Max Diestel as \u2018discoverer\u2019 of Bonhoeffer<\/p>\n
\u2018Christianity entails decision.\u2019 With these words began Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u2019s first sermon in 1925. One can either be wholly Christian or not at all is what that means. And what decides whether one is or not, is whether one follows up one\u2019s confession of faith with appropriate actions, whatever that may cost.
\n\u2018Decision\u2019 was, from then on, one of the keywords in his theology. It may be observed that, according to the old Brockhaus German dictionary, decision-making can involve anxiety and therefore be avoided or put off. Newer editions of Brockhaus no longer take note of this. Bonhoeffer was to write in his doctoral dissertation of the \u2018boundless fear of making a decision\u2019. The more important the issue to be decided, the greater one\u2019s fear, but the more necessary it is that the fear be overcome. These insights were to take on existential importance for him after 1933.
\nThat first sermon, with its portentous opening, was given by the 19-year-old theology student at the request of Superintendent Max Diestel, his supervisor, who needed a substitute for a pastor who had suddenly fallen ill in Stahnsdorf, on the south side of Berlin. Bonhoeffer asked his superintendent to discuss the draft of the sermon with him, and Diestel, who had a canny feel for people and their particular gifts, kept an eye on him from then on. It is not saying too much to call him the discoverer of Bonhoeffer, as he was the first to consider how the young man\u2019s career could be furthered, without telling him so or influencing him in any way. The most Diestel did was occasionally to invite Bonhoeffer to his home, alone or with others, and, because Bonhoeffer was good with children, to have him play St Nicholas for his large family. But as soon as the young theology student had earned his doctorate and passed his First Theological Examination, Diestel purposely sent him abroad to experience a world completely different from his upper middle-class home. And in case this was not enough, he made sure that, after taking his Second Theological Examination, Bonhoeffer was able to study in New York for a year, after which Diestel made him his colleague in international ecumenical work. For the young pastor, this last became an unexpectedly time-consuming volunteer position, but it helped to shape him both theologically and personally. Many years later he wrote to Diestel:<\/p>\n
Most likely you have forgotten all about these \u2018interventions\u2019 in my life, since within the full scope of your work these were all, of course, extremely minor, secondary matters. But for me they were fundamental for my entire life and its formation. Later I was able to be with you at numerous ecumenical conferences; there, just from your way of speaking and manoeuvring, I learned to recognize and understand the full responsibility of the German church toward other churches. (DBWE 16, 368)<\/p>\n
A 21-year-old Doctor of Theology<\/p>\n
\u2018Sanctorum Communio: A Dogmatic Enquiry into the Sociology of the Church\u2019 was the title Bonhoeffer gave to his dissertation, and first of all it must be said that when he spoke of the \u2018communion of saints\u2019, he wasn\u2019t accepting any easy distinction between \u2018the visible and the invisible church\u2019. He was speaking of the Church in the concrete sense. Only if it is the communio sanctorum, the congregation of the saints, is there a \u2018loving fellowship\u2019 within it. There were at that time in German Protestantism two theologically based views of the Church, and both were negative. The first view was espoused by the liberal theologian and sociologist Ernst Troeltsch, who believed that the Church had \u2018all the hardness, afflictions and trivial thinking of an official institution\u2019. It was to be used as a means to an end, and as such, \u2018as far as possible, to be made into a tolerable means to one\u2019s ends\u2019. This was the view familiar to Bonhoeffer from home. In a time of opposition between Christian tradition and contemporary culture, Troeltsch believed the Church could no longer be reformed.
\nThe other view was the early opinion held by Karl Barth, in which the existing church had lost its credibility through its conduct before and during the Great War, and according to which a struggle against the old church, or for a new church, would not be worthwhile. For him the only important thing was preaching: \u2018We should speak of God, and yet cannot \u2026 at once the necessary and the impossible task of the minister.\u2019 Bonhoeffer, who saw great strength in the type of the Church (Volkskirche) as it had developed historically, objected:<\/p>\n
Luther\u2019s love for the church and deep dogmatic insight into the significance of its historical nature made it very hard for him to tear himself away from the church of Rome. We should not allow resentment and dogmatic frivolity to deprive us out of hand of our historical Protestant church.<\/p>\n
He did see, however, that this church should not remain as it now was. \u2018The church of the future will not be bourgeois [b\u00fcrgerlich]\u2019 he said of its future development. \u2018We want to take the church to the proletariat.\u2019
\nCarl von Weizs\u00e4cker said, in his above-mentioned speech in Geneva, that Bonhoeffer\u2019s dissertation \u2018in two respects \u2026 marks the beginning of the journey towards reality, beyond liberal theology and beyond Barth\u2019, on one hand by speaking of \u2018religious existence in the concrete form of the Church as a social reality\u2019, and on the other, with sociology as his starting point, by seeking \u2018to show that the theology of the Church is the real, the only stable embodiment of the sociological doctrine of community\u2019.
\nBonhoeffer had pointed out that crucial theological concepts are always social concepts as well. If human beings are social beings, then all the more so in the Church, where we recognize that it is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who makes human beings capable of community and is, moreover, the ground of our community. Of course this immediately raises the question of how Jesus, who lived 2000 years ago, can be the ground of a community today. As \u2018teacher\u2019 and \u2018example\u2019, as liberal theologians say? As the Risen One, as Karl Barth and the Orthodox say? The Risen One is \u2018Christ existing as church-community\u2019 says Bonhoeffer, thereby adapting Hegel\u2019s dictum, \u2018God existing as church-community\u2019. In and through the church community we have the proof that Christ is the Risen One and that he is present there.
\nAnyone interested in the life of Bonhoeffer will be wondering how, at the age of 19, he came to choose this particular topic. Seeberg had suggested a different subject, and Harnack and Holl would certainly have done so. But to Bonhoeffer his own discovery was more important.
\nIt is not only the \u2018communion of saints\u2019 which poses a problem; every human community has problems, even a privileged family with close ties among its members. The Bonhoeffers were such a family, and yet, as we have seen, both Dietrich and Susanne Bonhoeffer experienced loneliness within it. Bonhoeffer\u2019s older brothers teased him about his religious ideas, when he told them he was going to study theology. When they declared that the Church was old hat, he shot back, \u2018Well, then I\u2019ll reform the church!\u2019 What that meant at first was only, I\u2019m not you, and what you\u2019re studying isn\u2019t for me! But underneath was his very early discovery of \u2018the gulf between his I and the Thou of other people\u2019 of which he was later to speak in his dissertation. Undoubtedly this gulf seemed threatening, first of all, because it seems to call the family community into question. That his father claimed, when matters of church and faith were raised, not to know anything about it, must have caused Bonhoeffer much more insecurity than the teasing of his brothers; at the age of 15, what could he say in reply? His father, who was both rather distant and an absolute authority to him, remained an example to Bonhoeffer all his life, and this also had an effect on his theology. Many years later he was to write to his fianc\u00e9e:<\/p>\n
[That element of severity] in the father-son relationship is a sign of great strength, and of an inner self-assurance that derives from an awareness of the sanctity of fatherhood. Most parents today are too spineless. For fear of losing their children, they devalue themselves into their friends and cronies, and end by rendering themselves superfluous to them. I abhor that type of upbringing, which is nothing of the kind. I believe our families think alike in that respect.<\/p>\n
His fianc\u00e9e was to contradict him, for good reasons; to her, her father had been the best friend one could imagine. That his father\u2019s feelings and thoughts were so different from his own, precisely in matters of religion, must have been quite a problem for Dietrich as a teenage boy, particularly because he couldn\u2019t talk about it with him, and presumably never did so, even later in their lives.
\nAnd then in Rome, in St Peter\u2019s on Palm Sunday 1924, he saw the communio sanctorum as a living reality before him: \u2018illustrating the universality of the church in a marvellously effective manner: white, black, yellow, all \u2026 united under the church\u2019. So there was, after all, something that brings people together and makes them into a community, even when their differences far outweigh those typically found among family members. That this must have something to do with the communion between humans and God, that mass in St Peter\u2019s had shown him. But it became truly recognizable through the revelation of God in Christ, which for Bonhoeffer no one had so clearly described as Karl Barth. In the opinion of the young doctoral candidate, however, Barth did not tie this recognition clearly enough to the Church. What actually happens in the Church, and how an individual becomes a member of a true community, therefore became the question on which everything depends.
\nWe shall see how the early picture that Bonhoeffer had of the Volkskirche fell apart, when it did not measure up to reality from 1933 onward. Suddenly he found in his church an enormous lack of faith and too little \u2018loving community\u2019. However, because very few theologians have \u2018lived\u2019 their theology to the extent that Bonhoeffer did\u2014it was not just an intellectual matter for him\u2014we shall find him discovering new, radical questions and trying to answer them. If his church is no longer the \u2018true Church\u2019, then where is the true Church? The church as community, with Christ as its centre, was to remain the defining issue in his \u2018journey to reality\u2019.<\/p>\n
3. Years Abroad (1929\u20131931)<\/p>\n
As pastoral assistant in Barcelona<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer\u2019s next step was decided by a telephone call, and by much more than that. Here is what he wrote to the caller, Superintendent Max Diestel, in 1942 on the occasion of Diestel\u2019s 70th birthday:<\/p>\n
I realize that I am indebted to you for the decisive initiatives in my external, professional and personal life \u2026 It was perhaps one single telephone call\u2014namely, in December 1927\u2014that set my entire thinking on a track from which it has not yet deviated and never will. At that time you asked me \u2026 whether I would like to go to Barcelona as a vicar. Just a few weeks later, I had my first encounter with a foreign German congregation and with ecumenical Christianity. (DBWE 16, 367)<\/p>\n
At the time there was no lack of advice to Bonhoeffer to turn down this proposal. The Catalan capital is a lovely and important city in Spain, but to those who expected this young German theologian to be preparing himself for an academic future, as a teacher, it looked like a sidetrack. If he really wanted to work in an expatriate German congregation, why not in London, Paris or Rome? It was certainly not by chance that the High Church Council of the Evangelical Church had had no luck, despite enquiries to all the regional consistories, in finding a candidate for ordination to send to Barcelona, until Diestel thought of asking Bonhoeffer. Diestel\u2019s idea was that this would be a completely different world from that of his home, which would do him good, \u2018high-flyer\u2019 that he was. Diestel himself had served as a pastor in Middlesbrough, in the north of England, when he was young. His proposal coincided with Bonhoeffer\u2019s own thoughts.<\/p>\n
This offer seemed to bring to fruition a wish that had grown stronger and stronger over the past few years and months, namely to stand on my own two feet for a longer period completely outside my previous circle of acquaintances. I believe I was already certain of the matter right after the telephone conversation. (DBWE 10, 57)<\/p>\n
In Barcelona, Bonhoeffer wrote in his travel diary that he had been thinking about the way he actually made personal decisions. Decisions on matters of faith he could make quickly and clearly\u2014even before 1933\u2014but decisions which affected his personal life were usually entirely different for him.<\/p>\n
I myself find the way such a decision comes about to be problematic. One thing is clear to me, however, that one personally\u2014that is, consciously\u2014has very little control over the ultimate yes or no, but rather that time decides everything. Maybe not with everybody, but in any event with me. Recently I have noticed again and again that all the decisions I had to make were not really my own decisions. Whenever there was a dilemma, I just left it in abeyance and\u2014without being really conscious of dealing with it intensively\u2014let it grow toward the clarity of a decision. But this clarity is not so much intellectual as it is instinctive. The decision is made; whether one can adequately justify it in retrospect is another question. (DBWE 10, 58)<\/p>\n
Pastor Olbricht would have liked his new assistant to start at Christmas time, but in those days no consistory worked that fast. It was February 1928 by the time he received a copy of the order officially dispatching Bonhoeffer to Barcelona. A message particularly for Olbricht had been added: \u2018We shall expect, by 1st March 1929, two copies of a report from you, Reverend Sir, regarding the training of Dr Bonhoeffer as pastoral assistant and his performance.\u2019
\nAfter a series of farewell parties, Bonhoeffer\u2019s whole family came to the railway station, on a cold, wet Berlin evening, to see him aboard the night train to Paris. He was leaving the family space for the first time, with its high expectations and its warm protection. His grandmother\u2019s house in T\u00fcbingen had been an extension of home; so had Italy, which had so deeply impressed him during his holiday stay there with his brother Klaus. When Klaus came to Spain later in the spring, Dietrich proved an able host, who not only already knew a great deal about the land and people, but had also learned Spanish astonishingly well.
\nIt was typical of the Bonhoeffers for his parents, brothers and sisters to be on the platform to see him off, and also typical that he didn\u2019t miss the opportunity of a stopover in Paris. A former classmate arranged a hotel room for him, took him to the Louvre and twice to the opera, and showed him the famous P\u00e8re Lachaise cemetery. What especially impressed Bonhoeffer, however, was a solemn high mass at Sacr\u00e9 Coeur, the basilica atop Montmartre.<\/p>\n
The people in the church were almost exclusively from Montmartre, prostitutes and their men went to mass, submitted to all the ceremonies; it was an enormously impressive picture, and once again one could see quite clearly how close, precisely through their fate and guilt, these most heavily burdened people are to the heart of the Gospel. I have long thought that Tauentzien Street in Berlin would be an extremely fruitful field for church work. It\u2019s much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity. (DBWE 10, 59)<\/p>\n
Here we see, as in his description of his farewell to the Sunday school in the Grunewald Church, how much the issue of true community was still with him. In Grunewald the pastor had prayed for his journey to Spain and for his future work there. He wrote in his diary:<\/p>\n
Pastor Meumann mentioned me in his general prayer and\u2014the congregational prayer has long sent shivers down my spine, and it did so incomparably more when the group of children, with whom I had spent two years, prayed for me. Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is, there is never loneliness. (DBWE 10, 58)<\/p>\n
In Paris, too, the weather was cold and damp. So he was amazed when he woke up the next morning somewhere near Narbonne and looked out the train window at a glorious spring landscape. Soon he could see the snowy summits of the Pyrenees, and from the border he took a \u2018luxury train\u2019 along the Mediterranean coast to Barcelona, a trip that didn\u2019t last a minute too long through the enchanting Catalan countryside with its almond trees in bloom. At the station his new mentor, Pastor Olbricht, was waiting for him.
\nThe \u2018Evangelical Church\u2019 in Barcelona was in more ways than one typical of German expatriate congregations in large European cities. There are similar churches in northern, western and southern European countries to this day. The elders of the church were respectable businessmen, but that didn\u2019t necessarily mean that they came to church very often. \u2018A generally supportive disposition toward the church\u2019 went together with \u2018extremely poor church attendance\u2019, the new pastoral assistant concluded (DBWE 10, 77). However, it was a matter of pride to belong to the German club and the tennis club, to support the choral society and the German school. Barcelona\u2019s German colony numbered about 6000, which of course included many Catholics.
\nThe congregation had 313 members. However, only those who paid contributions were counted, so if family members were included as well it amounted to quite a few more people. That did not include Germans living in smaller cities in the region, in Valencia and on the island of Majorca. These people expected the pastor to visit now and then to conduct worship services. As in other port cities where there were German congregations, Pastor Olbricht was also pastor for the sailors\u2019 mission, and by agreement with the German consulate he also maintained a \u2018welfare office\u2019 where Germans could come if they were in trouble. So there was no lack of work, and one could see why Pastor Olbricht had asked for an assistant.
\nThe Evangelical Church in Barcelona could hardly have been called a \u2018blooming\u2019 congregation at that time. About 40 people came to worship services on average, among them a few nationals of other countries. The simple name \u2018Evangelical Church\u2019 had been chosen on purpose, instead of \u2018German Evangelical Church\u2019, so that people from other countries could feel that they belonged there too. The Swedish and Swiss consuls were ex officio voting members of the presbytery. Bonhoeffer\u2019s mother wasn\u2019t familiar with the term \u2018presbytery\u2019, so he explained in a letter that this was the local church council.
\nBonhoeffer was shown the little church, which according to Spanish law was not allowed to have a steeple or a bell, the day of his arrival. He found it attractive in its simplicity, and looked forward to preaching there at least once a month.
\nHis lodgings were in the home of three impoverished Spanish ladies, who rented rooms to Germans but did not speak a word of German themselves. This was fine with Bonhoeffer, since he wanted to learn Spanish as quickly as possible. He got along well with the two other Germans living in the house, and was soon going with them on his first outings in the beautiful countryside. Unfortunately the ladies didn\u2019t spend much time on their cooking, and that was how it tasted, according to Bonhoeffer. But the serious disadvantage of these lodgings was described to their grandmother by his brother Klaus: \u2018The only place for everyone in the house to wash is the lavatory, the toilet, which is hardly any different from a third-class lavatory on an express train except that it doesn\u2019t shake.\u2019
\nWhether a pastoral assistant abroad can get his footing in an expatriate congregation, and also get to know the country and its people, depends on his enthusiasm and goodwill, but even more on the pastor who is supposed to be training him and assigning work to him. One could hardly say that this pastor in Barcelona and his assistant were \u2018made for each other\u2019. \u2018We didn\u2019t become friends, but we liked each other well enough,\u2019 was the way Bonhoeffer expressed it privately. Olbricht was apt in his social relations with the business people in his congregation. Like them, and like most German pastors in those days, he was politically conservative. But he had a healthy understanding of human beings; his style was not emotive, nor his attitude superior. When he came to Berlin on a fundraising tour for the congregation\u2019s silver jubilee and called on the Bonhoeffers in Wangenheimstrasse, Dietrich described him as \u2018a man who preferred a good glass of wine and a good cigar to a bad sermon\u2019. And he was \u2018not exactly a dynamic pulpit presence\u2019, Bonhoeffer adds elsewhere (DBWE 10, 77). Olbricht seems to have recognized quickly that it was best to let his assistant \u2018just do what he wanted\u2019, which testifies to his knowledge of people. Bonhoeffer, who always treated his elders with consummate politeness, behaved not only correctly but loyally towards him. He could have wished for many things to be different, but said to himself, \u2018It\u2019s only for one year.\u2019
\nOne of the first things Bonhoeffer was assigned to do was to start a Sunday school. As yet this was the only pastoral task with which he was familiar. Olbricht issued an invitation, but only one girl came. But she must have brought others along the next Sunday, so that there were already 15. The attendance soon grew to 40, and even in the summer months when many activities are in recess in Spain, the children wanted their Sunday school. Bonhoeffer reported to his brother-in-law, Walter Dre\u00df: \u2018These children don\u2019t know anything; it\u2019s shocking, but also a good thing, since nothing about the church has yet been spoilt for them. They are very trusting and quite unrestrained in their relations with adults.\u2019
\nWhenever new children joined the group, Bonhoeffer called on their parents, and found these visits much more meaningful than the introductory visits he had made during the first weeks. In such a small German colony people know how to size one another up. Nobody pretends to be anything he or she isn\u2019t, and people are pleasantly matter-of-fact in their conduct toward one another. However, in such a community gossip also flourishes, and this had disturbed Bonhoeffer very much during those introductory visits. Talking about the children, on the other hand, and how to help them grow, soon led to warmer relationships. Olbricht wrote, on 1 January 1929 when he sent the required report on his assistant to the High Church Council in Berlin and requested a successor:<\/p>\n
He particularly devoted himself energetically and with kindness to the young people, who were enthusiastically devoted to him \u2026 In a truly exemplary fashion, he produced a nativity play in the church with the children on the Sunday before Christmas, a project with endless rehearsals and practice that demanded a great deal of hard work. It was enormously well attended by the German colony, and the play was performed to great satisfaction. (DBWE 10, 172)<\/p>\n
However, things probably didn\u2019t go quite that harmoniously. Bonhoeffer, who had been so pleased with the enthusiasm and abilities of the children, wrote about Olbricht: \u2018\u2026 the success of the nativity play angered him so that we had a clash. Otherwise everything went smoothly\u2019 (DBWE 10, 175).
\nBonhoeffer didn\u2019t have such an easy time with his proposal to introduce religious instruction into the upper classes at the German school. The teachers and Pastor Olbricht were immediately worried about what would happen to this when Bonhoeffer left. Olbricht didn\u2019t want to take on this instruction on top of his other duties. But as soon as he arrived with his fashionable round hat, the \u2018vicar\u2019 from Berlin had already created a sensation among the older pupils, and proved to be such a magnet that they took to visiting him at his pension. His room there was large enough to accommodate them, and weekly discussion evenings were soon under way. Bonhoeffer again began calling on the parents right away, and since he also helped to resolve difficulties at school, more than once putting in a good word with a teacher for one of his young visitors, he soon became very popular in the German colony. The parents of both children and youth began coming to Bonhoeffer\u2019s church services. He wrote to his own parents that the teenagers were very involved in the discussions, even though they were quite ignorant about religion, due to the lack of preparation at school.<\/p>\n
Right now we are talking about the essence of Christianity and will then discuss individual problems, beginning with the problem of immortality. For this the seniors always have a reading assignment about which there is a report and then a discussion. The young people here of this age and younger are different from those in Germany; a peculiar mix of adulthood in terms of manners and career questions, and great naivety in other areas. There is not much intellectual arrogance or self-importance. In any event, intelligence is not overrated. One has the impression of greater honesty and clarity, which may derive from the Spanish influence. (DBWE 10, 154f)<\/p>\n
A story that only became known in 1999\u2014when a cache of letters that Bonhoeffer had written in 1928 to Walter Dre\u00df, his youngest sister\u2019s fianc\u00e9, was discovered\u2014reveals just how unusual was Bonhoeffer\u2019s gift for dealing with children and young people.<\/p>\n
At 11 in the morning there was a knock at my door, and in came a 10-year-old boy \u2026 I soon noticed that there was something wrong \u2026 then out it came. He broke into wild sobs, and I could only hear \u2018Mr Wolf is dead.\u2019 He wept and wept. \u2018So who is Mr Wolf?\u2019 It turned out it was a young German shepherd dog, which had been sick for a week and had just died half an hour ago. The boy was inconsolable, sat on my knee and could hardly compose himself again; but then he told me all about it, how the dog had died, so it was the end of everything \u2026 So he talked for awhile, and then suddenly his heartrending sobbing stopped, he was very quiet, and then said, \u2018but of course I know he isn\u2019t really dead\u2019. \u2018What do you mean?\u2019 \u2018Because now his spirit is in heaven, and he\u2019s happy there. At school one time, somebody asked the religion teacher what it\u2019s like in heaven, and she said she\u2019d never been there. But now, you tell me: will I get to see Mr Wolf again? He is really and truly in heaven, isn\u2019t he?\u2019<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer and the owner of Mr Wolf<\/p>\n
There I was and had to answer, yes or no. If I said \u2018We don\u2019t know\u2019, it would have meant \u2018no\u2019, and that\u2019s always a bad thing when someone wants to know. So on the spot I decided to say to him, \u2018Look, God made the animals, the same as people, and certainly loves the animals too. And I think God has arranged things so that everybody on earth who loved someone, really loved them, will get to be together with them in God\u2019s heaven, because loving is a part of God. Even though we don\u2019t know how it actually happens.\u2019\u2014You should have seen then, the happiness on that boy\u2019s face; he had stopped crying completely. \u2018So I\u2019ll see Mr Wolf again, when I\u2019m dead too, and play with him\u2019\u2014he was transported with joy. I said to him a couple of times more that we don\u2019t know how that happens. But he knew \u2026
\nAfter a few minutes he said, \u2018I said such bad words about Adam and Eve today; if they hadn\u2019t eaten the apple, Mr Wolf wouldn\u2019t have died.\u2019\u2014The whole thing was as serious for this child as it is for us adults when something really tragic happens. But I was just astonished\u2014gripped by that naive piety, suddenly appearing in a wild little boy at such a moment. As someone who is \u2018supposed to know\u2019, I felt very small compared with him, and I keep remembering his confident face when he left me. (DBW 17, 82\u201383)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer asked his brother-in-law please not to read this letter aloud to the family at home. He knew how it would arouse the gibes of his brothers, and he felt that this story did not deserve that.
\nHis brothers and sisters were amused that, in order to be seen as a proper member of the German colony, Dietrich had joined three clubs\u2014the German club, the tennis club and the choral society. He accompanied the choral society on the piano, and did not disdain to play even the most sentimental songs they sang. He enjoyed tennis, and also wanted to stay fit. At the German club he was welcome as a chess player, among other things. He was sorry that he did not succeed in learning Skat, a popular German card game; it was a big favourite of Pastor Olbricht\u2019s. Small talk didn\u2019t bother Bonhoeffer, either at the club or during his pastoral visits. After all, here he wasn\u2019t in Berlin-Grunewald, and he consciously wanted to get to know a different world. \u2018When in Rome, do as the Romans do,\u2019 the English say; he made it his motto.
\nBut in Barcelona a great deal was different from anything he had previously known, not least the crass difference between rich and poor. At that time the German businesses in Barcelona were having difficulties with competition from Western countries. It could happen that members of the church slid into complete poverty in a very short time. Bonhoeffer shared in the shock felt by the whole congregation when, in Pastor Olbricht\u2019s absence, he had to bury a respected businessman who had committed suicide out of despair over his sudden financial ruin. Several times Bonhoeffer asked his father for help for people in need. At Christmas he arranged an urgently needed loan for his three landladies.
\nIn German expatriate churches, especially in port cities, people often turned up who needed help, or who perhaps were only pretending to be in need. Pastor Olbricht\u2014who as treasurer of the German Welfare Society kept office hours for these persons, some of which he soon assigned to Bonhoeffer\u2014was in the habit of treating the people asking for help rather roughly because so many of them were swindlers. This wasn\u2019t Bonhoeffer\u2019s manner at all, but he also could see that he shouldn\u2019t allow himself to be swayed by melodramatic stories. Whenever Pastor Olbricht was away, he had to take over this work, taking care not to waste the limited funds available; an experience\u2014of which he gives a fascinating description in a letter to his eldest brother\u2014that later had its effects on his social welfare activities in Berlin.<\/p>\n
I get a look at the most varied ways of living, and have to deal with the strangest people, with whom I would otherwise scarcely have exchanged a word: globetrotters, vagrants, escaped criminals, lots of foreign legionaries, lion tamers and other animal trainers who have run off from the Krone Circus during its Spanish tour, German dancers from the music halls here, German gangster murderers on the run, all of whom tell me their life stories in great detail. It\u2019s often very difficult in these cases to give or to refuse at one\u2019s own discretion. As it is impossible to establish any guidelines on principle, the decisive factor has to be my personal impression, and that can often and easily enough be mistaken. (DBW 10, 71)<\/p>\n
Sermons and lectures at the church<\/p>\n
The task to which Bonhoeffer had been looking forward most of all, perhaps not without a few jitters, was that of preaching. Pastor Olbricht had him give 19 sermons during his year in Spain; that was more than usual for a pastoral assistant at the time. Of these sermons, 14 manuscripts have been preserved and show that he invested a great deal of effort in each. \u2018I work on it the entire week, devoting some time to it every day\u2019, he wrote home, and after a time there was nothing he would rather that Pastor Olbricht asked him to do. Certain expressions he used, and at times whole paragraphs of these sermons, may have gone over the heads of the congregation. But for one thing, it is always better to expect too much of the listeners than to aim below their level, and for another, here in the pulpit was the man whom their children loved, who talked with the teenagers, visited people at home and did what he could to help at the welfare office.
\nLet us take a closer look at Bonhoeffer\u2019s sermon of 26 August 1928. He had chosen as his text, \u2018The world and its desires are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever\u2019 (1 John 2:17). He brought in Faust and Prometheus, to show how the human soul longs and strives for immortality and that this is how great works of art are created. Bonhoeffer posed the question, \u2018but are these not all eternal? the works of a Beethoven, Bach, Goethe or Michelangelo?\u2019 and immediately answered No (DBWE 10, 517). Human beings are mortal, and everything they create also passes away. This is a passage from a typical beginner\u2019s sermon. One after another, Bonhoeffer called up other figures: Heraclitus, Buddha, the preacher Solomon, the novelist Fontane, Schiller and Nietzsche. But after evoking the end of the world, transience and death, the young preacher brought up, for the first time in his career, the distinction between the \u2018ultimate and penultimate things\u2019, and with this he succeeded in striking the balance and making God\u2019s eternity central to his interpretation.
\nThis distinction was later to be one of the important categories of Bonhoeffer\u2019s Ethics. The \u2018ultimate\u2019 is God\u2019s Yes and No to humankind, in judgment and mercy. But no human being can live with reference only to this ultimate; instead, we must find our way in this world, learn an occupation, work, earn our living, find a partner, keep our house in order, bring up our children rightly if we have any, and so forth. These things, and everything else one might mention\u2014Bonhoeffer later included working in the Resistance movement among them\u2014are the \u2018penultimate things\u2019. How to keep the two, penultimate and ultimate, in a proper relation to one another is one of the most important questions Bonhoeffer was to pose in his Ethics. That he was already speaking of it in Barcelona makes this sermon worth reading today, with its many literary quotations, even though he was still a long way from his great sermons of later years.
\nApparently it did not suit Pastor Olbricht that church attendance had increased markedly during his summer vacation. In previous years no worship services had been held during that time. In any case, from then on he no longer announced who would be preaching the next Sunday. However, in the final report on his assistant, he was unstinting with his praise:<\/p>\n
He \u2026 was able to excite his listeners to such an extent that they came regularly. His sermons were well thought through and contained profound and rich ideas; in his presentation he developed a self-confidence remarkable for his young age and gave the impression of a pastor with many years of experience. (DBWE 10, 172)<\/p>\n
A few years later Bonhoeffer was already an expert in homiletics. In Barcelona he was not at all concerned about standards or rules for preaching, although he later considered them quite important. But even then he warned his students against being tied down too slavishly by rules. For these early sermons, and also in his London pastorate, he chose the Bible texts himself rather than following those provided in the church lectionary for each Sunday. In Barcelona he usually chose a short Bible verse. Before 1933, he liked to use dramatic images and a style which we would find flowery today, and it is striking that he almost never mentioned political issues. Spain at that time was officially a monarchy, and its people had a relatively quiet life under the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. In Germany, the prudent policies of Stresemann seemed to be bearing some first fruits. Nobody had an inkling of the cruel civil war that lay ahead for the Spanish people, not to mention Hitler\u2019s dictatorship. Neither would the members of the German colony in Barcelona have believed the fate that awaited them. Under considerable pressure from the Nazi Party they were resettled in Germany, and church work among them was to be made well-nigh impossible by the Nazi authorities.
\nOne task which Bonhoeffer set himself in Barcelona was completely outside the usual parish parameters. During the winter he announced a series of lectures. Olbricht reported that four lectures were held and said they were very well attended, even by Catholics and people outside the church. \u2018He captivated people and offered them a great deal through his rich knowledge and excellent delivery, so that everyone parted from him with regret.\u2019 The texts of only three lectures have been preserved, entitled \u2018The Tragedy of the Prophetic and Its Lasting Meaning\u2019 (DBWE 10, 325ff), \u2018Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity\u2019 (DBWE 10, 342ff), and \u2018Basic Questions of a Christian Ethic\u2019 (DBWE 10, 359ff). These lectures are interesting especially because some ideas on which he lectured to the congregation were reworked by Bonhoeffer in his later theological writings.
\nHe had decided deliberately to give the lecture on the Old Testament prophets first. It would allow him to speak about very ancient times and also bring in contemporary issues, without alarming his hearers. The prophets were people who lived in changing times, and Bonhoeffer was experiencing the period in which he was then living, following the First World War, as such a time. His audience\u2019s feelings would have been similar. He said of the prophets:<\/p>\n
They had a covenant with God in which they were given two overwhelming experiences of God, namely as the world ruler who guides history according to his will, and as the Holy One. Whoever would be part of God\u2019s people should fall down in the dust before him. Although proclaiming this message cost the prophets their lives, the message itself became a permanent possession of humanity. We ourselves, through German philosophy, partake even now of the inheritance of the blood, the seed of the prophets \u2026 All the blows of fate that come upon a people are both justified and merited, for it is God who has sent them. The point now is to draw the appropriate conclusions from such blows and to bear them as a burden that God lays upon us. Any people can go astray, can lapse. But they can then also find their way again by following God\u2019s path. (DBWE 10, 341)<\/p>\n
In the second lecture, Bonhoeffer spoke much more directly and challengingly. Here the word \u2018decision\u2019, which was so important to him, appears right at the beginning.<\/p>\n
The question before us today is whether in our own day Christ still stands in the place where decisions are made concerning the most profound matters we are facing, namely, concerning our own lives and the life of our people [Volk]. We want to talk about whether the spirit of Christ can still speak to us of the ultimate, final, decisive matters. (DBWE 10, 342)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer described how, through the secularization of culture, Christ has become marginalized to the point of being considered a historical figure. Even among theological experts he is thought to be best understood and evaluated as such. But in truth, said Bonhoeffer, Christ represents an all-or-nothing decision. \u2018Either we accept him as our Lord, or we do not accept him.\u2019 This seems to leave us in an ice-cold, hard world, but the reality is God\u2019s love for humankind. Bonhoeffer showed how this is seen in the persons to whom Jesus\u2019 words and actions were especially directed. \u2018Jesus turns his attention to children, and to the morally and socially \u2018least of these\u2019, those viewed as less worthy. This is something totally unprecedented and new in world history, and in the person of Jesus it seems to constitute a break\u2019 (DBWE 10, 350). This requires us to rethink completely what we have always believed. For Jesus, Bonhoeffer declared, childhood is not just a phase on the way to adulthood, but rather something that has its own character, deserving of great respect from adults. \u2018God is closer to children than to adults. Thus Jesus becomes the discoverer of childhood.\u2019 We have seen what a joy it was to Bonhoeffer, both in Berlin and in Barcelona, to work with children and youth. Theological insights\u2014and this is a theological insight, expressed here by Bonhoeffer\u2014always carry something of the person who proclaims them.
\nThe third lecture has always had a special interest for researchers in Bonhoeffer\u2019s thought, because it was the first time that he who today is considered an ethicist, among other things, spoke in detail about ethical issues. Not least of all, it shows how his thinking developed. That a \u2018historical regime\u2019 is something distinct from a \u2018regime of love\u2019, he had learned at university, and this was still the way he presented it in Spain. The commandment to love your neighbour he described to his hearers as incumbent on everyone, and then showed that Christians, when confronted by a war that threatens their own nation, must take up arms, out of love for their own people, against persons who belong to another nation. This \u2018nationalist theology\u2019 was to play a decisive role in Germany only a few years later; but by then, as we shall see, Bonhoeffer had left it far behind.
\nHowever, he retained some other ideas from this lecture in Barcelona, including the opposition between the will of God and worldly reality. Each must be taken with radical seriousness. Consequently, Christian ethics must be concrete, related to the present, and can never be about ethical and moral principles.<\/p>\n
The significance of all of Jesus\u2019 ethical commandments is \u2026 to say to people: You stand before the face of God, God\u2019s grace rules over you; but you are at the disposal of someone else in the world. You must act and believe in such a way that in each of your actions you are mindful also of acting under God\u2019s gaze, mindful that God has a certain will and wants to see that will done. Each particular moment will reveal the nature of that will. You must merely be perfectly clear that your own will must in every instance be accommodated to the divine will; your will must be surrendered if the divine will is to be realized. (DBWE 10, 365)<\/p>\n
That sounds forceful, but here one must remember the idea of the \u2018ultimate and penultimate\u2019. Bonhoeffer is by no means thinking of a Christian as someone who must continually practise self-violation, for \u2018Christ is the one who brings freedom\u2019. It is always and only the decisive moment that matters, for \u2018I will do something again today not because it seemed the right thing to do yesterday, but because today, too, God\u2019s will has pointed me in that direction\u2019. One wonders what the church members must have understood, when he said: \u2018There are no acts that are bad in and of themselves; even murder can be sanctified. There is only faithfulness to or deviation from God\u2019s will. There is no law with a specific content, but only the law of freedom, that is, bearing responsibility alone before God and oneself\u2019 (DBWE 10, 367). This sentence might make us think of his involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and at least be amazed that, in a lecture in a church in February 1929, Bonhoeffer already was not only thinking of such a thing as possible, but even saying it out loud\u2014with, as yet, no idea of the weight such words could carry.<\/p>\n
Don Quixote and bullfighting<\/p>\n
Everyone who undertakes employment abroad probably hopes to see as much as possible of the foreign country and its scenery, and to learn about its culture and people. Erfahren means \u2018to learn\u2019 in German, and fahren means \u2018to travel\u2019. While still in Berlin, Bonhoeffer had asked Olbricht whether he would have time for travel while in Spain, and Olbricht had assured him: \u2018Of course. We shall sort that out together, for you must certainly see something of Spain.\u2019 And in fact Bonhoeffer did see much of the country, between travel for work and for pleasure. He preached in Madrid and on Majorca, and took his first big trip as early as Easter 1928, when his brother Klaus came to join him. The two of them went as far as Andalusia, and even undertook a second African adventure, which went off this time without any unfortunate incidents. A major discovery for Bonhoeffer during this holiday in Spain was the paintings of El Greco, and from then on he went to see as many as possible, wherever he could find them.
