rescued the German people from
destruction.
Both Jesus and Hitler were persecuted, but while Jesus was crucified,
Hitler was exalted to chancellor.
While the disciples of Jesus betrayed their master and left him his distress,
the sixteen friends of Hitler stood by him.
We hope that Hitler will lead his work to completion.
Jesus built for heaven, Hitler for the German soil.
Prose taught in schools.
On February 1st, 1933 at Vuxhaus, Potsdamer Straße in Berlin, Bonhoeffer
preached his first sermon after Hitler's seizure of power.
The leader must be responsibly aware of this clear limit to his authority.
If he understands his function differently, then the image of the leader
slips into that of misleader.
At this point, the transmitter cut out before the end of the broadcast.
Censorship was in place.
Swastika flags began flying atop cathedrals and churches, whose altars now
were adorned with swastikas.
The horse vessel was included in the hymnals, and sermons swearing loyalty to
Nazism were being preached.
The swastika has become a symbol of German hope.
Whoever reviles this symbol of ours is reviling our Germany.
The swastika round the altar radiates hope, the day that is at last about to
dawn.
Bonhoeffer disagreed.
He voiced his dissent openly.
In the church we have only one altar, and that is the altar of the Most High.
He who seeks anything other than this must keep away.
And in the church we have only one pulpit, and from that pulpit faith in God will be
preached, and no other faith.
As part of his strategy, Hitler manipulated both the Protestant and Roman
Catholic churches.
The national government sees the two Christian confessions, Catholic and
Protestant, as the most important factors safeguarding our national heritage.
Jews who comprised only 1% of the population were accused of fostering
materialism, secularism, pacifism, anti-patriotism, and moral degeneracy.
These factors ensured that the church leaders would lead their flocks into the
conservative movement, and they called for a synthesis of Volkssturm, or the German
national identity and Christianity.
The German church bought into this anti-democratic myopia.
The Concordat that von Papen signed with the papacy on July 20, 1933 nullified any
opposition to Hitler within the Catholic Church.
At the Herrenhaus in Berlin, Protestants met together on April 3rd and 4th,
1933, to form a unified Reich Church and to harmonize church creeds with Nazism.
Members were called German Christians.
On April 7th, a new civil service law was passed.
Its Aryan clause prohibited Jews or anyone of Jewish ancestry from holding any civil,
service, or government position.
Since all the churches were part of the state church, all pastors within it were
state officials.
Therefore, the German Christians desired to apply the Jewish clause to the church
and expel pastors of Jewish background from office, and ultimately deny anyone of
Jewish descent from being part of the church at all.
The first organized opposition to the German Christians crystallized around the
leadership of Martin Niemöller, the pastor of the Dahlem Church,
and Karl Barth, the eminent theologian.
It came from the Young Reformation Movement, of which Dietrich Bonhoeffer was
a member.
The present situation of the church demands a consideration of the true faith.
Any person can become a member of the church without distinction of race and
social position.
The offices of the church are held as spiritual offices and not political.
On September 5th, 1933, the General Synod passed laws which restricted the ministry
to only those who unconditionally supported the National Socialistic State
and the German Evangelical Church, and were also of Aryan descent.
Bonhoeffer spelt out the consequences of such a vote.
The exclusion of Jewish Christians from the community of the church destroys the
substance of the church.
In church elections, Hitler's nominee, Ludwig Müller, was elected to lead the
German Christian Church.
As Reich Bishop of the Reich Church, Müller desired to accelerate the
Nazification of the church.
The popular mission carried on by the Reich Church was reflected in the way
Müller nationalized the Sermon on the Mount, rewriting the Beatitudes in terms
of bravery, comradeship, and patriotism.
The Beatitude of the Meek of Heart became blessed as the one who is a good comrade
at all times.
He will get on well in the world.
Wanting to serve both Caesar and Christ, the Reich Church finally shaped its Christ
in the image of the Caesar.
During the elections for the Reich Bishop, the phrase confessing church was first
used.
We work for a confessing church.
It is not enough that our creedal confessions remain unchanged.
The church must learn anew how to confess before men the crucified Lord.
Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth corresponded with each other about the possibility of
forming a free church.
At the Barmen Synod of May 29th to 31st, 1934, the new confessing church composed
of pastors who opposed the Aryan Clause and other Nazi policies affirmed the now
famous Barmen Confession, mostly drafted by Karl Barth.
We repudiate the false teaching that there are areas of our life in which we belong
not to Jesus Christ, but to other Lords.
Most of the members were immediately on the Gestapo list for their opposition to
Hitler.
However, Bonhoeffer continued to raise his voice publicly in defense of the Jews
after the Reichstag surrendered its conscience to Hitler.
The state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself.
That opens up three possibilities for action by the church against the state.
First, asking the state whether its actions are legitimate.
Secondly, helping the victims of state action.
The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society,
even if they do not belong to the Christian community.
Do good to all people.
The third possibility is not to tie the victim to the wheel, but actually to
destroy the spokes of the wheel.
Such a course would involve the church in direct political action.
Almost immediately after Hitler had come to power in January 1933, Bonhoeffer began
to encourage and in some cases orchestrate foreign protests against Nazi policies.
At the September 1933 World YMCA conference in Sofia, Bulgaria,
he successfully influenced delegates to pass a strongly worded resolution
condemning the violence against Jews.
We especially deplore the fact that in some circles the Jewish race is considered
of inferior stature.
We protest against the resolution of the Prussian General Synod and other synods.
In July 1933, nauseated by the stifling atmosphere of Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer
accepted an invitation to serve two German-speaking Lutheran congregations in
London.
He put his pension rights and security for old age at risk by avoiding recognition by
the Reich church government.
From England, he wrote to Karl Barth.
I felt that I was incomprehensibly in radical opposition to all my friends and
so I thought it was probably time to go into the wilderness for a while.
He received a strongly worded response from Barth.
The German church is lost.
One simply cannot become weary now, still less go to England.
