Bonhoeffer, Dietrich

(1906–45)

   Theologian.

   Bonhoeffer was educated at the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin, in Germany. He was particularly influenced by the thought of harnack and barth. After ordination, he continued to teach at the University of Berlin. He was a moving spirit behind the Barmen Declaration, which refused to allow the Confessing Church of Germany to become an instrument of Nazi party policy. He became head of the Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde in 1935, but he was dismissed from his post at the university and the seminary was closed down by the Nazis in 1937. In 1943 he was arrested and he was hanged in Flossenberg prison just before the end of the Second World War. His most celebrated work, Widerstand und Ergebung, was a collection of his letters and papers written in prison. It did not contain a fully worked out theology, but gave a glimpse of what he called a ‘religionless Christianity’. He argued that it was necessary for ‘man come of age’ to speak in a secular way about God and he interpreted the person of Jesus as ‘the man-for-others’. His other books include Sanctorum Communio, Akt und Sein, Die Nachfolge and the posthumous Ethik. Bonhoeffer is widely regarded as a modern saint and martyr. Through his death, as well as through his writings, he has become perhaps the best-known of all twentiethcentury Protestant theologians.

   Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, edited by E. Bethge (1967);

   J.W. de Gruchy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Witness to Jesus Christ (1988);

   C. Marsh, Reclaiming Bonhoeffer (1994).