\nFrom his first day in Barcelona, Bonhoeffer found it an unusually lively city, in the midst of a grand-scale economic upturn. He wrote home that there were good concerts, and the theatre was also good, though old-fashioned. What was unfortunately lacking was conversation, sharing of ideas at the academic level, \u2018even when one goes looking for Spanish academics\u2019. He did find the old city \u2018even dirtier than Naples\u2019, but he was full of praise for the countryside round about, deeming it as among the most beautiful in Spain. He went on hikes and long excursions with the church youth. Alone, or with acquaintances, he often climbed the Tibidabo, the mountain that looms over Barcelona. There was a legend that this was the mountain from the top of which the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth, saying \u2018Tibi dabo [I will give you] all these, if you will fall down and worship me\u2019 (Matthew 4:8\u20139).
\nBonhoeffer was amazed by the Spaniards\u2019 manifest indifference towards striking contrasts in social status; this was a country where it was possible to see master and servant sitting at the same table in a caf\u00e9. \u2018None are so low that they believe they have to think even less of themselves than of others, and none\u2014least of all the king, whom I have seen several times\u2014think so highly of themselves that they permit themselves to look down upon others\u2019 (DBWE 10, 121).
\nHowever, Bonhoeffer\u2019s encounter with Spanish Catholicism was a bitter disappointment to him. He was fascinated, as is every tourist to this day, by the grand processions during Holy Week; but after his experiences in Italy, he had looked forward to conversations with members of the Spanish clergy, and found these people, on average, \u2018shockingly uncultivated\u2019. So his \u2018longing to get to know them better\u2019 evaporated. Conversations with educated Spaniards were also hard to come by, and when he did have the opportunity, he found them vehemently opposed to the church. To his surprise, when he knew enough Spanish to read more difficult texts, he discovered this attitude also in modern Spanish literature. On later occasions when he was abroad, Bonhoeffer enjoyed evaluating each country and its people, and often did so in letters. Here is a typical passage from a letter to his parents:<\/p>\n
In diametrical contrast to Italy, Spain is a country that ancient culture\u2014in the preliterary period as well as the Renaissance\u2014passed by without leaving a trace, and which instead existed for four hundred years under the rule of Eastern culture. It is a country that, to one who has been educated in the humanities, initially seems totally alien; one lacks all clues, so to speak, for understanding it. This is true not only of the historical but just as much of contemporary Spain. But this alienation is joined by a certain element of sympathy, a feeling of kinship that one does not really sense, at least in this way, toward Italy. Again, I can only explain it by adducing the position regarding ancient and humanistic culture. For Italy humanism and the classical period represent the solution to all problems, whereas in Spain there is an element of resistance, which I think is also evident, to a certain degree, time and again among Germans. Spaniards and Germans, I think, are similar in that neither culture ever completely opened itself up to humanism; instead, a remnant of something else always persisted. (DBWE 10, 95)<\/p>\n
Even in March 1928 Bonhoeffer was already aware that being in Spain was having an effect on his thinking, and a note in his diary says, \u2018My theology is taking a humanistic turn; what\u2019s that all about? I wonder whether Barth ever lived abroad.\u2019
\nIn July he wrote to Harnack that the time he was spending in Spain, in retreat from academic influences and focusing instead on many new impressions in practical life, seemed to him to be quite fruitful in its way:<\/p>\n
One gains distance from so many things about which one had become a bit obsessive, one acquires a measure of freedom from didactic doctrines and also learns to recognize much more precisely the limits of the value of pure scholarship; and in turn all that provides a point of departure from which one re-examines everything one has previously worked out. (DBWE 10, 116)<\/p>\n
One of Bonhoeffer\u2019s great discoveries during his year in Spain came soon after his arrival in Barcelona: Don Quixote. An acquaintaince took him to the cinema, where a film version of the novel was being shown. He couldn\u2019t understand all of it, and not knowing whether this was due to his insufficient knowledge of Spanish or to the film itself, he bought Cervantes\u2019 book and was captivated by it for the rest of his life. Twelve years after his first encounter with this greatest work of Spanish literature, it had become for him a symbol of the present age:<\/p>\n
The perennial figure of Don Quixote has become contemporary, the \u2018knight of the doleful countenance\u2019 who, with a shaving basin for a helmet and a miserable nag for a charger, rides into endless battle for the chosen lady of his heart, who doesn\u2019t even exist. This is the picture of the adventurous enterprise of an old world against a new one, of a past reality against a contemporary one, of a noble dreamer against the overpowering force of the commonplace \u2026<\/p>\n
Whoever wants to fight against the injustice and the crimes of the Nazi state, but uses the weapons of a time that is past, will fail because these swords are rusty instead of being shiny and strong. On the other hand, it is also true that<\/p>\n
It is too cheap to deride the weapons that we have inherited from our ancestors, with which they achieved great things, but that are not sufficient for the present struggle. Only the mean-spirited can read the fate of Don Quixote without sharing in and being moved by it. (DBWE 6, 80\u201381)<\/p>\n
Many admirers of Bonhoeffer today are astonished that he was keen on watching bullfights. At the very beginning of his stay in Spain, a teacher at the German school took him to a corrida. He was immediately fascinated by the hair-raising drama being played out before him, and remained so all his life. His enthusiasm also infected his brother Klaus, and wherever they had the opportunity during their travels together in Spain, they went to see the local bullfights. His twin sister wrote to him that she wouldn\u2019t \u2018have such a spectacle on a silver platter\u2019; it must make boxing seem totally benign. His students in Finkenwalde were also surprised at the seriousness with which Bonhoeffer described bullfighting to them, and demonstrated the steps and rapier thrusts of the torero, when they asked him to tell them something about Spain. Bonhoeffer also took his parents to a corrida when they came to visit him in Spain; but of course he knew how outlandish bullfighting would seem to his family and most people he knew.<\/p>\n
\u2018Greetings from a matador\u2019: postcard from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Barcelona, to R\u00fcdiger Schleicher<\/p>\n
I \u2026 cannot really say that it shocked me all that much, that is, the way many people think they owe it to their central European civilization to be shocked. It is, after all, a great spectacle to see wild, unrestrained strength and blind rage fight against and ultimately succumb to disciplined courage, presence of mind and skill \u2026 Overall, the people vent all these powerful emotions, and one gets drawn into it oneself. I think it\u2019s no accident that in the country with the gloomiest and most stark Catholicism the bullfight is ineradicably secure. Here is a remnant of unrestrained, passionate life, and perhaps it is the bullfight that, precisely by stirring up the entire soul of the people, indeed by fanning it to a frenzy, renders possible a relatively elevated morality in the other areas of life, since other passions are killed off by the bullfight\u2014so that the Sunday corrida constitutes the necessary counterpart to Sunday mass. (DBWE 10, 83)<\/p>\n
Back in Berlin: examinations, publications and a eulogy<\/p>\n
The year in Spain was important to Bonhoeffer not only because he was moving out and trying his wings away from his family, but also because in Barcelona he became aware that he could not be tempted by a strictly academic career. His plan for the future was to combine teaching at university level with a pastorate. The congregation in Barcelona would have liked to keep him permanently, and had already offered him a position in November 1928. But he only considered it briefly. He wanted to return to Berlin, write his postdoctoral thesis, which was required for lecturing at a German university, and take the Second Theological Examination required by the consistory of his Protestant Church of Berlin and Brandenburg\u2014then he would decide on his future course. But the letters he exchanged from Berlin with friends in Barcelona show that he left part of his heart in Spain and the congregation in Barcelona. When he went back there in 1930 for the wedding of one of the teachers, it seemed to him that he had never been away.
\nSuperintendent Diestel, whose job it was to receive Bonhoeffer\u2019s registration for the Second Examination and curriculum vitae and pass them on to the appropriate church office, was delighted to read of all that Bonheoffer had learned in Barcelona, having recommended that he go there. In his strong handwriting, Diestel wrote in the margin of the c.v.:<\/p>\n
I consider him to be a young man who is outstandingly gifted both in church praxis and in scholarly activities, a young man who can only broaden his experience through his anticipated activities in the United States. I recommend that things be made as easy for him as possible and that at the same time we keep him in mind for future practical work. (DBWE 10, 221 Note 11)<\/p>\n
The word \u2018practical\u2019 was energetically underlined. Diestel had soon arranged the first alleviation himself. Bonhoeffer and his friends did not think it necessary to attend a preachers\u2019 seminary, as required of candidates for ordination in the Old Prussian church. For half a year they had to live in a dormitory, and instead of being prepared for the pastoral ministry in ways that had not been adequately covered by their studies to date, they often had to attend courses at a lower level than their university preparation. Those who could find a way\u2014even Bonhoeffer, who was to become director of a preachers\u2019 seminary six years later\u2014tried to avoid this requirement which they found nonsensical. Diestel helped him do so, thinking it made more sense for Bonhoeffer to concentrate on his postdoctoral thesis and then to have some additional experience abroad.
\nIn Berlin, Bonhoeffer found that politics had changed. Those who, like Foreign Minister Stresemann of the Weimar Republic government, were concerned about reconciliation with the Western powers, were denounced by rapidly growing right-wing groups as \u2018too dutiful\u2019 in fulfilling the reparations and disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler\u2019s National Socialist German Workers\u2019 Party (NSDAP, the incipient Nazi Party) only controlled 12 votes in the Reichstag (parliament), but that didn\u2019t stop his SA (Storm Trooper militia) from even more raucous rampages in the streets. Together with the Stahlhelm and German Nationalists, the NSDAP circulated a petition against the Young Plan to have Germany\u2019s war debts renegotiated. The proposal did not get enough votes in the Reichstag to succeed, but the shouting grew ever louder that the government was in the hands of \u2018defeatists\u2019 who were \u2018lackeys of the Western powers\u2019 in carrying out the Treaty. Even voices in the churches joined in these irresponsible claims.
\nOn 3 October 1929, Gustav Stresemann died\u2014one of the few political leaders who could be counted on by honest democrats in Germany. Not long afterward came the New York stock market crash of 29 October, triggering a worldwide economic crisis that had especially disastrous effects in Germany. From one day to the next, the \u2018golden twenties\u2019 were over. Banks closed. All short-term loans were called in. Thousands of businesses went bankrupt, and as each catastrophe brought on others, unemployment grew rapidly. This raised to a new pitch the government\u2019s conflicts with the Nazis and the communists. There was fighting in the streets of large German cities, especially Berlin. Bloodshed during police actions became frequent.
\nOn 27 March 1930, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which traditionally represents labour, decided to leave the governing coalition because the premiums for unemployment insurance had to be raised. \u2018Suicide out of the fear of death\u2019, one SPD deputy called it. By the end of the month, the centrist politician Br\u00fcning had become Reich Chancellor for the first time. Since he could now rule by means of emergency decrees, issued by the Reich President whenever the government couldn\u2019t get a majority for necessary measures, the Republic began to crumble. Br\u00fcning\u2019s cruelly tight economic regime contributed to making conditions unbearable as unemployment ballooned to over six million. In the election of 14 September 1930, Germany experienced the Nazi Party\u2019s first landslide victory; instead of 12 seats in the Reichstag, it now held 107. Even the communists gained some, although not nearly on the same scale. Germany was headed for chaos.
\nSometime after his return from Spain, Bonhoeffer is supposed to have said that he wasn\u2019t especially interested in politics. Nevertheless, in a letter at Christmas 1932 to a friend from his student days, Helmut R\u00f6\u00dfler, he wrote: \u2018I hope you will not misunderstand the term \u201cdisinterestedness\u201d that I let drop a long time ago (I can\u2019t even remember that any more); it now actually strikes me as frivolous\u2019 (DBWE 12, I\/23). Whether he used the expression or not, the fact is that Bonhoeffer\u2019s brothers were much more involved in discussing politics than he was. He read the Vossische Zeitung newspaper and heard a lot of political discussion at home, especially since his sister Christine\u2019s husband, Hans von Dohnanyi, who lived next door, had become personal assistant to the Reich Minister of Justice.
\nBut if Bonhoeffer wanted to pass his postdoctoral Habilitation requirement and take his Second Theological Examination, he had to concentrate first and foremost on his theology studies. In addition he was looking into having his doctoral thesis published, and above all looking for a position as a lecturer at the university. It did not help that Reinhold Seeberg, who had supervised his thesis, was now retired and could no longer offer him a position, and that Seeberg\u2019s successor, Wilhelm L\u00fctgert, had reservations about Bonhoeffer\u2019s inclination toward \u2018dialectical theology\u2019; nevertheless Bonhoeffer did obtain a position as a \u2018volunteer\u2019 assistant lecturer. As such he was expected to supervise the seminar library and card file, hand out keys to rooms and make sure they were returned; but not being keen on these tasks, he delegated them to students. L\u00fctgert soon came to appreciate his new assistant, but said to Hans Christoph von Hase, who was the next to hold the job \u2018I really just took over your cousin, from Seeberg; otherwise I would have exercised rather more pressure on his philosophy.\u2019
\nGetting the doctoral thesis published turned out to be a difficult business. The university\u2019s requirement would have been satisfied by simply having the text duplicated inexpensively, but Bonhoeffer wanted this chance to show Barth and his disciples that he had taken up their thinking and reworked it critically. In the meantime Barth, who had not read any of Bonhoeffer\u2019s work, had brought out the first half-volume of his Christian Dogmatics, and a book had appeared by Paul Althaus, the Luther specialist at the University of Erlangen, with the same title as Bonhoeffer\u2019s thesis. When a publisher was finally found that would print Sanctorum Communio if 1000 Reichsmarks were paid in advance for the printing costs\u2014about three months\u2019 salary for a parish pastor in those days\u2014three years had passed and Bonhoeffer was on his way to America. His postdoctoral thesis had been accepted in the meantime so he was looking for a publisher for his second book, and had lost his interest in the first. The publisher complained bitterly to Bonhoeffer\u2019s father about this lack of interest. That first book did not really become known until after Bonhoeffer\u2019s death. At the time it aroused scarcely any discussion, and was misunderstood for the most part.
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s second book, Act and Being, also only began to interest people after his death in Flossenb\u00fcrg and the publication of his Letters and Papers from Prison [Widerstand und Ergebung] had made him well known. In Act and Being, Bonhoeffer tried to enter into a dispute going on at the time between advocates of transcendental philosophy and supporters of ontology. Both these forms of knowledge, when taken as absolutes, seemed to him to be doomed to failure, and he tried, as he had done in his doctoral dissertation, to bring the two sides together in the concept of the church. \u2018[With regard to] contents, both works are the kind of thing a man has to write while he is young and still has the courage to write it\u2019, said Carl Friedrich von Weizs\u00e4cker. Both books, in contrast to all Bonhoeffer\u2019s subsequent writings, are composed in scholarly language which requires an effort from the reader to get used to it. So it is not surprising that they lay unnoticed for so long. For some years, however, renewed interest in them has been shown by younger theologians.
\nFor his postdoctoral thesis, Bonhoeffer\u2014with L\u00fctgert\u2019s help\u2014quickly found a publisher. Bertelsmann took it on and asked for only 200 Reichsmarks in advance for printing costs, after Paul Althaus had recommended the book as a \u2018very important piece of work, which unquestionably must be printed as soon as possible\u2019. Bonhoeffer thanked him for this with a polite letter, after returning from the USA, and also sent Althaus both his books. This is all the more interesting because at that time he and Althaus belonged to different camps, as we shall see. Althaus returned the favour by sending Bonhoeffer his book Communio Sanctorum, along with a warm letter.
\nMax Diestel, who wanted to groom Bonhoeffer for work in the ecumenical movement, had proposed in 1929 that after his Second Examination for the church, Bonhoeffer should go to England for a while, learn English and get to know what it was like to study there, and then apply for a grant to study in the USA. Bonhoeffer was attracted to this idea, but in order to carry it out he had to concentrate hard and prepare quickly for the Prussian church\u2019s Second Examination. His postdoctoral thesis was accepted in lieu of a \u2018theological essay\u2019 for this purpose. The time to accomplish the rest was shortened yet more because the grant for the USA was approved even sooner than he and Diestel had planned for it. He had to give up the plan for a study trip to England beforehand.
\nHe took his oral examination at the Prussian church consistory from 5 to 8 July 1930, and received a very good mark for it. Amusingly, it was his written proposal for a Sunday school session which was found lacking (it was considered \u2018over the children\u2019s heads\u2019) and earned him only a passing mark. But Diestel, who was present when Bonhoeffer conducted the Sunday school session, judged it quite differently. His superintendent\u2019s evaluation sheet read, succinctly: \u20181. Catechist\u2019s bearing: serious and dignified. 2. Mastery of material: excellent. 3. Posing of questions: correct. 4. Ability to respond to the children\u2019s answers: excellent. 5. Class discipline: excellent\u2019 (DBWE 10, 230). Bonhoeffer had long since mastered this area of parish work and, in contrast to the expert who was evaluating his work, he did not hesitate to discuss even difficult questions with children and youth.
\nIn the midst of preparing for his Second church Examination, Bonhoeffer found out that Adolf von Harnack had died unexpectedly in Heidelberg on 10 June 1930. This was a blow to him, for it marked the end of a chapter in his life. Harnack had been much more to Bonhoeffer than the teacher of six seminars he had attended in Berlin; he had also been a fatherly friend. On 15 June, following the funeral, the King Wilhelm Society, of which Harnack was still president at the time of his death, held a memorial (a secular event rather than a worship service) for him. Following speeches by three government ministers, the Dean of the Theological Faculty and the Director of the National Library, Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke on behalf of Harnack\u2019s former students. His speech was published, and it made a wider public aware of him for the first time. He said:<\/p>\n
Through him, it became clear to us that truth is born only of freedom. We saw in him the champion of the free expression of truth, once it was recognized, who formed his own free judgement afresh time and again and expressed it clearly, notwithstanding the anxious inhibitions of the crowd. This made him \u2026 the friend of all young people who spoke their opinions freely, as he asked them to do. And if he sometimes expressed concern or warned us about recent developments in our field, it was motivated exclusively by his fear that the opinions of others might be in danger of confusing irrelevant issues with the pure search for the truth. Because we knew that with him we were in good and solicitous hands, we saw him as the bulwark against all superficiality and stagnation, against all fossilization of intellectual life. (DBWE 10, 380)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer missed Harnack when he took up his duties as lecturer at the university in Berlin in 1931; there was no longer any mentor for him there.<\/p>\n
Weddings and a new friend<\/p>\n
In the meantime there had been noticeable changes in Bonhoeffer\u2019s family. The circle of siblings was gradually becoming a circle of sibling families, with Dietrich the only unmarried one. This caused his relationship with his mother to become even closer, and when his parents moved from the Wangenheimstrasse in Grunewald to a house of their own in the Heerstrasse neighbourhood, he was the only one who still had a room at home with them. This house, in Marienburger Allee, now belongs to the church and is kept as a Bonhoeffer memorial.
\nThe first of his brothers and sisters to marry was Ursula; in 1923 she wedded R\u00fcdiger Schleicher, a lawyer from Stuttgart, who had been introduced to the family as a \u2018fellow Hedgehog\u2019 of Dietrich\u2019s. An excellent violinist, he had soon become a regular visitor. In 1925, Christine married her schoolmate, Hans von Dohnanyi, two years older than she; he and his sister Grete had long been among the Bonhoeffer children\u2019s neighbourhood friends. A year later, Dietrich\u2019s twin sister Sabine became the wife of Gerhard Leibholz, also a lawyer, who at the age of only 28 was made full professor at the University of Greifswald, holding the chair of Public Law, in 1929. He was from a Jewish family but had been baptized a Christian as a child. In 1929 Susanne married Walter Dre\u00df, a fellow theology student of Dietrich\u2019s whom he had introduced to the family. In 1930 they were followed by Karl Friedrich, who married Grete von Dohnanyi, and by Klaus, whose bride was Emmi Delbr\u00fcck, daughter of Hans and sister of Justus, another of the Bonhoeffers\u2019 long-time neighbourhood friends.
\nProbably because he belonged to such a close-knit family, Dietrich had never had a really intimate friend during his childhood and youth. The playmate who came nearest to that status was his cousin Hans Christoph von Hase, with whom he had often spent vacations as a child and a teenager, and whose decision also to study theology enabled them to remain in close contact. But this cousin was almost like a brother to him, and in the friendships of youth one normally looks for kindred spirits outside the family. Bonhoeffer found such a friend in Franz Hildebrandt, a theology student three years younger than he, whose father was professor of Art History at the University of Berlin and whose mother came from a Jewish family. The two young men first became acquainted in Seeberg\u2019s seminar, shortly before Bonhoeffer received his doctoral degree. In 1929 they ran across each other again at a performance of J. S. Bach\u2019s St Matthew Passion at the Berlin Choral Academy; they then arranged to meet, and were soon the best of friends. Hildebrandt knew a great deal about Luther, and he not only made Luther\u2019s writings more familiar to Bonhoeffer, but also influenced his developing a much stronger relationship with the Bible in his theology. Hildebrandt was brilliant intellectually and extremely witty, and not least because of this was soon a welcome guest in the Bonhoeffer home. He and Dietrich often argued about theological and philosophical issues, on which they had some quite divergent opinions, and on 31 July Hildebrandt gave Bonhoeffer a little book of Luther\u2019s sayings, inscribed, in allusion to Luther\u2019s hymn \u2018A Mighty Fortress\u2019: \u2018To my ancient foe, on the occasion of the completion of your postdoctoral studies.\u2019<\/p>\n
As a scholarship student in the USA<\/p>\n
Forward-looking German students were drawn to study in the USA in those days, not because it was made advantageous for them, as it was after the Second World War, but to get to know this rising world power with its great potential and perhaps even greater problems. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) paid for their ship\u2019s passage, and there were study grants offered in the USA. Bonhoeffer\u2019s predecessor grantee, Johannes Schattenmann from Bavaria, had stayed on for a second year in order to learn more.
\nCertainly if Bonhoeffer had had the choice, in 1930, between a study grant in India and one in the USA, he would have chosen India without hesitation. It was his grandmother who had first suggested this idea to him. India was not a \u2018majority Christian\u2019 country; people there lived according to other laws and a completely different philosophy from that of Europe or America. Like Barth and his students, Bonhoeffer believed that religion was the way chosen by human beings to come to God, and therefore a futile way. To him, the Christian faith was therefore exactly the opposite of all other religions, since only through Christ can human beings encounter God. This could be considered a narrow-minded view, because it does not appear to take seriously the beliefs of followers of other religions. But Bonhoeffer was equally convinced that everything depended on learning from the others. He saw the errors of Western civilization and of the churches much too clearly to be able to speak in favour of fundamentalist Christianity. In any case he didn\u2019t want to talk about other religions like a blind person talking about colours.
\nThough he was now on his way to the USA, could he perhaps return to Germany by way of the Far East, and thus carry out his plan to visit India? The American with whom he was sharing a stateroom on the Columbus turned out to be the president of a college in Lahore, India (now in Pakistan), and immediately invited Bonhoeffer to visit him there. Bonhoeffer\u2019s brothers and sisters were full of enthusiasm for this idea, especially Christine von Dohnanyi, the liveliest of his four sisters. She wrote to him:<\/p>\n
Perhaps gradual pressure on Papa and Mama will do the trick, possibly dressing it up as a big loan. If you accept a position here immediately afterward and promise not to marry soon, you can pay it back. Incidentally, I have the feeling that they would be quite sympathetic to such an idea, so that in the end you will manage it.<\/p>\n
She was almost more disappointed than her brother when he had to postpone the scheme, because it turned out that crossing the Pacific would be far more expensive than travelling from Germany through the Suez Canal. \u2018The chance certainly won\u2019t come again\u2019, she wrote, and she turned out to be right in the end, even though six years later Bonhoeffer actually received an invitation from Gandhi to visit his ashram.
\nBonhoeffer had never been so carefree, and never was to be so again, as during his year of study in the USA. He had taken the examinations to clear his way to both the pastorate and university teaching in Germany, and passed both with flying colours. While in the United States he could have done, or left undone, anything he pleased. But it would have been completely out of character for him not to make use of his year of study at Union Theological Seminary in New York to work as hard as everyone else there. As in Spain, he would still have enough time to learn about the country and its people, if he could find ways to see the \u2018New World\u2019 through the eyes of friends who belonged to it. His time in New York saw the beginning of four fast friendships, two with Americans and two with Europeans, and all four became so important in his future life that we shall have much more to say about them later.
\nNew York City, of course, fascinated Bonhoeffer like everyone else seeing it for the first time. In those days it was the silhouette of Lower Manhattan that dominated the skyline. Rockefeller Center and all the other skyscrapers were yet to be built; even the Empire State Building was still under construction. Yet nobody landing in New York for the first time could ever have seen anything like it. For Bonhoeffer it was the beginning of \u2018an uninterrupted assault of new experiences\u2019 (DBWE 10, 261). \u2018If you really try to experience New York completely, it almost does you in\u2019 (DBWE 10, 296), he wrote to Diestel. A few of his impressions were rather distressing, for the unemployment rate in New York and throughout the country in 1930 was far higher even than in Germany, and \u2018Prohibition\u2019 led to unbridled alcohol smuggling which greatly increased organized crime. He wrote to his sister Sabine on their 25th birthday: \u2018Unfortunately I cannot even toast you with a glass of wine on this occasion, since it\u2019s forbidden by federal law; what a frightful bore, this Prohibition in which no one believes\u2019 (DBWE 10, 271). As a budding ethicist, he was bemused to see the same churches which had used their influence to bring about Prohibition having to fight later to get it repealed.
\nIn common with visitors arriving from other continents in the USA today, especially in church circles, Bonhoeffer\u2014after a brief stay with relatives in Philadelphia\u2014was expected to speak to groups of people and tell them about Germany and the German church. Even before he could speak English comfortably, he was also asked to preach in English. In one local church he arrived to find a thousand school children awaiting him. One would love to know more about all this, but unfortunately many letters he wrote to his parents during this time have been lost.
\nThe environment which he was to share with 300 other people during an academic year took some getting used to for Bonhoeffer. Like many graduate schools in the USA, Union Seminary in New York was rather like an English university college in the nineteenth century, and for his taste there was too little privacy\u2014it was hard to find any place to be alone. That the lecturers were dealing with more contemporary issues than their colleagues in Germany, and saw their students as persons with equal rights, pleased Bonhoeffer. But that doors were left open everywhere, on the assumption that others\u2014even professors\u2014would welcome a conversation, was hard on him\u2014totally different from Germany. \u2018There\u2019s a lot of time-wasting chatter around here, but at least I\u2019m learning English from it\u2019, he said in a letter.
\nUnion Seminary had been founded as a college by the Presbyterian Church and was then about a hundred years old. Around 1900 it had been transformed into a graduate theological seminary for Protestants of all denominations. It had then become infused with a liberal mindset, and had an outstanding reputation in the USA as a place for modern and critical thinking. American fundamentalist groups were often scandalized by the political, social and ecclesiastical views of professors at \u2018Union\u2019. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, many students from these very conservative churches could be found there. At that time the Seminary already valued and sought out relationships with churches and theologians overseas, and had quite a few grants available for foreign students, like Bonhoeffer\u2019s Sloane Fellowship. In 1920 a Mrs Sloane had endowed a year-long study grant for a French student, which she later expanded so that three Europeans could be offered places each year. The two other Sloane Fellows, Erwin Sutz from Switzerland and Jean Lasserre from France, became Bonhoeffer\u2019s European friends in America.
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s previous theological education had taken him far beyond that of the other students, so that he actually belonged on the faculty. The impression he made on his fellow students was described by one of his four friends, Paul Lehmann, in 1960 on British radio. Of course Lehmann told his British audience about Bonhoeffer as a Resistance fighter who had been murdered at Flossenb\u00fcrg, and that probably overshadowed his memories of Bonhoeffer from 1930. But he also told of other experiences shared with Bonhoeffer, repeatedly expressing how fascinating their time at Union together had been for him. In the radio programme he said of Bonhoeffer:<\/p>\n
With professors and fellow students at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Identified by numbers: 1. Daniel J. Fleming, 2. Ernest F. Scott, 3. Harry F. Ward, 4. Reinhold Niebuhr, 5. Henry Sloane Coffin, 6. John Baillie, 7. Julius A. Bewer, 8. James Moffat, 9. Frank Fisher, 10.??, 11. Erwin Sutz, 12. Dietrich Bonhoeffer<\/p>\n
He was German in his passion for perfection, whether of manners, or of performance, or of all that is connoted by the word Kultur. Here, in short, was an aristocracy of the spirit at its best \u2026 His aristocracy was unmistakable, yet not obtrusive, chiefly I think owing to his boundless curiosity about every new environment in which he found himself and to his irresistible and unfailing sense of humour \u2026 the capacity to see oneself and the world from a perspective other than one\u2019s own. (DB-ER 155\u201356)<\/p>\n
None of the other Americans at Union Seminary came to know Bonhoeffer as well as Lehmann, who came from a Russian-German family and spoke fluent German, or to understand so precisely what he wanted to contribute as a German theologian to the discussions there. He kept hoping for years that Bonhoeffer would become a professor in the USA and be able to influence theological developments there.
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s other American friend was Frank Fisher, who was black. It was not easy to win him over, to gain his trust, but Bonhoeffer was genuinely interested in the life of the black community.
\nAt that time, the term \u2018Negro\u2019 was not yet taboo. Lehmann used it quite freely in 1960 in describing Bonhoeffer\u2019s interest in the situation of African-Americans:<\/p>\n
What was so impressive was the way in which he pursued the understanding of the problem to its minutest detail through books and countless visits to Harlem, through participation in Negro youth work, but even more through a remarkable kind of identity with the Negro community, so that he was received there as if he had never been an outsider at all. (DB-ER 155)<\/p>\n
It was Frank Fisher who made these experiences possible for Bonhoeffer, and they were among the most important of his year in America, perhaps the most important of all to him. Almost every Sunday, and also during the week, he could be found at the Abyssinian Baptist Church on West 138th Street in Harlem, where he taught a Sunday school class. He took part in countless discussions and in excursions with the church youth. Ruth Zerner, an American who worked at the same church in the 1960s, found that a number of the church members still remembered the blond pastor from Germany who had been part of their congregation 30 years earlier.
\nOn a trip to Washington DC, Bonhoeffer was impressed by the monumental buildings of the capital, especially the Lincoln Memorial, which he found \u2018enormously imposing, portraying Lincoln himself ten or twenty times larger than life, brightly illuminated at night, in a mighty hall \u2026 Moreover, the more I hear about Lincoln, the more he interests me. He must have been a tremendous man\u2019 (DBWE 10, 257). He was impressed also by the \u2018unbelievable\u2019 conditions under which black citizens had to live. Not only were there separate train and streetcar carriages and buses, but \u2018when I wanted to have dinner in a small restaurant with a Negro acquaintance, I was refused service there\u2019.
\nHe had been invited to take part in a conference in Washington of the Federal Council of Churches, the predecessor of the present National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. He was not happy with its theological debates. \u2018They talked about everything, but not about theology\u2019, he wrote to Diestel. However, Bonhoeffer was impressed by a political resolution of which he witnessed the discussion and adoption. It was a \u2018Message to Our Christian Brothers in Germany\u2019 in which the \u2018theory of the sole guilt of Germany for the war\u2019 was rejected. Bonhoeffer had been speaking in New York churches about the First World War and the postwar situation in Germany. This resolution encouraged him, and after his return to Germany he was indignant that respected professors of theology there did not take it into account, but rather demanded that no German take part in theological discussions of the ecumenical movement without first denouncing the lies about guilt for the war and the continuing war of the Western powers against Germany.
\nOn theology as it was taught at Union Seminary, Bonhoeffer\u2019s judgement was rather harsh. In the report he wrote after his return to Germany for the Church Federation Office in Berlin, he delivered his verdict with youthful insouciance:<\/p>\n
The faculty at Union Theological Seminary represents what the enlightened American demands of theology and the church, from the most radical socialization\u2014Professors [Harry F.] Ward and [Reinhold] Niebuhr\u2014and philosophical and organizational secularization of Christianity\u2014Professor [Eugene W.] Lyman, Professor [H. S.] Elliott\u2014to a liberal theology that takes its orientation from [Albrecht] Ritschl\u2014Professor [John] Baillie. The students can be classified accordingly into three or four groups. Doubtless the most lively if not the most profound among them belong to the first group. Here they have turned their backs on any sort of proper theology; they study many economic and political problems, are actively engaged in all sorts of corresponding organizations, are conducting one of the endless \u2018surveys\u2019 of the sort commonly conducted by the more progressive elements in America, and all this within a so-called ethical interpretation. Here they sense the renewal of the Gospel for our age and develop a strong self-consciousness in which they believe it possible to pass over various \u2018theological\u2019 objections rather hastily. (DBWE 10, 307\u20138)<\/p>\n
The report, which is 18 pages long, is regarded today as unjust by many who are in a position to know, but it is the result of keen observation. No one could have written such a report who did not have a thorough knowledge of the professors and the courses which they offered. And it should not be seen as motivated by condescension. Bonhoeffer was impressed by the experience of life which his fellow students at Union had, which he admitted was not the case among students of theology in Germany; he also admired the American students\u2019 readiness to get involved in social work. He not only joined them in these projects, but found them worth emulating in social welfare undertakings of his own, later on in Berlin. He was discovering the theological \u2018social gospel\u2019 movement, not only in this active way, but through the relevant literature.<\/p>\n
With the horrific unemployment in New York during the past winter, it dawned on many Americans for the first time that the presupposition of their social thinking is antiquated. People no longer really have the status in the world that they have earned through their own work and competence. This situation now makes the principle of voluntary charity as a means of social aid immoral. That principle was based on a false valuation of the lives of others. Such notions predominate in the so-called social gospel, which has been overcome in name but is still powerfully present in substance. The right of other persons to exist must be respected. (DBWE 10, 318)<\/p>\n
But he was very offended when, during a seminar, students laughed loudly at theological terms, such as a quotation from Luther about sin and grace, as if people in modern times could only regard such language as grotesque. What theology was for him was almost unknown to his American fellow students. But the teachings of the fundamentalist seminaries in the USA he found backward and unscholarly. In a seminar with Professor John Baillie from Scotland, a follower of German liberal theology, Bonhoeffer became the first person in the history of Union Seminary to put forward Barth\u2019s theology. He began his presentation with the words: \u2018I confess that I do not see any other possible way for you to get into real contact with his thinking than by forgetting, at least for this one hour, everything you have learned before\u2019 (DB-ER 159). And then he began to lecture on Barth\u2019s theology, including also some theological ideas of his own, as a doctoral student later discovered, with such enthusiasm that even after the Second World War, Baillie still regarded him as a dyed-in-the-wool Barthian, not knowing that Bonhoeffer had just begun, in his postdoctoral thesis, to express some criticism of Barth. In the United States Bonhoeffer did not go into fine distinctions, however: here his purpose was to bring the ideas of dialectical theology into the debate for the first time. His effort was not in vain. The very next year a first doctoral thesis was published at Union which showed that the issues as formulated in European theology were beginning to receive consideration there.