Be glad that I do not have you here in person, for I would let go at you in quite
a different way, with the demand that you must think only of one thing, that you are
a German, that the house of your church is on fire, that you belong to Berlin and not
to London.
The letter devastated Bonhoeffer.
He did not want to go back to Germany, yet Bonhoeffer's self-imposed exile in
London did not bring tranquility.
This became a time for preparation.
And I believe that the whole of Christianity must pray with us that this
becomes resistance to the point of shedding blood and that people can be
found who will endure it.
Germany was in transition to totalitarianism.
After the death of Hindenburg on August 2nd, 1934, Hitler merged the offices of
President, Chancellor and Commander-in-Chief to declare himself as
the Führer and Reichskanzler.
A few days later, on August 19th, Hitler ordered a special referendum to
endorse his rule as the Führer.
Over 90% of the Germans overwhelmingly voted in favor of Hitler and legitimized
the reign of terror under the Nazis.
This enormous popularity was reflected in the grand and intimidating display of
parades and processions with banners proclaiming, Germany awake.
Thousands gathered in city after city holding rallies and demonstrating their
allegiance to the Führer.
Hitler was credited for having ushered in an era of prosperity, eliminating the
unemployment and poverty of the Weimar days.
Hitler's industrial policies encouraged the construction of large industrial
complexes, generating increased employment.
With the standard of living rising dramatically, the streets were displaying
wealth and prosperity.
There was a boost in consumer confidence which was evident from the shops and
shoppers in the daytime and the dazzling displays of the nightlife that had once
again returned to German cities.
Hitler augmented the private sector employment with massive investment in
public projects like subways and highways.
Hitler's favorite project was the people's car or Volkswagen, a small and affordable
car for every German household.
Under the banner of one people, one nation, one leader, Hitler mesmerized
the populace into living and dying for him as their Führer.
He stirred up mass hysteria around the myth of the German master race and made
them assume they were destined to be the world's rulers.
Bonhoeffer, however, was not deceived by Hitler's lies and his human mask.
He had already realized that Hitler and the Nazis were inherently evil and that
they would manipulate the church to sell its soul to Hitler.
Hitler has shown quite clearly the sort of man he is and the church must know with
whom it is dealing.
Isaiah did not go to Sennacherib.
Hitler will not and may not listen.
His heart has been hardened and precisely because of this, he should make us listen.
That is about how things are.
We need to be converted, not Hitler.
In the summer of 1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer met the English Bishop of Chichester,
George Bell, at an ecumenical meeting in Geneva.
From then on, there were regular consultations between them.
In later years, Bishop Bell would become the main liaison between the Allies and
the anti-Nazi group of the Abwehr.
Oh, and the official German Reich Church required theological students to submit to
an examination to verify their Aryan descent.
The anti-Nazi confessing church felt compelled to take theological education
into its own hands.
All theological education these days belongs in the church and in religious
communities in which pure doctrine, the Sermon on the Mount and worship are
taken seriously.
By December of the year 1934, Karl Barth had become increasingly involved in
opposition to Hitler.
By playing a major role in the confessing church, especially at the Barmen Synod in
1934, this led to his dismissal from the university.
In early 1935, when Karl Barth was unavoidably leaving Germany for exile in
Switzerland, Bonhoeffer voluntarily went back to Germany, to which the confessing
church was calling him.
In 1935, Dietrich Bonhoeffer established a seminary of the confessing church,
first at Zingst on the Baltic coast, and later that summer, it moved southeast
to Finkenwalde, the suburb of Stetten.
The seminary was housed at an abandoned private school.
The students were aware that they would not be easily accepted by the established
German church because of their fierce independence.
One of them was Eberhard Bethke, who met Bonhoeffer for the first time at
this seminary, and later would become his closest lifetime confidant and friend.
It was here that Bonhoeffer worked on the theme which had captivated him for years.
The cost of discipleship.
Through ideas like costly and cheap grace, simple obedience, and above all,
in his exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, Bonhoeffer related Christian faith
to the figure of the present Christ.
The life of Jesus Christ has not yet been brought to an end upon this earth.
Christ continues to live in the life of his disciples.
Bonhoeffer indicted Christians for replacing a living and obedient faith in
Jesus Christ by a belief in doctrine about faith.
He warned against cheap grace.
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church.
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market, like cheap jacks wares.
Grace without price.
Grace without cost.
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.
Baptism without church discipline.
Communion without confession.
Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.
Grace without the cross.
Grace without Jesus Christ.
We have gathered like ravens round the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have
drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ.
Bonhoeffer lamented that the church had become a peddler of cheap grace.
By allowing itself to be captured by Nazism, the church had destroyed the
Christian faith.
The price we are now having to pay today is only the inevitable consequence of our
policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost.
Giving that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving.
Cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless to our church.
Bonhoeffer challenged the church to the costly grace of following Christ in
discipleship.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again.
The gift which must be asked for.
The door at which a man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow.
And it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
It is costly because it costs a man his life.
And it is grace because it gives man the only true life.
It is costly because it condemns sin.
And grace because it justifies the sinner.
Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his son.
Ye were bought at a price.
And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.
For Bonhoeffer, though theologically faith comes before obedience, faith and
obedience are inseparable like two sides of a coin.
Only he who believes is obedient.
And only he who is obedient believes.
Only the obedient believe.
If we are to believe, we must obey a concrete command.
Without this preliminary step of obedience, our faith will only be pious
humbug and lead us to the grace which is not costly.
If you dismiss the word of God's command, you will not receive his word of grace.
How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life
you are running away from him?
The man who disobeys cannot believe.
For only he who obeys can believe.
Meanwhile, Dietrich's father Karl Bonhoeffer retired from the Charité on
April 1st, 1936.
They gave up the big house in Wangenheimstrasse and moved into a new
house on 43 Marienburger Allee in the Charlottenburg area of Berlin.
From then on, the attic room to the west belonged to Dietrich.
From his windows he looked out over to No.
42, the home of his sister Ursula and her husband Rüdiger Schleicher.
