Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor. He is well known for his support of ecumenism and his viewpoints on Christianity’s role in a secular world. A spirited opponent of Nazism, his contribution to the German resistance movement led to his execution in a concentration camp.
Born the son of a prominent psychiatrist in Breslau, now Wrocław, Poland, Bonhoeffer studied theology at the universities of Tübingen and Berlin. The neo-orthodox movement led by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth and others increasingly influenced Bonhoeffer. He left Germany in 1933 in protest against the Nazi enforcement of anti-Jewish legislation and worked in German parishes in London. He returned to Germany in 1935 and became head of a pastoral seminary of the German Confessing Church.
An active opponent of Nazism, Bonhoeffer signed the Barmen Declaration in protest against attempts by German Christians to synthesize Nazism with Christianity. Consequently, he was forbidden to teach, and his seminary at Finkenwalde was closed in 1937.
Bonhoeffer’s participation in a conspiracy to oust Adolf Hitler led to his arrest in 1943. Bonhoeffer was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was hanged at Flossenbürg just before the liberation of the camp by American troops.
Bonhoeffer’s Widerstand und Ergebung (1951; Letters and Papers from Prison, 1953) is an overpowering document of his convictions. His Nachfolge (1937; The Cost of Discipleship, 1948) emphasize the genuine discipleship of Christ and the sacrifices it entailed. His other writings include Sanctorum Communio (1927,) Aki und Sein (1931, ‘Act and Being,’) and Ethik (1949, ‘Ethics.’)
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It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Strength, Decisions, Excellence, Questions
We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
As time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time troubles us whenever we look back. Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Time Management, Value of Time
The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Prayer
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