\nOne fellow student at Union not only understood Bonhoeffer\u2019s theological concerns there, but also shared them: Erwin Sutz, from Switzerland. His friendship was to endure into the war years and become very important to Bonhoeffer. As a student of Barth, Sutz thought along the same lines theologically, and they were both excellent pianists and helped one another scout out the houses around Union in which they were welcome to play music. Sutz believed that Bonhoeffer ought to find an opportunity as soon as possible to talk with Barth personally, and, before they both returned to Europe, Sutz wrote to Barth proposing that Bonhoeffer visit him in Bonn, where he was now teaching. The two friends also shared their astonishment, not to say horror, at what was considered preaching in New York. Bonhoeffer wrote to Diestel:<\/p>\n
The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about events in the newspaper. As long as I\u2019ve been here, I have heard only one sermon in which you could hear something like a genuine proclamation of the Gospel, and that was delivered by a Negro (indeed, in general I\u2019m increasingly discovering greater religious power and originality in Negroes). One big question that continually occupies me in view of these facts is whether one can really still speak of Christianity [Christlichkeit] here, and where the criterion might be found. There\u2019s no sense in expecting the fruits where the Word really is no longer being preached. But then what becomes of Christianity per se? Ultimately it can\u2019t really be the responsibility of theology, can it? Well, it\u2019s good that Christmas is coming again here as well. (DBWE 10, 266)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer found the teaching at Union stimulating in important ways, especially during the second semester. The way that ethical issues\u2014such as the problems with Prohibition and the deprivations of ordinary people ruined in the stock market crash\u2014were analysed on the basis of articles in the press, he found exemplary. Since he felt that the American way of life was based on American philosophy, he made use of tutorial sessions in which a student could discuss problems individually with a professor, to work through a great deal of American philosophical literature with Eugene Lyman, Professor of Philosophy of Religion, especially the works of William James (1842\u20131910), the brother of the great novelist Henry James.
\nJames was an exceptionally many-sided philosopher and psychologist who also had a degree in medicine. He was one of the founders of American pragmatism, which condemns mere verbal speculation as without consequences for the context of daily life. His main interests were in studying human actions and the results to which they led. In one of his best-known works, he also studied the \u2018varieties of religious experience\u2019. Bonhoeffer seems to have read this book of his first and strongly disagreed with it, but that did not stop him from continuing, with Lyman as tutor, to study James\u2019s other works. Pragmatic philosophy did indeed provide Bonhoeffer with explanations for what he had observed around the seminary.
\nThat the professors there also had their students read works of fine literature and write papers on them not only fascinated Bonhoeffer, but gave him ideas later for his preachers\u2019 seminary in Finkenwalde. Like the other Union students, he wrote assessments of the books that were dealt with in seminars. In this connection, an odd coincidence arose. Bonhoeffer\u2019s judgement of George Bernard Shaw\u2019s Androcles and the Lion was negative, but he seems to have neglected to read the author\u2019s afterword. In it, Shaw attacks the Church of England bishops who, during the First World War, allowed a little German church in London to be closed because it was \u2018inadmissible for God to be worshipped in the German language\u2019. If he was seeing truly, said Shaw, the only people to be dumbfounded by this argument were freethinkers, people who drew their own conclusions independently of religious authority. Bonhoeffer would certainly not have reproached someone who made this statement as being a \u2018shallow\u2019 and \u2018blasphemous\u2019 writer, as he had characterized Shaw.
\nBut the story goes further. In 1933, the little German church to which Shaw was referring became the place where Bonhoeffer himself preached, when he went to London as a pastor. During the Second World War it was destroyed by German bombs, but after the war the congregation received money from the British War Damage Commission, with which, on the site of their ruined house of God, they were able to erect the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Church.<\/p>\n
Trips to Cuba and Mexico<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer spent the Christmas holidays with Erwin Sutz in the blazing heat of Cuba. They had been invited there by a sister of his former governess Maria Horn, who was working in Havana as a teacher. Bonhoeffer was as yet unsatisfied with his knowledge of English and enjoyed being able to speak Spanish again in Cuba. He took over some class sessions from Miss Horn, and at the German church service on the Sunday before Christmas he gave a rather gloomy Advent sermon.<\/p>\n
It is probably correct to say that each of us who has looked around a bit in the world perhaps finds it particularly strange to be celebrating Christmas this year. Before our eyes stand hordes of unemployed persons, millions of children throughout the world who are hungry and miserable, people starving in China, the oppressed in India and other unfortunate countries, and in everyone\u2019s eyes we see despair and perplexity. And despite all this, Christmas is coming. Whether we want to or not, whether we are in the mood for it or not, we must hear once again: Christ, the Saviour, is born \u2026 (DBWE 10, 589)<\/p>\n
It would be hard to decide which of Bonhoeffer\u2019s four friendships which began in the USA became most important to him later in his life. Each in its own way had a lasting influence on him. Paul Lehmann was the first to visit him in Berlin and experienced with him the first consequences of Hitler\u2019s seizure of power. Even then he became a close friend of the Bonhoeffer family, and remained so until his death. Through Frank Fisher, Bonhoeffer first learned to see the world \u2018from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering\u2019 (DBWE 8, Prologue). He wrote this on New Year\u2019s Eve, 1943, in his essay \u2018After Ten Years\u2019, and described it as \u2018an experience of incomparable value\u2019. This practice, even before the Hitler era, in seeing the world from the underside was one of the learning experiences that made him a man for the Resistance.
\nAfter his return from the USA Erwin Sutz remained an important theological conversation partner. That they had to carry on their dialogue in written form, and that the letters still exist, gives us deep insights into Bonhoeffer\u2019s personal and theological development. From 1938 on Sutz became the link between Bonhoeffer and his twin sister Sabine, who had to flee with her family to England. Since Sutz was in Switzerland, a neutral country, they could send important family news back and forth through him.
\nThe Frenchman Jean Lasserre was the first Christian minister with pacifist tendencies Bonhoeffer had met, and was the one who got him to read the peace commandment in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5) as the commandment of Jesus to his disciples that they must follow until Judgement Day.
\nThe passionate appeals for peace for which Bonhoeffer became known a few years later in the ecumenical movement had their origins in conversations in America with Jean Lasserre. Even when, speaking in American churches, Bonhoeffer was emphasizing that there was a peace movement in Germany, Lasserre\u2019s influence could already be felt. After describing the First World War and its horrors, Bonhoeffer said \u2018We will not reopen an old and painful wound.\u2019<\/p>\n
Let me tell you frankly that no German, and no stranger who knows well the history of the origin of the war, believes that Germany bears the sole guilt of the war, a sentence which we were compelled to sign in the treaty of Versailles. I personally do not believe on the other hand that Germany was the only guiltless country, but I as a Christian see the main guilt of Germany in quite a different light. I see it in Germany\u2019s complacency, in her belief in her allmightiness, in the lack of humility and faith in God and fear of God. (DBWE 10, 579, original in English).<\/p>\n
However, it was in Bonhoeffer\u2019s ecumenical work, which began right after his return to Germany, that Lasserre\u2019s influence was fully revealed. That he got along especially well with French conversation partners, with whom reconciliation was considered impossible because of their attitude toward Germany, was certainly not least of all the result of the generous amounts of time which he and Jean Lasserre had devoted to one another.
\nSince North America is not just the United States, but is much larger and more diverse, toward the end of their time there the two friends wanted to get acquainted with Mexico, the Spanish-speaking part. They had \u2018a tent and a little money\u2019, and the help of the Ern family\u2014Americans who were ready without hesitation to lend Bonhoeffer an old car.<\/p>\n
Travelling to Mexico: lots of time and little money<\/p>\n
Their 10-year-old son Richard had met and become attached to Bonhoeffer during the Atlantic crossing on the Columbus, and had been writing to him since then.
\nBonhoeffer had also been invited to visit the Erns at several weekends. On receiving their generous offer, Bonhoeffer took driving lessons. He failed the test for his driver\u2019s licence twice, as he laughingly told friends later, because he refused to pay the customary 20-dollar bribe.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer with Richard Ern<\/p>\n
Lehmann rode with them as far as Chicago and then decided that Bonhoeffer, after having reached that city, could drive reasonably well. In St Louis Sutz turned back. The car needed repairs a few times along the way, but Lasserre and Bonhoeffer managed to go nearly 4000 miles in it, and only took the train for the 1200 miles they travelled in Mexico. They were enchanted with the varied scenery they encountered, as can be gathered from brief postcards they sent; unfortunately there is no long letter telling us more about their Mexican adventure. But at last the two friends had unlimited time together. They must have had some intense discussions about the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus\u2019 peace commandment; of this we have one indication. At a teacher training college in Victoria, where Lasserre had acquaintances, they created a sensation by appearing on the same platform, a Frenchman and a German together, to speak on \u2018peace\u2019. They spent a week in Mexico City, including excursions to see ancient Aztec pyramids and sacrificial sites. Again, Bonhoeffer enjoyed speaking Spanish with ordinary people whom they met.
\nAlthough the trip had gone well so far, despite a few breakdowns, they suddenly ran into trouble crossing the border back into the USA. The border officials suspected these two Europeans of being illegal immigrants, about to become a burden on the American labour market. Only with the help of telegrams sent by Paul Lehmann and the German ambassador in Mexico to the border station could they prove that they were scholarship students and that their ship\u2019s passage home had already been paid. They were allowed entry. With great relief they climbed into the Erns\u2019 ramshackle Oldsmobile and headed back to New York.
\nHow important this trip was for Bonhoeffer we can see from a letter he later wrote to Erwin Sutz, in which the memory of Mexico became tied up with his dream of going to India:<\/p>\n
A year ago I was with Lasserre in Mexico! I can hardly think of that without having an irresistible urge to go off again, but this time to the East. I don\u2019t know when, but I don\u2019t want to wait much longer. There must be more people on earth who are different from us, who know more and can do more than we can. And only a Philistine wouldn\u2019t go there too, and learn from them. In any case they\u2019re not the Nazis, these people, and they\u2019re not our Communists, not as I got to know them a bit better last winter. (DBW 11, 89\u201390)<\/p>\n
A conversation between Bonhoeffer and Lasserre in New York has become famous. Bonhoeffer mentions it in his letter of 21 July 1944 to Eberhard Bethge, just after the failure of the attempt on Hitler\u2019s life. This is, for many people, the deepest and most moving letter Bonhoeffer ever wrote. He tells Bethge about a conversation with a French friend in America, in which they talked about their life\u2019s aims. The Frenchman said that he wanted to become a saint. Bonhoeffer writes that he thinks possibly his friend did become one; for himself, he had answered that he wanted to learn to have faith (DBWE 8, IV\/178). After the Second World War, Lasserre said that they had been speaking English, and not yet well enough to avoid misunderstanding one another. Rather than sainthood, he had meant simply the observance of a life sanctified by consistently following God\u2019s commandments. This is the very purpose which Bonhoeffer describes in his book, Discipleship [Nachfolge, better known in English as The Cost of Discipleship]. The letter of 21 July 1944 shows that, in speaking of religious matters, even misunderstandings can be fruitful.<\/p>\n
Homecoming in troubled times<\/p>\n
Professors Reinhold Niebuhr and John Baillie have said in retrospect that during his study year in America Bonhoeffer was quite unpolitical. But can this be said of someone who in 1930, long before most white Christians in the USA, was disturbed to see that the African-American churches were losing the hearts of their younger generation? And all the more because the white American churches, much more than their sister churches in Europe, had no problems at all in feeling integrated into mainstream American society. Even then Bonhoeffer saw serious racial conflict in America\u2019s future. And his letters show that he indeed had a burning interest in political developments in Germany. He was so concerned about the votes gained by the Nazi Party in the spring of 1931 that each of his parents wrote to him separately, reassuring him that there was as yet no real danger from this party. But his brother Klaus was already thinking otherwise:<\/p>\n
Since your departure the political situation has changed greatly. The success of Nazism has convinced the widest circles that the democratic regime has failed in the past ten years. The consequences of the world economic crisis are explained in purely domestic terms. People are flirting with fascism. If this radical wave captures the educated classes, I am afraid it will be all over for this nation of poets and thinkers. (DB-ER 166\u201367)<\/p>\n
Likewise, from Helmut R\u00f6\u00dfler\u2014a friend from student days and now pastor of a village church\u2014came a disturbing description of the inroads the Nazis were making in the rural population.
\nIn Berlin, Superintendent Diestel had long been thinking over the best future course for his prot\u00e9g\u00e9. He had been discussing Bonhoeffer\u2019s doctoral thesis with the other candidates for ordination under his care. With regard to the difficult terminology of the book, he said to Bonhoeffer\u2019s uncle, Karl Alfred von Hase, \u2018But your nephew still needs to learn German!\u2019 (DBWE 10, 255). However, since Bonhoeffer now spoke fluent English, as soon as he got back Diestel could introduce him into ecumenical work. This energetic and far-sighted man of the church was vice-president of the German section of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, and the actual president left all the work to him. For some time he had looked forward to Bonhoeffer\u2019s becoming his new comrade-in-arms. When Bonhoeffer wrote that he would like some time off in Berlin at first, to reflect on his experiences in America, Diestel took his part. The consistory rejected this proposal immediately, but Diestel found a way to let Bonhoeffer avoid any new assignment until the beginning of October.
\nReinhold Seeberg also wrote to Bonhoeffer to congratulate him on having learned English, and confessed that in recent years he himself had hardly felt any gap in his education so keenly as the inability to speak \u2018with the tongues of angels\u2019 (10, 291). Indeed, the languages that Bonhoeffer had learned put him ahead of most Germans in theological fields at that time.
\nThat Diestel was not the only one awaiting his return to Berlin, he found out from his mother:<\/p>\n
At the Diestels\u2019 recently I saw Dibelius; he spoke very kindly of you and asked when you would be back, and said he hoped to see you as chaplain to students at the Technical College, and thus won over entirely for a career as a pastor. Schreiber also sang your praises.<\/p>\n
August Wilhelm Schreiber was the church official responsible for ecumenical work. At the end of June or the beginning of July 1931, Bonhoeffer was back in Berlin.
\nHans Pfeifer, a German scholar who has made an in-depth study of Bonhoeffer\u00b4s time in the USA, has come to the conclusion that \u2018Bonhoeffer\u00b4s study year at Union Theological Seminary in 1930\/31 enabled him to find his own way to learn faith, leaving behind everything that might be in his way, however precious and impressive it might be.\u2019 He refers here to Bonhoeffer\u2019s strong ties with his family and goes on:<\/p>\n
It is not far-fetched to say that, for Bonhoeffer\u2019s theology, discipleship began to become the centre of Christian life right then and there, when he befriended Jean Lasserre and matured as a member of a small group of similarly minded friends. By their mutual encouragement, this friendship paved the way to find life directly in the Gospel. He learned that as an individual, all by himself, he could never be strong enough to go this way. Sanctorum communio (the fellowship of saints) was not only a theological concept but had of necessity to become a real social community of disciples.<\/p>\n
4. Before the Storm (1931\u20131932)<\/p>\n
A visit to Karl Barth<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer was hardly back from the USA when he turned down an offer from his parents to take some time in Friedrichsbrunn to rest after his travels. Instead, he took the train to Frankfurt to visit his brother Karl-Friedrich and family, then journeyed on to Mainz where he boarded a steamer down the Rhine River. A postcard to his parents shows his elation and how much he was looking forward to Bonn: \u2018Karl-Friedrich and Grete were very glad to see me, and so is the Rhine.\u2019
\nHe was on his way to see Karl Barth, whom he wanted at last to meet in person. He had given up his holiday time in order to arrive before the end of the summer semester and hear a few of Barth\u2019s lectures. Sutz, who had arranged the contact, soon received three letters from Bonn in which Bonhoeffer described not only the impression Barth made on him, but also his impression of Barth\u2019s eager students, which was that they did not give much credit to views other than those of their great master.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sitting here in the park in front of the University. Barth lectured this morning at 7 a.m., and I spoke briefly with him afterwards. This evening there is a discussion group at his house with people from Maria Laach. I\u2019m looking forward to it very much. In spite of all you did to prepare me, there were a number of surprises in his lecture. (DBW 11, 16)<\/p>\n
You can imagine yourself that I have often wished you were here, especially at times, in the company of his anointed initiates, when there would have been chances (at least for the not yet initiated) to laugh out loud. But I daren\u2019t do that here, only a quiet little snicker (doesn\u2019t sound likely, does it?) But there\u2019s not much opportunity for me as a theological illegitimate, as I see here all too clearly. They have a sharp scent for thoroughbreds here. No Negro passes for white; they even examine his fingernails and the soles of his feet. Until now they are still showing me hospitality as the unknown stranger. (DBW 11, 18)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer experienced Barth differently from the way Barth\u2019s students did; that is, he saw him as a theologian who had \u2018gone beyond his own books\u2019 and was hungry to hear from others who were grappling with the same problems. \u2018I\u2019m even more impressed with him in a discussion than in his writings and lectures. In a discussion he\u2019s really all there.\u2019 We have an account of one of the \u2018open evenings\u2019 at Barth\u2019s home which Bonhoeffer attended, by Winfried Maechler, who was not long afterwards to become one of the most enthusiastic of Bonhoeffer\u2019s own students. He described his first encounter with his future teacher:<\/p>\n
As usual [at Barth\u2019s evenings] we were discussing the content of his lecture on dogmatics. Then a blond Teuton stood up and quoted Luther: \u2018For God, the cursing of a godless person can be more agreeable than the hallelujahs of the pious!\u2019 Barth jumped up from his chair: \u2018That\u2019s magnificent. Where does it come from, and who are you anyway?\u2019 (DBW 11, 19)<\/p>\n
Others who remember this incident say that Bonhoeffer did not stand up to speak, and that Barth didn\u2019t know at first who had tossed in the quote from Luther, but they do remember his delight. So it was not long until Bonhoeffer received a personal invitation from Barth, and they had a lengthy conversation on the problem of ethics. Bonhoeffer\u2019s burning interest at the time was the question of how the Church could proclaim God\u2019s commandments, including of course the peace commandment in the Sermon on the Mount, in such a way as to make them ethically concrete and obligatory. In his view, the Church was not supposed to proclaim ethical principles, but only God\u2019s commandments for here and now. Barth did not want to take on this question with such intensity, and Bonhoeffer reported to his friend in Switzerland:<\/p>\n
He wouldn\u2019t concede to me what I expected he would have to concede. For him, besides the one great light in the night, there are also a lot of smaller lights, so-called \u2018relative ethical criteria\u2019, the nature of which, and the meaning and the right, he nonetheless couldn\u2019t make sense of for me; he could only point to the Bible. In the end he said I was making a principle out of grace and using it to strike everything else dead. Of course I contested the first point, though I still wanted to know why all the rest shouldn\u2019t be struck dead \u2026 Finally I had to tear myself away. This is really someone who has something to offer, and there we sit moping in poor old Berlin because there is no one there who can teach us theology. (DBW 11, 20)<\/p>\n
It was precisely the dispute they had that won Bonhoeffer over definitively for the professor in Bonn.<\/p>\n
Busy beginning three careers at once<\/p>\n
Anyone beginning a new career should have some time to go slowly and find his way in his chosen work, but this was denied Bonhoeffer. His visit to Karl Barth in Bonn was an important epilogue to his studies, but the 25-year-old was hardly back in Berlin when demands began to be made of him as if he had already been practising a profession for years. His life for the next year and a half called for him to be many things at once, as never before. This was indeed strenuous, but it could not have prepared him better for the years of struggle that lay ahead. Eberhard Bethge speaks of Bonhoeffer\u2019s return from the USA as marking a sharp break in his life.<\/p>\n
He now began to teach on a faculty whose theology he did not share, and to preach in a church whose self-confidence he regarded as unfounded. More aware than before, he now became part of a society that was moving toward political, social and economic chaos. (DB-ER 173)<\/p>\n
On 21 July 1931 the 13th German Student Assembly in Graz, Austria, had unanimously elected a Nazi as chair of the German student organization. He and his helpers decided that in place of the building of a democratic state, which until now had been the watchword of Germany\u2019s students, they should introduce the \u2018leader principle [F\u00fchrerprinzip]\u2019 of Hitler\u2019s National Socialist (Nazi) Party. Even though this young man was soon forced to resign his position for lack of competence, from then on it was difficult for democratically minded students to make their voices heard. A fight over issues of \u2018German racial origin\u2019 and \u2018being Volk-minded\u2019 had already taken place. Jews were to be excluded, and the \u2018German race\u2019, for which the soldiers who fell in the First World War had made a \u2018holy sacrifice in their blood\u2019, was to be honoured. The religious language was unmistakable. \u2018Germany, O sacred word\u2019 was not sung in those days only by students with Nazi leanings, and in poetry Germany was even described as \u2018blessed\u2019, in the sense in which canonized saints are blessed. A carefully planned infiltration of the German student organization had begun, and it increasingly became a brown-shirted unit of shock troops in universities and graduate schools.
\nPompous poetry was also written by the man whom Hitler named as Reich (national) youth leader of his Nazi Party, Baldur Benedikt von Schirach. One of his \u2018poems\u2019 bore the title, \u2018Repentance\u2019:<\/p>\n
Lightly we bear heavy sins
\nhappy despite every crime,
\nAllied only with the best
\nsuch as our souls seek always.
\nWhen, our colours flying brave
\nNor foe nor scaffold frightened us
\nDid our penance without prayer
\nAnd yet God forgave our debt.<\/p>\n
As a student, Schirach threw himself so totally into working for the Party that he could no longer keep up with his studies. When he confessed this to Hitler, the F\u00fchrer said to him, \u2018Schirach, you\u2019re studying with me!\u2019 The newly appointed Reich youth leader had come into Hitler\u2019s inner circle because, from 1925 on, whenever Hitler went to Weimar he was invited to the Schirachs\u2019 home. The father had been fired as director of the theatre there in 1918 and was bitter about it. The Schirach home had a certain international flair since the mother was an American. The son, thrilled by Hitler\u2019s first visit there, had joined the Party at the age of 18. The \u2018old warriors\u2019 didn\u2019t think he was tough enough, but he enjoyed Hitler\u2019s protection, who was well aware of how much he owed to Schirach\u2019s agitation at German universities. \u2018If anything keeps me believing in the victory of our movement,\u2019 said Hitler in July 1931, \u2018it is the progress we are making among German students.\u2019
\nBonhoeffer was soon to have plenty to do with the Nazi Student Federation, but first he had to concentrate on preparing his lectures for the winter semester. Even before that, however, Franz Hildebrandt requested his help as a friend. Hildebrandt had become pastoral assistant in Dobrilugk, in the rural Mark Brandenburg, the province surrounding Berlin, and was grappling with the problem of how to make the Christian faith relevant to youth preparing for confirmation. At that time, confirmation classes were taught using Luther\u2019s Shorter Catechism, a series of questions and answers to be learned by heart, explaining the Ten Commandments, the creed and the Lord\u2019s Prayer. Pupils also had to memorize many hymns from the church\u2019s hymnal. This way of teaching youngsters was being increasingly criticized; so Hildebrandt suddenly descended on his friend with a plan to develop a new catechism, containing the \u2018Lutheran faith for today\u2019. Bonhoeffer, with his wealth of experience with youth, was immediately captivated by the idea. His rather difficult book Act and Being had just been published, so Hildebrandt received a copy with the ironic inscription, \u2018And this is going to become a catechism?\u2019
\nEven today the catechetical text they produced glows with the joy the two friends had in working on it together. \u2018What you believe, you have\u2019 was their title. They used the traditional format of questions and answers, but these were not to be learned by heart, becoming instead a stimulus for discussion with the young people. One of the first questions was \u2018Who is a Protestant?\u2019 The answer begins with a formulation by the two friends, and then leads into a confession of faith that Hildebrandt had found in Luther\u2019s writings. Bonhoeffer put a copy of this into his own hymnal and later used it in many worship services.<\/p>\n
[A Protestant is] anyone who rejoices in the grace of God, acknowledges the name of Christ, and prays for the Holy Spirit. Anyone who is ready for the lordship of God, who is not afraid of alien powers and knows of the final consummation. Anyone who hears the Word of God in preaching, who loves his[\/her] community and lives from forgiveness. The faith of the Gospel acknowledges that God has given himself completely to us with all that he is and has, in these words:
\n\u2018I believe in God, that he is my Creator, in Jesus Christ, that he is my Lord, in the Holy Spirit, that he is my Justifier. God has made me and given me life, soul, body and all good things, Christ has brought me under his dominion through his body, and the Holy Spirit justifies me through his word and the sacraments which are in the church, and will justify us completely at the Last Day. That is the Christian faith; know what you must do and what you have been given.\u2019<\/p>\n
For the answer to what a Christian should do in the world, the catechism follows the Lutheran tradition by pointing to one\u2019s work, one\u2019s occupation, but in the awareness of how much injustice there is in this area of life. \u2018Those who are earning their living today are taking bread out of the mouths of others.\u2019 At the time, six million Germans were unemployed. In some of the other questions, too, the friends adopted a new-sounding tone. \u2018The church prays to God for peace, and does not consider any war a holy war.\u2019 And the question, \u2018Why are there so many churches?\u2019 is also answered in this catechism:<\/p>\n
We are really supposed to be one church. In the midst of our incredible divisions we urgently seek communion among all Christians. It will only be possible for us humans ever to have it if we keep waiting and believing [in him] who is faithful to his church. (DBW 11, 235)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt may have been the first to ask and answer a question on the ecumenical issue in a catechism. Their joint effort was published in the Monatschrift f\u00fcr Pastoraltheologie (Pastoral Theology Monthly), but what response there was, or whether others besides themselves used it, is not known.
\nLooking at Bonhoeffer\u2019s calendar for the period that followed, one finds not only the obligations he had to fulfil as a lecturer, but also dates for his work as student chaplain at the Technical College and as an assistant in parish work on the east side of Berlin. He once said in a letter to his parents that he could only work with concentration at night or very early in the morning, and this must often have been the case in the year-and-a-half before 1933. As we shall see, he had taken on additional responsibilities in both teaching and parish work, far beyond what was normally expected. In addition, there were tasks for the Protestant ecumenical movement which Diestel was planning for him, never suspecting how time-consuming these were to become for Bonhoeffer.
\nTo get a picture of this period in Bonhoeffer\u2019s life, we must consider each area separately; otherwise we will become too confused by his rushing back and forth between lectures, seminars, evenings with students, meetings in Berlin or elsewhere, confirmation classes, worship services, desk work and trips abroad. Let us begin with the ecumenical work.<\/p>\n
Ecumenical work<\/p>\n
In Germany today, the \u2018ecumenical\u2019 sphere usually means cooperation between the two major churches, Catholic and Protestant. This was not true in Bonhoeffer\u2019s day because the Catholic Church did not then want any contact with others. On the other hand, there was a desire among many other Christian confessions, on every continent, for conversation and cooperation.
\nYoung people had been pressing for such contact since the first half of the nineteenth century, and had preceded their elders by founding the worldwide YWCA in 1844, YMCA in 1855 and World Student Christian Association in 1895. The church mission societies and associations agreed in 1910 to cooperate among themselves, because there had long been the feeling that it was a scandal for the churches overseas to preach the \u2018one Lord Jesus Christ\u2019 while at the same time competing or even fighting with one another. Shortly before the First World War, most Protestant churches, along with the Anglican and Greek Orthodox Churches, were ready to negotiate on ways of cooperation. The war postponed this somewhat. But by the time Bonhoeffer began to participate in it, the ecumenical movement had for years consisted of three independent organizations: the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, founded in Konstanz, Germany in 1914; the Life and Work [of the Church] movement, founded in 1925 in Stockholm, and the Faith and Order movement, begun in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1927. These three had set up a joint office in Geneva, Switzerland, which maintained contacts and organized meetings and conferences.
\nOn the basis of his interests, Bonhoeffer would have belonged in the theological area, the Commission on Faith and Order, where issues defined as theological were discussed. But he never warmed to this branch of the work, and his one encounter with it came through a dispute. The World Alliance into which Diestel brought him was, at the time Bonhoeffer joined, the one least concerned with theology as such; but it was concerned about the peace issue, which provided the starting point for his work with the organization.
\nWhen he left Bonn, Bonhoeffer would have liked to visit his friend Sutz in Switzerland, but he had already promised to go to an ecumenical conference in England. Diestel had obtained permission from the consistory for his ecumenical helper to attend \u2018because he speaks several languages and can move in the intellectual sphere with enough freedom\u2019 (DB-ER 198). With this assignment to travel to England, Diestel had put Bonhoeffer\u2019s life \u2018on a track\u2019 that it never left, as Bonhoeffer said in 1942 (DBWE 16, 367). On 14 August 1931 he went to Cambridge as a German delegate to a conference of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. On 6 September he came back as one of its three International Youth Secretaries, and from then on he was responsible for the youth work of the World Alliance in the Scandinavian countries and central Europe, including Austria and Hungary. The other two Youth Secretaries were Tom Craske in England and Pierre Toureille in France.
\nIt didn\u2019t take long for Bonhoeffer to discover that he had allowed himself to be elected to a highly labour-intensive volunteer job. Another consequence was that it made him a member of the German section of the World Alliance, in which Diestel had the say. In Berlin, Bonhoeffer became secretary of the Central Office for Ecumenical Youth Work, from which all ecumenical activities for Protestant youth in Germany were to be coordinated.
\nThis first ecumenical meeting in which Bonhoeffer took part was concerned, among other things, with disarmament. It had been preceded by a drum roll in Germany. In June 1931, during a preparatory meeting in Hamburg of the German section of the World Alliance, Professors Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch published an article in the Hamburger Nachrichten newspaper in which they said:<\/p>\n
In this situation, in our judgement, there can be no understanding between us Germans and the victorious nations in the world war; we can only show them that as long as they continue the war against us, understanding is impossible \u2026 Thus we give full weight to the demand that we break through all artificial semblance of commonality with them, and unreservedly profess our conviction that Christian understanding and cooperation among churches on issues of rapprochement among peoples is impossible as long as the others pursue a policy against our people which we find murderous. Those who believe that such understanding can be better served otherwise at this time are denying the fate which Germany has suffered and confounding consciences here at home and abroad, because such a view fails to honour the truth.<\/p>\n
The right-wing newspapers carried the article on their front pages, and thus began an anti-ecumenical campaign that lasted a year. Among those who tried to inject some reason into the situation was Bonhoeffer, who had seen in Washington that the attitude toward Germany was beginning to change. He felt that everything depended on German forbearance and consistent participation instead of self-pitying, nationalistic pronouncements. The French delegation in Cambridge had said:<\/p>\n
After the war mania had disappeared, our churches expected some gesture of regret from the German churches about what had happened, and a desire to lead their people along the path of justice and fellowship. No act of penance was expected from them, only a word of sympathy for our plundered and destroyed churches. But nothing came. The German churches bewailed only the suffering of their own people, whose complete innocence they proclaimed. (DB-ER 198\u201399)<\/p>\n
With his report on the meeting in Cambridge, Bonhoeffer intervened in the debate going on in Germany. He said that people who weren\u2019t interested in the work of the World Alliance, or felt resentful towards it, should allow their judgement to be either confirmed or revised by this meeting. For the churches, the question on disarmament was whether the nations which had committed themselves to disarm under the treaty would keep their word or not. In Cambridge the churches had called for truth-telling and good faith, for honouring promises made by carrying them out. The youth conference, however, had not adopted a similar resolution, not least because Bonhoeffer had urged it not to do so.<\/p>\n
There was too strong a feeling that we must first learn to see new situations in a new way, and not wade in right away with big declarations \u2026 Nowhere was criticism of the entire undertaking heard more loudly, from more different viewpoints, than in the youth conference. Moreover, it was here that, once again, the intellectual division into two groups, the continental [European] group, especially the Germans and French (also the Danes) on one side, and the British and American group on the other, emerged clearly. The French youth saw many essential things very much the way we did, especially theologically. (See Bonhoeffer\u2019s report in DBWE 11)<\/p>\n
Here we hear for the first time Bonhoeffer\u2019s two demands of the ecumenical movement, on which he stubbornly insisted, time and again: ecumenical statements should only be made when participants really had something to say, that is, they must learn to guard against empty words; secondly, they must be clear about what theology they wanted to stand for. His report ended with the thought that the churches almost never spoke their words at the appropriate moment. \u2018When will the time come when Christianity speaks the right word at the right time?\u2019 Behind this statement we hear once again the question of concrete commandments.
\nThe Geneva office, with the ecumenical movement\u2019s few full-time employees, was not at all pleased that the conference in Cambridge had appointed three youth secretaries, who of course were supposed to work with the Geneva office but were not subject to its directives. The research department especially, headed by the German economist and pastor Hans Sch\u00f6nfeld, thought it ought to have a say in all work projects initiated by the youth secretaries; instead, it wasn\u2019t even consulted. When Bonhoeffer began talking about \u2018unemployment\u2019 as the theme for upcoming youth conferences, Sch\u00f6nfeld saw it as proof that the work of the youth secretaries wouldn\u2019t accomplish anything, since they weren\u2019t qualified to deal with such a topic. In this way Hans Sch\u00f6nfeld became one of Bonhoeffer\u2019s earliest opponents.
\nAmong the experienced ecumenical leaders as well, a number were discontented that, through the youth conferences and appointment of youth secretaries, younger leaders were gaining influence in the movement. From this time on World Alliance work became much more explosive theologically, because these younger persons were not afraid of any controversy. But the Danish bishop Valdemar Ammundsen, as chairman, had insisted that the World Alliance needed to be rejuvenated so that it wouldn\u2019t become \u2018too respectable\u2019.
\nSch\u00f6nfeld\u2019s criticism of the conference proceedings was not entirely unjustified, since the structures of the ecumenical movement had already been quite complicated. His own department was a case in point. Though it belonged to the Geneva office, Sch\u00f6nfeld\u2019s position was paid for by the German churches, so he was personally dependent on the goodwill of Germans towards the work of his department. Unlike the youth secretaries, he was not independent.
\nMoreover, during this time the World Alliance\u2019s sources of income were drying up, due to the world economic crisis. The German office was only saved from being closed because Diestel incorporated it into his Superintendent\u2019s office. Bonhoeffer received polite instructions from Geneva asking him to ensure that \u2018a maximum of activities and effectiveness\u2019 was achieved \u2018with a minimum of resources\u2019 (DBW 11, 36). However, recognizing that in the long run, such a directive tends to be little more than a pious hope, the World Alliance and the Life and Work movement were already making overtures to one another and beginning to plan and carry out much of their work together.
\nThe conference in Cambridge convinced Bonhoeffer that he needed to know the economic context in order to understand worldly reality. He therefore joined a Theological Working Group on Questions of National Economy and began to study relevant literature on the subject.
\nEcumenical work in Germany differed from that of other European countries and the USA in that it was carried out notably by members of university faculties of theology, especially so within the Faith and Order movement. Among these ecumenical academics, those at the University of Berlin played a leading role. Church officials preferred to be involved in the Life and Work movement, or Practical Christianity as it was called in German. The World Alliance was never especially popular in Germany, because it was considered to be \u2018Western-dominated\u2019. It was a less regimented organization, meaning that committed individuals were still playing the decisive roles. Bureaucracies of every kind, even church bureaucracies, do not particularly care for this style. The World Alliance\u2019s most prominent representative in Berlin was Professor Friedrich Siegmund-Schulze. As a student, Bonhoeffer had not been interested in meeting him, but now this had changed, since Siegmund-Schulze was not only a co-founder of the World Alliance but also well known for his social work on the east side of Berlin. In addition, Siegmund-Schulze made no secret of his opposition to the Nazi regime, to the point that he became one of the first German academics forced to emigrate. Bonhoeffer, however, did not lose contact with him.
\nThe letters Bonhoeffer had to write as secretary for the Central Office for Youth Work give evidence of many quarrels over who was responsible for what. So he soon had plenty to do with everyday details of church business. The ecumenical circle was trying hard to come up with a theological basis for its work, but the appeal by Professors Hirsch and Althaus had involved the Central Office, too, in the dispute between supporters and opponents of international ecumenical cooperation. Before 1933 there was still hope of settling it through theological discussions. Bonhoeffer participated energetically in these as well as taking the minutes. Two extended sessions were held in Berlin on \u2018The Church and the Churches\u2019 and \u2018The Church and the Nations\u2019. The first was intended to tackle the confessional problem; the second, the question of peace. The sessions were chaired by Professor Wilhelm St\u00e4hlin from the University of M\u00fcnster, who was anxious to mediate between the two sides (DB-ER 241\u201342).