Edicts, prohibitions and arrests were the means by which the Ministry of Church
Affairs tried to subdue the Confessing Church.
On June 9th, 1937, a collection of offerings for the Confessing Church was
declared illegal.
Bishop Heckel of the Reich Church accused Bonhoeffer of being a pacifist and
therefore an enemy of the state and called for measures to be taken to stop him from
training German theologians and pastors.
He and all other teachers from the seminaries of the Confessing Church were
barred from the University of Berlin.
The Gestapo raided churches and meetings, arresting hundreds.
On July 1st, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethke went to Dahlem for
consultation with Martin Niemöller at his house.
However, Niemöller had been taken away only minutes before by the Gestapo.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not
a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not
a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
Niemöller, however, did speak out and as a consequence lost eight years of his life
to the Nazis.
He remained in the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Dachau until the end of
the war in 1945.
While Bonhoeffer and Bethke were still in the house, the Gestapo returned and put
them all under house arrest, making them involuntary witnesses to an eight-hour
search of Niemöller's study.
The news of the persecution of the confessing church reached London.
This is a critical hour.
It is not only the fate of the individual pastors.
It is the case of the attitude of the German state to Christianity.
Times, July 3rd, 1937.
On August 29th, 1937, all substitute colleges set up by the confessing church
were banned.
The wave of arrests also reached Finkenwalde students.
By Christmas 1937, the Gestapo had arrested 27 of them and had sealed shut
the doors to Finkenwalde.
Though in 1937 the Gestapo throttled the Finkenwalde seminary, Bonhoeffer moved
further east where he continued his ministry of training pastors by disguising
it as a collective pastorate in the towns of Kosteln and Grossschlonewitz.
This entire region of Upper Pomerania, before the war, was in Germany.
But now is a part of Poland.
Instead of registering students as members of the seminary, they were appointed as
probationary assistant pastors to clergy who were sympathetic to the confessing
church.
Bonhoeffer spent half the week living with the other seminarians in the parsonage,
just a short distance away from the center of the town where the historic
Marienkirche is located.
If present on Sundays, he would preach at this Lutheran church.
Which stands today as a Roman Catholic cathedral.
In the second half of the week, Bonhoeffer regularly taught at
Grossschlonewitz in Schlade, where he lived at the parsonage next to the church,
which also is now a Roman Catholic church.
A picture of the crucified Christ, which hung above the altar at that time,
can still be seen today in the foyer of the church.
On January 11, 1938, there was a new wave of arrests of pastors of the confessing
church in Dahlem.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had been there, was prohibited from staying at Berlin.
His father managed to get this prohibition restricted to visits on church business.
Thus Bonhoeffer continued to visit his family in Berlin.
The year of 1938 was the year of greatest weakness for the confessing church.
All active pastors were required to take the oath of allegiance to the Führer.
Anyone who refused to take the oath of allegiance was to be dismissed.
I swear that I will be faithful and obedient to the Führer of the German
nation and people, Adolf Hitler.
Observe the laws and conscientiously fulfill the duties of my office.
So help me God.
Bonhoeffer wanted the leadership of the confessing church to defend the right of
pastors to refuse taking this oath.
Instead of upholding this right, the leadership evaded its moral
responsibility by leaving the decision to each individual pastor.
This was exactly what the Gestapo wanted because now they were able to identify
those pastors who were openly disloyal to Hitler.
Enraged at the spineless behavior of the church, Bonhoeffer rebuked.
Will the confessing church ever learn that the majority in matters of conscience
kills the spirit?
Bonhoeffer was frustrated by his own confessing church because it did not
openly and firmly oppose the anti-Jewish violence.
For Bonhoeffer, the only criterion to determine the success and failure of the
church was the sincerity and potency of its activities on behalf of the Jews.
However liturgically correct our services are, and however devout our prayer,
however brave our testimony, they will profit us nothing.
Nay, rather they must needs testify against us that we have as a church ceased
to follow our Lord.
God will not be separated from our brother.
He wants no honor for himself so long as our brother is dishonored.
Where is Abel, your brother?
When asked to defend his uncompromising stand, he would always refer to the
scripture in Proverbs 31.8.
Who will speak up for those who are voiceless?
In September 1938, Bonhoeffer wrote his little classic, Life Together,
in which he recorded the experiments of the seminary.
Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ.
It means, first, that a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ.
It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ.
It means, third, that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity,
accepted in time, and united for eternity.
On midnight of September 9th, Dietrich Bonhoeffer helped his twin sister Sabine,
her husband and their children, to escape to Switzerland en route to
England, barely four weeks before the passports of non-Aryans were declared
invalid without the dreaded Jews' stamp on it.
November 9th, 1938, the persecution of the Jews reached a high point with the
so-called Kristallnacht, or Crystal Night, in which the show windows of Jewish
businesses were smashed.
Jewish synagogues were burned and Jews were brutalized on a massive scale all
over Germany in an orgy of lethal and legal vandalism.
That night, Bonhoeffer was away in Großschlarnowitz, but rushed to Berlin
when he found out what had happened.
He vociferously discredited all attempts to attribute this barbarism to the
so-called curse on the Jews because of Christ's death.
In his Bible, he underlines Psalm 74, 8.
They say to themselves, let us plunder them.
They burn all the houses of God in the land.
And marked it with the date of Kristallnacht.
As early as 1935, Bonhoeffer had said...
Only he who cries out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants.
O come, O come,
Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here
Until Messiah shall appear
Bonhoeffer felt betrayed and isolated even by his own confessing church, which had
refused to be a brave and resolute opposition to the essentially evil Nazi
regime.
We too had learned to lie before long and adapted ourselves to public wrong.
And when the defenseless were felled by force, we took it all as a matter of
course.
And that which within our hearts still flamed remained unspoken and unnamed.
We checked the blood's insurgent flow and trampled out the outward glow.
Fill the whole world with heaven's peace.
The event which Bonhoeffer feared most was the least discussed in his family.
Conscription to the military service, which in 1938 was getting closer and
closer.
