Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945
The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived from 1906 to 1945—a time of cataclysmic changes in his country. When he was six years old, his father ascended to the most important neurological and psychiatric post in Germany, and the family moved from Breslau to the capital, Berlin. In little more than three decades, Germany shuddered through two complete cycles of armament and utter defeat, and was lashed by incessant economic and political catastrophes. The national disaster reached into the Bonhoeffer family early on, with the death of second oldest son, Walter, on the Western Front in 1918. By the time the years of cataclysm had ended in 1945, two sons, Dietrich and Klaus, and two sons-in-law, Hans van Dohnanyi and Ruediger Schleicher, had been executed for treason. Yet for the childhood and youth of the eight children, the family always supplied a place of security and well-being, with weekly family musicales, Bible and other readings, visits by famous friends and neighbors, summers in the Harz mountains, and early schooling itself by the children's mother, Paula, and a Moravian governess. When Bonhoeffer enrolled at the University of Tuebingen, as his father and brothers had before him, it was with the clear intention, even at age 17, of becoming a theologian.
From the beginning he demonstrated a preference of feeling over intellect, of action over contemplation. When he became a doctoral candidate at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin later on, he was persuaded by Karl Barth's argument that the implications of faith are profoundly "worldly" as opposed to "other-worldly." And in 1928, while acting as assistant pastor to German Lutherans living in Barcelona, Bonhoeffer told his congregation the saga of the giant Antaeus who was stronger than any man on earth until someone managed to lift him off his feet and deprive him of the source of his strength, which had flowed into him through his contact with the earth. Going on, Bonhoeffer said, "The man who would leave the earth, who would depart from the present distress, loses the power which still holds him by eternal, mysterious forces." The foundation for Bonhoeffer's conviction that the church's rightful place is "in the center of the village" was already firmly established.
In September 1930 Dietrich Bonhoeffer set sail for New York and Union Theological Seminary. In America he was moved by the destitution of those hit hard by the first year of the Great Depression; he revelled in the emotional power of black worship services in Harlem; and he quickly noted Union's emphasis upon social action. Shortly before returning to Germany, he wrote, "The impression that has been made on me by today's advocates of the social gospel will leave its mark on me for a long time." Back home in Germany, banks collapsed and the democratic experiment that was the Weimar Republic ground towards its desperate end. National Socialism was gaining alarming political momentum, and its antiSemitic sirens were now blaring with open stridency. The Bonhoeffer family was affected by this directly. The husband of Dietrich's twin sister as well as his closest confidant—both Jews, along with many other family friends and assistants to his father at the University were forced to emigrate. Bonhoeffer's chief biographer, Eberhard Bethge, says that the persecution of the Jews in Germany was the main reason for Bonhoeffer's decision to become actively involved in political conspiracy against the Nazis.
One of the first expressions of this activism was his leadership role in the Confessing Church, a group of Protestant parishes openly opposed to the German Lutheran Church, which had reached an "understanding" and accommodation with the National Socialists. Throughout the thirties, Bonhoeffer taught at an underground seminary for pastors of the Confessing Church at Finkenwalde, where, in 1935, he said to his students, "Only those who cry out for the Jews may also sing Gregorian chant."
In 1939, confronted with military conscription, Bonhoeffer was given exemption for a year for journeys abroad. Again he came to America and Union Theological Seminary, where he weighed President Henry Sloane Coffin's invitation for him to join the Union summer school faculty. After three weeks he made his fateful decision of conscience that he must return to Germany. Writing to Reinhold Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer affirmed: "I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless I share the trials of this time with my people."
A second realm of activism later became his "cover" as a double agent working in the Abwehr, the office of military intelligence. Bonhoeffer had become Youth Secretary of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship Through the Churches, and travelled to England, Sweden and Switzerland to foster the ecumenical goals of this organization. Scorned by the Nazis, ecumenism still gained adherents as the nations of Europe ironically prepared once again for war! Bonhoeffer managed to avoid military conscription on grounds that his participation in international church conferences could provide contacts abroad that would be helpful to German military intelligence. What that participation did however, was give him opportunity to inform outsiders of the existence of resistance activities against Hitler within Germany itself. Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, worked as legal assistant to the Abwehr in conspiratorial activity that began by helping Jews leave Germany, and culminated in several assassination plots against Hitler. The last of these was on July 20, 1944, a failed attempt that sealed Bonhoeffer's and Dohnanyi's fate. They were executed in 1945.