\nThese discussions at the Central Office, to judge by the minutes, give the impression of a preliminary skirmish to the fierce disputes of 1933. For example, one of the participants, Revd Friedrich Peter, strongly objected to Bonhoeffer\u2019s view that the ecumenical movement had a mission to work for peace. Peter had fought in the volunteer corps and felt that after experiencing a great war, people were entitled to think war might come again and to maintain defence forces and an army. A strong person, called by God through Christ, could have the right to do things that were not the business of the Christian community. The other participants found this statement so inept that they urged the Revd Peter be replaced in the group by another clergyman. But only a year later the \u2018strong person called by God\u2019 of whom Revd Peter was thinking became German Reich Chancellor, and he himself became the new Bishop of Magdeburg.
\nThat Bonhoeffer himself spoke out strongly against these nationalistic tendencies hardly needs to be mentioned. Bethge says:<\/p>\n
His interest in the ecumenical movement was at first incidental, but it took such a hold on him that it became an integral part of his being. He was soon furiously involved in the internal battles about its orientation, while at the same time defending it enthusiastically in public. (DB-ER 189\u201390)<\/p>\n
In March 1933 a last attempt was made to keep ecumenically minded German theologians together, at a conference in Dassel on \u2018Common Perspectives for Ecumenical Work in Germany\u2019. But the political conflicts, in which church circles were also involved, had become so strong that it was no longer possible to accomplish much. It is interesting that, in Dassel, Bonhoeffer was already pointing out that ecumenical study must bring back the concept of heresy, of false doctrine. \u2018The loss of this concept means a heavy sacrifice of confessional substance\u2019 (cf. DBW 11, 260\u201363). A few months later he was to enter into a long struggle on this question with ecumenical partners in Geneva and in England.
\nAs disappointing as these early ecumenical experiences in Germany were for Bonhoeffer, he was gaining an acquaintance with influential ecumenists, which was to prove very useful to him in the years to come. With most of his conversation partners he was to cross paths again later. The former General Superintendent of Westphalia, Wilhelm Zoellner, and the foreign affairs expert in the Church Federation Office, Theodor Heckel\u2014both participants in the Central Youth Work Office discussions\u2014were to become opponents of his, while others became friends or remained conversation partners.<\/p>\n
Ecumenical journeys<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer was determinedly opposed to holding too many meetings. His report on a British\u2013French youth conference in April 1932 at Epsom, near London, shows what he regarded as being relatively unproductive. For three days, three main themes relating to Christian faith were discussed: whether it should be practised (1) in politics, (2) in economic life or (3) in society. He reported that lively discussions had taken place in the groups as long as they consisted in sharing information. As soon as they tried to go further, however, they got stuck right on the threshold of the main issue, because they couldn\u2019t agree on what \u2018Christianity\u2019 was (DBW 11, 315). Although his official report on the main conference was politely positive, Bonhoeffer wrote to Sutz: \u2018In the meantime I\u2019ve been in England again, at a very superfluous meeting.\u2019 (DBW 11, 88)
\nBonhoeffer found a German\u2013French conference held in July 1932, at Westerburg Castle in the Westerwald, much more successful, because participants weren\u2019t afraid to tackle concrete political issues. Papers had been exchanged beforehand so that the conference could begin right away with discussion. A great deal of time was spent on the rise of Nazism in Germany; this allowed Bonhoeffer to point out that in Hitler\u2019s successes, the policies of other countries were also playing a role, since they had turned down every request made by the democratic government in Germany for an easing of the peace terms of 1919. During the Second World War, he continued to represent this viewpoint when he came to Geneva on behalf of the German Resistance.
\nThe German and French conference participants at Westerburg Castle, coming from two nations that were usually arch enemies, experienced their being together at that time as a gift, and looked forward to another conference in 1933. But after Hitler had seized power no further meetings could be held.
\nProbably the most important ecumenical conference for Bonhoeffer during these years was a youth peace conference hosted by a Czechoslovakian church from 20 to 30 July 1932 in Ciernohorsk\u00e9 K\u00fapele. Bonhoeffer was substituting at this conference for Diestel, who was ill, doing so somewhat reluctantly as he had to be in Geneva three weeks later. Again he wrote to Sutz that the conference had been \u2018rather mediocre\u2019; today it is seen as a small but important milestone in ecumenical history, because it was in Ciernohorsk\u00e9 K\u00fapele that Bonhoeffer explained what he meant by a \u2018theology of the ecumenical movement\u2019.
\nHe had prepared in advance theses for his audience summarizing his lecture and making clear what the issues were for him at that time (DBW 11, 344ff.). A young Czech was to give proof many years later that Bonhoeffer\u2019s presentation influenced his own Czech church\u2019s resistance to the German conquerors. The first thesis made clear straightaway that the ecumenical movement was not united and therefore was letting itself be defined from outside.<\/p>\n
The ecumenical movement does not have a theology. If this movement is a new form of self-understanding for the church, then it must put forward a theology. If it does not do so, it reveals that it exists only to achieve certain goals. The ecumenical idea becomes dependent on the political ups and downs (nationalism\u2013internationalism) unless it has its own theological foundation. In many countries this has become a highly sensitive issue. We must have an end to disregard for theology on the part of \u2018practical\u2019 people. (DBW 11, 344)<\/p>\n
Because Jesus Christ is Lord of the whole world, Bonhoeffer said, the Church must carry his word to all the world. But by what authority does the Church speak? His answer was that because it is the Church of Jesus Christ, it is by Christ\u2019s authority that it proclaims the gospel and commandments. But Christ is present, insisted Bonhoeffer, and therefore the gospel and commandments of Christ must address the concrete situation today, or else we are speaking of something other than Christ\u2019s message. The preaching of the commandments can only be made concrete when the person preaching them has a profound understanding of present reality. The word of God in this concrete sense, which Bonhoeffer repeated with penetrating force, was part of his struggle against the amiable, uncommitted discourse he found at such meetings. For him, the Church was not there to establish lofty principles; it either had to keep quiet or to give concrete commands. He granted that it might make mistakes in doing so, but each of its commands was based solely on the Church\u2019s belief in the forgiveness of sins. The fourth thesis says:<\/p>\n
How does the church know what God\u2019s command is for the present hour? Neither the biblical law, nor any sort of established orders of creation, can be sources of such knowledge; either would simply be conformity to a natural law. Only from Christ, from whom we have the Gospel, can we also know God\u2019s command. From Christ comes, necessarily, our recognition of the whole world as a fallen world; we no longer recognize its original orders. We know only orders that keep us holding onto Christ, and whenever we have to judge that an order is no longer open to Christ, this order must be broken. There are no orders that are sacred in themselves. Only through its openness to Christ and for the new creation can an order be \u2018good\u2019. The church must dare, through faith, to decide for or against such an order. Its goodness is not assured in any other way. (DBW 11, 345\u20136)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer said that in Anglo-Saxon theological thinking, peace was understood as \u2018a piece of the kingdom of God on earth\u2019; but that meant making it an absolute ideal, and this must be rejected. In this fallen world, the right to struggle exists; but, Bonhoeffer contended, this does not mean the right to wage war. War is a means of struggle which today is forbidden by God, because its consequence is to destroy human beings both outwardly and inwardly and thus to rob them of their chance to see Christ.
\nSocialism, he continued, has shown that a movement that has a message can establish itself on an international basis. The Church, with its message of an entirely different sort\u2014that is, alone by means of Christian preaching and theology which keeps close to the present\u2014must now create an all-embracing, supranational basis for its work. The churches of the World Alliance should tell Christendom to listen to the commandments of God, and should tell the world, the states that govern it, that they must change the present state of affairs and should listen to the words of criticism from the Church.<\/p>\n
What church can speak in such a way? Only a church which proclaims the pure truth of the Gospel. But this truth has been torn apart; for the churches of the World Alliance, there is no longer one truth. It is this that is most deeply lacking in the ecumenical situation, and the peril it represents must never be disguised. But wherever the church recognizes its guilt with regard to the truth, and wherever the church is nevertheless called by God\u2019s command to speak, there the church must dare to speak, solely in faith that its sins are forgiven. (DBW 11, 347)<\/p>\n
We wouldn\u2019t know today why this speech made such a deep impression on those who heard it, but for the Czech participant who wrote down Bonhoeffer\u2019s welcoming speech to the conference as international youth secretary, in which Bonhoeffer made clear what he meant by speaking concretely. This speech had the effect of translating his theological theses into political demands.<\/p>\n
Peace work runs into a whole series of internal and external problems. In Germany there is a general feeling of having been treated unjustly by the one-sided declaration, in the Treaty of Versailles, that the German people are to blame for the World War. The League of Nations is not completely trusted here either. The feeling of injustice and our self-awareness as a people are being exploited by extreme elements. Our ecumenical forces, both inside and outside the World Alliance, have a lot of well-meant but theologically problematic statements to overcome, attempts to solve the problem of nationhood, the war and so forth \u2026
\nThe Hitler-nationalist party is misusing democratic means in its striving to set up a dictatorship. These next few days will decide to what extent the parties opposed to Hitler are capable of preventing the Nazis from taking over the government. Nazism is also penetrating into the church. Responsible theologians are faced, with the support of the ecumenical world, with the task of strengthening those Germans and Christians in Germany who are struggling against Hitler. A victory for Hitler\u2019s party will have consequences that cannot be foreseen, not only for Germany but for the whole world. Christians must unite in combatting the forces which are tempting peoples to follow false nationalisms, promoting militarism and threatening the world with an unrest that can lead to war. (DBW 11, 347\u201348)<\/p>\n
That the Church only has the right to speak when it speaks in concrete terms was well-nigh hammered into the conference participants by Bonhoeffer:<\/p>\n
The word the church speaks to the world must \u2026 from a profound knowledge of the world, be relevant to its very present reality, if it would resound with full authority \u2026 otherwise it will be saying something else, a human word, a powerless word. Thus the church must not proclaim principles which are true for all time, but only commands which are true for today. For whatever is \u2018always\u2019 true, is just what \u2018today\u2019 is not true: God is \u2018always\u2019, for us, the One who is God \u2018today\u2019. (DBW 11, 332)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer left the conference early, despite being begged to stay, in order to vote in the parliamentary (Reichstag) elections of 31 July 1932 against the Nazi Party and the German National People\u2019s Party (DNVP).
\nAs a youth secretary, Bonhoeffer was also a member of the executive committee of the World Alliance. Its meeting in Geneva, 19\u201322 August 1932, was immediately preceded by a meeting of the Ecumenical Council of Life and Work. This body, to Bonhoeffer\u2019s joy, had elected Karl Barth to its theological committee; and it had also chosen the Bishop of Chichester in England, George Bell, to replace its president, who had died. Hermann Kapler, the ecumenically experienced President of the Old Prussian Union\u2019s High Church Council in Berlin, had declared that Bell should not only serve out the unfinished term of his predecessor, but be elected right away for two additional years, because the decisions that were expected to be made called for the greatest possible continuity. As a result of this being affirmed, Bishop Bell, as president of the Life and Work Council, was able during the following year to intervene in the German church struggle, being kept informed by Bonhoeffer of every detail of developments in Germany.
\nThe disarmament conference which had just been taking place in Geneva had ended in failure. William Temple, the Archbishop of York in England, had preached a sermon at the time of its opening, in which he said:<\/p>\n
One clause there is in the existing treaties which offends in principle the Christian conscience and for the deletion of which by proper authority the voice of Christendom must be raised. This is the clause which affixes to one group of belligerents in the Great War the whole guilt for its occurrence \u2026 We have to ask not only who dropped the match but who strewed the ground with gunpowder.<\/p>\n
In Germany, where a nationalistic mood was heating up at that time, such voices were simply going unheard.
\nAt the executive committee meeting of the World Alliance, to Bonhoeffer\u2019s astonishment Professor Wilfred Monod, head of the French branch of the World Alliance and considered a hardliner against Germany, argued for the World Alliance to reflect on its theological basis. This was completely along the lines of what Bonhoeffer wanted. In the executive it led to an impassioned dispute with the old pioneers of the movement, who urged that they not get involved in \u2018theological quarrels\u2019. The \u2018younger generation\u2019 took the opposing view and, although no agreement was reached at that time, the signs were that the ecumenical movement was turning a page. Bonhoeffer was asked to draft a response to Monod\u2019s theses, but by the time of the next meeting the church struggle had begun and he had no time.
\nThe youth conference of the World Alliance and Life and Work, which followed immediately in Gland, Switzerland, on Lake Geneva, under the leadership of the Bishop of Ripon, was also not very satisfying to Bonhoeffer, who had to preside in the German-language section. Even so, he invited Sutz to participate, saying he was only partly responsible for the leadership. \u2018In all events I already feel I am not responsible for its course. The British have now put their fingers in the pie too much for that \u2026 though in spite of everything it will perhaps be quite interesting.\u2019
\nThis conference was substantially bigger than the preceding one, since there were representatives from almost all European countries. There were even a few individual delegates from Asian countries, including C. F. Andrews, Gandhi\u2019s friend and co-worker. They discussed the effects of capitalism and the machine age and, for the first time at such a conference, also India\u2019s situation. Then came, once again, the battle over whether the conference should adopt a resolution. Bonhoeffer pleaded successfully for \u2018qualified silence\u2019. The extent to which his authority had grown in the course of the conference was shown when he was asked to give the closing address, the \u2018summing-up\u2019, in place of the respected Danish Bishop Ammundsen who had had to decline. Bonhoeffer reiterated much of what he had already said in Ciernohorsk\u00e9 K\u00fapele, but he took a different tone:<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t it also especially in the spirit of these conferences that, whenever we find ourselves face to face with someone who seems completely strange to us, whose concerns we cannot understand yet who surely has a right to be heard, we hear in the voice of this brother the very voice of Christ, and thus do not refuse to listen, but rather take this voice completely seriously, hear it, and love this other person just because of his or her strangeness to us? (DBW 11, 352\u201353)<\/p>\n
It could be, he continued, that some would have to say they had heard nothing at the conference, while others would say they had heard an enormous amount. But in this regard he had a great concern:<\/p>\n
Hasn\u2019t it become shockingly clear, in everything we have talked about with one another here, that we are no longer obedient to the Bible? We like our own ideas better than those of the Bible. We are no longer reading the Bible seriously; we are no longer reading it against ourselves, but only in our own favour. If this whole conference were to have a great significance, perhaps this would be that we read the Bible in an entirely different way until we meet again. (DBW 11, 353)<\/p>\n
Then, speaking of the situation in the world, Bonhoeffer asked: \u2018Why is the \u2026 Church of Christ, as it appears in the World Alliance, afraid?\u2019<\/p>\n
Because it knows there is a commandment to peace, and yet with the clear vision that is given to the church, sees the reality that is full of hate, enmity, violence. It is as if all the powers on earth had conspired together against peace; as if money, the economy, the drive to power, even the love of one\u2019s fatherland have been dragged into the service of hate \u2026<\/p>\n
How could it be anything but blasphemous mindlessness, if we were to declare \u2018No more war!\u2019 and think that with that, and a new organization\u2014even a Christian one\u2014we could exorcize the devil? Such organizations are nothing, no more than a house of cards that the whirlwind blows away \u2026 Even our well-meaning good will amounts to nothing \u2026<\/p>\n
Christ must be present among us in preaching and sacrament, the Crucified One who made peace between God and humankind. The Crucified One is our peace. (DBW 11, 354\u201355)<\/p>\n
This trip to Switzerland had a prologue and an epilogue for Bonhoeffer. Both were of a private nature, but no less important to him than taking part in the conference. He spent 16\u201317 August as the guest of Jean Lasserre and Jean\u2019s parents, who had a holiday chalet near Chamonix. Unfortunately Lasserre was far too modest to come forward, after the Second World War, and speak of his relationship to Bonhoeffer. After their time together in the USA they were able to meet again several times; if only we knew more about these visits. In August 1932 especially, they must have had a lot to tell one another. In signing the Lasserres\u2019 guest book, Bonhoeffer thanked them \u2018for two fine and unforgettable days, during which I was privileged to feel cared for as if I were a member of your family\u2019 (DBW 11, 104).
\nAbout a visit to Sutz later that summer we do know more. The two went together to visit Karl Barth, on his invitation, at the chalet of his friend Rudolf Pestalozzi, a manufacturer from Z\u00fcrich. However, since this was already after a visit with Barth in Berlin which had rather preoccupied Bonhoeffer, we shall first turn to his work in Berlin in his two callings as university lecturer and assistant pastor.<\/p>\n
\u2018Christianity entails a decision\u2019<\/p>\n
In Bonhoeffer\u2019s ecumenical work, echoed soon afterwards in his lectures as well, he had begun taking a tone that was not yet being heard in Barcelona. It came out most clearly in Gland when he said that we must read the Bible \u2018against ourselves as well\u2019. A fundamental change of direction, a complete reorientation, must have taken place within him. This transition had been induced by Bonhoeffer\u2019s experience in the USA, particularly his conversations with Jean Lasserre. Bethge calls it \u2018the transition from theologian to Christian\u2019. Bonhoeffer does not seem to have talked about it with anyone at the time, but Paul Lehmann saw the effects of this decision when he visited Bonhoeffer in Berlin in 1933. In New York he had felt that his friend had quite an easygoing attitude toward church and attending worship. Now he was struck by how deeply serious these matters had become for him.
\nThere are three testimonies from later years from which one may deduce what must have taken place in Bonhoeffer\u2019s mind and heart. The first is in a letter he wrote in 1935 from London to his brother Karl Friedrich. To this eldest of his brothers, with whom he had a warm, close relationship, he was quite prepared to give an account of himself. Karl Friedrich had asked him if he really must take such an exposed position in the church struggle, as it was worrying their mother. Bonhoeffer replied:<\/p>\n
Perhaps I seem to you rather fanatical and mad about a number of things. I myself am sometimes afraid of that. But I know that the day I become more \u2018reasonable\u2019, to be honest I should have to chuck my entire theology. When I first started in theology, my idea of it was quite different\u2014rather more academic, probably. Now it has turned into something else altogether. But I do believe that at last I am on the right track, for the first time in my life. I often feel quite happy about it. I only worry about being so afraid of what other people will think as to get bogged down instead of going forward. I think I am right in saying that I would only achieve true inner clarity and honesty by really starting to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. Here alone lies the force that can blow all this hocuspocus [of Nazism] sky-high\u2014like fireworks, leaving only a few burnt-out shells behind \u2026 Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself. (DBWE 13, 284\u201385)<\/p>\n
The second testimony is found in quite a long letter to his brother-in-law R\u00fcdiger Schleicher, 11 years older than he. Bonhoeffer liked to discuss things with him, appreciating his humanistic, cultured mind and his gentle humour. In matters of church and Christianity, R\u00fcdiger Schleicher thought along Harnack\u2019s lines and, when he had a chance to hear Bonhoeffer preach or give a lecture, usually had a lot of questions for him. On 8 April 1936, Bonhoeffer wrote to him from the Harz Mountains:<\/p>\n
We have had a number of feuds with one another, and always been able to resolve them \u2026 It is good always to be reminded that a pastor can never make it all seem right to a good \u2018lay\u2019 person. If I preach about faith and grace alone (Trinity Church!) you ask, what about the Christian life? If I lecture about the Sermon on the Mount, you ask, what about real life? If I give you an interpretation of the very real and sinful life of a man from the Bible, then you ask, what about eternal truth? And all that is intended only to make one concern heard: how do I live a Christian life in the real world, and where are the ultimate authorities for such a life, the only life worth living?
\nAt this point I simply want to confess that I believe the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that all we need do is keep on asking, rather humbly, to get the answers from it. You can\u2019t just read the Bible like any other book. You have to be prepared really to ask it something. Only then will it open up to you. Only when we expect ultimate answers from it, will it give itself to us \u2026 Of course we can also read the Bible like any other book, for example in doing text criticism. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that, only it\u2019s superficial; it\u2019s not the way that will open the essence of the Bible to us. We don\u2019t take apart the words of someone we love, and analyse them; we simply take in such words and let them go on echoing in our minds for days afterward \u2026 that is the way we should treat the words of the Bible. (DBW 14, 144\u201345)<\/p>\n
With even less reserve than in these two letters, Bonhoeffer expressed his thoughts to Elizabeth Zinn, a distant relative who also studied theology, with whom he had an especially close relationship. He told her quite openly how he had become a Christian:<\/p>\n
I plunged into my work in a very unchristian way, quite lacking in humility. I was terribly ambitious, as many people noticed, and that made my life difficult and kept from me the love and trust of people around me. I was very much alone and left to my own devices; it was a bad time. Then something happened which has tossed about and changed my life to this day. For the first time I discovered the Bible. Again, that\u2019s a bad thing to have to say. I had often preached, I had seen a great deal of the church, spoken and written about it\u2014but I had not yet become a Christian. Instead, I had been my own master, wild and undisciplined. I know that what I was doing then was using the cause of Jesus Christ for my own advantage, and being terribly vain about it. I pray God that it never happens again. Also I had never prayed, or only very little. For all my loneliness I was rather pleased with myself. Then the Bible freed me from that, in particular the Sermon on the Mount. Since then everything has changed. I have felt this plainly, and so have other people around me. (DBW 14, 112\u201313)<\/p>\n
Was this really Bonhoeffer\u2019s decision, or was his life \u2018tossed about and changed\u2019 by a higher authority, by God? Even in that first sermon he had said that the two belong together. \u2018To fight for God\u2019s honour, to work, but always to see clearly that only God can do the ultimate thing\u2014that is what it means to be a Christian\u2019 (DBWE 9, 455).<\/p>\n
\u2018Who am I?\u2019<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer was interested in literature throughout his life, and in 1931 he composed two literary texts that look as though they were intended for a novel. It seems he did indeed have something of the sort in mind, but he had to keep putting it off until, in the military prison in Tegel, he finally found time. In 1931 he only got as far as two short attempts. The style as well as the content of these texts reminds one of the French novelist Georges Bernanos, whose radical self-honesty had impressed Bonhoeffer deeply. In one of the two, Bonhoeffer as author tells us about a secondary school student; here we have the young theologian trying to see into himself. This portrayal must have been closely connected with the experience of liberation which the Bible had meant for Bonhoeffer. He shows us the 17-year-old answering his teacher\u2019s question about what he wants to be: he wants to study theology. The teacher, dismayed, answers quietly \u2018You are going to be amazed.\u2019 This causes a rush of thoughts through the student\u2019s mind. He is proud of having stood by his own intention, then is overcome by holy feelings, and at the same time wonders whether the expression on his face is serious and resolute enough, now that the whole class is looking at him:<\/p>\n
O, he knew himself well, unusually well for age 17; he knew about himself and his weaknesses, and he also knew just that: that he knew himself well. This dizzying knowledge only succeeded, again and again, in letting his profound vanity descend on the house of his soul and frighten him. It had made an incomparable impression on him to read in Schiller that a human being only needed a few slight weaknesses to die out in order to be godlike. Since then he had been on the lookout. There was no doubt that he would emerge from this battle as the hero, was the thought that came to him; he had just solemnly sworn to do so. Now his path lay clear before him, the path he had known since the age of 14 that he would certainly follow. (DBW 11, 371)<\/p>\n
That is only a part of this long, rather wild text in which Bonhoeffer struggles, in fear and trembling, with the vanity he described in his letter to Elisabeth Zinn. In this first year of professional work, one of the decisions to which the Bible led him, once he began reading it \u2018against as well as for himself\u2019, was one that lasted until his years in prison\u2014a determination to give up this sort of self-analysis.
\nIn one of his best-known poems, as a prisoner, he was once again to ask himself, \u2018Who am I?\u2019 The poem describes how he felt himself to be entirely different from the way people around him saw him. They said of him that he bore days of calamity serenely, smiling and proud, like one accustomed to victory\u2019, although he really felt \u2018restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird\u2019. And once again, he gave up making a decision about it himself:<\/p>\n
Who am I? This one or the other?
\nAm I this one today and tomorrow another?
\nAm I both at once? Before others a hypocrite
\nand in my own eyes a pitiful, whimpering weakling?
\nOr is what remains in me like a defeated army,
\nFleeing in disarray from victory already won?
\nWho am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
\nWhoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine!
\n(DBWE 8, III\/173)<\/p>\n
As an outsider at the University of Berlin<\/p>\n
Wilhelm L\u00fctgert, Seeberg\u2019s successor as Professor of Systematic Theology, took Bonhoeffer on as \u2018extraordinary assistant\u2019 in his seminar. Otherwise, as an assistant lecturer, he was only entitled to the meagre fees paid by students who registered for his courses. But the seminar post guaranteed him 214 Reichmarks a month, even though it was only paid retroactively after the end of each semester. Now the question was how many students would come to hear him.
\nThere have always been, and still are today, two types of students: the goal-oriented, those who are studying for a profession, and the intellectually curious. The former are utilitarian, looking for the lectures one must absolutely attend because they are delivered by the professors who give the examinations; the latter are looking to hear something new and exciting. There were then around a thousand students at the Faculty of Theology in Berlin, including a group of such curious ones, who had passed the word around about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, even though he neither had assistantships to offer nor was in a position to give examinations. In 2003, Bishop Albrecht Sch\u00f6nherr recalled how, arriving from T\u00fcbingen in 1931, he met his friend Winfried Maechler and asked him, \u2018Who\u2019s the one to hear, here in Berlin?\u2019 and Maechler replied, \u2018Bonhoeffer, absolutely!\u2019
\nTo the \u2018Bonhoeffer circle\u2019 which gathered together in this way in 1931, and initially consisted of only 15 students, both women and men, we owe a great deal. Bonhoeffer\u2019s manuscripts of his lectures from that time were lost in Pomerania in the chaos at the end of the Second World War. From his students\u2019 notes we know at least how he went about his work, and we also have students\u2019 descriptions of the impression he made. For example, Otto Dudzus wrote:<\/p>\n
He looked like a student himself when he mounted the platform. But then what he had to say gripped us all so greatly that we no longer came because of this very young man, but because of what he was saying\u2014even though it was dreadfully early in the morning. I have never heard lectures that impressed me nearly so much as these. (DB-ER 219)<\/p>\n
And Albrecht Sch\u00f6nherr described him thus:<\/p>\n
His appearance was imposing, but not elegant; his voice was high, but not resonant; his formulations were laborious, not brilliant \u2026 Never did I discern anything low-minded, undisciplined or mean from him. He could be relaxed, but he never let himself go \u2026<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer possessed what our church as a whole, and we Christians in particular, are so sorely lacking. He willed what he thought. And he thought sharply, logically.<\/p>\n
Of course this goes far beyond a first impression, but Bonhoeffer was a lecturer whom his students could soon get to know personally. He went hiking with his students, took them on weekend retreats, and before long there was also a weekly discussion evening in Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann\u2019s room, where any and all topics were discussed amid clouds of cigarette smoke. In those days nobody worried about the comfort of non-smokers. Bonhoeffer was never hasty in dropping his reserve. It took awhile to be invited to visit him in Wangenheim Street, but in time all members of the Bonhoeffer circle came to know his parents\u2019 upper middle-class home. Hungarian theologian Ferenc Lehel tells us:<\/p>\n
What the Bonhoeffer family offered for the enjoyment of the mind as well as the body was on the same high level. When we felt we should refuse an invitation to a meal, he assured us: \u2018That is not just my bread, it is our bread, and when it is jointly consumed there will still be twelve baskets left over.\u2019 Such was his humour.<\/p>\n
For his part, Bonhoeffer gave his estimation of his first students, in describing to Sutz the participants in his seminar: \u2018I think I really have an elite group of interested people here, some of whom are astonishingly knowledgeable and good\u2019 (DBW 11, 50). In the winter semester 1931\u20131932 he was giving weekly two-hour lectures on the \u2018History of Twentieth-Century Systematic Theology\u2019 and holding a seminar on \u2018The Concept of Philosophy and Protestant Theology\u2019. In his lectures, of course, he made plenty of room for Barthian theology\u2014in it, the whole of the preceding reached its climax. But he himself had been a student of Harnack\u2019s and had no intention of denying it. Like Barth, he considered nineteenth-century theology so important that he required his hearers to \u2018get a picture\u2019 of the era of their fathers and grandfathers in general, besides the Church and theology of that time. Bonhoeffer wanted to show his students why they must distance themselves from the theology of the nineteenth century, but one cannot do this without knowing from what one is distancing oneself, and especially, why. Bonhoeffer\u2019s problem with Barth\u2019s students had to do, among other things, with the tendency among many to think that as long as they knew their master\u2019s teachings, they didn\u2019t need to know anything about what had been taught before him.
\nThe loss of Bonhoeffer\u2019s manuscript for his first lecture is especially hard because he began with a portrayal of bourgeois society towards the end of the nineteenth century. Bethge says of the student notes available:<\/p>\n
The key words suggest that he reviewed the lines of his own background with a critical love: the sober, tolerant bourgeois world of his father; the aristocratic church world from which his mother came; the empirical art of Leopold von Kalckreuth. It was a world that was disappearing, which he, like his parents, nonetheless loved with every fibre of his being. It was the world which he would acknowledge with gratitude from his prison cell in 1944. (DB-ER 212)<\/p>\n
As a novice lecturer, Bonhoeffer did not have previous lecture manuscripts or seminar texts to give him a leg up. So he built on his preparations for his doctoral and postdoctoral dissertations. In the seminar he was able to speak of the philosophers whom he had dealt with in Act and Being, and he knew the nineteenth-century theologians because he had studied their concepts of the Church for Sanctorum Communio. But of course the lectures still cost him great efforts to prepare, as he wrote to his brother Karl-Friedrich:<\/p>\n
The semester has begun again, and preparations for lectures and the seminar are again taking up most of my time. I often have the feeling that housewives must have when they have put a lot of effort into cooking something special, and then see it just gobbled up along with the rest. But I simply couldn\u2019t see myself giving a poorly prepared lecture; I\u2019d get hopelessly bogged down. (DBWE 12, I\/27)<\/p>\n
When Bonhoeffer had been teaching at the university for half a year, his salary was finally paid him retroactively. With the money he bought a wooden cabin and had it put up in Biesenthal, near a small lake on the northern outskirts of Berlin. These were Spartan weekend quarters indeed, a single room used in the daytime for meals and discussions and at night as a dormitory; but it was here that, in the spring of 1932, the \u2018Bonhoeffer circle\u2019 experienced for the first time their teacher\u2019s idea of community. The days included devotions, Bible studies and singing, besides discussions on political, social and church issues, and also sharing meals, sports and games. In a letter to Erwin Sutz, Bonhoeffer wrote that theologically he felt lonely in Berlin:<\/p>\n
My theological background is gradually becoming suspect here; people must have the feeling that they have been nourishing a viper in their bosom. I hardly ever see any of the professors, which doesn\u2019t leave me inconsolable. Since coming back from Bonn, I\u2019ve been much more aware of the poverty of the situation here. I recently had the other private lecturers here at my house, and then the next day my students, and I must say that the students are much more interested in theology than are the lecturers. (DBW 11, 50)<\/p>\n
In large part, Bonhoeffer\u2019s feeling of loneliness was due to his colleagues\u2019 not sharing in his discovery of the Bible, while the majority of his students were willing to go with him on this new path, on which one could connect one\u2019s knowledge and one\u2019s commitment to the Church entirely differently from before. Other contacts too pointed to the conclusion that he would not find his spiritual home in the university, but rather in the Church. So at last he made his way to the Student Christian Movement group in Berlin, whose secretary, Martin Fischer, invited him several times as a speaker. Here too, Bonhoeffer spoke urgently on the issue of peace. Hans Brandenburg, a staff member at the Berlin City Mission, invited him to lead a Bible study and later gave him practical advice.
\nThe \u2018Dehn case\u2019 was one of the scandalous situations in which the Nazi Party\u2019s student organization was able to exercise power even before 1933. G\u00fcnther Dehn was a pastor in Berlin whose parish was in the working-class district of Moabit. Dehn had been a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), but had resigned from it because he felt he was being unfairly \u2018put on show\u2019 as a pastor. His unusual success with proletarian youth had attracted attention. Moreover, on 6 November 1928 he had given a speech in Magdeburg on \u2018The Church and International Understanding\u2019, a topic close to his heart as a pacifist, in which he spoke against placing war monuments and commemorative plaques in Protestant churches, saying it was wrong to make heroes of soldiers who had died in wars, or to describe their deaths as a \u2018holy sacrifice\u2019. A lady in the audience had said during the discussion that if soldiers who had died were no longer honoured with commemorative plaques, it would be the same as calling them murderers. The press had seized on this and reported that Dehn had called the soldiers who died in the World War murderers. A storm of indignation had blown up, but died down again when the church authorities issued a clarification.
\nBut in 1931 when Dehn was offered a chair in Practical Theology by the theological faculties of the Universities of Heidelberg and Halle, a former pastor apparently had nothing better to do than to revive the old libel against him. This time the Nazi student organization took up the matter, and made such a racket about it that the Heidelberg faculty immediately withdrew its offer. Dehn accepted the offer from Halle, but was unable to give his inaugural lecture there in the face of hordes of shouting students. The Nazi student organization threatened that all the students in Halle would leave, and instead of firmly rejecting this, the university authorities put Dehn on leave for two semesters.
\nAt this time a social worker named Gertrud Staewen was attending Bonhoeffer\u2019s lectures. She was a friend of Dehn\u2019s and through him had come to know Karl Barth and his personal assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who in turn had arranged for her to meet Bonhoeffer. Since both Mrs Staewen and Bonhoeffer found the reaction of the theology professors in Halle to the \u2018Dehn case\u2019 to be entirely incorrect, Bonhoeffer drafted an open letter in which he challenged the professors in Halle to make their theological position clear on this matter. Gertrud Staewen copied out the letter and sent it to Barth, who made a few changes and then sent it to a number of colleagues, requesting their signatures. Since only a few wanted to join the appeal, he advised that the matter be dropped. However, from then on Gertrud Staewen could count on Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a dependable friend. This became important to both of them during the Second World War, when she risked her life to help Jews who were being deported to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, some of whom were actually saved with the help of audacious Berliners.
\nThere was no theologian in whom Bonhoeffer was more interested than in Karl Barth. He was not much bothered by the fact that Barth had several times expressed strong reservations about his view of ethics. In April 1932 Barth was to address the Brandenburg Mission Conference on \u2018Theology and Contemporary Mission\u2019; Bonhoeffer was not the only one who was looking forward to this. The evening before, Professor Julius Richter invited the members of the Berlin theological faculty and General Superintendents to meet the famous, or notorious, dogmatician from Bonn. Bonhoeffer described the evening in a letter to his friend Sutz the next day:<\/p>\n
Barth\u2019s meeting with the princes of the church here was in every way typical and, as expected, depressing. These people still harbour an inquisitorial spirit which is satisfied with symptoms and doesn\u2019t bother to pursue a matter to its roots, or even to ask daring questions\u2014just disgustingly stuffy. It made quite a picture \u2026 Barth sitting like a defendant on a little chair opposite the church dignitaries and having to explain himself; then when they were invited to ask questions, nothing ensued but a long, embarrassing silence, because nobody wanted to be the first to make a fool of himself \u2026
\nSo after hours of agony, Barth somewhat shaken, the church dignitaries here quite pleased to have found him such a charming person after all, we all went home. (DBW 11, 88)<\/p>\n
Rudolf Pestalozzi, the industrialist from Z\u00fcrich who was a friend and promoter of Karl Barth and had come with him into the \u2018lions\u2019 den\u2019, had already heard about Bonhoeffer and brought him greetings from Sutz. It was in Pestalozzi\u2019s chalet above the Lake of Z\u00fcrich, Bergli, that Barth used to spend the summers working and having friends visit. Probably Gertrud Staewen had suggested that Bonhoeffer be invited there after his ecumenical conferences in Geneva and Gland, Switzerland, for which he was already preparing. In any case, Bonhoeffer asked Sutz in another letter:<\/p>\n
What do you think about this? I must admit that it seems a little pushy for me to go there, since I hardly know any of these people. On the other hand, of course I should like it very much \u2026 Do you think it would be all right, or would I only be disturbing these folks during their holiday? (DBW 11, 101\u20132)<\/p>\n
A letter Bonhoeffer wrote to Barth on Christmas Eve 1932 shows not only that he went to Bergli, but that Barth must have spent a substantial amount of time with him.<\/p>\n
Before this year closes, I would like to thank you once again for all that I have received from you in the course of the year. The evening here in Berlin, and then the incomparably splendid hours spent with you on the Bergli, belong to the moments of this year that will remain with me. Please forgive me if I was a burden to you in August with my perhaps too obstinate, and\u2014as you once said\u2014\u2018godless\u2019 questions. (DBWE 12, I\/21)<\/p>\n
But, he said further, he did not know anyone who could steer him away so thoroughly from asking the wrong questions as could Barth. He felt that Barth could bring him right up to the real issue which he had previously only been circling around at a distance. The few hours they had had together during that year, he said, had been enough to direct his thoughts, which otherwise had a tendency to get bogged down in \u2018godless\u2019 questions, and to keep them focused on the issue at hand.<\/p>\n
Student chaplain and pastor to youth<\/p>\n
On 10 July 1931, General Superintendent Emil Karow wrote to his new \u2018synod pastoral assistant\u2019, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that he was planning to appoint him chaplain to students at the Technical College, and asked him to work in cooperation with the Revd Ernst Bronisch-Holtze, the chaplain at the University of Berlin. This job did not actually begin until October, so until then Bonhoeffer was on leave\u2014the leave that had been requested for him by Diestel before Bonhoeffer\u2019s return from America. At the same time he received a notice from the consistory of the Old Prussian Church, in best German officialese:<\/p>\n
You are assigned to absolve your duties as assistant within our regional church. Your ordination will therefore take place on Sunday, 15 November 1931 at 10 a.m. in St. Matthew\u2019s Church. General Superintendent Vits will preside \u2026 A fee of 5 Reichmarks is to be paid to the sexton before the ordination to cover its costs (compensation for church officials etc.). pp. etc. (DBW 11, 39)<\/p>\n
It has been a long time since church authorities used such prosaic wording in regard to an ordination, and this attitude is also shown by the fact that we know nothing about Bonhoeffer\u2019s ordination service itself.