On our advertisement column, there is an announcement of the drafting of those born
in 1906 and 1907.
I often wonder whether anything will come of your journey.
And if so, what?
Almost a year earlier, in February 1938, Bonhoeffer had developed closer contacts
with his brother-in-law, Hans von Donanyi, who had been preparing a military-led coup
d 'etat with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and other colleagues in the military
intelligence unit, or Abwehr.
Though opposition to Hitler and attempts to oust him originated as early as 1934
and continued throughout his reign, no opposition movement was able to survive
the ever watchful Gestapo with its reign of terror and summary executions.
The Allies were reluctant to support or even grant credence to these opposition
movements, which were not only splintered by enormous ideological differences,
but were also under nationalist pressure to avenge the humiliating defeat of 1919.
Consequently, as soon as the war erupted, the Allies demanded unconditional
surrender, raising doubts if a new German regime following the military coup would
be recognized.
Hans von Donanyi confided in Dietrich Bonhoeffer about the planned coup.
Until that point, Dietrich had taken no political action against the state and he
had been careful to express all his protests within the framework of legality.
Besides, Bonhoeffer saw his battle as a theological one, but now Bonhoeffer had
technically become an accessory to the plan, a crime punishable by death.
He also feared being an unwitting cause of the Gestapo's stumbling onto their plans.
For all these reasons, he decided to leave Germany.
I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to take part in a war in these
circumstances.
His former teacher, Reinhold Niebuhr, and his closest American friend,
Paul Lehmann, were eager to save Bonhoeffer, who was in obvious danger.
They arranged a speaking tour for him and assumed that once the war broke out in
Germany, Bonhoeffer would remain in America.
But Bonhoeffer was not at ease with himself in New York.
His daily Bible reading for 24 June 1939 confirmed God's will for him.
The one who believes does not flee.
We can in fact justify anything.
But in the last resort, we are acting from a plane that is hidden from us,
and we can only ask God to judge and forgive us.
At the end of the day, I can only ask that God may judge this day and all my
decisions mercifully.
To the disappointment of his friend Paul Lehmann, who had arranged the lecture
tour, on the 7th of July 1939, as Hitler was proudly rearming Germany,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, within five weeks of having left Germany, returned to Europe,
to war.
Today, Germany.
Tomorrow, the world.
I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction after the war, if I do not
also share the trials of this time with my people.
Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the
defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive,
or willing the victory of their nation, and thereby destroying our civilization.
I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make that choice in
security.
Bonhoeffer's decision to return to Germany did not at first bring about any striking
changes to his life.
He resumed work at the collective pastorate in Lower Pomerania.
On September 1st, 1939, Hitler declared war on Poland.
Poland has fired on our territory for the first time since 5.45 a.m.
Bonhoeffer was in Klein-Krosnin, now part of Poland, in Kolsinko,
where he was writing his book, Ethics.
On September 4th, 1940, Gestapo imposed a ban on Bonhoeffer, which prevented his
speaking in public, on the grounds that he was subverting the people.
He also had to report regularly to the police.
Bonhoeffer appealed unsuccessfully against this ban in writing and tried to convince
them of his patriotism.
He even ended the letter with the greeting, Heil Hitler.
The end of the collective pastorate in 1940 ended the possibility of continuing
his pastoral work.
Yet Bonhoeffer did find a way to continue that work through his writings.
From now on, Bonhoeffer lived in his parents' home, seriously deliberating on
his future and the future of Germany.
With the fall of France, Hitler had wiped out the shameful defeat of 1918 and
rehabilitated German pride.
Anyone who now thought in terms of traditional ethics could no longer
successfully oppose Hitler in any way.
While the people of Germany, including many church leaders, were hailing the
victories of their army and the Fuhrer, Bonhoeffer was publicly lamenting the
church's guilt and the suffering which the Nazis were unleashing.
The church confesses that she has witnessed the lawless application of
brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of countless innocent people,
oppression, hatred, and murder, and that she has not raised her voice on
behalf of the victims, and has not found ways to She is guilty of the deaths of the
weakest and the most defenseless brothers of Jesus Christ.
This freedom to write was made possible, ironically, by his becoming a part of the
conspiracy to stage a coup d'etat.
For Bonhoeffer, it was an agonizing decision, an acute moral dilemma.
He debated the rightness of any action, be it the radical step of eliminating
Hitler, or the traditional Christian obedience of civil authority, which in
this case meant supporting genocide.
He remembered his own words, his pacifism, and his commitment to the Sermon on the
Mount.
The brother's life is a divine ordinance, and God alone has power over life and
death.
But the genocide-sweeping Europe made planning an assassination attempt on
Hitler's life, all the more a moral imperative instead of a murderous act.
Bonhoeffer saw Hitler as a demon whose evil could only be exorcised by
eliminating him.
If we claim to be Christians, there's no room for expediency.
Hitler is anti-Christ.
Therefore, we must go on with our work and eliminate him, whether he is successful or
not.
On the other hand, as a Christian pastor and a pacifist, he opposed the use of
violence and therefore hesitated to join those planning an assassination attempt
against Hitler.
Two things eventually helped determine his resolve.
One, with the deportation of the Jews taking place on a massive scale.
For Bonhoeffer, the actions of the state had become horrendous.
He was aware of the Grunewald station in Berlin, from where masses of innocent
victims were transported to their deaths.
Second, many of Bonhoeffer's friends had seen the inside of the concentration
camps, and their full horror was beginning to emerge.
After much internal struggle, Bonhoeffer became convinced that he had only one
option.
He must act to remove Hitler.
Only this would resolve his dilemma.
Though he viewed violence as morally indefensible, he also believed that
inaction in the face of death camp horrors was spiritually suicidal.
It is not only individual Germans and individual Christians who are guilty.
Germany and the Church are guilty too.
Germany and the Church themselves must repent and be justified.
Only in defeat can we atone for the terrible crimes we have committed against
Europe and the world.
He decided he must risk God's judgment on his own actions that others might live.