Commenting upon Bonhoeffer's contemporary influence, Professor Wolfgang Huber of the University of Heidelberg wrote in an article published in the Evangelische Kommentare in April, 1986:
When we remember Paul Tillich and Karl Barth, the thought would hardly occur to us that they could still be alive, that they could represent the present. How different is the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.... The image of Bonhoeffer continues unmistakably to have an intense effect in ecumenical Christianity. When Christians, on grounds of conscience, see themselves forced to protest the violation of basic human rights, they too derive encouraging strength from his example. And for many who seek new breakthroughs in theology, Bonhoeffer is one of the most important sources of inspiration. The Lutheran Church in East Germany has been influenced by the Bonhoeffer heritage, but so has the theology of the people of South Korea. The resistance in South Africa leans on him, as does the Latin American Liberation Theology.
Bonhoeffer's example of faithfulness, of inclusive humanity, of unwavering integrity, inspires all who contemplate the real cost of discipleship; and that inspiration is as compelling today as when his friends observed it on April 5, 1943, when he was arrested.
—Joseph Robinson
Principal Oboist of the New York Philharmonic and member of Union's Board of Directors
Bonhoeffer at Union
In late April 1931, a month before his year as a Union theological Seminary student came to a close, Bonhoeffer wrote to a friend, "If you really try to enjoy New York to the full, you can wear yourself out." For him, the year had been full. His strict German standards did not admit there could be any "real theology" in America, but Bonhoeffer had been deeply affected by Union's engagement with the City. In the midst of the Depression, the participation of the students and the churches in the events of public life impressed him.
His fellow student Frank Fisher introduced him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where he became an active member. The gospel, he wrote to friends in Germany, was preached in the black churches as in few other places. Even in 1931, he was convinced "the race question [was] arriving at a turning point." In one year, New York City and Union Theological Seminary made a profound difference in the life of the young German theologian.'
Despite Bonhoeffer's skepticism about the American theological landscape, Union affected his theology, too. A meeting place of ecumenical Christianity, the Seminary introduced Bonhoeffer to the world church. Jean Lasserre, an ardent French pacifist, became a close friend. Lasserre's persuasive interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount helped move Bonhoeffer toward 1be Cost of Discipleship and contributed to his passionate involvement in the campaign for international peace within the context of the ecumenical movement. What he wrote to his brother Karl Friedrich in 1935 reveals the impact of his days at Union. "I think I am right in saying," he wrote,
that I would only achieve true inward clarity and sincerity by really starting work on the Sermon on the Mount....The restoration of the uncompromising adherence to the Sermon on the Mount in imitation of Christ....There are things for which an uncompromising stand is worthwhile. And it seems to me that peace and social justice, or actually Christ, are such.
Hitler ruled Germany when Bonhoeffer visited Union a second time, in 1939. Offered refuge by Union Theological Seminary through the efforts of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Lehmann, Bonhoeffer, now a full-fledged scholar and pastor, looked forward to teaching students and working with German refugees. He resided in the guest room called the Prophet's Chamber, now the Bonhoeffer Room. Shortly after his arrival, however, he found he could not stay. "We abandon, destroy, our life if we are not back in the fight," his diary records. "I have made a mistake in coming to America," he wrote to Niebuhr.
I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.
Five weeks after he had arrived in New York City, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sailed back to Germany. He had made the most important decision of his life.
—Larry Rasmussen
Former Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology and Ethics
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York has been, since its founding in 1836, a champion of moral courage in action. It is fitting, therefore, that the Seminary has established a faculty Chair in Theology and Ethics in memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a hero of the German resistance and one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. A named Chair represents the highest and most appropriate means to honor Bonhoeffer, and the field of Theology and Ethics sits squarely in the center of the Seminary's curriculum. The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Theology and Ethics chair, currently held by Professor Christopher L. Morse, was established in 1992.
Half of the funds to endow this chair were raised in Germany and half in the United States. The idea of the chair originated with Pres. Don Shriver's desire to endow the present areas of the Union curriculum. It was suggested that a Bonhoeffer designation for a chair in the rethinking of Christian dogmatics as a "testing of the spirits" within the Church and secular culture would be appropriate given Bonhoeffer's observations about the lack of such a discipline of study at Union in the 1930s when he was a visiting scholar. Morse's dogmatics text, Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief was published to coincide with the inauguration of the Chair in February 1994. It has be a leading text for a number of schools as a textbook for courses in Christian Systematic Theology and Dogmatics.
Learn more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Learn more about endowed and named professorships at Union Theological Seminary.
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