\nRobert Frick, a church historian whom Bonhoeffer later met at Bethel, was also ordained by General Superintendent Vits around that time. When Frick was asked rather emotionally, on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, about \u2018what must be the greatest day in the life of a pastor\u2019, he said that was not the way he experienced it. \u2018If you wanted to be a pastor, you had to get ordained, that was all.\u2019 This only changed during the church struggle, when the Confessing Church, under persecution by the state, was ordaining its candidates for a service that was considered illegal. It not only promised them God\u2019s blessing and a brotherly community of fellow pastors, but also undertook to care for them and their families in case of need.
\nThe main assignment for which General Superintendent Otto Dibelius had recommended Bonhoeffer, the office of chaplain to students at the Technical College, turned out to be extremely difficult. First of all, Bonhoeffer had to inform the students, two-thirds of whom already belonged to the Nazi student organization, that he was available to them as pastor. A notice he put on the bulletin board was removed several times by unknown hands. Finally Bonhoeffer replaced it with a note attached: \u2018Dear fellow student \u2026 Why always the same joke \u2026? Why not come round to see me some time? We might not do so badly talking with one another\u2019 (DBWE 12, I\/10).
\nThe programme events he offered were poorly attended; often no one came at all. But it was different at his Sunday worship services in Trinity Church, where conspicuous numbers of students were present. Bonhoeffer suspected that even those who were interested had so much studying to do during the week that they had no time for anything else. He consulted one of the professors about this, who confirmed it. Bonhoeffer wrote to the student fraternities asking them to give him some publicity, and offering to speak at their meetings. When this actually took place, his talks were followed by lively discussions, since he chose topics which the students found interesting; but overall he had little success with these enquiries. Some fraternities didn\u2019t bother to reply, others only briefly acknowledged his letters, and the rest invited him to evening drinking parties at which he did not care to speak as pastor.
\nAt that time there was already a conference of student chaplains in Germany. Bonhoeffer went to a meeting at Friedrichroda, near Gotha in Thuringia, having been especially asked to bring up for discussion the spread of the Nazi student organization. This was being talked of in many church circles, but nobody knew what to do about it. In 1933 Bonhoeffer submitted a report to the Old Prussian Church consistory, in which he described the attempt to establish a student chaplaincy at the Technical College as a failure. However, he ended his report with a suggestion as to what might be done instead.<\/p>\n
I am becoming increasingly convinced that an attempt should be made to establish a professor\u2019s chair in Christian Thought at the Technical College, so as to gain influence from the inside in shaping student life. Only when the ground has first been prepared in this way does it seem to me that the work of a student chaplain, who really has to concentrate on the Gospel and not get sidetracked from it, can be spared from appearing to fail. (12, I\/54)<\/p>\n
General Superintendent Karow wrote in the margin \u2018This report is not encouraging. But no tree is felled by the first blow. Let\u2019s wait and see how it goes.\u2019 But by the time he wrote that, Hitler was already in power and the time for Christian professorships and chaplains at technical colleges was as good as over.
\nSince Bonhoeffer was not only a student chaplain, but was also available to Berlin General Superintendent Karow as \u2018synod pastoral assistant\u2019, he was asked to take over the boys\u2019 confirmation class at Zion Church in the Prenzlauer Berg district of east Berlin. The old pastor, Johannes M\u00fcller, could no longer manage the group. Bethge writes of Bonhoeffer\u2019s first day there, as he described it:<\/p>\n
The elderly minister and Bonhoeffer slowly walked up the stairs of the school building, which was several stories high. The children were leaning over the bannisters, making an indescribable din and dropping rubbish on the two men ascending the stairs. When they reached the top, the minister tried to force the throng back into the classroom by shouting and using physical force. He tried to announce that he had brought them a new minister who was going to teach them in future and that his name was Bonhoeffer. When they heard the name they started shouting \u2018Bon! Bon! Bon!\u2019 louder and louder. The old man left the scene in despair, leaving Bonhoeffer standing silently against the wall with his hands in his pockets. Minutes passed. His failure to react made the noise gradually less enjoyable. He began speaking quietly, so that only the boys in the front row could catch a few words of what he said. Suddenly all were silent. Bonhoeffer merely remarked that they had put up a remarkable initial performance, and went on to tell them a story about Harlem. If they listened, he told them, he would tell them more next time. Then he told them they could go. After that, he never had reason to complain about their lack of attentiveness. (DB-ER 226)<\/p>\n
In 1985 a pensioner from Berlin made the 75-kilometre journey eastward to the holiday resort of Hirschluch, because he had read in the newsletter of the East German Christian Democratic Union that an international Bonhoeffer Congress was being held there. He told them that he had been confirmed by Bonhoeffer in 1932. More than 50 years later, his encounter with Bonhoeffer remained one of the unforgettable experiences of his life.
\nThe young pastor who confirmed him, too, never forgot as long as he lived these working-class boys with whom he had gone hiking and on weekend excursions. The old pastor whom they had literally annoyed to death was carried to his grave not long after he had handed over the class to its new teacher. Bonhoeffer cancelled an important meeting in order to take all the boys to the funeral. He wrote to Sutz about this unaccustomed task:<\/p>\n
This is just about the wildest district in Berlin, with the most difficult social and political conditions. At first the boys behaved as though they were crazy, so that for the first time I had real difficulties with discipline. But what helped the most was that I simply told them stories from the Bible, with great emphasis, particularly eschatological passages. And by the way, I also told some stories about Negroes. Now there is absolute quiet, the boys see to that themselves. (DBW 11, 50)<\/p>\n
By \u2018eschatological passages\u2019 he meant the New Testament reports about the coming end of the world, about the Last Judgement and God\u2019s eternity. Probably the expert who gave Bonhoeffer such a low grade in the First Examination for his catechetical work would have said one couldn\u2019t talk about such things with youth, especially youth of this sort from east Berlin. But the young pastor was of an entirely different opinion.
\nOf course Bonhoeffer also wanted to get to know the parents of his confirmation pupils, but that turned out to be much harder. Even though, as he had done in Barcelona, he could visit them as the teacher working with their sons, it was seldom that a real conversation got started. He shared with Sutz:<\/p>\n
To think of those excruciating hours or minutes when I or the other person try to begin a pastoral conversation, and how haltingly and lamely it goes on \u2026 I sometimes try to console myself by thinking that this kind of pastoral work is something that just did not exist in earlier times and is quite unchristian. But perhaps it really means the end of our Christianity, that we fail here. We have learned to preach again, at any rate a little, but the care of souls? (DBW 11, 65)<\/p>\n
As difficult as all this was, Bonhoeffer found here a mission that being a student chaplain could not offer him. With the help of Bertha Schulze, an acquaintance from Harnack\u2019s seminar, he rented a room on Oderberger Street so that he could live near his boys. Those who knew the area advised him against it; this was the \u2018darkest east side\u2019 of the city, not without its dangers for a minister. The hosts of unemployed workers there had mostly been organized into communist groups, which engaged the Nazi SA militia in street battles in which people were killed. The old master baker into whose house Bonhoeffer moved, for his part, had first enquired of another minister whether a \u2018synod pastoral assistant\u2019 might possibly be \u2018a Catholic\u2019, as he wanted no such person in his house. On his free evenings, Bonhoeffer invited the boys to his room one or two at a time, shared a meal and played games with them. A few became enthusiastic chess players. After some time, the baker\u2019s wife came to see Bertha Schulze, to thank her. Bonhoeffer had indeed brought a commotion into her home, his confirmands were always around and he was constantly asking her to prepare meals, but he had put new heart into her and her elderly husband.<\/p>\n
Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a young pastor with some of his 42 confirmation pupils in the Harz Mountains, 1932<\/p>\n
Whenever he possibly could, Bonhoeffer took his confirmands to Biesenthal for weekends, and after their confirmation he took them to Friedrichsbrunn in the Harz Mountains for 10 days, where they romped in the snow and behaved themselves especially well. Mrs S., who looked after the elder Bonhoeffers\u2019 vacation house there, turned up her nose at these \u2018proles\u2019 that young Mr Bonhoeffer had brought in. She was used to more genteel guests. But, except for one window, nothing got broken.
\nFritz Figur, the pastor of the neighbouring parish in Berlin, met Bonhoeffer one day in late February with a huge bolt of black cloth, which he was dividing up so that each of his Zion\u2019s boys could have a proper suit for confirmation. Once again, it was his parents who paid for the fabric and the tailoring. The actual confirmation day, 13 March 1932, was dominated by election fever. Hitler, Th\u00e4lmann and Duesterberg were candidates for the office of Reich President, but Hindenburg defeated all three of them by gaining 49 per cent, and later also won the runoff vote against Hitler. In Bonhoeffer\u2019s sermon to the boys being confirmed, taking Genesis 32:22\u201331 as his text, he said:<\/p>\n
No one shall ever deprive you of the faith that God has prepared, for you too, a day and a sun and a dawn; that he guides us to this sun that is called Jesus Christ, that he wishes us to see the promised land in which justice and peace and love prevail, because Christ prevails; now we see it only from afar, but some day, in eternity. (DBW 11, 414)<\/p>\n
In the autumn of 1932, Anneliese Schnurmann, a schoolfriend of Bonhoeffer\u2019s sister Susanne who had heard about his work on the east side of Berlin, asked him about the possibility of starting an inter-confessional youth group, unaffiliated with any political party. She was convinced of the need and was prepared to make a monthly income available from money inherited from her parents. Bonhoeffer, who was already open to the idea, if only because of his contacts with Gertrud Staewen and G\u00fcnther Dehn, discussed it with Hans Brandenburg, at whose request he had once led a Bible study at the City Mission. Brandenburg was a sophisticated gentleman from Riga in the Baltic region who was passionately interested in bringing people distant from the Church to faith in Jesus Christ. He had experience with many kinds of groups, including communists, and was able to introduce Bonhoeffer in the city social work offices. There it was recommended that he consult Anna von Gierke, a social worker with a wealth of experience with youth groups. Anneliese Schnurmann and Bonhoeffer went to see her, and she recommended two suitable social workers who were available as staff. So by winter the Charlottenburg Youth Club had been set up in Charlottenburg Castle Street on the west side of Berlin, offering job training courses for young people. Bonhoeffer got one of his students, Karl-Heinz Corbach, to give an English course.
\nThe Youth Club was such a success that by November 1932 they had to move it to larger quarters. There were a few problems, but more encouraging successes, until the end of January 1933 when Hitler came to power. Then Mrs Gierke was ousted from her job and Anneliese Schnurmann, who was Jewish, had to emigrate. She became a psychoanalyst in London, where she worked with Anna Freud. The communist young people who had participated in the Youth Club began to be harassed on the street. Bonhoeffer let them use his Biesenthal cabin as a refuge until they found places to go in other parts of the city. But when the Nazi SA militia began trying to get hold of the Youth Club\u2019s card file, the Club had to be closed without further ado.
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s year as a \u2018church assistant\u2019 was coming to an end at this point. It did not take him long to evaluate which had been more important to him, the student chaplaincy or the confirmation class. He accordingly sought out the father of his student Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann; the elder Zimmermann was superintendent of the eastern Berlin I district of the Protestant Church in the city, and Bonhoeffer asked him about the possibility of a permanent ministry on the east side. At the time, Zimmermann was looking for candidates for a pastorate that was open at St Bartholomew\u2019s Church, near Alexander Square in central east Berlin, and the two agreed that this might be the right place for Bonhoeffer. He then preached there as a candidate, but lost out to a much older candidate with a more \u2018folksy\u2019 style, by 25 votes to 47. His 42 Zion\u2019s boys would not have been entitled to vote even had they belonged to St Bartholomew\u2019s. The girls\u2019 group of Zion Church, who knew Bonhoeffer only from his sermons, had said right away that they didn\u2019t want him as pastor. \u2018He keeps stopping to think, as though he doesn\u2019t know what he wants to say.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sermons in the \u2018year of decision\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018We have to read the Bible against ourselves [and not just in our favour]\u2019, Bonhoeffer had said in Gland, and had also called for a precise knowledge of reality. His own attitude in this regard had to be apparent in his preaching, and more than once he was near despair over the preparation of sermons. He had written to his classmate R\u00f6\u00dfler that, from outside of Germany, the situation there seemed such a local affair.<\/p>\n
How do you think Christianity can carry on in view of the situation in the world and our own lifestyle? It is becoming less and less imaginable that, for the sake of one righteous person, God said \u2018I will not destroy the city.\u2019 [Genesis 18:22\u201333] I am now student chaplain at the T.H. How can one preach such things to these people? Who believes in them anymore? They\u2019re invisible, that\u2019s what ruins our efforts. (DBW 11, 33)<\/p>\n
We can take as an example here one of these sermons in which Bonhoeffer really had to struggle for the right interpretation. Gerhard Jacobi, pastor of the King Wilhelm Memorial Church, had asked Bonhoeffer to take a service for him, and Bonhoeffer chose as his text Colossians 3:1\u20134:<\/p>\n
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.<\/p>\n
\u2018How can one preach such things?\u2019 he had asked R\u00f6\u00dfler. Within the church space one could read such a text aloud, but only imagine saying such words to someone or other in daily life and the strangeness of the Bible becomes shockingly clear. It was true, Bonhoeffer wrote, that politicians such as Papen and Hindenburg publicly proclaimed that they were speaking \u2018In the name of God, Amen\u2019, but that was only giving worldly business a bit of a religious sheen. It had nothing whatever to do with the message of the Bible. Bonhoeffer made such a thorough analysis of the situation and of people\u2019s thinking in modern times that he only got a few steps beyond this introductory idea, and had to ask Jacobi to let him preach again on the same text the following Sunday. He said that in these modern times people were concerned about ideal forms or techniques for trading goods, for hygiene, for education, for psychoanalysis, even for philosophy, art and religion; and the more acute the crisis, the louder the calls for experts to bring some order into the chaos.<\/p>\n
How much more trust we have in this feverish striving for knowledge in all areas of human life; how much better prospects it seems to have than the sober \u2018In the name of God, Amen\u2019, which doesn\u2019t say anything. And that goes even more for that dusty old saying we have long since forgotten, \u2018So if you have been raised with Christ \u2026\u2019 (DBW 11, 439)<\/p>\n
At this point, many preachers would have raised an admonishing forefinger and said: all we need to do is go back to the Bible and its truth. But that was exactly what Bonhoeffer did not do; instead he quoted, not from the Bible, but from a work of literature. Half a year earlier he had heard Otto Klemperer direct the Berlin Philharmonic in an oratorio by Paul Hindemith. The oratorio, instead of being based on a biblical text, used as its text a poem by Gottfried Benn, \u2018The Unceasing\u2019. Instead of asking, like Bonhoeffer in his sermon, whether the modern world towards which we are rushing can arrive at a meaningful goal, Benn describes the never-ending journey into nothingness. Bonhoeffer quotes in his sermon the words which the poem repeats several times: \u2018Taste you the cup of nothingness, that dark draught?\u2019 In his painstaking analysis of the sermon, J\u00fcrgen Henkys also considers the text of the oratorio. At the end the men\u2019s choir sings: \u2018In every age has human flesh proclaimed \/ What is existence, but to be content!\u2019 and is contradicted by a boys\u2019 choir:<\/p>\n
But no, another word must follow us
\nFor in creation, struggle has its place.
\nIn struggle, our contentments fade away,
\nin pain, in which the shadows hover round,
\nin thirst that drinks from both the cups at once,
\nboth cups that with destruction overflow.
\nIn suffering the combat will continue,
\nin loneliness, in silence, which alone
\ncan sense those ancient powers, ever with us\u2014:
\nand thus we know: unceasing human life.<\/p>\n
Then, instead of setting the Epistle to the Colossians beside the quotation from Benn, Bonhoeffer takes up the image of the two cups about which the boys\u2019 choir sang, and transforms it:<\/p>\n
But now we are overcome by a terrible certainty, that we are fleeing from God. Whether we dare to drink \u2018the cup of nothingness, that dark draught\u2019\u2014or whether we avoid it and turn to religious busyness and blather\u2014we are fleeing from that other cup of which the Bible has tasted and which it proclaims to the world in a mighty voice. The cup of God\u2019s anger \u2026 To drink from this cup of God, if we really know what we are doing, is to be serious. And to drink that cup of nothingness, that dark draught, is also to be serious. And to those who do so, the eternal God is infinitely nearer, with the shining promise of God, than they can realize from afar. (DBW 11, 441\u20132)<\/p>\n
By taking Benn\u2019s poem seriously as a description of reality, as he himself also felt and thought about it, Bonhoeffer was able to read the biblical text, Colossians 3:1\u20134, as aimed at himself, that is, against him. Christians live, as he said in the second sermon on the text, in a world which turns the Bible\u2019s words around and says \u2018Set your minds on things that are on earth.\u2019 Here again, Bonhoeffer does not offer a polemic against this, but instead says:<\/p>\n
This is where a tremendous decision takes place: whether we Christians have enough strength to witness before the world that we are not dreamers with our heads in the clouds \u2026 that our faith really is not opium that keeps us content within an unjust world. Instead, and precisely because our minds are set on things above, we are that much more stubborn and purposeful in protesting here on earth \u2026 Does it have to be so that Christianity, which began as immensely revolutionary, now has to remain conservative for all time? That every new movement has to blaze its path without the church, and that the church always takes twenty years to see what has actually happened? If it really must be so, then we must not be surprised when, for our church as well, times come when the blood of martyrs will be demanded. But this blood, if we truly have the courage and honour and loyalty to shed it, will not be so innocent and shining as that of the first witnesses. Our blood will be overlaid with our own great guilt. (DBW 11, 446)<\/p>\n
To be faithful to the earth for the sake of \u2018things above\u2019, to let one\u2019s earthly hopes be renewed by eternal hope, dashes any hope for a comfortable life. That certainly goes against the grain, particularly for devout church folk; but only by reading the Bible against ourselves, no less than in our favour, do we read it rightly.
\nTo learn to read the Bible in this way, one needs to do \u2018spiritual exercises\u2019 like those of St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, to whom the Protestant Dietrich Bonhoeffer is said to have referred on several occasions. For the winter semester 1932\u20131933 he announced a theological exegesis of the first three chapters of the Bible, which was to be such an exercise for himself and his students. The word had been passed around in the meantime that exciting new things were to be heard from Bonhoeffer, and for the first time some three hundred students turned up for his lectures. At their urging, his text was later published, entitled Creation and Fall. This third book of Bonhoeffer\u2019s reads differently from the first two. He had found a new style to go with his new thinking. We have enthusiastic descriptions by those who heard the lectures at the time, but also the somewhat ill-humoured opinion of Hilde Enterlein, the philosophically inclined future wife of Albrecht Sch\u00f6nherr, that Bonhoeffer was \u2018telling fairy tales\u2019 (DBWE 3, 3).
\nNevertheless, in these lectures as well we hear in the background Bonhoeffer\u2019s dispute with contemporary criticism of the theory of knowledge. Taking his stand on a biblically based anthropology, Bonhoeffer questions the usual way of talking about ethics, and especially attacks the pseudo-Lutheran doctrine of the orders of creation. At meetings of the Central Office for Youth Work, which we have mentioned, Wilhelm St\u00e4hlin had tried to justify the \u2018duty of peoples [V\u00f6lker] to fight\u2019 on the basis that God had created the different peoples and therefore had given them the right to defend themselves. Bonhoeffer had argued that anything could be justified in some way by referring back to the creation, even the exploitation of the weak by the strong and economic competition unto life and death. The creation, however, had been corrupted by the fall, by human sin. He had proposed speaking instead of \u2018orders of preservation\u2019, because God had preserved the world until Christ came, so that through him the world might be reconciled with its Creator. Thus Bonhoeffer began with the Christ event in interpreting the stories of the creation and the fall, leading to new insights.
\nLet us look at one such insight. That human beings are in the image of God (Genesis 1:26\u201327), Bonhoeffer sees in God\u2019s creation of humankind, \u2018male and female\u2019, dependent on one another and at the same time as free for one another as God is free for God\u2019s creatures. Thus being made in God\u2019s image means that God created us to be capable of relationship and commitment. It was not least because of Bonhoeffer\u2019s thinking about the Old Testament that the Jewish theologian Pinchas Lapide called Bonhoeffer\u2019s theology \u2018primally Jewish\u2019. When Creation and Fall first appeared in 1933, there were already vehement attacks being made on the Old Testament, and one reviewer said, \u2018Anyone who is inclined to take cheap shots at the Old Testament today should first get hold of this book \u2026\u2019 (DBWE 3, 172).
\nOn 31 January 1933, the day after Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer came, in his lecture course, to Genesis 3:4, the promise made by the serpent in Eden: \u2018You will be like God\u2019 (if you eat the fruit of the tree which God has forbidden you to eat). And the students, who had passed through a forest of swastika flags in order to enter the university building in Unter den Linden Boulevard, heard his exegesis of the serpent\u2019s promise:<\/p>\n
Sicut deus [to be like God]\u2014for Adam that can only be a new, deeper kind of creaturely being. This is how he is bound to understand the serpent. To be sure, Adam sees that the new, deeper kind of creatureliness must be won at the cost of transgressing the commandment. And this very fact must focus his attention. Adam is in fact between God and God, or better, between God and a false god [G\u00f6tze], in a situation in which the false god portrays itself as a true God \u2026 (DBWE 3, 113f)<\/p>\n
5. The Year 1933<\/p>\n
The \u2018new age\u2019 and the German Christians<\/p>\n
The year 1933 was the most hectic Bonhoeffer ever experienced, either before or afterwards. From 30 January, the day on which Reich President Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor (Prime Minister), 27-year-old Pastor Bonhoeffer was caught up in a whirlwind of events which at times called upon him to make new decisions from one day to the next.
\nHitler did not become Reich Chancellor through a victory by his party or by the will of the people, as the term \u2018taking power [Machtergreifung]\u2019 might suggest. In the election of 6 November 1932, two-thirds of the voters did not vote for him. It was some influential conservative leaders\u2014including former Chancellors Papen and Schleicher, and Oskar von Hindenburg, son of the Reich President\u2014who thought it would be a clever tactical move to bring Hitler into the coalition in power and thus exercise some restraint over him. Then the parliamentary parties could no longer block one another in the Reichstag, and in the cabinet the conservatives would still have a majority and therefore hold onto power, even with Hitler as Reich Chancellor. This upstart from Austria would soon prove himself unfit to govern, they thought, and would thus have to give up what power he held. In Hitler\u2019s new government his Nazi Party was a minority\u2014besides his own position, it held only two cabinet posts\u2014so it could be outvoted.
\nBut even after these conservatives who had pulled the strings saw how greatly they had been deceived in this new Reich Chancellor and his party, they did not so much as attempt to turn the wheel back again. The people, including the millions-strong army of the unemployed, reacted with a mixture of apprehension and dim hope. Perhaps at last their fortunes were about to take a turn for the better.
\nFrom 30 January 1933 onward Hitler was on parade as a statesman aware of his responsibilities, but inwardly he remained the leader of a criminal organization whose functionaries were required to swear absolute loyalty to him, to join with him in bending the whole of Germany to his will. Even then he already wanted to make Eastern Europe the \u2018living space for the Nordic [Aryan] race\u2019, which meant that in 1933 he was already planning war. However, he was filled above all with an out-and-out hatred of Jews. He saw \u2018worldwide Jewry\u2019 as the embodiment of evil. To him, Jews had been the driving force behind the German defeat in 1918 and the \u2018shameful Treaty of Versailles\u2019, and he also saw Jews as the leaders of Bolshevism, the Russian communist movement which would soon be flooding all of Europe unless Germany succeeded in putting up \u2018a dam against the Red tide from the east\u2019.
\nAnyone in Germany could have known long before 1933 what Hitler was thinking, for he had described his ideas in great detail, so that their consequences in war, oppression and murder were unmistakable, in his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle). But very few Germans had read the book, and even in 1933 the great majority of the people considered it unnecessary to concern themselves with it. Hitler had long since settled on his plan for making Germany into a dictatorship, after taking over its government. His aim as newly appointed Reich Chancellor was to conceal his intentions behind statesmanlike speeches and symbolic actions, through which he would show that, though violence had been done\u2014\u2018you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs\u2019\u2014as soon as the \u2018national revolution\u2019 had banished the Bolshevist threat, law and order would return, and the fate of the German people was in good hands.
\nHe encountered scarcely any resistance as he proceeded to carry this out. The judiciary made no protest against his violations of laws. Civil servants, the majority of whom had been against Hitler until 1932, adapted themselves surprisingly quickly to the new power structures. The great majority of university professors kept themselves in waiting, as the Nazi Federation of Students was strongly represented at all institutions of learning, always ready to kick up a row. Even the military saw no reason to intervene, although the generals had misgivings as they watched the growth of the SA militia.
\nRoland Freisler, Hitler\u2019s judge who had so much blood on his hands, said in 1944, before sentencing the young Resistance leader, Count Helmuth James von Moltke, to death: \u2018We National Socialists [Nazis] and Christianity resemble each other in only one respect: we claim the whole man!\u2019 This was Hitler\u2019s thinking from the beginning, and therefore he saw the two main churches as the two significant groups that could seriously threaten his cause. He had to treat the Catholic Church differently from the Protestants, since he had no influence over the pope and the Vatican, and he knew that though the Catholic bishops negotiated with him they would never give up their tie to Rome. What he wanted from the Catholic Church was a concordat, a treaty between state and church, which the Vatican had been trying for a number of years to obtain, but without success.
\nThe situation of German Protestants was entirely different: their churches did not extend beyond Germany\u2019s borders. There were 28 provincial churches, all of which had for centuries lived, as a rule, in close partnerships with their respective states. Hitler wanted to make use of this for his purposes. The \u2018church struggle [Kirchenkampf]\u2019, as the years of fierce disputes over the Protestant churches were rightly known, began soon after 30 January 1933. In this struggle, Hitler and his henchmen were the churches\u2019 real opponents throughout, but hardly a member of the church opposition realized it at the time. Many would probably not have admitted it if they had; instead, they declared loudly and repeatedly that the dispute was only going on within the Protestant church, and that they were not at all opposed to \u2018Adolf Hitler\u2019s new Germany\u2019. So the battlefronts were never clear.
\nSince Bonhoeffer was striving from the beginning, as scarcely anyone else was doing, to make the situation clear and to show what decisions needed to be made, the only way to portray his life in the year 1933 is to tell of the many fronts on which he was fighting and the many groups of people with whom he wrestled. This means speaking of a bewildering abundance of events. Eberhard Bethge devotes almost a hundred pages of his great biography to the life of his friend during this one year, in the course of which he mentions the names of more than 200 persons. Even a shorter portrayal will have to capture some of that bewildering diversity, for it was during the chaotic, fateful year, 1933, that the course was set for the 12 years of Hitler\u2019s dictatorship, and thus for everything that was to follow in Bonhoeffer\u2019s life.
\nThe year had begun for Bonhoeffer with ecumenical work. The Universal Council for Life and Work and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches were holding meetings of their governing bodies in Berlin, and Bonhoeffer\u2019s collaboration was essential because preparations were being made for the youth committees of the two organizations to merge.
\nSo it was together with delegates from around the world that, in a sea of flags, Bonhoeffer lived through the turbulent days of Hitler\u2019s \u2018coming to power\u2019, as it was called in the propaganda around 30 January. This term was intended not only to conceal the lack of a victory in the election, but also to give the impression that Hitler had been granted, right from the moment of taking over the government, the dictatorial powers which he was to create for himself in the coming weeks and months through a carefully calculated mixture of terrorist acts, law breaking and statesmanlike speeches.
\nBut he was still far from having the trust of all the German people. The public mood was rather reserved during the first days of the \u2018Third Reich\u2019. Even today, when this moment in history is portrayed, we are still shown scenes of an enthusiastic crowd in Berlin paying homage to Hitler, on the evening of 30 January, with a \u2018spontaneous torchlight procession\u2019 of the SA, SS and \u2018Steel Helmet\u2019 militias. But this footage comes from a film made later by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, because on the day itself no one had thought to bring out movie cameras. However, Hitler and Goebbels did not usually fail to make use of the new information media, which had been invented just in time for them.
\nEven in the parliamentary elections on 5 March, despite its clever and aggressive election propaganda, the Nazi Party only gained 44 per cent of the vote and had to continue depending on support from the German National People\u2019s Party. Protestant pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer voted for the Catholic Centre Party, because he expected it to offer the necessary resistance to Hitler\u2019s policies.
\nBonhoeffer had come, only hours after its beginning, into direct contact with the \u2018new age\u2019 in Germany\u2019s history. On 1 February he had to give a talk on the radio\u2014the only time in his life that he ever did so. He had received the invitation weeks earlier, but the chosen theme, \u2018The Younger Generation\u2019s Altered View of the Concept of F\u00fchrer\u2019, was almost too good a fit with the drastically changed situation in Germany. In the frenzy of political transformation Bonhoeffer must have sounded like the voice of reason, when towards the end he said:<\/p>\n
If the leader tries to become the idol the led are looking for\u2014something the led always hope from their leader\u2014then the image of the leader shifts to one of a mis-leader, then the leader is acting improperly toward the led as well as toward himself. The true leader must always be able to disappoint. This, especially, is part of the leader\u2019s responsibility and objectivity. (DBWE 12, II\/9)<\/p>\n
However, his listeners no longer heard these words since, to his great annoyance, someone at the radio station had switched off the microphone. But he was able to have his lecture printed and circulated it to friends and acquaintances (DB-ER 260).
\nEberhard Bethge described the well-planned proceedings of Germany\u2019s new ruler in his first weeks in power as \u2018controlled chaos\u2019. The SA militia carried on its terrorism in the streets unhindered. Prominent opponents who hadn\u2019t fled the country quickly enough, Hitler had arrested and maltreated. On the other hand, in his speeches broadcast on the radio, he paid court to conservative elements in the population; in particular, he explained to the two main churches that their participation was indispensable in building the new Germany. In doing so, beginning with his own radio speech on 1 February, he knew how to \u2018make it sound religious\u2019:<\/p>\n
Now, German Volk, give us four years and then pass judgment upon us! True to the order of the Field Marshal [Hindenburg], we shall begin. May God Almighty look mercifully upon our work, lead our will on the right path, bless our wisdom and reward us with the confidence of our Volk. We are not fighting for ourselves but for Germany!<\/p>\n
Far too many people were gripped by such language and didn\u2019t hear its false overtones. \u2018Give us four years\u2019 time\u2019 meant, of course, that on the third day of his chancellorship, Hitler was already thinking he could avoid being judged by the governed for years to come. On 10 February at the Sports Palace in Berlin, he began his campaign for the parliamentary elections by portraying his office as Reich Chancellor as a divine mission, concluding his speech in the style of the Lord\u2019s Prayer:<\/p>\n
For I cannot divest myself of my faith in my Volk, cannot dissociate myself from the conviction that this nation will one day rise again, cannot divorce myself from my love for this my Volk, and I cherish the firm conviction that the hour will come at last in which the millions who despise us today will stand by us and with us will hail the new, hard-won and painfully acquired German Reich we have created together, the new German kingdom of greatness and honour and power and glory and justice. Amen!<\/p>\n
During the night of 27 February, the Reichstag building was burned down. Hitler made such immediate and clever use of this happening that rumours, both at home and abroad, claimed that the Nazis themselves had been the arsonists. This supposition was supported by the fact that the very morning after the fire, they were already accusing the communists of having set it; they immediately produced a well-prepared emergency decree and had it signed by President Hindenburg, the \u2018Reich President\u2019s Edict for the Protection of People and State\u2019. After the Second World War, the theory that Hitler\u2019s closest associates must have set the fire was contested for decades. It seemed to have been finally laid to rest, but recently it has again been defended with cogent arguments.
\nHis \u2018Reichstag Fire Edict\u2019 enabled Hitler to abolish some of the most important articles of the Reich constitution. Even more than the famous \u2018Enabling Act\u2019 in which, four weeks later, the newly elected parliament yielded up its own rights, the \u2018Reichstag Fire Edict\u2019 made Germany a state without justice. Beginning even on 28 February, the right to privacy of communication by mail or telephone no longer existed. Anything that the government, the Party or the secret police found inconvenient could now be forbidden on the spot. Even the most crassly unjust actions taken on the basis of this edict were no longer subject to any appeal. Bonhoeffer later found this out personally when the police closed the preachers\u2019 seminary of which he was director.
\nBut the powers which Hitler had created for himself went much further. Himmler was able to set up his concentration camps and send there anyone who had become persona non grata, to be held or executed without a court judgment. In one of these camps, shortly before Germany\u2019s surrender ended the validity of the edict in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was put to death. Of course, in the spring of 1933, the first persons to be affected by the new law, besides Jewish intellectuals, were mainly Communist Party functionaries and influential pundits such as Carl von Ossietzky, who were hunted down and arrested by Hitler\u2019s henchmen.
\nBy such means as these Hitler could expand his power, but they were not yet sufficient for him to make it stick. Instead he had to demonstrate, after the first few weeks of his government, that he intended to have an orderly state system. This was the purpose of the \u2018Potsdam Day\u2019 ceremony on 21 March, which began with parades and worship services and reached its climax in the Garrison Church of Potsdam, the imperial city just south of Berlin, broadcast by every radio station in the country. Here, at the tomb of the earlier Prussian King Frederick the Great, Hitler bowed before Hindenburg\u2014\u2018the World War I lance-corporal before his grey-haired field marshal\u2019. The Crown Prince, who would have been the King\u2019s successor, sat in the first pew. This state spectacle, which historian Friedrich Meinecke called \u2018the Potsdam heartstring theatrical\u2019, was staged in its every detail with all Joseph Goebbels\u2019 ingenuity. He even had an empty throne set up for the absent King. It was all intended to look like the renewal of Prussian tradition, and especially to throw sand in the eyes of the military and conservative circles. Thus it was hardly noticed that on the same day, Hitler had issued the Malicious Practices Act, which in effect made punishable any criticism of Nazi policies and especially any communication with the outside world about what was going on in Germany. Indeed, large parts of the population began to hope that they were seeing the \u2018renewal\u2019 of Germany.