They must be rescued from these death camps.
Our actions must be understood as an act of penitence.
In 1940, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined the resistance.
For a cover, his brother-in-law, Hans von Donanyi, recruited him to the
military intelligence agency Abwehr under the pretext that he would be useful in its
counterintelligence operations because of his contacts with various influential
church leaders in Switzerland, Britain, America and Scandinavia and thus
exempted him from military service and the obligation to report to the Gestapo.
Instead, Bonhoeffer used these contacts for the resistance.
Posing as a courier for the Abwehr, he traveled extensively throughout Europe
for the resistance to find out how the Allies would react to the planned coup d
'etat.
But for Bonhoeffer, the time had come to grab the wheels by the spokes.
From the end of November 1940 to February 1941, Bonhoeffer lived in a hotel where he
was a guest at the Benedictine Abbey.
He had his meals with the monks to the accompaniment of liturgical tunes.
I've been here since yesterday.
A most friendly welcome.
In short, everything one could want.
It was from here in his monastery that he struggled to prevent the confessing church
from dying out as a result of conscription or direction to war work.
Bonhoeffer attempted to influence the church minister Hans Kerl through
intermediaries whom he met there.
He met the Minister of Justice, Dr. Goethe, in connection with the matter.
We spent the day together and discussed a good deal.
He was very optimistic in the K matter.
The only question is what K himself can do.
Things are now moving on to some degree since reports of drafting for war work are
increasing.
Goethe was buried a month later.
Bonhoeffer celebrated Christmas in Etal with the Dormaniers and Bethke's company.
He could not let Advent pass without preaching.
Since he was forbidden to preach, he wrote a sermon, a meditation for
Christmas in the form of a sermon, basing it on Isaiah 9.6.7.
Unto us a child is born.
To us a child is born.
God's redemption is not by power, nor by might, not by wisdom or clever
strategy, but in a helpless child.
With justice and with righteousness, Jesus governs his kingdom.
His kingdom shall be a kingdom of righteousness, not by self-righteousness,
but by God-given righteousness.
We find it when we accept his lordship and when we let him give us a new life in
love.
He wants us to be with him, not for his sake, but for ours.
God with us, Emmanuel, Jesus, that is the secret of this holy night.
We rejoice.
To us a child is given.
To us a child is born.
Christ the Saviour,
the Saviour is born.
O come, desire...
On September 19, 1941, the decree that Jews should wear a yellow star came into
force.
All Jews had to wear this badge stitched onto their clothing.
Bernhofer got involved in a bold action initiated by the Abwehr for a few Jews.
Admiral Canaris gave instructions to save a group of about 12 to 15 Jews by getting
them to Switzerland on the pretext that they were being used by the Abwehr.
The enterprise was called U-7 because at first only seven people were involved.
Because of its strict neutrality, Switzerland refused entry to any
non-Aryans.
Through the intervention of Alphonse Kirchlin, President of the Swiss Church
Alliance, Bernhofer finally succeeded in taking the Jews to safety in 1942.
Naturally, the Gestapo was very suspicious of the entire operation and soon launched
an investigation which played a decisive role in Bernhofer's future.
The years 1941 and 1942 were of incessant activity as Bernhofer traveled abroad
extensively on secret missions for the resistance.
It was here in Sigtuna, Sweden, that Bernhofer expressed the movement's
willingness to negotiate a compromise peace following the overthrow of Hitler.
Bernhofer's British liaison for the resistance, Bishop Bell, conveyed these
plans to the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, but received an unfavorable
response.
Without casting a reflection on the bona fides of your informants, I am satisfied
that it would not be in the national interest for any reply to be sent to them.
By now, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were demanding Germany's unconditional
surrender.
At the end of this period, on January 17, 1943, at the age of 37, Bernhofer
announced his engagement to 18-year-old Maria von Wedemeyer, with whom he had
fallen in love in 1942, during his stays with her family in Patzig between his
Abwehr journeys.
Her mother, Ruth von Wedemeyer, was worried by the difference in their
ages.
Bernhofer had first met Maria when, at 13, her grandmother, Countess Ruth von
Kleistretzow, had brought her on a visit to the Confessing Church Seminary in
Finkenwald.
Bernhofer was a frequent visitor to the von Kleist home, especially on holidays
during the 1930s.
It was here that he had completed the cost of discipleship in the spring of 1937.
In that year, Maria was only 13 and Dietrich was 31, but by 1942 she had
turned 18.
Their engagement was a clear sign that Bernhofer did not imagine himself being
forced into an apocalyptic opposition.
In the midst of general destruction, a man desires to build.
In the midst of a life lived from day to day, he demands a future.
In the midst of our exile from the earth, he demands some living space.
In the midst of the general misery, some happiness.
And the overwhelming fact is that to this improbable desire, God says, yes.
That here, God confirms our will with his, when one would expect the opposite.
And so marriage becomes something quite new, majestic, glorious for those of us
here in Germany.
On March 13th, 1943, Hitler was expected to fly to the front to the Central Army
Group in Smolensk.
This was the occasion for the attempt on his life.
Eberhard Bethke drove Hans von Donany to the night train in Karl Bernhofer's car.
Donany flew to Smolensk with special explosives in his briefcase for Tresckow
and Schlabrindorf.
Although the explosives were on board, Hitler landed unharmed.
The bomb and the plot had failed.
This same day, Bernhofer received new draft papers from the Munich Conscription
Office.
Major General Oster used his authority for the last time and released Bernhofer from
the order.
On Sunday, March 21st, Hero's Memorial Day, Hitler was visiting an exhibition of
captured military equipment in the Berlin Arsenal.
Colonel Tresckow arranged for a colleague to guide the Fuhrer for the show.
The colleague was carrying a bomb in his person to blow up both himself and Hitler.
On that day, the whole family were in the Schleicher's house practicing a cantata
for Karl Bernhofer's 75th birthday.
Dietrich was sitting at the piano, Klaus playing the cello, Rüdiger
Schleicher the violin and Donanyi was in the choir.
