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Dietrich Bonhoeffer the Present Chapter Examines the Life of Dietrich CHAPTER SEVEN DIETRICH BONHOEFFER Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand— from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: ‘how can I be good?’ and ‘how can I do something good?’ Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: ‘what is the will of God?’ 1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics The present chapter examines the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; the following chapter examines his Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnun- gen aus der Haft (E.T., Letters and Papers from Prison) in relation to Etty Hillesum’s writings.2 The German theologian and author Dietrich Bonho- effer (1906–1945) is perhaps one of Germany’s most influential religious thinkers of the twentieth century.3 As in the case of Etty Hillesum, his life 1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, DBWE Vol. 6. Ethics, ed. Clifford J. Green, tr. Reinhard Krauss, Charles West & Douglas W. Stott (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), 47. Bonhoef- fer, DBW Vol. 6. Ethik, ed. Ilse Tödt, Heinz Eduard Tödt, Ernst Feil, and Clifford Green (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1992 [second edition 1998]): Es ist eine Zumutung sondergleichen, die an jeden, der das Problem einer christlichen Ethik auch nur zu Gesicht bekommen will, gestellt werden muß, die Zumutung nämlich, die beiden Fragen, welche ihn überhaupt zur Beschäftigung mit dem ethischen Problem führen: „wie werde ich gut?“ und „wie tue ich etwas Gutes“ von vornherein als der Sache unangemessen aufzugeben, und statt dessen die ganz andere, von jenen beiden unendlich verschiedene Frage nach dem Willen Gottes zu stellen. 2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, DBW Vol. 8. Widerstand und Ergebung, ed. Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge with Ilse Tödt (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1998); DBWE Vol. 8. Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. John W. de Gruchy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010). Cf. Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Auf- zeichnungen aus der Haft (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1970); Letters and Papers from Prison, The Enlarged Edition, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997). Hereafter: “LPP.” Cf. Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison”: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 3 In 2008, I visited the “Bonhoeffer-House, Memorial and Place of Encounter” (Bon- hoeffer-Haus, Gedenk- & Begegnungsstätte) and the archives of the State library of Berlin, reading several original documents of Der Nachlass Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hereafter: “NL.” Cf. the database Kalliope, dem zentralen Sucheinstieg für Nachlässe und Autographen in 412 chapter seven was bounded by the two world wars.4 On February 4, 1906 he and his twin sister Sabine were born in Breslau, Silesia, then part of Germany’s empire, now Wroclaw in Poland. Barely twenty-seven years of age when the Nazi regime came to power, he emerged as one of the major voices against the ideological deformation of the Protestant Church.5 His life story, which spans the rise and fall of Hitler’s Germany, is marked by family solidarity, faith and courage. Bonhoeffer was reared in a comfortably off educated family; in a dis- tinguished but not particularly religious environment. When in the early 1930s Adolf Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer began to question the politi- cal and ideological changes that were being implemented. Throughout the 1930s he attended ecumenical meetings, becoming an outspoken leader in the breakaway ‘Confessing Church’ (Bekennende Kirche).6 He declared his theological opposition to Nazism, and urged the faithful to reject the Nazi heresy that the Führer7 and the state deserved allegiance above that Deutschland and the library’s online Biographie Dietrich Bonhoeffers (Berlin: Die Staats- bibliothek zu Berlin, 2010) by Till Becker. For The collected works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer see the original German critical edition: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, 17 vols., ed. Eberhard Bethge, et al. (Munich and Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser-Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1986–1999). Hereafter: “DBW.” The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Project translated the critical edition in an English scholarly edition: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 17 vols., ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996-present). Hereafter: “DBWE.” 4 The following biographical information is chiefly inspired by (1) Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary, ed. Edwin Robertson, tr. Eric Mosbacher et al. (London: Collins, 1970), a slightly condensed translation of the original German edition Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologe, Christ, Zeitgenosse (Gütersloh: Güterslo- her Verlagshaus, 1968 [9th edition, 2005]), which contains appendices omitted from the English translation. Hereafter: “DB” and “DB/E.T.”; (2) Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoef- fer: A Biography, rev. and ed. Victoria J. Barnett (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000). Hereafter: “DB-ER.”; (3) Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906–1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance, tr. Isabel Best (New York, NY: T & T Clark, 2010), a translation of the original German edition Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 1906–1945. Eine Biographie (Munich: C.H.Beck, 2005 [4th revised edition in 2007]). Hereafter: “DBEB” and for the English trans- lation: “BMTM.” 5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, DBW Vol. 4. Nachfolge, ed. Martin Kuske & Ilse Tödt (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1989) [2nd. ed. Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1994]; DBWE Vol. 4. Discipleship, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly & John D. Godsey, tr. Barbara Green & Rein- hard Krauss (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000). Cf. Nachfolge (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1937). The Cost of Discipleship (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1995). Hereafter: “CD.” 6 DB-ER, 483. BMTM, 186–191 & 254. DBEB, 204–209 & 268. 7 Führer is a common German title meaning ‘leader’ or ‘guide,’ though mostly associ- ated negatively with Hitler and Nazi Germany. See in this Chapter “The Führerkult and the Jewish Question.”.
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