\nDuring this political storm, in April 1933, Paul Lehmann and his wife were guests in the Bonhoeffer home in Wangenheim Street (DB-ER 268\u201369). They were surprised to find how serious their friend Dietrich had become\u2014they remembered him as always ready to enjoy a joke. Bonhoeffer took time whenever he could to show them around Berlin. They marvelled at the forest of swastika flags in the city centre, visited the Wedding district, and went to the opera. But what most interested the Lehmanns was what they saw of their friend\u2019s parental home, with its upper middle-class atmosphere and the many servants responding to almost imperceptible signals from their mistress.
\nEven that soon after the Malicious Practices Act had been promulgated, frank conversations no longer took place without precautions being taken. The Lehmanns found it irresistibly funny when, in the middle of a conversation, Klaus Bonhoeffer would quietly get up, steal over to the door and fling it open suddenly to see if anyone was secretly listening outside. The conversations were indeed of a sort that no enthusiastic servant of the new regime ought to be hearing. Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer discussed with Paul Lehmann, among other things, how it would be possible to keep people outside Germany quickly and reliably informed about developments inside the country, since Hitler had made such an undertaking a punishable offence.
\nDuring this period Hitler was careful not to speak openly about his war plans. With regard to his hatred of the Jews, he did not have to restrain himself. There were plenty of Germans who not only were afraid of Russian Bolshevism, but made no secret of their aversion to Jews, including many Christians, both Protestant and Catholic. So there were no protests against the arrests of communists, nor was there resistance to the Nazi Party\u2019s declaration calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April, instructing the party members:<\/p>\n
The action committees are further responsible \u2026 to explain and disseminate the truth\u2014that peace and order reign in Germany, that the German Volk desires wholeheartedly to pursue its work in peace and to live at peace with the rest of the world, that its fight against the Jewish conspiracy is only conducted in self-defence \u2026 On Saturday, at the stroke of 10, Jews will know whom they are fighting. (DB-ER 267)<\/p>\n
The photos of SA militiamen holding up their signs in front of Jewish stores: \u2018Germans! defend yourselves, don\u2019t buy from Jews!\u2019, were sent around the world. We have already told how Bonhoeffer\u2019s 91-year-old grandmother was among the few Berliners who pointedly went shopping in these stores on 1 April. Most people preferred to let this event pass. Church leaders such as Otto Dibelius were writing to their partners abroad not to believe the \u2018propaganda against Germany\u2019. In doing so they did not mention that, on that same day, Hitler\u2019s compliant parliament had passed the Law on the Reconstruction of the Professional Civil Service, of which the third clause, the infamous Aryan paragraph, provided for all those not of the Aryan race, i.e. Jews, to be dismissed from the civil service.
\nThere are indications that men like Dibelius at that time were not acting of their own free will. In her spirited biography of Bonhoeffer, Renate Wind said that at the time \u2018almost all the Protestant church was prostrate before Hitler\u2019. But, vivid as this description is, one need only have met Otto Dibelius to know that such an attitude must be foreign to his nature. At the time, the President of the Evangelical High Church Council in Berlin, Hermann Kapler, informed it and the General Superintendents that he had sent telegrams of protest to several government ministries. But the first protests had already arrived from churches abroad. On 4 March 1933, the Executive Committee of the Federal Council of Churches in the USA, whose meeting in 1930 in Washington Bonhoeffer had attended, issued a statement \u2018condemning persecution of the Jews in Germany\u2019; it was mentioned in an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung, a widely read national newspaper, on 23 March. It was clear to everyone involved that such protests would soon swell to an angry flood. The result might be that the new rulers of Germany would become unwilling to negotiate.
\nWhen Bonhoeffer wrote on 14 April 1933 to his friend Erwin Sutz that, on the Jewish question, \u2018here the most intelligent people have totally lost both their heads and their Bible\u2019 (DBWE 12 I\/38), the reason was not to be found in total blindness, nor in the national mood of exuberance, but rather in the hope that through clever diplomacy one could still avoid the worst outcome and stay in dialogue with the new regime. This view was shared by the Catholic bishops and the leaders of the Catholic Centre Party, who could not be suspected either of harbouring any enthusiasm for Hitler. Like the overwhelming majority of the people, the leaders of both churches were fatally deceived by Hitler, with the fear of a communist revolution playing the decisive role in their thinking.
\nWhile \u2018Potsdam Day\u2019 had been put on for the benefit of the general public, Hitler\u2019s plan to get the majority of the people behind him had to include bringing a positive image of the \u2018new age\u2019 to small towns and even to villages. From Ilsenburg in the Harz Mountains, Friedrich Busch\u2014a 24-year-old lecturer in a seminary there that prepared pastors for German congregations in South America\u2014wrote to his fianc\u00e9e:<\/p>\n
On the first of May there was a big commotion here. It was only with sharp pricks of conscience that I declined to join the insubordinates [the insufficiently submissive], and instead went along with the seminary to the big procession. Led by the brown-shirted Nazi student group, which until now has existed secretly at the seminary and was coming out in uniform for the first time, we closed ranks with the trade associations directly behind the schoolteachers \u2026 Not a house to be seen that wasn\u2019t decked out with evergreens, fir trees set up in front, colourful flags, pictures of Hitler or Goebbels, or banners \u2026 You can imagine how it irked me to be forced to march with the hallelujah-shouting rabble in Mr Goebbels\u2019 propaganda procession.<\/p>\n
At the May Day celebrations, the processions ended with entertainment and free beer. That probably pleased a lot of people; but Hitler also wanted to win over those who weren\u2019t so easily tempted, including both the main churches. So in his May Day speech, in which he promised to end unemployment, the greatest social problem of the day, by building the Autobahn (national highway) system, he again finished with a prayer: \u2018Lord, we are with you! Now bless our fight for our freedom and our German fatherland!\u2019 For those who didn\u2019t think much of theatrical religious declarations, he found other phrasing. On 23 May, in his speech announcing the Enabling Act, which was given the high-sounding name \u2018The Law to Relieve the Emergency of the People and the State\u2019, he included a passage intended to reassure the church leaders in Germany: \u2018The National Government perceives in the two Christian confessions the most important factors for the preservation of our national heritage [Volkstum] \u2026 It will respect any contracts concluded between these Churches and the provincial governments [L\u00e4nder].\u2019
\nHitler knew that words alone would not be sufficient. How much the Third Reich needed the churches\u2019 support should be made plain in the sight of all, so it sent its \u2018movement fighting troops\u2019 in uniform to attend Sunday worship services. Many local church members, but also pastors and professors of theology, let themselves be bedazzled by this; in fact, the idea soon spread among church circles that the Nazis were bringing about a new era of a \u2018people\u2019s mission\u2019, to make Germany a Christian country again. Friedrich Busch described to his fianc\u00e9e how this was happening in Ilsenburg:<\/p>\n
Today was the installation of the new representatives to the synods from local churches, a big fuss, most of them in uniform, the rest in top hats. The storm troopers and the Hitler youth came marching in. Such things are too grotesque to have any kind of reality, except an extremely dangerous reality. All day I\u2019ve kept seeing these uniformed men before me, as they sang \u2018Let us all set our faces \/ and our entire being \/ straight towards Jerusalem!\u2019 Some were so totally inattentive that surely they didn\u2019t hear themselves singing about Jerusalem. But others\u2019 faces looked as though they thought it was about a battle against Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
This was written on 30 July 1933, when the struggle for the Protestant church was already in full swing, and when Bonhoeffer and everyone who thought as he did had already lost the church elections and thus the first battle with those who followed Hitler.
\nLong before 1933 there had already been Nazi Party members in the Protestant church. In 1932 most of them banded together in the German Christian Faith Movement. Now that Hitler was in power, they concluded that it was their duty to transform the Protestant provincial churches into a \u2018German Reich Church in the national socialist [Nazi] spirit\u2019. Until then, the 28 provincial Protestant churches had been loosely gathered together in the German Protestant Church Federation, founded in 1922, but by now all the provincial churches wanted closer ties than that.
\nOf the 28 independent churches in the Federation, the Church of the Old Prussian Union (APU) had by far the most members. It was called Old Prussian because the \u2018new Prussian\u2019 provinces incorporated by Bismarck into the Prussian state following the war of 1866\u2014Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hessen-Kassel and Nassau, along with the city of Frankfurt\u2014had kept their independent provincial churches. \u2018Union\u2019 indicated the APU\u2019s continuity with the united Prussian Church created by King Friedrich Wilhelm in 1817, bringing together Lutheran and Reformed churches, though most of the local congregations remained either Lutheran or Reformed.
\nBesides the APU, the Federation included such large provincial churches as the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Bavaria, W\u00fcrttemberg and Hanover, but there were also some very small ones, in small German provinces that had previously been independent states. The APU, to which Bonhoeffer belonged, reached from East Prussia (including K\u00f6nigsberg, now part of Russia) to Aachen in the west, near the Belgian border; as the largest Protestant church, it carried a disproportionate weight in the Church Federation. The call to unite the Protestant churches had been popular long before the German Christians made it their cause. Now it was raised even more loudly, as Protestants saw their government treating the Catholic Church as a partner and negotiating a treaty of state, the so-called Concordat, with the Vatican.
\nBut the German Christians, unlike Hitler and his propagandist Goebbels, were not very clever at public relations. They organized a \u2018Reich Conference\u2019 on 3\u20134 April in Berlin, at which they shouted for all to hear that the Church must now \u2018synchronize\u2019 (gleichschalten) with the new Germany; it must adopt the F\u00fchrer principle, and alien (artfremdes) blood did not belong in the pulpit, therefore the Church must adopt the Aryan paragraph and dismiss its Christian pastors of Jewish heritage. It is important to appreciate the extent to which, before Hitler, German Jews had been integrated in German society. There were no ghettos, and no one gave any thought to the fact that, for instance, Bonhoeffer\u2019s friend Franz Hildebrandt, who was preparing for ordination as a Lutheran pastor, had a Jewish mother.
\nTwo of Hitler\u2019s cabinet ministers, G\u00f6ring and Frick, appeared at the Reich Conference, thus giving it an official whitewash. The Berlin Party Secretary, Wilhelm Kube, made a long speech in which he rudely insulted church leaders such as Dibelius. All this went too far even for many supporters of the German Christians. The signs were that the convictions on various sides were irreconcilable, and thus there would be a fight over the Protestant church in Germany (DB-ER 269\u201371).<\/p>\n
\u2018The Church and the Jewish Question\u2019<\/p>\n
The Bonhoeffers, like the middle- and upper-class majority in the country, were under no immediate threat from this political upheaval, but they soon began to feel the effects of the new laws. Gerhard Leibholz, Sabine\u2019s husband, a professor of law at G\u00f6ttingen University, was threatened with the loss of his position due to his Jewish ancestry. Karl Bonhoeffer and his eldest son Karl Friedrich, also as professors, had to resist pressure from the new regime within their respective institutions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer could easily become a victim of the Malicious Practices Act merely by keeping in touch with his friends abroad.
\nThrough the Reichstag fire, Karl Bonhoeffer became the first family member to come into direct contact with the new government. His services were requested as consulting psychiatrist in the highly publicized trial of the lone suspect, the Dutchman van der Lubbe, who was supposed to have started the fire. Dr Bonhoeffer accepted this task and carried it out as he saw it his duty to do. It would not have occurred to him, at the time, to act otherwise. But even at this early stage, the Bonhoeffers were among the best-informed families in the country, having more specific experience than most people of the criminal methods being employed by the new government. Bonhoeffer\u2019s brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, was chief of staff for the Minister of Justice, Franz G\u00fcrtner, whom Hitler had inherited from the previous government, intentionally in order to show that \u2018justice is independent in the National Socialist [Nazi] state\u2019. G\u00fcrtner knew that Dohnanyi was secretly keeping a chronological list of the legal offences committed by the Nazi regime. In the years to come, Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were to be drawn into an ever closer partnership in their struggle against the terrorism of the Nazi dictatorship.
\nDietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the first theologians, after 30 January 1933, to recognize Hitler\u2019s policy against the Jews as a problem for the Church. There were never to be many who agreed with him. He had very soon realized that this was not just a church problem, but also an eminently political one. Having been warned by Dohnanyi, he was already writing his essay on \u2018The Church and the Jewish Question\u2019 even before the law on the civil service containing the Aryan paragraph was issued. He had first presented his theses on this topic to a group of pastors invited by Revd Gerhard Jacobi in the parish house of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, some of whom left the room in protest because they, like most Germans at the time, were of a different opinion.
\nThe essay, which he was still able to have printed in the June issue of Vormarsch, a Protestant \u2018monthly magazine for politics and culture\u2019 (DB-ER 240), shows how hard it was at the time, even for such an independent-minded theologian as Bonhoeffer, to subject the government and its legal conduct to theologically based criticism. A long tradition stood against it. During the Counter-Reformation, when the Lutheran provincial churches in Germany were in great danger, they had been protected by the Protestant German princes. This was the beginning of more than four hundred years of a close relationship between church and state in Germany, and a sharing of responsibilities between them based on Luther\u2019s \u2018doctrine of the two kingdoms\u2019. According to traditional Lutheran thinking, it was the state\u2019s responsibility to uphold law and order in the \u2018kingdom of this world\u2019. It exercised its power as the authority established by God, and the Church had no right to interfere here. The Church was responsible \u2018to proclaim the kingdom of God\u2019, and the state was not allowed to meddle in the spiritual mission of the Church. However, it was supposed to provide the legal framework within which the Church could carry out its mission unhindered, and could watch over the conduct of church office-bearers in legal matters, to see that they obeyed the law of the land.
\nThis is what Bonhoeffer had been taught at university. This theology did not even allow for the theoretical possibility that the state could itself become unjust. Because he was the first Lutheran theologian to think this particular matter through, Bonhoeffer in 1933 saw the Church\u2019s situation more clearly and drew more radical conclusions from it than most of his teachers and friends, even Karl Barth whom he so admired. Bonhoeffer wrote in his essay:<\/p>\n
There are thus three possibilities for action that the church can take vis-\u00e0-vis the state: first (as we have said), questioning the state as to the legitimate state character of its actions, that is, making the state responsible for what it does. Second is service to the victims of the state\u2019s actions. The church has an unconditional obligation towards the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. \u2018Let us work for the good of all.\u2019 These are both ways in which the church, in its freedom, conducts itself in the interest of a free state. In times when the laws are changing, the church may under no circumstances neglect either of these duties. The third possibility is not just to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel, but to seize the wheel itself. Such an action would be direct political action on the part of the church. This is only possible and called for if the church sees the state to be failing in its function of creating law and order \u2026 The necessity for immediate political action by the church must, however, be decided by an \u2018evangelical council\u2019 as and when the occasion arises. (DBWE 12, II\/13)<\/p>\n
Here Bonhoeffer was far-sightedly addressing the question that was to decide whether Germany under Hitler would remain a civilized nation or slide into barbarism. He was standing before his church and demanding that it develop a political conscience and take determined action. If it had done so, there might have been a \u2018timely resistance movement\u2019, but the response at that point was only a very limited one, carried out by a small number of Christians. In such a situation there are a thousand reasons to say it would be better to wait and see. Resistance might look unpatriotic, other people are in a better position to undertake it, we aren\u2019t yet dealing with the really important issues, and whatever else one might consider as reasons to put off action. Resistance is almost always avoided because those who must offer it say that the time has not yet come.
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s early rejection of Nazism had much to do with the Jewish question. Again, this was not an isolated decision, but rather, like so much else in his life, one that was influenced by family and friends. Even before 1933, all the members of his family had disapproved of Hitler. Moreover, his twin sister was married to a Jewish Christian, and his friend and theological dialogue partner Franz Hildebrandt was, according to Nazi terminology, a \u2018half-Jew\u2019. But in April 1933, even though the whole family agreed on this matter, only the youngest son, the one who had become a pastor, had, with his essay \u2018The Church and the Jewish Question\u2019, already put these thoughts into a call to action. At the same time, his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi had initiated a sustained struggle behind the scenes in the Ministry of Justice. In the spring of 1933, Bonhoeffer understood right away that the persecution of the Jews, then just getting under way, was to be the state\u2019s decisive challenge to the Church; thus he was already ahead of the church struggle before it began. From our point of view today, this gives him a particular status within it; but at the time, his clear-sightedness about the political consequences of theological statements made him, even for his friends in what was to be the Confessing Church, an inconvenient Cassandra.<\/p>\n
The church struggle begins<\/p>\n
Towards the end of April, the Church\u2019s situation became considerably more acute. The German Christians took for granted that, since Hitler\u2019s victory, they were in charge of the Church. But the picture they painted of the coming \u2018Reich Church\u2019 was anything but attractive to the great majority of practising Protestant Christians. In this way the German Christians themselves brought about the development of an opposition against them: the Young Reformation Movement for the Renewal of the Church. True to the above-mentioned \u2018doctrine of the two kingdoms\u2019, the Young Reformation declared: We say yes to the new government under Adolf Hitler, but no to the German Christians. The Church must remain the Church, and the state may not be allowed to interfere in its affairs. The only sources for the concerns of the Church are the Bible and the confessional writings of the Reformation. The German Christian attempt to change that is unacceptable. The Young Reformation was saying No specifically to the German Christians, not to the government; on the contrary, it was second to no one in its political loyalty.
\nLooking back decades later at the religious groupings confronting one another at that time, one finds not only contradictions, but also some surprising areas of agreement. This explains why, for many people, it was so hard to see what Hitler\u2019s intentions really were. For example, the Young Reformation declared its \u2018wish [for the Church] to reverse the aging trend among office-holders and in the membership of governing bodies, through more efforts to bring in younger persons, especially from those who served in the first world war (DBWE 12, I\/44)\u2019. They spoke of \u2018alliances in the struggle\u2019, and were in favour of \u2018setting up a practical training year\u2019 which was to bring future pastors together \u2018in genuine companionship and service with people from all walks of life\u2019.<\/p>\n
Today it is not enough to declare in a general and uncommitted way that the church must continue in future to take up the cause of the poor and those in need; instead it must help to bear the severe hardships of people who have been traumatized socially and emotionally by the political fate that has inevitably been the outcome of struggle for them.<\/p>\n
It was thoughts like these that persuaded a naval officer named Martin Niem\u00f6ller to make the move \u2018From the U-Boat to the Pulpit\u2019. This was the title under which the feisty pastor from Dahlem had published his widely read memoir; and years later, when colleagues from southern Germany heard the tone of voice of the former submarine commander at meetings in his parish house, they could have sworn they were sitting in the officers\u2019 mess. It didn\u2019t make any difference to the Nazis, however. All they heard was what the Young Reformation was saying: \u2018We confess our faith in the Holy Spirit, and therefore reject, as a matter of principle, the exclusion of non-Aryans from the Church, because it is based on confusion between State and Church. The State is supposed to judge; the Church is supposed to save\u2019 (DBWE 12, I\/44). How strong was the hope of being able to curb the excesses of the Nazis and, in view of \u2018what all German people have in common\u2019, to work amicably with them, is shown by the efforts of Hans Joachim Schoeps. After Easter 1933 he founded a new Jewish youth organization which he called the German Advance Guard, German Jewish Followers, to gather up the Jewish members of youth groups which had been dissolved or \u2018synchronized\u2019 with the Nazis. Schoeps, who was also a public speaker for the Reich Association of Jewish Front-Line Soldiers, was at the same time trying to get an audience with Hitler to persuade him that the old liberal leading class needed to be replaced by \u2018veterans\u2019 association forces\u2019. He thought that in this way he would get the Nazis to be more willing to negotiate. In 1956 he reported:<\/p>\n
I was working with some friends on a memorandum about the legal situation and the condition of German Jews, showing how they could be included as an incorporation among others in building the new Reich \u2026 The Jews who have immigrated from the east since 1918, and the Zionists, to the extent that they didn\u2019t, as they said themselves, already consider themselves a Palestinian diaspora rather than Germans, I wanted to put under the protection of the minority laws until they emigrated; for the old-established Jews, however, I wanted a firm guarantee of their full rights and duties as citizens by the Reich leadership.<\/p>\n
When the leaders of the Church Federation proposed to write a constitution for the newly uniting German Evangelical Church, the member churches agreed that there was no question of allowing the German Christians to be involved in this. On 25 April a \u2018triumvirate\u2019 met to begin work on the draft. Hermann Kapler, President of the Evangelical High Church Council, represented the Old Prussian Union Church. The Lutheran churches were represented by Bishop August Marahrens from Hanover, the Reformed churches by Pastor Hermann Albert Hesse, a well-known Reformed leader from Wuppertal.
\nBut Hitler had no intention of respecting Luther\u2019s doctrine of the \u2018two kingdoms\u2019; he saw any opposition, even by the Church, as directed against himself, and he very cleverly found a way to meddle in the work of the new drafting committee. He appointed Ludwig M\u00fcller, a military chaplain from K\u00f6nigsberg, East Prussia, who had long been a Nazi Party member, as his Authorized Representative for Protestant Church Affairs, and assigned him to \u2018promote all efforts in the creation of an Evangelical German Reich Church\u2019. The triumvirate had to take him on board right away in order not to offend Hitler, and the German Christians also had to react to Hitler\u2019s surprise move. On no account did they want to make M\u00fcller the head of their movement\u2014their Reich leader was a pastor named Joachim Hossenfelder\u2014but they named M\u00fcller as their patron and as candidate for the office of Reich Bishop. The Young Reformation countered that it was the triumvirate which must nominate a candidate for bishop, and it named Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, the highly respected director of a church community for the disabled at Bethel in Westphalia.
\nThe draft constitution for the new German Evangelical Church was published on 25 May. During the following two days, representatives of the 28 provincial churches hastened to hold their deliberations on it, and also to elect Friedrich von Bodelschwingh as Reich Bishop. But neither Hitler nor Hindenburg was prepared to accept Bodelschwingh in this capacity. Ludwig M\u00fcller and the German Christians unleashed a ruthless campaign against him, saying that the constitution was not yet in force and therefore the churches\u2019 representatives were not authorized to elect a bishop.
\nIn the midst of this crisis, Hermann Kapler retired as President of the High Church Council, and General Superintendent Ernst Stoltenhoff from the Rhineland was appointed as an acting successor. This could be interpreted as a procedural error, since according to a state agreement the provincial government of Prussia was entitled to be consulted in appointments to this office. It was indeed only a provisional appointment, but the Prussian Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs, Bernhard Rust, immediately declared that the Church had transgressed its legal limits and therefore lost its entitlement to conduct its own legal affairs.
\nAnyone who could read the signs of the times had to be deeply alarmed, in 1933, by the appointment of Rust to his own job. His enmity towards the Church and his hatred of Jews were as well known as the fact that his sole qualification for office was being an \u2018old guard\u2019 Nazi Party member. This man was now in charge of Prussia\u2019s schools and universities, as well as the Religious Affairs department. After the war, Karl Bonhoeffer wrote of him:<\/p>\n
Of the official ceremonies at the university, the only one I attended was the inaugural speech of Rust, the Minister for Cultural Affairs. Unfortunately neither I nor any of the other professors had the courage on this occasion to get up and walk out in protest against the Minister\u2019s insulting position toward the professors. (DB-ER 279)<\/p>\n
Rust named August J\u00e4ger, an anti-church lawyer on his ministry staff, as state commissioner for Prussia\u2019s provincial churches. J\u00e4ger began \u2018restoring order\u2019 by suspending all clergymen in positions of leadership from their offices, allowing the SA militia to take over church office buildings, and filling all key positions in church structures with German Christians. This, now, really had the look of a battle by the Hitler state against the Protestant church. But J\u00e4ger\u2019s arbitrary actions aroused such a storm of protest all over Germany, as well as an appeal from Hindenburg, that Hitler called them off.
\nTo this day it is often overlooked that the Protestant church never fought against Hitler\u2019s policies, or even posed objections to them; instead, Hitler, by ingenious means, conducted a fight against the Protestant church, for of course Rust had acted in consultation with him. However, since Hitler had not appeared in person on behalf of any of these measures, he could say they were departmental errors. Orders that turned out to be false moves could be taken back without being blamed on Hitler or damaging him. The truth was that at this stage of his takeover of power, nothing that was happening in the Protestant church was a matter of indifference to him. So, immediately upon reversing Rust\u2019s move, he undertook another.
\nHitler was not a Protestant church member\u2014he was nominally a Catholic, and never officially left the Church of Rome\u2014but on 14 July he personally ordered elections to be held for the leadership of the new Protestant church, and set the date as 23 July. This meant there were only nine days to prepare, following his announcement. The German Christians were not nearly well enough organized, but Hitler made it the duty of all local Nazi Party secretaries to support their cause enthusiastically. This led to a frenzy of activity on behalf of the German Christians all over the country. Among other things, rallies were held at universities appealing to students to demonstrate \u2018spontaneously\u2019 on behalf of Ludwig M\u00fcller. \u2018Spontaneous\u2019 was one of the Nazis\u2019 favourite words for actions planned by the Party. Years later, boys coming home from dutiful participation in Hitler Youth meetings, on being asked what they did there, might say, \u2018We practised spontaneous applause.\u2019
\nAs a pastor in a university setting, Bonhoeffer, together with his students, had thoroughly prepared for the German Christian rally that was held at the university in Berlin. The T\u00e4gliche Rundschau (Daily Review), a Protestant newspaper, said that \u2018when the resolution supporting Chaplain M\u00fcller\u2019s candidacy for bishop was read out, nine-tenths of the audience left the auditorium\u2019. Three days later, there was a debate organized by Bonhoeffer and a colleague in the university building in Unter den Linden Boulevard. The report on it was entitled \u2018The Struggle for the Church\u2019. In those days, heavy with religious tension, 2000 students are said to have turned up. Can we imagine that today? The speakers included German Christian professors, representatives of the neutral group of theology students and teachers who could not or did not want to take sides, and as sole representative of the Young Reformation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. According to the reports in the church press, his words must have profoundly impressed his audience. Here the work he had put into the essay on \u2018The Church and the Jewish Question\u2019 had its first public effect, since he was able to express in simple words why a church which adopted the Aryan paragraph, or which put up with the state\u2019s deposing church leaders and appointing others, was giving itself up for lost.
\nHectic days were ahead for Bonhoeffer\u2019s students during this summer semester, since besides their own work they organized a news service for the suspended church General Superintendents and were drafting and distributing their own protest statements. Bonhoeffer himself participated in many pastors\u2019 conferences in Berlin, and was shocked to see how hesitant the pastors were about active struggle. After the war, Gerhard Jacobi reported that on two occasions, when the pastors were discussing only the possibility that protests might bring further harm to the Church, Bonhoeffer stood up and merely quoted a brief couplet from Theodor Storm: \u2018One man asks: What is to come? \/ The other, What is right? \/ And that is the difference \/ Between the free man and the slave.\u2019 If the state has driven its leaders from office, and arrogated to itself the decision as to who may be a member of the Church and who may not, shouldn\u2019t the Church\u2019s ministers feel free to launch their sharpest counterattack?
\nBonhoeffer and Franz Hildebrandt then proposed an interdict, a sort of strike by pastors. There would be no more church funerals in Germany until the state restored the Church\u2019s rights under law. A better moment could not have been chosen to take such a decision. Hitler wanted to show the world that he had brought his German revolution to a successful conclusion; so alongside the solemn signing on 20 July of the Concordat between the Reich government and the Vatican, an uproar in the Protestant church was really not what he wanted. If such pressure had been applied right at that moment, Hitler would have had to yield. But everyone to whom Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt turned with the idea was shocked and wouldn\u2019t even consider it. So then the two friends wondered together whether the time had not come for them to leave the church which had ordained them as pastors.
\nDuring these tempestuous days in which one piece of news was swept away by the next, Church Councillor Heckel, who was in charge of German expatriate congregations for the Church Federation, asked Bonhoeffer to come and see him. They knew each other from ecumenical discussion meetings and had met more recently several times at Young Reformation events. Heckel asked Bonhoeffer if he would be willing to take a German pastorate in London. Was this the solution? Hildebrandt had already been thinking of looking for a pastorate abroad. But first they had to wait and see how the church elections turned out.
\nHitler had purposefully allowed only nine days for the church election campaign. He had named Hans Pfundtner, a leading government official, as his Authorized Representative to ensure that the character of \u2018free elections\u2019 was preserved. But the opposition\u2019s campaign rallies were broken up by SA commandos and their flyers and lists of candidates confiscated by the secret police, the Gestapo. The one and only daily church newspaper had to cease publication. The German Christians obtained a court injunction against the name the Young Reformation had chosen for its list of candidates, \u2018Evangelical Church List\u2019. Together with Gerhard Jacobi, Bonhoeffer managed to get in to see Rudolf Diels, the head of the Gestapo, to register their protest, pointing out that Hitler had guaranteed free elections. They were told that the Young Reformation could continue to campaign if it changed the name of its list: the name Gospel and Church was agreed upon. The police even gave back some of the flyers.
\nThen, on the eve of the election, Hitler made a speech on the radio, during an intermission at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, in which he said he was expecting a vote in favour of \u2018the forces that are exemplified by the German Christians who stand firmly upon the foundation of the National Socialist State\u2019 (DB-ER 296). He also made it the duty of all good Nazis who were not Catholics and had not left the Church to cast their votes. The result could not have been worse. The German Christians got 70 per cent of all votes, in some areas even more, and in the majority of the provincial churches they filled all the key positions. Ludwig M\u00fcller, Hitler\u2019s man, became president of the High Church Council in Berlin, and also bishop of the Old Prussian Church, in which he had dictatorial powers. Hermann G\u00f6ring, Prime Minister of Prussia, bestowed on him the honorary title of State Councillor.
\nIn Hanover, but especially in the southern German provincial churches of Bavaria and W\u00fcrttemberg, where there had already been German Christians in office before the election, things looked a little better. Since Bishops Meiser, Wurm and Marahrens and their staffs could stay in office, these three churches were henceforth referred to as the \u2018intact\u2019 churches, while those now dominated by German Christians were regarded as \u2018destroyed\u2019. The latter included all the Prussian provincial churches except that of Westphalia, where the election results had not been sufficient to allow the German Christians to take over completely.
\nOn the Sunday of the election, Bonhoeffer preached in Trinity Church in Berlin, on Matthew 16:13\u201318, about the rock on which Jesus wants to build his Church:<\/p>\n
If we had our way, we would prefer to keep detouring around the decisions confronting us. If we had our way, we would prefer not to be dragged into this fight over the church \u2026 But\u2014God be thanked\u2014it is not up to us. With God, we get just what we don\u2019t want \u2026 We will not be spared any of this\u2014making a decision means that we differ with others \u2026 In the midst of the creaking and groaning of the church structures, which have been profoundly shaken and are collapsing and crumbling away here and there, we can still hear the promise of the eternal church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, the church on the rock, which Christ has built and continues to build through all the ages. Where is this church?\u2026 Come, all of you who are asking this seriously, you who are left alone and lonely, who have lost your church. Let us go back to the Holy Scriptures, let us look together for the eternal church. Let anyone with ears to hear listen. (DBWE 12, III\/8)<\/p>\n
The question of power had been decided in Hitler\u2019s favour; but, as Bonhoeffer made clear to his hearers, this had been the very means of posing the question of truth in such a way that it could not be ignored. After this heavy election defeat, the Young Reformation withdrew from politics and announced that from then on it would concentrate on missions, which meant \u2018home missions\u2019: evangelizing its own compatriots. Bishop Dibelius and several others resigned from their offices.<\/p>\n
From the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League to the Bethel Confession<\/p>\n
Groups of pastors were now gathering all over Germany to formulate confessions of faith intended to correct the false teachings of the German Christians. What they wanted to accomplish was formulated by Martin Niem\u00f6ller on 2 August at a Young Reformation meeting:<\/p>\n
Theologically, is there a fundamental difference between the teachings of the Reformation and the ones the German Christians are proclaiming? Yes! is our fear, though No! is what they say. We must do away with this lack of clarity, by means of a confession of faith for our time. If this doesn\u2019t come from the other side\u2014and there\u2019s no sign of it coming soon\u2014then it has to come from us! and it must come in such a way that the others must answer Yes or No to it \u2026<\/p>\n
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse, another Lutheran theologian who in 1932 was already criticizing the Nazi statements on church policy, had accordingly been charged with writing a confession of faith appropriate to the time for the Protestant church. They were to work at Bethel, where Bodelschwingh made some of his staff available to support them. Bodelschwingh had given up his candidacy for Reich Bishop after four nerve-wracking weeks, but he was still the church leader around whom the opposition could gather. Georg Merz, a lecturer in the Church College at Bethel, was to moderate the discussion meetings.
\nBonhoeffer did not go directly to Bethel, but travelled by way of London, where he preached as a candidate in the two German-speaking local churches which were seeking a shared pastor. Both congregations wanted to call him, but he did not immediately accept. He was tormented by the decision, whether to leave Germany and his church, which was just getting its opposition together again. Didn\u2019t it really mean running away?
\nBodelschwingh personally took his guests on a tour of the Bethel community for the disabled. Bonhoeffer wrote to his grandmother about a church service there:<\/p>\n
It is said of Buddha that he was converted by an encounter with a seriously ill person. What utter madness, that some people today think that the sick can or ought to be legally eliminated. It is almost like building a Tower of Babel and must bring vengeance on us. Anyhow, our concept of sickness and health is pretty ambiguous. What we see as \u2018sick\u2019 is actually healthier, in essential aspects of life and of insight, than health is. And that the two conditions depend on one another is surely an essential part of the plan and the laws of life, which can\u2019t simply be changed to suit people\u2019s impertinence and lack of understanding. (DBWE 12, I\/86)<\/p>\n
Only a few years later, Hitler commanded that just this be done, and had sick and disabled people removed from the population by murder. His \u2018euthanasia doctors\u2019 were only too willing to help.
\nAbout the theological task which occupied him in Bethel, Bonhoeffer wrote to his grandmother:<\/p>\n
Our work here is very enjoyable, and also very demanding. We want to try to make the German Christians declare their intentions. I rather doubt we shall succeed \u2026 It is becoming increasingly clear to me that what we are going to get is a big, v\u00f6lkisch national church that in its essence can no longer be reconciled with Christianity, and that we must make up our minds to take entirely new paths and to follow where they lead. The issue is really Germanism or Christianity, and the sooner the conflict comes out in the open, the better. The greatest danger of all would be in trying to conceal this. (DBWE 12, I\/86)<\/p>\n
The theologians helping to draft the Bethel Confession stayed close to Luther and the confessional writings of the Reformation. In each of six articles they stated first what the Church believes, and in a second paragraph rejected as false doctrine what the German Christians had made of that article of faith. In the article on the people Israel, contributed by Wilhelm Vischer, a Swiss who taught Old Testament at Bethel, it says:<\/p>\n
The fellowship of those belonging to the church is not determined by blood nor, therefore, by race, but by the Holy Spirit and baptism. We reject any attempt to compare or confuse the mission of any other nation with that of Israel, which is part of salvation history. It can never in any case be the mission of any nation to take revenge on the Jews for the murder committed at Golgotha \u2026 We object to the attempt to make the German Protestant church into a Reich church for Christians of the Aryan race, thus robbing it of its promise. This would set up a racial law at the entrance to the church \u2026 (DBWE 12, II\/15)<\/p>\n
For Bonhoeffer the article on the Jews was the most important part of the confession, because it was here that concrete decisions had to be made. He found Vischer\u2019s text particularly well done. But when the draft text was sent to 20 theologians in Germany\u2014including Althaus and Schlatter\u2014for their expert opinions, he already suspected no good would come of it. Not only were the drafters overwhelmed with proposed corrections; it was above all Vischer\u2019s text which was so watered down that Bonhoeffer no longer wanted to own the confession and withdrew his signature from it. His disappointment in the outcome of this work on the Bethel Confession was a significant reason why he sent his acceptance to the two congregations in London. A year later he gave a copy of the final version of the confession to his colleague in England, Julius Rieger, inscribed: \u2018Too many cooks spoil the broth\u2014from an anonymous collaborator D.B.\u2019
\nWhat turned out to be more important than the confession for Bonhoeffer was that in Bethel he met Georg Merz, a theologian from Bavaria who had an unusual feeling for excellence and for contemporary cultural developments. He was an early admirer of the great German writer Thomas Mann and had baptized Mann\u2019s daughter Elisabeth. A consultant to the publisher Kaiser in Munich since the late 1920s, Merz in 1933 arranged for Bonhoeffer to become one of its regular authors, among whom it already counted Karl Barth. The first of Bonhoeffer\u2019s books to be published there, in 1933, was Creation and Fall.