Christine von Donanyi whispered to her sister Ursula Schleicher, It must be going
off any moment.
But minute by minute went by and the telephone did not ring.
Hitler had not kept his planned timetable.
He had left the exhibition ten minutes early.
This attempt too failed.
Ironically, on March 31st, 1943, Hitler awarded the Goethe Medal for
Honorable Service to Dr. Karl Bernhofer to coincide with his 75th birthday
celebration.
The family, friends and co-conspirators of Dietrich Bernhofer who had gathered
together for this birthday celebration were oblivious of the events of a few
months ago.
When in 1942, the customs post at Prague had discovered irregularities in the
papers of someone who claimed to be acting for the Abwehr in Munich.
Counsel Wilhelm Schmidhuber, a member of the Abwehr, was arrested.
And Dr. Josef Muller, the intermediary between Abwehr and the Vatican,
was interrogated.
There were incriminating statements in connection with putting Operation 7 into
effect.
The names of Hans von Donanyi and Dietrich Bernhofer were noted.
From his home in Marienburger Allee, about midday on April 5th, 1943,
Bernhofer tried to telephone his sister Christine von Donanyi.
He heard a man's voice on the telephone.
At that moment, he knew that the house was being searched.
Without disturbing his parents, Dietrich went up to his attic and prepared
for his own arrest.
Dietrich walked over next door to his sister Ursula Schleicher's house and asked
her to cook him a large meal.
About four o'clock, his father came over.
Two men want to talk to you in your room.
So on that fateful Monday of April 5th, 1943, along with his sister Christine and
brother-in-law Hans von Donanyi, were taken separately to the
Charlottenburg and Moabit prisons.
Dietrich Bernhofer was taken to the military interrogation prison in Tegel.
Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.
The night of April 6th, 1943, was cold at Tegel.
Bernhofer could not bring himself to use the blankets of the plank bed,
as he could not stand the stench that rose from them.
He spent 18 months in a room about six feet by nine feet with a plank bed,
shelf, stool and bucket.
A board door with an observation hole looking from the outside in, and a
skylight window above head height on the opposite side.
He kept a daily routine of Bible reading, prayer, and singing the many hymns of Paul
Gerhardt, which he had memorized.
During the interrogations, Bernhofer effectively disguised the true nature of
his obvious activities, and was permitted to have visitors and receive letters.
Dear parents, I do want you to be quite sure that I'm all right.
Strangely enough, the discomforts that one generally associates with prison life
hardly bother me at all.
The 75th birthday, or a fortnight ago today, I can still hear the chorale that
we sang in the morning and evening with all the voices and instruments.
Praise to the Lord!
That is true, and it is what we must always rely on.
Your Dietrich.
Afraid that he might not stand up to possible torture and perhaps give away his
friends, he wondered, should he not kill himself?
On a piece of paper which had survived from the first weeks in prison,
Bernhofer wrote...
Suicide, not because of consciousness of guilt, but basically because I am already
dead.
Besides writing to his parents, Bernhofer wrote letters to his friend,
Eberhard Bethke, and to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer.
He lived for these letters and by these letters.
In the period between November 1943 and August 1944, letters amounting to 200
closely written pages reached Eberhard Bethke.
All of them smuggled out.
They are the basis of the letters and papers from prison, which today are read
all over the world.
On May 15, 1943, a few days after the release of Christine von Donany,
and while Dietrich Bernhofer was still confined to his prison cell, Eberhard
Bethke married Dietrich's niece, Renate Schleicher.
From his cell, Dietrich sent a special message for the couple.
God adds his yes to your yes.
He is guiding your marriage.
God makes your marriage indissoluble.
God establishes a rule of life by which you can live together in wedlock.
God has laid on marriage a blessing and a burden.
God gives you Christ as the foundation of your marriage.
From the first day of your wedding, the rule must be, welcome one another for
the glory of God.
Bernhofer communicated with his family using a code while investigations were
being made about his Abwehr service, his role in Operation 7, and his journeys
for the conspiracy.
At the trial in the military court, the original charge of treason and high
treason could not be sustained.
Bernhofer was accused of infringements of military law.
He expected to be released very soon and wrote to his fiancée, Maria, about
marriage.
I am under God's special guidance here, I feel sure.
Moreover, when I consider the state of the world, the total obscurity enshrouding our
personal destiny, and my present imprisonment, our union can only be a
token of God's grace and goodness which summon us to believe in him.
Our marriage must be a yes to God's earth.
It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth.
I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth with only one leg will
stand in heaven on only one leg too.
Throughout his life, Bernhofer had welcomed the Christmas season with music
and preaching.
But Christmas 1943 greeted him with severe restrictions in his prison cell.
Yet he was neither fretful nor anxious.
When everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can barely
withstand it, the Christmas message comes to us that all our ideas are wrong,
and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes
from God.
Our eyes are at fault, that is all.
God in the manger, wealth and poverty, light and darkness, succor and
abandonment.
No evil can befall us.
What it meant is true endurance and true rejoicing in the knowledge that Christ is
with us.
Remember that Christ too frequents prisons, and he will not pass me by.
Bernhofer was disappointed that he was not able to baptize the first child of
Eberhardt and Renate, and whom the parents had named after him, Dietrich Wilhelm
Rüdiger Bethke.
He sent a baptismal sermon.
Our being Christians today will be limited to two things, prayer and righteous action
among men.
There will be those who pray and do right and wait for God's own time.
May you be one of them.
Bernhofer continued his pastoral ministry in this Nazi prison and later even in the
concentration camps, especially to those who had been condemned to death.
His one concern in prison was to get permission to minister to the sick and his
fellow prisoners.
And his ability to comfort the anxious and depressed was amazing.
But Bernhofer was realistic about himself.
Who am I?
They often tell me I would step from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully,
firmly, like a squire from his country house.
Who am I?
They often tell me I would talk to my warders freely and friendly and clearly as
though it were mine to command.
Who am I?