\nA General Synod of the Old Prussian Union Church had been called for 5 September. It was to meet in the Herrenhaus, where the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of the German parliament, sits today. Since the question was still open of what decisions the synod would make with regard to the Aryan paragraph, Bonhoeffer had composed a pamphlet entitled \u2018The Aryan Paragraph in the Church\u2019. It was widely distributed and particularly annoyed those who did not want to see any quarrel with the government over this issue. These included the Church Federation and Councillor Heckel, who was in charge of expatriate congregations. After reading the pamphlet, Heckel decided that Bonhoeffer, whom he had recommended for the pastorate in London, was actually unsuited for the post and resolved to keep him from being sent there. Bonhoeffer had portrayed the Aryan paragraph as adopted by the church as blatantly false doctrine:<\/p>\n
The German Christians say: We are not so much concerned with these thousand Jewish Christians as with the millions of our fellow citizens who are estranged from God. For their sake, these others might in certain cases have to be sacrificed. We answer: We too are concerned for those outside the church, but the church does not sacrifice a single one of its members. It may even be that the church, for the sake of a thousand believing Jewish Christians that it is not allowed to sacrifice, might fail to win over those millions. But what good would it do to gain millions of people at the price of the truth and of love for even a single one? (DBWE 12, II\/16)<\/p>\n
The General Synod turned into a spectacle in brown. Many of the delegates appeared in uniform. Those presiding were Party comrades such as Joachim Hossenfelder, August J\u00e4ger and Kapler\u2019s successor, Friedrich Werner. They quickly ruled out any discussion as to whether the question of a confession of faith should be debated. Next, the church constitution was thrown out; the provincial church structures were replaced with ten bishoprics, whose bishops were under the authority of Ludwig M\u00fcller as head bishop. Finally, the Church Law on the Legal Position of Clergy and Church Officials was adopted. Besides containing the Aryan paragraph, it demanded \u2018unconditional support for the National Socialist State and the German Protestant Church\u2019 from all clergy and office-holders. The small group of those who objected was shouted down and left the room. This disgraceful assembly was soon known throughout Germany as the Brown Synod. However, by refusing to tolerate a small opposition in its midst, it unintentionally created an extra-Synodal opposition which was that much more powerful.
\nMartin Niem\u00f6ller, together with 20 other pastors including Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt, called for the creation of a Pastors\u2019 Emergency League. The suggestion had come from two pastors in the countryside, Eugen Weschke and G\u00fcnter Jacob. Thus the Confessing Church was built from the beginning on cooperation among many pastors and members of local churches. The members of the Emergency League were, first of all, to commit themselves anew to the Scriptures and Confessions; secondly, to resist any violation of these; third, to give financial help to those affected by Nazi laws or by violence; and fourth, to reject the Aryan paragraph. In a very short time as many as 2000 pastors signed up to the commitments of the Emergency League. By the end of the year their number had grown to 6000, and was still to grow by a further thousand. Kurt Scharf, a 32-year-old pastor who was to be elected the following year as president of the Confessing Church in Brandenburg, wrote at the time to his fellow pastors in his district:<\/p>\n
Ludwig M\u00fcller\u2019s formal installation as Reich Bishop at a national meeting of the German Christians, Berlin Cathedral, 23 September 1934<\/p>\n
We commended to one another to take upon ourselves, in the struggle for our confession as a church of the Reformation, everything possible including the ultimate commitment, and to stand by one another unconditionally. We believe that only our willingness to do so will compel the people now in power in the church offices to take notice, and that in our church\u2019s present situation we owe it our profession of faith.<\/p>\n
In October, a Council of Brethren was elected to lead the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League, the first democratically elected governing body in the history of German Protestant churches. There was now a church opposition which could fight the arbitrary decisions of the German Christians as the Young Reformation had not been able to do. Klaus Scholder, in his book The Churches and the Third Reich, describes it thus:<\/p>\n
The strict limitation to church and confession and along with it the deliberate openness of its approach also made the League politically almost impregnable. Thus the organization of the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League became the core of the Confessing Church and remained so until the collapse of the Third Reich.<\/p>\n
But before the opposition had thus established itself, those who initiated the Emergency League had to take action against the forthcoming National Synod in Wittenberg. Here they were not dealing just with the Prussian Church, but with the new German Evangelical Church. This synod was to meet soon after the Prussian Brown Synod, and now it was time to tell the Church publicly, and inform the whole ecumenical community, about what was going on in Germany.
\nIn Kurhessen, where, despite a German Christian majority, August J\u00e4ger\u2019s attempt to synchronize the provincial church with the Nazis had foundered, the provincial synod decided on 11 September to request from the theological faculties in Marburg and Erlangen \u2018a solemn and responsible instruction to German Evangelical Christianity\u2019 as to whether the law adopted by the Old Prussian Church and intended for the entire Reich Church on the conditions of employment for clergy \u2018is in conformity with or contradicts the teaching of Holy Scripture, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teaching of the apostles \u2026\u2019 The reply from Marburg, signed by the Dean of the Faculty, church historian Hans von Soden, was unambiguous. It declared the Aryan paragraph to be irreconcilable with the essence of the Christian Church, and this statement was supported, within a few weeks, by 21 New Testament professors from all over Germany.
\nLutheran dogmatists Paul Althaus and Werner Elert from Erlangen came to a different conclusion. They declared that the \u2018v\u00f6lkisch diversity of external church organization\u2019 expressed \u2018a necessary consequence of the divisions of the peoples which are to be affirmed in terms of destiny as well as ethics\u2019 and thus had to be taken into account \u2018in admission to the ministry of the church\u2019. For the Church\u2019s new task \u2018of being a Volkskirche of the Germans\u2019, in the present situation, \u2018the occupation of its ministry by persons of Jewish origin generally would be a severe burden and a hindrance\u2019. Therefore the Church must \u2018require the withholding of its Jewish Christians from office\u2019. That with these words the two professors were, retrospectively, calling for Jesus, the Apostles and many New Testament authors to be \u2018withheld\u2019 from the German Evangelical Church, does not seem to have entered their minds. Quarrels over the Aryan paragraph continued well into 1934 and flared up again afterwards from time to time.<\/p>\n
\u2018Break with our theologically grounded reserve\u2019<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer had been cancelling his participation in all ecumenical meetings since February, for lack of time; but he wanted to make use of the World Alliance conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, 15\u201320 September 1933, to inform his friends abroad fully about the situation in Germany. The opposite was the intention of Theodor Heckel, who went to a concurrent meeting in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, to reassure ecumenical circles about developments in Germany. He was about to be named as bishop in charge of the church Foreign Office and, although he was not a German Christian, had made up his mind to go along with the Nazi government. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, the Geneva office, the nerve centre of the ecumenical movement, was more accommodating towards him than towards his sparring partner Bonhoeffer. But at that time there were still more ecumenical partners who agreed with Bonhoeffer, and it was he who was invited to give one of the keynote speeches on \u2018The Churches and the Peace Question\u2019 at the World Conference to be held in 1934 on the Danish island of Fan\u00f8.
\nIn Sofia, behind the scenes, Bonhoeffer was able to inform influential men in the ecumenical movement about political developments in Germany and the church struggle, while Heckel was soothing the participants in the Novi Sad meeting. Heckel could not yet manage to block Bonhoeffer\u2019s call as pastor to the two German churches in London, but from this point on the two of them realized that they were on opposite sides. Heckel\u2019s role in Bonhoeffer\u2019s life was henceforth to be that of an adversary. A Bavarian pastor who knew Heckel well, confirmed that he had a nose for politics; he was a seeker after influence and power.
\nThe National Synod, which included all the German provincial churches, met at Wittenberg on 27 September and elected Ludwig M\u00fcller Reich Bishop by acclamation. Over Luther\u2019s tomb in the castle church, the German Christian leader Hossenfelder extolled him: \u2018I greet thee, my Reich Bishop!\u2019 Hildebrandt whispered to Bonhoeffer that now Luther \u2018really would turn over in his grave\u2019 (DB-ER 320). From then on the people called M\u00fcller the \u2018Reibi\u2019.
\nKarl Bonhoeffer\u2019s chauffeur had driven Bonhoeffer, Hildebrandt and Gertrud Staewen to Wittenberg with flyers making known the protest of the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League, which were then distributed there. When the new Reich Bishop made no mention in his report to the synod of the resistance within the Church, the three sent him a telegram asking him to redress this that afternoon. But instead, M\u00fcller proclaimed in his speech that the church struggle was over. At this point, it is said, a snort of laughter was heard from the castle church gallery where Bonhoeffer was standing discreetly.
\nThere was public astonishment that the synod did not adopt the Aryan paragraph for the new Reich Church. Hitler had flatly forbidden it to do so, at the urgent request of the Foreign Office. Bonhoeffer considered the synod a disaster precisely for this reason, since the \u2018intact churches\u2019 and their Lutheran bishops were thereby spared the necessity of protesting against the Aryan paragraph. The Archbishop of Sweden, Erling Eidem, known to be a friend of Germany, had come to Germany especially to implore the leaders of the Protestant church to prevent the Aryan paragraph from being adopted at Wittenberg. If only because of his involvement, the bishops of Hanover, Bavaria and W\u00fcrttemberg would have had to follow suit. Precisely because \u2018nothing happened\u2019 at Wittenberg, the new German Reich church had, in effect, confirmed the Old Prussian Union\u2019s Brown Synod.
\nWith hindsight, this would have been the moment for a successful protest against Hitler by Protestant Christians in Germany. Against the 2000 pastors in the Emergency League, whose ranks were swelling from day to day, he would not have been able to act at that point, with the nations outside Germany watching attentively and the international newspapers carrying full reports. If the churches had followed Bonhoeffer and cried \u2018Schism\u2019, charged Hitler\u2019s obedient Reich Church with heresy and renounced all fellowship with it, Hitler would probably have backed off again. Above all it had become clear that the issues were political, that the real opponent of the church opposition was the government. But on all sides, Bonhoeffer\u2019s and Hildebrandt\u2019s radical proposals fell on deaf ears.
\nThe German Christians had indeed triumphed in Hitler\u2019s church elections and been able to profit from their victory until the National Synod; but it was a Pyrrhic victory, for two reasons. On one hand, it was the Nazi Party which, at Hitler\u2019s command, had brought about their victory, while they themselves had scarcely any competent staff and no national-level organization at all. Among the many indications of this is that there was no interference with the enquiry to theological faculties from the Kurhessian provincial church synod. Any competent organization would have been able to hinder such an undertaking through negotiations behind the scenes.
\nOn the other hand, and this was the decisive fact, the great majority of Hitler\u2019s followers in the Nazi Party, beginning with the local Party secretaries, were in no way friends of the Church. The dream of a strong Nazi church was not that of the Party, and was certainly not Hitler\u2019s dream. The only thing that interested the dictator, and even fascinated him, about the Church was that the Catholic Church as an institution had survived for 19 centuries; only in this sense did it serve as a model for his \u2018Thousand-Year Reich\u2019. Thus the German Christians found themselves in a very unclear and confusing situation, which soon led to sharp internal quarrels. Their unity fell apart, leaving various groups fighting among themselves.
\nAt this point, if not before, the church opposition should have perceived that it was confronted with a government that would be happy to get rid of Christianity in any form. Hitler\u2019s solemn speeches indeed painted a different picture, but these could have been recognized as tactical manoeuvres intended to deceive. The struggle of the Confessing Church against the German Christians was from the beginning a struggle against the wrong opponent. Bonhoeffer, who had never seen it in any other light, wrote to Sutz in 1934:<\/p>\n
It is [also] time for a final break with our theologically grounded reserve about whatever is being done by the state\u2014which really only comes down to fear. \u2018Speak out for those who cannot speak\u2019 [Prov. 31:8]\u2014who in the church today still remembers that this is the very least the Bible asks of us in such times as these? (DBWE 13, 217)<\/p>\n
Heckel put Bonhoeffer under pressure to withdraw his acceptance of his call to the London churches himself. Bonhoeffer not only resisted this, but demanded an appointment with Ludwig M\u00fcller, at which he told him quite plainly that he had no intention of speaking or acting on behalf of the Reich Church while in London. When the Reich Bishop tried to argue with him, Bonhoeffer commenced quoting an article from the Confessio Augustana in Latin. As the Swedish mission chaplain in Berlin wrote to his Archbishop, at that point \u2018M. got a bit hot under the collar and suggested postponing the conversation until later\u2019 (DB-ER 322). M\u00fcller was not a very clever man, and certainly not much of a theologian. It did not take long until nobody took him seriously any more, beginning with his protector, Hitler.<\/p>\n
6. London (1933\u20131935)<\/p>\n
As a German pastor in London<\/p>\n
When Bonhoeffer moved into the parsonage of the German congregation in south London, on 17 October 1933, it meant a radical change in his life. Until that day he had lived in his parents\u2019 home, except for brief periods, and had not had to keep house for himself in either Barcelona or New York. Now he had to learn, and his new surroundings could hardly have been less suited to that purpose.
\nThe main rooms of the parsonage were being rented by a private German school, leaving the new pastor with just two, quite large rooms upstairs, which were cold and damp. An addition had been built onto the house years before and had now settled, so that stepping from one room into the other felt like being on board ship in heavy seas. The windows would not close properly and the wooden doors were warped. There was neither central heating nor warm water. There was a gas fire in the fireplace, but when turned on it made no difference unless one sat directly in front of it, and mice could not be deterred from scurrying around everywhere.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer\u2019s vicarage in the 1950s<\/p>\n
Except for the plague of mice, most of this was fairly normal for an old house in London. Until long after the Second World War, hardly any English private homes had central heating, but for someone coming from Berlin this was an unaccustomed hardship. In his first months in London Bonhoeffer was often ill with colds and fever. From November he had the help of Franz Hildebrandt, who stayed for three months. He also had other visitors, to whom he offered meals and lodging without a great deal of bother. All those who were guests in this household gave glowing reports. Among them was the physicist Herbert Jehle, who had attended Bonhoeffer\u2019s lectures on \u2018Creation and Fall\u2019; he came over often from Oxford and later also turned up in Finkenwalde.
\nBonhoeffer had some fine old furniture from his parents\u2019 home sent to London, along with his Bechstein grand piano. When spring came he could see that this house in Forest Hill was in an especially attractive part of London. There was a large garden with old trees, and only a short walk away was a famous park on a hill with splendid views, reaching far into the Kentish countryside in the south and to the north offering the world-renowned skyline of London.
\nHowever, Bonhoeffer must not have had much time to enjoy all this. \u2018His year and a half in London was the only time in his life when Bonhoeffer worked as a parish minister in a full-time pastorate.\u2019 Every Sunday he had to conduct two worship services, and even though he preached the same sermon in both churches, this was new for him. He was not the sort of preacher who stood up in the pulpit with just a few notes; every sermon was written out word for word. Sixteen of his sermons in London have been preserved.
\nIn Barcelona, Bonhoeffer had already found out how many small tasks there are to do each day in an expatriate congregation, but now, in a much bigger city, he had to take care of them all, for two congregations, without an assistant. \u2018It is really hard to understand how so much can be going on in such a small congregation\u2019, he wrote home. His colleague Julius Rieger reported:<\/p>\n
Towards the end of the week I quite often had a telephone call from Bonhoeffer, for the sole purpose of asking, What are you preaching about next Sunday? Then we would exchange some ideas, either critical or in support of one another, which were always of great benefit, at least to me. Occasionally he would say, \u2018I wrote something about that once,\u2019 and the next morning\u2019s post would bring some essay of his; on one of these he wrote, \u2018Don\u2019t let this get in the way of preparing your sermon.\u2019<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer expected a great deal of congregations who listened to his sermons; even so, once again he demonstrated how easy it was for him to win people over. The church in south London consisted of well-off business people and German diplomats, in contrast to 200-year-old St Paul\u2019s Church in the East End, which consisted of small businessmen, bakers, butchers, tailors and other artisans, many of whose families had been there since the late nineteenth century. During the First World War these people had been treated badly because of their German origins, even though they had long been British subjects. This had traumatized their children, none of whom spoke German anymore or had any contact with the Church. However, there were also more recent immigrants with children, so that Bonhoeffer started a Sunday school as he had done in Barcelona, and it soon began to flourish. They also had a nativity play at Christmas 1934, and like the one in Barcelona it made a great impression. The choir, too, acquired new energy, to the extent that it performed Johannes Brahms\u2019 German Requiem.
\nBonhoeffer made regular pastoral visits to his parishioners, and since the distances he had to travel in London took a lot of his time, he liked to use the lunch hour to meet with colleagues. Rieger describes with what aplomb Bonhoeffer could order a meal in a foreign restaurant. Sometimes after lunch they would go to the cinema, and Bonhoeffer was not averse to taking in a crime thriller. So one day Rieger and his wife found themselves with Bonhoeffer at The Mystery of Mr X. Mr X was an enemy of all policemen, droves of whom were soon breathing their last on the screen. Mrs Rieger found this perfectly dreadful, so they simply stuck a hat in front of her face whenever another doughty guardian of the law fell to the enemy. Rieger wrote that it was one of the most amusing times he ever had at the cinema.
\nFrom reading Bonhoeffer\u2019s writings one has almost solely an impression of great seriousness, but his friends report plenty of laughter shared with him, too, even at the most difficult times. In particular there was merriment over the lively theological arguments between him and Hildebrandt. One such debate was brought to an end by Hildebrandt, to roars of laughter from those listening, by using his sparring partner\u2019s own favourite expressions; he characterized Bonhoeffer\u2019s arguments as \u2018doctrinaire, affected, formalistic and cheap\u2019.
\nThey usually went to bed very late, because the parish work took up so much afternoon and evening time and there was still much to do afterwards. Franz Hildebrandt also played the piano very well and loved to do so. When the two friends played four-hands piano pieces late at night there was no one else in the big house to be disturbed. In the mornings, breakfast was late in the bachelor pad in Forest Hill, with the latest news in The Times and the mail from Germany providing the main themes.<\/p>\n
Carrying on the struggle by other means<\/p>\n
At the beginning Bonhoeffer may still have wondered whether his move to London really meant running away, but it soon became clear to him that here he would be carrying on with the struggle by other means: \u2018\u2026 one is close enough to want to take part in everything and too far away for really active participation\u2019 (DBWE 13, 81), he wrote to his brother Karl Friedrich in January 1934. But he never stopped thinking about what was going on in Germany. It kept him on the telephone almost daily with friends, and especially with his mother, who had become a member and great supporter of Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s church in Dahlem. The post office responsible for Bonhoeffer\u2019s telephone bills is said to have voluntarily reduced the amount by more than half, since a parish minister could not possibly pay such monumental sums. Every six to eight weeks, whenever he felt that he needed to do something, Bonhoeffer flew to Berlin to help his friends there or to plead with them not to back down. Comrades-in-arms such as Niem\u00f6ller were not always enchanted when Hildebrandt and Bonhoeffer wrote to \u2018embrace you in fellowship \u2026 with all the force of our youth\u2019.<\/p>\n
Now is the time when we must be radical on all points, including the Aryan paragraph, without fear of the possible disagreeable consequences for ourselves. If we are untrue to ourselves in any way at this point, we shall discredit the entire struggle of last summer. Please, please, you be the one who makes sure that everything is kept clear, courageous and untainted. (DBWE 13, 56)<\/p>\n
Niem\u00f6ller replied that the two friends had added stress to his life when it was already stressful enough. The issue at this point was a new scandal unleashed by the German Christians. On 13 November they had put on a big rally in the Berlin Sports Palace, with all the leaders of the Reich Church on hand. The keynote speech was given by the Berlin Nazi Party leader Reinhard Krause, a secondary school teacher, who called on the Church to \u2018liberate itself\u2019 finally, in Adolf Hitler\u2019s new Germany, \u2018from the Old Testament with its Jewish money morality and from these stories of cattle dealers and pimps\u2019; all offices in the church must be taken over by \u2018men of the movement\u2019, and the Aryan paragraph must be implemented everywhere without exception.
\nThe press carried full reports, and the news spread like the wind through Germany that none of the Ministry of Church Affairs officials and bishops of the Reich Church who had been present had raised a word of protest against Krause\u2019s speech. Outraged letters and telegrams were received from individuals and groups, including many rank-and-file German Christians. For the first time people resigned in large numbers from the German Christian Faith Movement.
\nBonhoeffer and Hildebrandt were reading about all this in The Times, which was outstandingly well informed and could count on great public interest in stories such as these. In the same paper they also read that, because of this scandal, Ludwig M\u00fcller had to rescind the Reich Church adoption of the Aryan paragraph and dismiss Hossenfelder\u2019s Church Ministry Council. Meanwhile, a position paper by the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League on the Sports Palace scandal was immediately confiscated, and some members of the League were suspended from their pastorates; but, once again, Hitler knew exactly how he should react. This time he presented himself as being \u2018above church party politics\u2019, and had his Interior Minister announce that he had no intention either of intervening in the church dispute or of using police measures. So the seas continued to rise. M\u00fcller was drenched with telegrams and had to postpone indefinitely his solemn installation as Reich Bishop, which had been scheduled for 3 December. He began to look unsure of himself; we now know that Hitler had sent for him and told him that he had to sort this matter out by himself, and that he could not afford to make any more mistakes.
\nM\u00fcller also had influential enemies in the government itself. If his arbitrary action in handing over the Protestant youth groups to be absorbed by the Hitler Youth was taken in order to shore up his relationship with Hitler, it was a smart move. Like all ideological dictators, Hitler wanted to cut the youth off from all influences outside the Party. He is supposed on one occasion to have formulated his idea of this as follows:<\/p>\n
These young people are learning nothing other than to think as Germans and act as Germans, and when these boys come into our organization at the age of ten \u2026 then, four years later, come from the boys\u2019 groups into the Hitler Youth, and we keep them there another four years, then we are certainly not going to let them go \u2026 instead, we take them directly into the Party, into the Storm Troops, into the SS \u2026 and so on, and they never get away for the rest of their lives, and are quite content so.<\/p>\n
Hitler, for whom \u2018youth\u2019 apparently consisted of boys only, was never really able to carry out this totalitarian idea, but it was clear what he wanted. Baldur von Schirach was determined from the beginning to bind German youth exclusively to Hitler. In a speech on 5 October 1933 in Frankfurt on the Oder, having mentioned the national church which was being established, he declared to great applause: \u2018I belong to no confession. I am neither Protestant nor Catholic. I believe only in Germany.\u2019 The leaders of the church youth groups, however much the majority of them supported \u2018German Volk-ish\u2019 thinking, were not inclined to hand over their big youth organizations to this man. In Berlin in 1933 there were about a thousand boys in the Hitler Youth, but 2500 secondary school pupils in Protestant Bible study groups alone and many more in the YMCA, the Boy Scouts and various other groups.
\nThe leaders of the Evangelical Church Youth had declared several times to the Reich Bishop that there was no question of annexation of their groups by the Hitler Youth, and he had promised them not to take any action without consulting them. He had solemnly made the same promise to the south German bishops. But the last time he promised not to do anything without consultation, he had already made his deal with Schirach. The latter had invited him to dinner at the Hotel Esplanade, because he knew the Reich Bishop was a fan of the violinist Barnabas von G\u00e9czy who was appearing there with his orchestra, and in this pleasant atmosphere the two were soon of one mind. The next day M\u00fcller didn\u2019t want to confess this to the Protestant youth leaders. When finally confronted with his betrayal, he lied his way out of it. Probably his claim that Hitler had described the incorporation of the Evangelical Church Youth into the Hitler Youth as \u2018his best Christmas present\u2019 was also a lie.
\nM\u00fcller\u2019s opponents in the government did not at all approve of his over-hasty agreement with Schirach. The Foreign Minister, Konstantin von Neurath, found the Reich Bishop\u2019s stupid mistakes and mendacity to be disturbing for foreign relations. Being a diplomat, he expressed this a bit more formally, saying the Reich Bishop must be lacking in \u2018intelligence and character\u2019. Wilhelm Frick, the Interior Minister and his staff also wanted to get rid of M\u00fcller. He had even forfeited much of the respect of his own followers; but Hitler still kept him on. Karl Barth told an American church representative, Charles MacFarland, who was visiting Germany on his own initiative and had been invited to meet Hitler, to give the Reich Chancellor the message that \u2018putting the German church into the hands of Ludwig M\u00fcller is like turning the army over to the Captain from K\u00f6penick\u2019. Hitler simply didn\u2019t want to admit that he had made a completely incompetent one of his plenipotentiaries. Men like G\u00f6ring and Rust supported M\u00fcller for other reasons. They wanted a Nazi church or no church at all.
\nNevertheless it looked as though the Reich Church, and with it the German Christians, had their backs to the wall, and that M\u00fcller would soon fall. The church opposition was growing from day to day. The Pastors\u2019 Emergency League now had 7000 members. In this situation, Bonhoeffer in London urged a new course for the Emergency League. He had heard that the bishops of the \u2018intact\u2019 churches were already negotiating with M\u00fcller again instead of fighting against him. Bonhoeffer implored his friends to have the Emergency League press for the election of new synods to replace the ones in which German Christians were in charge, and that the Emergency League itself must stop taking in new members, lest the opposition be infiltrated by its enemies. These were by no means illusory proposals. A councillor of the Reich Court in Leipzig, Dr Wilhelm Flor, had been studying the issues in the church struggle and had proved that the entire church constitutional structure which the German Christians had erected with the help of the Party was contrary to the law of the land. As became clear later on, it could have been knocked down by a lawsuit.<\/p>\n
The Bishop of Magdeburg Friedrich Peter, Reich Bishop Ludwig M\u00fcller, and Bishop Heinrich Oberheid<\/p>\n
Finding himself in such difficulty, M\u00fcller sought out two protectors who were cleverer than he and who considered him useful as a puppet. One was August J\u00e4ger, who was glad of another chance to get the Church under the Nazis\u2019 thumb and thereby to become an important official in the Third Reich; the other was Heinrich Oberheid, whom M\u00fcller had made Bishop of the K\u00f6ln-Aachen region (Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle). Oberheid was only too happy to come to Berlin and leave the work in the Rhineland to a deputy. He was one of the most ambivalent figures in the church struggle. A theology student in 1914, he had gone to war and come back as a lieutenant, then worked his way up in the management of the Stinnes conglomerate, where he had made many contacts. He also earned a doctorate in economics before returning to his theological studies. In 1930 he joined the Nazi Party and in 1932, the German Christians. For a few months in 1933 he was assistant pastor in a little town in the Westerwald, before being made a bishop.
\nHe now took over the office of the Reich Bishop and from day one never let his \u2018boss\u2019 out of his sight. He decided who might speak with M\u00fcller, went with him to all his engagements, intervened whenever M\u00fcller put a foot wrong and probably also wrote his speeches. It was Oberheid who gave J\u00e4ger his second chance. The latter became\u2014while keeping his post at the Prussian Ministry of Culture\u2014legal administrator for M\u00fcller\u2019s office, and Oberheid showed him how the Reich Church could still gain acceptance despite the Sports Palace fiasco.
\nOberheid introduced J\u00e4ger to the new jurisprudence being taught by Carl Schmitt and his students. During his theological studies, Oberheid had come to know Schmitt personally and was very impressed with him. Schmitt\u2019s school promoted the view that the Nazi revolution had created a new order, quite the opposite of the Weimar Republic\u2019s constitution: that of the \u2018total\u2019 state, not a balance of different forces as in a democracy, but instead characterized and \u2018completely penetrated by one all-embracing idea\u2019. Such an idea could not be used to transform the Catholic Church, since its centre was in Rome; but, according to Carl Schmitt and his school, the power of the state could help in founding a Protestant Reich Church. As yet, however, this new church policy existed only in the heads of a few men.
\nMeanwhile, the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League, headed by Niem\u00f6ller, was working to bring M\u00fcller down, knowing that they could count on support not only from the Interior Minister and the Foreign Minister, but also from Reich President Hindenburg.
\nThe goal of getting Hindenburg\u2019s support for the removal of the Reich Bishop was being promoted fervently by Bonhoeffer from London. He tried to support the church opposition by informing his fellow pastors and the German congregations in Great Britain as thoroughly as possible about the situation, then working with them to formulate letters of protest. He also wanted to persuade the Church of England to intervene strongly in the German church struggle. He succeeded on both counts, which brought him into conflict with the church authorities back home. The German pastors in England, in their conference at Bradford, Yorkshire, protested unanimously against the scandal of the Sports Palace rally, declaring that the \u2018close relationship\u2019 of the German Protestant churches with the home church would be dissolved if members of the church government failed to uphold the \u2018belief in justification by grace alone through Jesus Christ\u2019 as \u2018the sole basis of Reformation thought\u2019 and \u2018the Holy Scriptures of the New and Old Testaments\u2019 as \u2018the sole standard for the faith\u2019 (DBWE 13, 50). The president of the Association of German Evangelical Congregations in Great Britain, the banker Baron Bruno von Schr\u00f6der, accentuated this by pointing out that the congregations in England enjoyed \u2018full liberty to resign from the Church Federation should we so desire\u2019 (DBWE 13, 51).
\nHeckel, as foreign officer for the German Evangelical Church, immediately sent a letter to reassure the German clergy in England that the Reich Bishop himself wanted to uphold the full authority of the Bible and the Church\u2019s confession. However, his letter arrived simultaneously with the news that M\u00fcller had handed the Protestant youth associations over to the Hitler Youth without consulting anyone. Furthermore, there was no sign of the efforts to \u2018bring peace to the church\u2019 which Heckel\u2019s letter promised. Instead, M\u00fcller reinstated the Aryan paragraph and, on 4 January 1934, enacted the notorious \u2018muzzling decree\u2019, which forbade the Protestant pastors in Germany any public discussion of the church struggle, and threatened to dismiss anyone who disregarded the ban. In other words, the Oberheid and J\u00e4ger regime was now in place: the two of them were dictating to the Reich Bishop what he was to do.
\nThe Pastors\u2019 Emergency League declared that it would not respect this decree, and called for a protest worship service in Berlin Cathedral. M\u00fcller ordered this prohibited by the police, which resulted in a large crowd singing Luther\u2019s hymn \u2018A Mighty Fortress Is Our God\u2019 in front of the cathedral. Thus the foreign press again had something to report about the church struggle. The German pastors in London reacted to every step taken by the Reich Bishop with another protest by telegram. When they heard that Hitler was planning to hold a reception at his Chancellery for the leaders of the Protestant church, they wrote to Reich President Hindenburg, with copies to Hitler and several of his ministers: \u2018We implore you, Mr President, to avert the terrible danger that threatens the unity of the Church and the Third Reich now, at the eleventh hour. As long as Reich Bishop M\u00fcller remains in office, the danger of secession remains imminent\u2019 (DB-ER 344).
\nGeorge Bell, Bishop of Chichester, also wrote to Hindenburg, which was then something completely unheard of. Here, Bonhoeffer was also at work behind the scenes, since in a very short time he had become this unusual bishop\u2019s adviser on the German church struggle. Bonhoeffer had seen Bell, who was exactly 23 years older than he\u2014they were both born on 4 February\u2014at ecumenical conferences, but had never spoken with him. Now, in a very few weeks, a relationship developed which Bell described after the death of Bonhoeffer:<\/p>\n
I knew him in London in the early days of the evil regime; and from him, more than from any other German, I learned the true character of the conflict, in an intimate friendship. I have no doubt that he did fine work with his German congregation: but he taught many besides his fellow countrymen while a pastor in England. He was crystal clear in his convictions; and young as he was, and humble-minded as he was, he saw the truth, and spoke it with a complete absence of fear. (DB-ER 362)<\/p>\n
George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, with Franz Hildebrandt on the steps of the Church of St Martin in the Fields, London, on 1 July 1941 after a service of intercessory prayer for Martin Niem\u00f6ller<\/p>\n
Anglican bishops are, to this day, generally friendly and kind in relating to Christians from abroad, but they are unusually cautious. Yet Bell seems not to have spent much time enquiring as to who this 27-year-old German might be, and whether he could be trusted. In a very short time the two had such confidence in one another that the English bishop began getting involved, vigorously and quite undiplomatically, in the affairs of the German church. Few of Bonhoeffer\u2019s other relationships illustrate so clearly his effect as a person upon other human beings. It did not take long to recognize that he had an excellent education; more unusual was the perfection of his conduct towards others. He was both self-confident and modest. Through Bonhoeffer, first in Germany and later in Britain, Bell became so much the \u2018spokesman for the other Germany\u2019 that the British Foreign Ministry called him \u2018our good German bishop\u2019.
\nHindenburg sent the letters he had received from London to Hitler, expressing also his own deep concern about what was happening in the Protestant church. It seemed as though M\u00fcller\u2019s days in office were numbered. However, thinking of the church leaders gathering at Hitler\u2019s Chancellery reception on 25 January made Bonhoeffer extremely uneasy. Four days before that, he preached on the prophet Jeremiah\u2019s plaintive cry: \u2018O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed\u2019 (Jeremiah 20:7). After just the first few words of this sermon, it was hard for the church members to tell anymore whether their pastor was speaking of Jeremiah or of himself.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah was not eager to become a prophet of God \u2026 he resisted, he tried to get away. But as he was running away, he was seized by the word, by the call. Now he cannot get away anymore \u2026
\nHe was accused of fantasizing, being stubborn, disturbing the peace and being an enemy of the people, as have those in every age even up to the present day who were seized and possessed by God\u2014for whom God had become too strong \u2026 O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed \u2026 I had no idea what was coming when you seized me\u2014and now I cannot get away from you anymore; you have carried me off as your booty. You tie us to your victory chariot and pull us along behind you, so that we have to march, chastened and enslaved, in your victory procession. How could we know that your love hurts so much, that your grace is so stern?\u2026 You have bound me to you for better or worse. God, why are you so terrifyingly near us? (DBWE 13, 347ff.)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer seldom spoke words so full of feeling; he was a very self-contained person. At the same time, he was unusually well informed. This is what made him so credible when he analysed the political situation in the presence of others. There are very few texts which reveal the burning passion concealed behind his reserve. One such is this 1934 sermon on Jeremiah.
\nThe anxiety which is visible here was only too well justified. The chancellery reception with the F\u00fchrer did turn out to be a defeat for the church opposition, even beyond Bonhoeffer\u2019s worst fears. Shortly after the church leaders presented themselves, Prussian prime minister Hermann G\u00f6ring appeared with a transcript, made by wiretapping, of a telephone call in which Niem\u00f6ller had expressed himself very colloquially about the preparations for the chancellery reception: that the old gentleman (Hindenburg) had received \u2018extreme unction\u2019 etc. Hitler, who had of course been informed in advance, acted outraged. This was \u2018backstairs politics\u2019 and he was not prepared to put up with it. The bishops of the Lutheran provincial churches immediately distanced themselves from Niem\u00f6ller, and two days later, \u2018under the influence of that great hour when the heads of the German Evangelical Church met the Reich Chancellor\u2019, joined with the German Christians in issuing a declaration that they \u2018took a united stand behind the Reich Bishop\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2026 and declare themselves willing to enforce his policies and decrees in the sense desired by him, to hinder church-political opposition to them, and to consolidate the authority of the Reich Bishop by all available constitutional means \u2026
\n[The church leaders] condemn most strongly any intrigue involving criticism of the state, Volk or movement, because such criticism is calculated to imperil the Third Reich. In particular they condemn the use of the foreign press to present the false view that the controversy within the church is a struggle against the state. (DBWE 13, 91)<\/p>\n
The opposition found itself divided and confused. Hitler had succeeded in isolating Niem\u00f6ller completely, and with him the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League. After keeping himself out of the disputes among the church groups, the F\u00fchrer could now stand there, shaking hands and taking leave of his guests, as the great mediator, and M\u00fcller had some new people for his bandwagon. None of those who were present at this reception could ever forget it, not even Hitler. In 1942, at table in his F\u00fchrer\u2019s Headquarters, he told how the church leaders \u2018were terrified, cowered down so that they almost weren\u2019t there any more\u2019.