They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smiling, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell me of?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath as though
hands were compressing my throat, yearning for flowers, for the voices of
birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, trembling with anger
at despotisms and petty humiliation, tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at
praying, at thinking, at making, faint and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I, this or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once a hypocrite before others and before myself a contemptibly
woe-begone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from
victory already achieved?
Who am I?
They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine.
Once again on July 20th, 1944, another attempt to assassinate Hitler was
made, but he survived the bomb attack with minor injuries on his right arm.
The editor of the official church journal, Pastorate and Theology, exhorted
Christians to thank God for saving the Führer's life.
We are grateful to God with all our hearts and with all our congregations ask God for
his support and help for the great responsibilities which the Führer has to
bear and discharge in these most difficult times.
As for Hitler himself, he was both angry and elated.
Impressing Mussolini, he was on an official visit at that time.
Hitler boasted of his miraculous escape and vowed revenge.
I am now more than ever convinced that the great cause which I serve will survive its
prison perils.
I will crush and destroy the criminals who have dared to oppose themselves to
Providence and me.
The Gestapo and the SS immediately carried out a purge.
Because of his imprisonment, Bonhoeffer was not directly involved, but some of the
conspirators were connected to Bonhoeffer.
When a month later, on August 22nd, his brother-in-law, Hans von Donany,
was sent to the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, Bonhoeffer realized that
his fate was sealed.
His only hope was in a plan to escape with the help of a devoted guard, Corporal
Knobloch, who was prepared to smuggle him out of prison.
A mechanic's garments and food coupons for the escape were already passed on to
Bonhoeffer.
But on October 1st, 1944, his brother Klaus, who was the legal advisor to
Lufthansa, was arrested in the Schleicher's house on Marienberger Allee.
Two days later, on October 4th, Rüdiger Schleicher and Eberhard Bethke
were also taken into custody.
Bonhoeffer did not want to further endanger his family.
He abandoned his escape plan.
Reflecting on this decision, he composed his famous poem, The Death of Moses,
in which Moses accepts his fate to die on the mountain in God's presence.
To punish sin and to forgiveness you are moved.
God, this people I have loved.
That I bore its shame and sacrifices and saw its salvation.
That suffices.
Bonhoeffer found the key to all problems, including his long and lonely internment
and his continuous living in Christ.
All that we may rightly expect from God and ask him for is to be found in Jesus
Christ.
In Jesus, God has said yes and amen to it all, and that yes and amen is the firm
ground on which we stand.
Following the debacle of July 20th, 1944, Hitler called for an extended
investigation, during which the Gestapo discovered Bonhoeffer's travel diaries.
These documents implicated Bonhoeffer and the Opfer.
Consequently, Bonhoeffer's situation deteriorated rapidly.
On Sunday, October 8th, 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was transferred to the
underground Gestapo prison, which was concealed by the facade of the Gestapo
headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße.
Life in the Gestapo prison was very arduous and restrictive.
Bonhoeffer was deprived of all privileges.
The only exception was the permission to write one letter each for Christmas and
New Year.
Bonhoeffer wrote the same poem in both the letters, the Christmas letter to his
fiancée, Maria, and the New Year letter to his mother, whose birthday fell on
December 30th.
The old year still torments our hearts, unhastening.
The long days of our sorrows still endure.
Father, grant to the souls, thou hast been chastening, that thou hast promised the
healing and the cure.
Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving, even to the dregs of pain at thy
command, we will not falter, thankfully receiving all that is given by thy loving
hand.
By kindly powers so wondrously protected, boldly we'll face the future, come what
may.
We are with God at night and morn, just as sure on each new day.
For interrogation purposes, at the end of January 1945, Donaghy was also brought to
the Gestapo prison.
On April 6th, 1945, he was taken back to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp,
where on the same day he was court-martialed and sentenced to death.
He was executed on April 9th, 1945.
On February 2nd, 1945, Klaus Bonhoeffer and Rüdiger Schleicher were condemned to
death.
Klaus Bonhoeffer and Rüdiger Schleicher were shot by the Gestapo on April 23rd,
1945.
A bomb crater in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery in Berlin became their grave.
The next day, February 3rd, 1945, the Allies unleashed their heaviest air
attack on the center of Berlin, transforming it into a wilderness of smoke
and ashes.
Amidst all this ruin and destruction, Dietrich's parents tried desperately to
visit him for his birthday, which was the following day, on February 4th.
His birthday gift included a book by the philosopher Plutarch.
It would play an important part in his destiny.
His parents tried again on the usual parcels day, Wednesday, the 7th of
February, to get into the head office.
Their parcel, which also contained a Plutarch, was accepted at this time,
but they were not allowed to see their son.
The accompanying letter was the last word that Dietrich Bonhoeffer received from his
family.
7 February, 1945.
Dear Dietrich, Your birthday letter for the 4th, which we wanted to bring on
Saturday, did not reach you because of the raid.
Karl Friedrich has chosen the Plutarch for your birthday.
I hope that this letter reaches you.
We are looking forward to being allowed to see you soon.
There are many things to be sorted out at our age, things that have to be discussed
with one's children.
I'm typing this, so it can be easily read.
Our hearty greetings.
Your father.
It was the same afternoon of February 7th, 1945, that Dietrich Bonhoeffer vanished
without trace from the Gestapo prison in Berlin.
It was only a week later, on the next parcels day, February 14th, that his
parents discover that there was no longer anyone at the heavily damaged
Prinz-Albrecht-Straße prison to receive their gifts.
And it was still months later, only through the BBC, that the survivors
hear of the last stages of Bonhoeffer's journey.
On February 7th, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was transported to the notorious
Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar.
He was housed in a basement prison, damp, cold and dark, without daylight.
There was a communal washroom and next to it was the dampest cell, cell number one
for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
As Easter Sunday of April 1st, 1945, approached, the thunder of American
cannons from the woods nearby could be heard in the basement.
For the prisoners, these guns heralded the sounds of freedom.
However, their joy and hope was short-lived.
The guards began a mass execution.
In special instructions from Berlin, camp inmates were routinely massacred in
face of the approaching enemy.
Prisoners in the basement cell were given new orders to be ready to leave at any
moment, even by foot.
Did that mean they were to share the fate of the others who were taken to the woods
and executed?
On Tuesday, April 3rd, a huge truck rolled out of Wuchenwald, carrying Bonhoeffer and
others in a southeasterly direction.
The hearts of the inmates sank.
They were going to Flossenburg.
It was for them an ominous name.
On the way, Bonhoeffer was a source of comfort and strength to the many
prisoners.
A fellow prisoner, Hugh Falconer, described those days to Dietrich's sister,
Sabine, a few months later.
He did a great deal to keep some of the weaker brothers from depression and
anxiety.
He spent a good deal of time with Wassilor Corcoran, who was a delightful young man,
although an atheist.
I think your brother divided his time between instilling the foundations of
Christianity and learning Russian.
Soon they were relieved to discover that the truck was going south.
It was not going to be the annihilation camp.
By late Friday, April 6th, they were approaching Schoenberg, 25 miles north of
Passau.
They were housed in this small schoolhouse being used as a temporary lock-up.
Bonhoeffer was among the special cases taken to the second floor.
That afternoon and next day, Saturday, April 7th, 1945, Bonhoeffer and his fellow
prisoners enjoyed the view of the lovely Green Mountain Valley, oblivious that in a
midday discussion two days earlier, on Thursday, April 5th, Hitler had given
special orders that all the conspirators be immediately executed.
On Sunday, April 8th, 1945, several prisoners requested Bonhoeffer to lead
them in a prayer service to celebrate Low Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter.
There was only one difficulty, the presence of the avowed atheist,
Corcoran.
Despite Bonhoeffer's longing to conduct the service, he refused because he did not
want to exclude Corcoran from any activity.
Surprisingly, Corcoran desired to be included and himself asked Bonhoeffer to
conduct the service.
Bonhoeffer offered a meditation on 1 Peter 1.3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead.
He spoke of their present state and the future that awaits them, freedom or death.
Whichever it may be, the true renewal has already taken place in our hearts.
Two things have happened.
First, Christ has died for us men in our salvation.
We live because he died.
And the second, because of this God has renewed us.
We are new men, unstained by the past.
After this service, the prisoners wanted to smuggle Bonhoeffer to their room so
that he could hold a service there too.
They were interrupted as the door was pushed open by two Gestapo members in
civilian clothes.
They called out, Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready and come with us.
By now it was clear to everyone, Bonhoeffer was to be executed.
He was able to get his things together.
He wrote his name and address in large letters with a blunt pencil in his
Plutarch, in the front, back and middle.
This book, which he had been given by his brother Karl Friedrich in the Gestapo
basement prison of Albrechtstrasse, was found and passed on to the family as
the last sign of Dietrich's life.
Bonhoeffer said his final goodbyes.
Payne Best records Bonhoeffer's last words, a message for Bishop Bell of
Chichester.
This is the end.
For me, the beginning of life.
A journey from Schoenberg to the Flossenberg concentration camp lasted till
late evening.
He is at thy right hand.
In Hitler's personal orders, the SS summary court held a short trial in the
laundry of the concentration camp.
The death penalty for high treason was pronounced on Wilhelm Gnerus, Hans Oster,
Karl Sack, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
But for Bonhoeffer, death had lost its sting and grave its victory.
With an indomitable faith in God, he approached his end.
Death, throw off our grievous chains and raise the thick walls of our mortal body
and our blinded soul, so that at last we may behold what we have failed to see in
this place.
Freedom, long we have sought you through discipline, through action, and through
suffering.
Now that we are dying, we see you, there in the face of God.
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.
His craft and power are great, and armed with brutal hate.
Yet our God doth prevail them.
Even in dying, Bonhoeffer left a powerful testimony of costly grace.
Grace bought at a price.
His last witness was an SS camp doctor.
He knew nothing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
He would never understand Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology, yet he could never
forget Dietrich Bonhoeffer's faith.
Ten years later, he wrote...
On the morning of that day, I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer before taking off his prison
garb, 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 steps to
the gallows, brave and composed.
His death ensued after a few seconds.
In the almost 50 years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die
so entirely submissive to the will of God.
On April 11th, 1945, the American forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration
camp.
Tragically, just six days earlier, on April 5th, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
was transported to Flossenburg to be hanged.
On April 30th, 1945, ironically, three weeks after ordering the execution
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hitler himself committed suicide in this bunker.
And in his schoolhouse in Reims, France, on May 7th, 1945, less than a
month after Dietrich Bonhoeffer's execution, the Third Reich surrendered to
the Allies.
The war in Europe was over.
Bonhoeffer's family waited anxiously for him or for news about him, but there was
no trace.
Only coincidentally, on July 24th, 1945, his parents tuned into a radio
broadcast from London.
What they heard was a memorial service for their son.
Three and a half months had passed since that fateful Monday, April 9th,
1945, when his family first heard of his execution.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged as a 39-year-old.
Lest this man forever becomes a monument, we must remember him more than just as a
martyr.
In relation to the situations in which he found himself, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an
authentic witness to Jesus Christ.
In both, through his life and his death, he has demonstrated how we should respond
in faithfulness to the Gospel.
One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a
saint or a sinner, a righteous man or an unrighteous man.
In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.
Taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world.
Watching with Christ in Gethsemane.
That is faith.
That is repentance.
And that is how one becomes a Christian.
How can success make us arrogant?
Or failure lead us astray when we share in God's sufferings through a life of this
kind?
May God in his mercy lead us through these times.
But above all, may he lead us to himself.
Praise to the Lord, who for all things so wondrously reigned, Shielded me under his
wings, With the power of his love.
He so gently sustained me, As though not seeing How the desires of him Granted him
what he ordained me.
Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper Thy work and defend thee, Surely his goodness
and mercy Here daily attend thee.
Honor anew All ye almighty men do, Who with his love doth defend thee.