\nHeckel, who had to cooperate with Oberheid and J\u00e4ger if he wanted to keep his position, was charged with getting the pastors in London to concede and if possible also to stop up The Times\u2019 source of information. This was anything but easy. He first sent a letter to all the German expatriate pastors:<\/p>\n
In particular I must urgently impress upon the clergy abroad the necessity for the greatest possible discretion in regard to church politics. Just as the soldier at the front is not in a position to assess the overall plan, but must carry out the duties that immediately concern him, so I expect the clergy abroad to distinguish between their own particular task and the task of the church authorities in shaping the German Evangelical Church at home. (DBWE 13, 85)<\/p>\n
At that time Heckel believed that he could keep his area of responsibility, namely the congregations abroad and ecumenical relationships with partner churches, out of the church struggle. After M\u00fcller named him a bishop he let himself be forced into one compromise after another, and thus became mired deeper and deeper in dependence on the Nazi regime. After the war, almost all those who had trod this path tried to excuse themselves by explaining that they had hoped, by so doing, to avoid even worse outcomes. Heckel\u2019s path to becoming an accomplice began with this letter with its odd military simile and with his visit to London in February 1934, during which he and Bonhoeffer found themselves at loggerheads.
\nHeckel arrived with two colleagues, and began by describing the events in Berlin to the German pastors in England in such a way as to show the Reich government correcting the faux pas of the German Christians and supporting the orientation of church work towards its confessional responsibility. Thus he claimed that the protests he had received from London were signs of a detrimental radicalization and had only hindered things. This led to a fierce dispute, since the pastors saw such claims as a grotesque playing down of the issue.
\nAt the end of his second session with them, Heckel demanded baldly that they sign a declaration that his report of the meeting was \u2018unanimously agreed to by all the German Evangelical clergy in England\u2019. Bonhoeffer protested vehemently, since the visitors from Berlin had not responded to any of the pastors\u2019 actual questions and arguments. Heckel replied with the threat that \u2018those in opposition must realize, in their own interest, that if they did not yield they would be aligning themselves inevitably with the Prague emigrants\u2019 (DBWE 13, 111). \u2018Prague emigrants\u2019 meant opponents of the Third Reich who had fled when the Nazis took power, including especially members of the Social Democratic Party, many of whom had found refuge in Czechoslovakia. When Heckel began, in this connection, to give examples of \u2018treasonous activities\u2019, Bonhoeffer and two of his friends got up and left the room in protest.
\nHis meeting with Bishop Bell did not go any better for Heckel. Bell had invited him and his colleagues to the Athenaeum Club, which today is still the place in London where Anglican bishops invite important guests for a conversation or a meal. Bonhoeffer himself met with Bell there several times while he was in London. He had prepared the bishop well for these three visitors. When Heckel tried to broach basic theological issues, and suggested to the bishop that he should stay out of German church conflicts, Bell asked him a series of very concrete questions about the conduct of the Reich Bishop and how the Reich Church was handling the church opposition. Heckel did not have much to answer, and when he later described this conversation as though all differences between the Reich Church and Bishop Bell\u2014as the representative of the ecumenical community\u2014had been cleared up, Bell responded with a sharply worded letter in The Times.
\nThus Heckel went home empty-handed, and he knew very well whom he had to thank for the twofold failure of his mission in London. He sent for Bonhoeffer to come to Berlin, where he categorically ordered him to refrain from all further ecumenical contacts. Bonhoeffer pointed out to him that, as a youth secretary of the World Alliance, providing information to ecumenical partners was part of his job.
\nThis trip to Berlin unexpectedly brought Bonhoeffer a sign of hope. On 7 March 1934 he was able to participate as a guest in the first synod of the Confessing Church in Berlin-Brandenburg. Such synods had already taken place in the Rhineland and in several other German provinces. Bonhoeffer had never seen the Reich Church as anything other than a church that had fallen away from God. Now, out of the ruins of the destroyed church, in several places at once, a new Confessing Church was beginning to grow. He returned to London full of hope.
\nIn a contemporary report on the Confessing Church synod in Berlin-Brandenburg, Kurt Scharf wrote:<\/p>\n
Their unanimity, which was evident not only in the agreement they expressed outwardly, but also in a close, warmhearted fellowship among all the participants, is the mark of spiritual legitimacy. Last Wednesday I was at the German Christians\u2019 rally at the Sports Palace. The difference in tone and content between our synod and that mass event put on by those who claim to represent the official church exemplified the most extreme contrast between \u2018spiritual\u2019 and \u2018secular\u2019. The sneers and slanders over there were unbelievable, whereas our meeting expressed an earnest resolve to fight for the basic articles of the Reformation church, all the way and with all our might, and the strength of this resolve was at least as notable among the lay members of the Free Synod as among the pastors who were speaking and voting.<\/p>\n
Two developments in Germany kept Bonhoeffer in suspense following his return from Berlin, and Oberheid and J\u00e4ger were involved, in one way or another, in each of them. One was their attempt to build on the advantage gained from Hitler\u2019s chancellery reception of the church leaders to obtain quick general acceptance of the Reich Church, by force if necessary. On the other hand, it was precisely the use of force by both Oberheid and J\u00e4ger that made them, against their will, midwives of the Confessing Church. The shared need to resist brought the \u2018intact\u2019 and \u2018destroyed\u2019 churches back together, and at the famous Confessing Church synod in Barmen they solemnly adopted a common confession opposing the false teachings of the Reich Church and the German Christians.
\nAn important word in the language of the Third Reich was Gleichschaltung (\u2018synchronization\u2019, i.e. Nazification). For example, through a law of 30 January 1934 the governments of the German provinces lost all their particular rights and became mere rubber stamps, instruments of the Reich government; they were \u2018synchronized\u2019 with it. The goal was as always to design a state in which, according to the so-called \u2018F\u00fchrer principle\u2019, everything was subject to one single will.
\nThis measure was the example Oberheid and J\u00e4ger were following when they first took away the autonomy of the church governments in the Prussian provinces, and shortly thereafter incorporated 11 other provincial churches into the Reich Church. The bishops of these churches were placed under the authority of the Reich Bishop and of the provincial church offices within the Reich Church government, and henceforth were bound to follow their instructions. J\u00e4ger also made two attempts to bring this about in W\u00fcrttemberg province. The first time, he tried to exploit a row that had suddenly broken out in the city of Stuttgart, in which the German Christians were demanding the resignation of Bishop Wurm. J\u00e4ger hurried there with the Reich Bishop, intending to establish in W\u00fcrttemberg, by force, his idea of order in the Church. But the only result was great agitation among the clergy and congregations, which stood by their bishop.
\nThis unrest alarmed the Bavarian church, because they assumed they would be next in line. Now the experiences of the destroyed churches got serious attention from the south German churches. The Evangelical Church in Westphalia had tried standing up to J\u00e4ger and had succeeded. Its provincial synod was the only one in Prussia where the German Christians had not gained a majority in the 1933 church election; it had refused to recognize J\u00e4ger\u2019s measures, and when he ordered its synod dissolved by the police, the thing for which Bonhoeffer had been waiting so ardently for a year finally happened. A rally with 20,000 church members was held in Westphalia Hall in Dortmund, with more people in two neighbouring churches. Paul Humburg, President of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland, spoke again of gratitude to the Reich Chancellor and confidence in him, but he also said:<\/p>\n
What do people care whether Jesus was perhaps an Aryan? Behind this in turn there is the idea that Aryan blood is better than Jewish blood \u2026 But Scripture says: he died for all! It is said that for Germany there is \u2018only one authority, the authority of the F\u00fchrer\u2019. That applies only to the Germany of the Third Reich, but not to the community of the Son of God.<\/p>\n
It must have been very impressive to hear 20,000 people sing their hymns and say the Lord\u2019s Prayer together.
\nAfter this Confessing assembly, the Westphalian synod, which had been dissolved, reconstituted itself, and within a short time over half of all local churches in Westphalia had joined it. Later when the Confessing Church distributed membership cards, 90 per cent of the practising Christians in Westphalia became \u2018red card\u2019 carriers. Representatives of the West German (i.e. Westphalian and Rhineland) church opposition met on 19 March in Frankfurt on the Main with representatives of the south German churches and decided to call Confessing assemblies like the one in Dortmund; these were to be held in the Bavarian cities of Munich, Nuremberg and Augsburg (Evangelical Church in Bavaria) and Stuttgart (Evangelical Church of W\u00fcrttemberg).
\nAt this point, in Bonhoeffer\u2019s view, it became crucial for the ecumenical community to make very clear, for all to see, on which side it stood. On 7 April, the day when the Reich Bishop made Oberheid his chief of staff and placed the \u2018synchronized\u2019 churches under his authority, Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to Geneva. This letter again reminds us of the beginning of his first sermon, \u2018Christianity entails decision\u2019.<\/p>\n
My dear Henriod \u2026 I would very much have liked to discuss the situation with you again; the slowness of ecumenical procedure is beginning to look to me like irresponsibility. A decision has got to be made some time, and it\u2019s no good waiting indefinitely for a sign from heaven, for the solution to the difficulty to fall into one\u2019s lap. Even the ecumenical movement has to make up its mind and is therefore subject to error, like everything human. But to put off acting and taking a position simply because you are afraid of erring, while others\u2014I mean our brethren in Germany\u2014have to reach infinitely difficult decisions daily, seems to me almost to go against love. To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love \u2026 and in this case it is really now or never. \u2018Too late\u2019 means \u2018Never\u2019. Should the ecumenical movement fail to realize this \u2026 then the ecumenical movement is no longer church, but a useless association for making fine speeches. \u2018If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all\u2019 [Isaiah 7:9]. But to believe, to stand firm, means to decide. And can there still be any doubt as to which way that decision should go? For Germany today the confession is the way, as the confession is the way for the ecumenical movement today. Let us shake off our fear of this word\u2014the cause of Christ is at stake; are we to be found sleeping? (DBWE 13, 126\u201327)<\/p>\n
If at this moment there was one thing that could have helped the two church opposition groups\u2014that of the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League and that of the \u2018intact churches\u2019\u2014really to come together in one Confessing Church, it would have been strong support from the ecumenical movement. But Bonhoeffer found no ears to hear him in Geneva. The office there kept to its statutes, according to which the Reich Church could not be denied its membership in the ecumenical community. If a Confessing Church were constituted alongside it, then this new church must apply for membership as a second German church. One can well imagine how horrified Bonhoeffer was by such formalism. But he had the trust of the Bishop of Chichester, who had a great deal of influence in the ecumenical movement and who did have ears to hear him.
\nAs President of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, Bishop Bell sent a pastoral letter on Ascension Day, in May 1934, to the member churches of the Council, in which he expressed his deep concern about the situation in Germany.<\/p>\n
The chief cause of anxiety is the assumption by the Reichbishop, in the name of the principle of leadership, of autocratic powers unqualified by constitutional or traditional restraints, which are without precedent in the history of the Church. The exercise of these autocratic powers by the Church Government appears incompatible with the Christian principle of seeking in brotherly fellowship to receive the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It has had disastrous results on the internal unity of the Church; and the disciplinary measures which have been taken by the Church government against Ministers of the Gospel on account of their loyalty to the fundamental principles of Christian truth have made a painful impression on Christian opinion abroad, already disturbed by the introduction of racial distinctions in the universal fellowship of the Christian Church. No wonder that voices should be raised in Germany itself, making a solemn pronouncement before the whole Christian world on the dangers to which the spiritual life of the Evangelical Church is exposed. (DBWE 13, 144\u201345; see also 139 and 179\u201380)<\/p>\n
Other questions of fundamental significance would, in view of the situation in Germany, also have to be discussed at the upcoming meeting of the Universal Council in Denmark. Bell\u2019s pastoral letter was a definite encouragement to the \u2018Confessing front\u2019, as it was still being called at that point, just before it held its first big assembly. Bonhoeffer immediately sent a letter of thanks to Chichester.
\nRepresentatives of all the opposition groups had met on 17 April in Nuremberg, and there a reconciliation had taken place between Niem\u00f6ller and Meiser, who had been at odds since Hitler\u2019s chancellery reception. And when it turned out that Bishop Wurm had already issued a call to rally again in Ulm on 23 April, it was decided to make this Confessing worship service the founding act of the Confessing Church. Five thousand worshippers came streaming into Ulm Minster. In the choir pews sat emissaries from all the provincial churches in Germany. Following the sermon by Bishop Wurm, Bishop Meiser mounted the pulpit and read out, \u2018in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, before this congregation and all Christendom\u2019, a document in which the provincial and local churches of Germany which remained faithful to the confession declared themselves to be the rightful church.
\nThis was the schism, the break with the Reich Church which had become godless, towards which Bonhoeffer had been working for more than a year. M\u00fcller immediately characterized the declaration as a \u2018declaration of war\u2019, but at this point his own troops were again in disarray. A few days before the Confessing assembly in Ulm, J\u00e4ger had succeeded in pushing Oberheid out of power and making the Reich Bishop, whom he despised, dependent on him alone. He wanted to achieve his goal of bringing the Church into subjection to the Party as quickly as possible, and carried on with the synchronization of the provincial churches which were still independent.<\/p>\n
The Confessing Synod of Barmen<\/p>\n
What the Reich Bishop and his legal administrator must have totally failed to grasp during those confusing days was that their behaviour was actually bringing the opposition together within the German Evangelical Church. They thus helped to make possible the Confessing Synod of Barmen, the most important event in the entire church struggle.
\nFrom 29 to 31 May, 139 delegates\u2014including one woman and one blue-collar worker\u2014from 18 Lutheran, United and Reformed churches in Germany, gathered in Barmen, on the east side of the city of Wuppertal in the Rhineland. They were to discuss a \u2018Theological Declaration\u2019, the essential points of which had been contributed by Karl Barth. Hans Asmussen, whom the German Christians had forced out of his pastorate in Altona near Hamburg, and Church Councillor Thomas Breit from Munich had worked with Barth to prepare from his draft a proposed resolution for the Synod. In Barmen, Asmussen introduced the proposed resolution \u2018with a captivating speech\u2019, assuring that, after a very thorough discussion, the resolution was unanimously adopted on its second reading. It is not saying too much to call this confessional statement the most significant church document of the first half of the twentieth century.
\nFrom our viewpoint today, there is surely more to say about Asmussen\u2019s speech than that it captivated his audience. Although in Barmen there was no longer any emotional affirmation of Hitler\u2019s government, it is striking that the synod, as did Asmussen in his speech, made sure it avoided any confrontation with the Nazi state, and did not risk even a mention of the Aryan paragraph. People felt at the time that they could leave out all the political problems; even Karl Barth, the Swiss, was of this opinion. Hermann Sasse, with whom Bonhoeffer had worked in Bethel to draft a more political confession, left Barmen before the Theological Declaration was adopted, because he could not vote for it but did not want to be the only one to vote against it. He was convinced that the Lutheran Church was being violated by joining the Reformed Church in adopting a common confession. Thus in 1934 a fissure was already appearing within the Confessing Church, which was to have disastrous effects on it in the years to come. However, as Klaus Scholder rightly says:<\/p>\n
The first Barmen thesis was soon attacked by some Lutheran theologians as a Reformed error, indeed as heresy. Here, however, no one could have overlooked the fact that the Barmen Declaration was more Lutheran than anything that the Lutherans objected to.<\/p>\n
The synod was \u2018Lutheran\u2019 in agreeing with Asmussen that the falling away from God then taking place in Germany was not to be ascribed to Nazism alone, but had already been among the effects of the Enlightenment. Without even a glance at the \u2018thinking believers [Denkgl\u00e4ubigen]\u2019\u2014from Lessing and Kant to Goethe, then to Harnack, or any contemporary philosophers and authors\u2014the Synod declared its loyalty to the fundamental teachings of Martin Luther, with his threefold \u2018solus\u2019: solus Christus, sola scriptura and sola fide. That meant that human beings are saved through Christ alone, the Scriptures alone can tell us this, and by faith alone can we be justified before God.
\nWhile the church struggle lasted, these were the statements which, again and again, gave the Confessing Church its foothold. Inevitably, however, after the Second World War the questions of the \u2018thinking believers\u2019 came back onto the agenda, and it speaks for Bonhoeffer\u2019s rank as a theologian that he had already faced these questions before that, in the Tegel military prison. For him it was a matter of intellectual honesty in doing theology (DBWE 8, III\/177).
\nSince Bonhoeffer counted the Barmen Synod, in which he did not take part, as one of the most important events in his life, and it became the reason for his to return to Germany, we quote here from the Preamble and the first of its six theses:<\/p>\n
In view of the errors of the German Christians of the present Reich Church government which are devastating the Church and also therefore breaking up the unity of the German Evangelical Church, we confess the following evangelical truths:
\n[Jesus Christ says:] \u2018I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me\u2019 (John 14:6). \u2018Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber \u2026 I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved\u2019 (John 10:1, 9).
\nJesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.
\nWe reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God\u2019s revelation.<\/p>\n
Each of the six theses follows this pattern: after quoting words from the Bible, it states what the Confessing Church believes, then the false teaching of the German Christians which is solemnly rejected. For us today it is painfully obvious that this confession does not include the statement on the Jewish question which was so important to Bonhoeffer in working on the Bethel Confession. But at the time, this and other utterances against Adolf Hitler\u2019s government would have been asking too much of the majority of synod members. Even so, there were plenty of objections afterwards from the ranks of Lutherans. To a considerable degree, it was J\u00e4ger\u2019s violent actions that caused the unanimous declaration of Barmen to enter into history at all. And there was great relief and joy over its unanimity. Kurt Scharf communicated something of the exalted mood of those days when he wrote to the Confessing Church pastors in Brandenburg:<\/p>\n
What had been promised in Ulm on 24 April was fulfilled in Barmen on 30\u201331 May. There, church groups faithful to the confession had gathered for a particular reason; as if there, beams and stones, mortar and bricks lay in disorder, waiting to be sawn, hewn, fired and fitted together. Here then, in Barmen, through the goodness of God the hard work was done in a few days; the great Evangelical Confessing Church of Germany was built out of all these diverse materials. Not a board or brick was left unused.<\/p>\n
From the R\u00f6hm Coup to the Confessing Synod of Dahlem<\/p>\n
August J\u00e4ger was involved in bringing about the second Confessing Synod of the German Evangelical Church\u2014that of Dahlem on 19\u201320 October 1934\u2014just as he had been involved in the first. A man such as he could only be spurred on by such events as the \u2018R\u00f6hm affair\u2019 in the summer of 1934, in which the SS, the elite Nazi paramilitary, massacred not only the leaders of the SA militia, who were suspected of preparing a coup, but also people who had nothing to do with the SA and were merely considered opponents of Hitler. In this connection, Hitler had set himself up as the highest judicial authority, and without further ado declared the murders just. On 13 July 1934, he spoke of 77 deaths in his most bloodthirsty speech to the parliament, declaring: \u2018If anyone reproaches me and asks why we did not call upon the regular courts for sentencing, my only answer is this: in that hour I was responsible for the fate of the German nation and was thus the Supreme Justice of the German Volk!\u2019
\nHitler wanted to be informed about everything, yet there were things he was far from wanting to know. Fritz G\u00fcnther von Tschirschky, a close colleague of Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, belonged to a group of opponents of the regime who were the first, in those days, to try to oust Hitler from office. After 30 June 1934, Tschirschky had fallen into the clutches of the SS and had witnessed how Gregor Stra\u00dfer, one of Hitler\u2019s early comrades-in-arms and his Party organizer, was butchered in the prison in Prince Albert Street. Tschirschky himself was not only released, but shortly thereafter was invited by Hitler, along with Papen, to the Obersalzberg resort. When he hinted that he had been present at Stra\u00dfer\u2019s death, Hitler took him into the next room and demanded a full report; he had been told that Stra\u00dfer committed suicide. Hitler\u2019s sister in the dining room heard every word and said later that her brother had been beside himself that day, and for a long time afterwards had screamed and struggled in nightmares every night.
\nBonhoeffer told his London friends that he knew through the Ministry of Justice that there had been many more than 77 murders. There are supposed to have been at least a hundred victims of the massacres. With these deeds, the SS began its rise; as its reward, Hitler made it a separate organization, independent of the SA militia. That there was no protest at the time, from anyone whatsoever, shows how far Germany had already travelled toward accepting a government without justice.
\nJ\u00e4ger must have concluded during this critical phase that after so much violence done at the behest of the state, he would have no problem incorporating the Evangelical Churches of Bavaria and W\u00fcrttemberg into the Reich Church by force. But he was to be disappointed. In W\u00fcrttemberg, and more so in Bavaria, the response to his placing Bishops Wurm and Meiser under house arrest was mass protests. Those who, up to that point, had felt that the Lutheran churches should keep to their own path and not join a combined Lutheran and Reformed church, put aside their reservations. So the Confessing Church was able to take a second step, no less crucial than the first. On 19\u201320 October it held another Synod, in Berlin-Dahlem, at which it provided itself with a new, united church administration, by adopting the following resolution:<\/p>\n
1. The constitution of the German Evangelical Church has been destroyed. Its lawful organs no longer exist. By their actions, the men who have taken over the leadership of the church in the Reich [M\u00fcller and J\u00e4ger] and in the provinces have separated themselves from the Christian Church.
\n2. On the basis of the emergency law of the churches, congregations and bearers of spiritual office bound by Scripture and confession, the Confessing Synod of the German Evangelical Church creates new organs of leadership.<\/p>\n
The main decision-making body for this administration became the Council of Brethren. So the democratic structure that had been introduced by the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League now entered into the Confessing Church.
\nThe Dahlem Synod had been arranged at very short notice, so that many of its members had to leave before it was over. This made it possible for the Lutheran churches to argue that they had strong reservations about the resolutions which had been adopted there. For many Lutherans, the decisions taken in Dahlem seemed too radical, while for Bonhoeffer and all those who thought as he did, the decisions of Dahlem were just the necessary \u2018form\u2019, the ordering of the Church required by the \u2018content\u2019 of the Theological Declaration of Barmen.
\nFollowing the example of the Emergency League, the new church administration consisted of a 22-person Council of Brethren and within it a 6-person executive council. Both the \u2018destroyed\u2019 and the \u2018intact\u2019 churches were represented in each, but the members who had come from the Old Prussian Union were in the majority by far since it had contained such large provincial churches. It was important to find the right balance. After lengthy discussion, the \u2018first Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing German Evangelical Church\u2019 was constituted in November, with Bishop Marahrens from Hanover as its President.
\nIn his fight with the southern German churches, J\u00e4ger turned out to be at cross-purposes with Hitler. The Treaty of Versailles had provided for a plebiscite in January 1935 for the Saar region, to determine whether this small southwestern province should be returned to Germany or remain French. Warnings had come to Hitler from several different sources that if further measures were taken against the Church, the Saar vote would go against Germany. He therefore had August J\u00e4ger immediately dismissed from all the offices he held. Thus J\u00e4ger came to a miserable end, which was to be followed by a far more dreadful one. He left the Church in 1938, and during the war was involved in serious war crimes in Poland; after the war he was condemned to death, and was hanged on 17 June 1949.
\nBonhoeffer was crucially involved in J\u00e4ger\u2019s ousting. The latter\u2019s heavy-handed measures had caused outrage even in England, so that Bonhoeffer, with his precise information from Berlin, was able to persuade Bishop Bell to visit the German embassy in London, and through him also the Archbishop of Canterbury, who asked the German Ambassador to come to Lambeth Palace. They both threatened to take public positions on the matter. In Berlin, Foreign Minister Neurath had already summoned the Reich Bishop to his office and read him the riot act, but the news from London was far more disturbing for the Reich government. The German ambassador, Prince Bismarck, sent telegrams:<\/p>\n
[Bishop Bell assumes] that the Reich Chancellor is insufficiently informed about actual events and their repercussions abroad \u2026
\n[I attempted] to mollify his deep concerns that there has been a conscious turning away from Christianity in Germany, but I fear that all my counter-arguments made little impression upon this bishop, who is so well informed about every detail of these events.<\/p>\n
In this conversation, Bell gave most of the blame for the persecution of the churches to August J\u00e4ger, and the Archbishop of Canterbury went a step further and politely asked for nothing less than J\u00e4ger\u2019s dismissal. He said that he would soon have to take a public position on the church struggle in Germany, and that the churches in France and Sweden were thinking of following suit.
\nThe telegrams from the German embassy in London were brought immediately to Hitler. In reply, the English bishops were requested by the embassy please to be patient a bit longer, since an announcement by the German government was expected shortly. In any case, J\u00e4ger was dismissed immediately from all his posts.<\/p>\n
The ecumenical conference on Fan\u00f8<\/p>\n
Even more than the R\u00f6hm affair, and the assassination by Nazis of Austria\u2019s Federal Chancellor Engelbert Dollfu\u00df, public sentiment in Germany was preoccupied by the death of President Hindenburg on 2 August 1934. He was buried in Prussian military style in the Tannenberg Mausoleum. Hitler\u2019s farewell cry, \u2018Departed Chief, now enter into Valhalla!\u2019 was regarded by many as being in bad taste.
\nAs he had done on \u2018Potsdam Day\u2019, Hitler presented himself as a loyal follower and now the successor of Hindenburg. He assumed the office of President, but took care never to be addressed by the title \u2018Reich President\u2019, only as \u2018F\u00fchrer and Reich Chancellor\u2019, schoolchildren being taught at the time that this was out of respect for Field Marshal Hindenburg. In reality, this new title was intended to make clear that, with Hindenburg, the last relic of the republic had gone, and from now on the country was governed by a single will.
\nIt was a fateful moment in German history, the last day in the Third Reich on which civil resistance might still have been possible. But even in the churches\u2014the only organizations, once the political parties and the trade unions had been crushed, in which Hitler still had a substantial number of critics\u2014too few people were aware of this at the time. Bonhoeffer, who knew that the events of the summer of 1934 had brought the threat of war much closer, was regarded by most church people who knew him as a pessimist. In April he had already written to Erwin Sutz: \u2018Naive, starry-eyed idealists like Niem\u00f6ller can still think they are the real National Socialists\u2014and perhaps it\u2019s a benevolent Providence that keeps them under the spell of this delusion; maybe it is even in the interest of the church struggle\u2019 (DBWE 13, 135).
\nThis was the critical situation in which the joint conference of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches and the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work on the Danish island of Fan\u00f8 had to be prepared. Bonhoeffer had agreed to give one of the main speeches and to direct the international Youth Conference. More important to him than his own contribution, however, was the position the ecumenical movement would take toward the church struggle in Germany. The Geneva office was demanding anew that the Confessing Church agree to participate in ecumenical bodies as a sort of German \u2018free church\u2019, despite its claim to be the true, constitutionally grounded Evangelical Church in Germany.
\nHeckel had managed to get the ecumenical Faith and Order movement, which studied theological issues, largely on his side in 1933, since no Germans belonged to it who could present the situation from the viewpoint of the Confessing Church. So the people in Faith and Order, whether British, Swiss or Americans, always objected when the Confessing Church protested against the German Christians and the Reich Church. Bonhoeffer meanwhile fought for a decision to have only delegates who stood on the ground of the Barmen Confession take part in the Fan\u00f8 Conference; otherwise he could not participate himself.
\nFor the Youth Conference he succeeded. He could not hope for support from Geneva, but he could count on the energetic Bishop Bell and the Danish Bishop Valdemar Ammundsen. The latter proposed that, as President of the Council, Bell could make use of his right to co-opt advisers to the conference; thus he could invite Karl Koch, president of the Westphalian church and of the Confessing Church Synod, and if possible also Friedrich von Bodelschwingh. In any case, neither of the two bishops wanted to do without Bonhoeffer\u2019s participation and his speech at the conference.
\nBonhoeffer travelled back and forth between London and Berlin, carrying news and counselling his friends in the Confessing Church, who were rather inexperienced in international affairs. It looked for awhile as though he were going to cancel his participation in Fan\u00f8, especially when the Confessing Church representatives decided not to go because of the political situation in Germany; but they, like the two bishops, were convinced that Bonhoeffer must be there. So he was destined to face there, once again, his opponent Theodor Heckel, who had just been named Auslandsbischof [bishop for the German congregations abroad] and who therefore headed the Reich Church delegation.
\nIn proposing his theses for his keynote speech (DBWE 13, 304ff), Bonhoeffer had concentrated wholly on the danger of war, and once again had not consulted the Research Department in Geneva. Hans Sch\u00f6nfeld was decidedly annoyed. He found the theses one-sided and radical and asked Bonhoeffer to change them, but Bonhoeffer would not budge. This showed how dependent Sch\u00f6nfeld was on Heckel, although at the time he would not yet have considered this a problem. He was a conservative Lutheran and believed that, on \u2018order of creation\u2019 questions such as national character and race, the other churches should learn from the German ones (DB-ER 385\u201387).
\nThe Youth Conference remained a lifelong memory for many of Bonhoeffer\u2019s students, for in order to avoid having any German Christian supporters smuggled into the delegation, he had mobilized conference participants largely from among his students in Berlin. The Youth Conference adopted two resolutions, after intense discussion of each. The first declared:<\/p>\n
The [conference] members \u2026 agree that the rights of conscience, undertaken in obedience to God\u2019s Word, exceed in importance those of any State whatever. They believe that the attacks upon these rights made in various countries justly provoke an ever-growing condemnation by general public opinion. They notice however that even those States which have inscribed in their law liberty of conscience violate this law by severely punishing, in one way or another, conscientious objectors [to military service]. (DBWE 13, 205\u20136)<\/p>\n
The second resolution spoke out even more plainly against the Nazi state:<\/p>\n
Recent years have witnessed a strengthening of the sovereignty of the State and the attempt on the part of the State to become the only centre and source of spiritual life. Most of the Churches have replied by mere academic protests, or they have shirked their responsibilities \u2026 As the Church has for its essential task the preaching of the Word of God this can never be a function (not even the highest function) of the nation. The Church works within the nation, but it is not \u2018of the nation\u2019. (DBWE 13, 207)<\/p>\n
A Swedish youth delegate asked Bonhoeffer, as they sat together among the sand dunes, what he would do if he were drafted into military service. He replied that he hoped God would give him the strength to refuse to serve.
\nThe main ecumenical conference on Fan\u00f8 had to respond to the Ascension Day pastoral letter which Bishop Bell had sent to all World Alliance and Universal Council member churches. They had to approve it or reject it, and that brought the German question squarely into the centre of their deliberations. It was discussed in an animated plenary session. An envoy from the Reich Bishop, Church Councillor Walter Birnbaum, came swooping in to the island by specially chartered seaplane, so that Heckel was already afraid he was being replaced. But after this man had taken up 15 minutes with an \u2018absurd rigmarole\u2019 of a speech, as Julius Rieger noted in his diary, Heckel resumed his attempts to have Bell\u2019s pastoral letter rejected. The resolution in favour of the letter passed nevertheless. It condemned the use of force by M\u00fcller and J\u00e4ger, their autocratic government, the ban on free discussion and the loyalty oath, instituted by M\u00fcller, which German pastors had to swear to Hitler after Hindenburg\u2019s death. It also said: \u2018The Council [on Life and Work] desires to assure its brethren in the Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church of its prayers and heartfelt sympathy in their witness to the principles of the Gospel, and of its resolve to maintain close fellowship with them\u2019 (DB-ER 383).
\nThat same day, President Karl Koch (of the Confessing Synod) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were both co-opted as Council members of the Life and Work movement. Heckel protested against this one-sided privileging of the Confessing Church, but had no more success there than he had had in protesting the resolution. He could only record a protest in the minutes:<\/p>\n
The German delegation repudiates the allegation that in the German Reich the free proclamation of the spoken and written Gospel is imperilled \u2026 On the contrary, it holds that the prevalent conditions in Germany today provide a more favourable opportunity for proclaiming the Gospel than ever before. (DB-ER 384)<\/p>\n
The fact that the church press in Germany had just been synchronized, he preferred not to mention. However, he had managed after all to have a small note inserted in the resolution, to the effect that the Council wished \u2018to remain in friendly contact with all groups in the German Evangelical Church\u2019.
\nSuch amiable formulations meet with success at most conferences; the one in Fan\u00f8 was no exception. But it was just this sentence which made the Confessing Church\u2019s relations with the ecumenical movement so difficult later on, because Heckel was usually the only one deciding what contacts there would be. Even the staff in Geneva came to regret that the Fan\u00f8 Conference had not made a clean break with him. Despite such limitations, Bonhoeffer was well satisfied with the outcome. He considered it a good beginning; yet in reality, the ecumenical community was never again to side with the Confessing Church to such an extent.
\nToday, Fan\u00f8 is known as the conference at which Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who is now admired and revered by all churches, gave two prophetic speeches. Both were about \u2018The Churches and Peace\u2019. At the time they certainly still provoked head-shaking and strong criticism behind the scenes. In his speech to the conference he said:<\/p>\n
The destiny of the [World] Alliance is determined by the following: whether it regards itself as church or as a society with a definite purpose. The World Alliance is church as long as its fundamental principles lie in obediently listening to and preaching the Word of God. It is a society, if its essential object is to realise aims and conditions of whatever kind they may be. It is only as church that the World Alliance can preach the Word of Christ in full authority to the Churches and nations \u2026 The work of the World Alliance means work of the Churches for peace amongst the nations. Its aim is the end of war and the victory over war. (DBWE 13, 304f)<\/p>\n
He expressed this even more urgently, and much more directly, in a sermon on the morning of 28 August 1934:<\/p>\n
\u2018Let me hear what God the Lord will speak: for he will speak peace to his people, and to his faithful\u2019 (Psalm 85:8). Between the twin crags of nationalism and internationalism, ecumenical Christendom calls upon its Lord and asks for guidance. Nationalism and internationalism have to do with political necessities and possibilities. The ecumenical church movement, however, does not concern itself with these things, but with the commandments of God, and regardless of consequences it transmits these commandments to the world \u2026 Peace on earth is not a problem, but a commandment given at Christ\u2019s coming. There are two ways of reacting to this command from God: the unconditional, blind obedience of action, or the hypocritical question of the Serpent: \u2018Did God say \u2026?\u2019 This question is the mortal enemy of obedience, and therefore the mortal enemy of all real peace \u2026 Has God not understood human nature well enough to know that wars must occur in this world, like laws of nature? Must God not have meant that we should talk about peace, to be sure, but that it is not to be literally translated into action? Must God not really have said that we should work for peace, of course, but also make ready tanks and poison gas for security? And then perhaps the most serious question: Did God say you should not protect your own people? Did God say you should leave your own a prey to the enemy?<\/p>\n
No, God did not say all that. What God has said is that there shall be peace among all people\u2014that we shall obey God without further question, that is what God means. Anyone who questions the commandment of God before obeying has already denied God \u2026<\/p>\n
Why do we fear the fury of the world powers? Why don\u2019t we take the power from them and give it back to Christ? We can still do it today. The Ecumenical Council is in session; it can send out to all believers this radical call to peace. The nations are waiting for it in the East and in the West. Must we be put to shame by non-Christian peoples in the East?\u2026 We want to give the world a whole word, not half a word\u2014a courageous word, a Christian word. We want to pray that this word may be given us, today. Who knows if we shall see each other again another year? (DBWE 13, 307ff)<\/p>\n
In Fan\u00f8 at that time Bonhoeffer encountered more agreement than criticism. Several of those who were present have spoken of the silence in the hall from the moment he began to speak, as if the audience were holding its breath. \u2018Non-Christian peoples in the East\u2019 referred to Mahatma Gandhi and his life of passive resistance. Bonhoeffer so admired him that twice already he had made plans to go to India to learn more. He had written to his grandmother in May 1934 that, before undertaking a new assignment in Germany, he definitely wanted to get to know India. It sometimes seemed to him that there was more Christianity in their \u2018heathenism than in the whole of our Reich Church\u2019. In fact, he pointed out, Christianity did \u2018come from the East originally\u2019, but \u2018it has become so westernized and so permeated by purely civilized thought that, as we can now see, it is almost lost to us\u2019 (DBWE 13, 152).
\nSo for the third time he made plans to travel eastward, to become a pupil of Gandhi\u2019s, and through Bishop Bell as intermediary he received a kind invitation from Gandhi himself. Julius Rieger wanted to come with him, and the two friends pored over prospectuses, looked for the cheapest routes and means of travel, and read whatever they could find about India and its culture. But once again the plan fell through, first because of considerable follow-up work after the Fan\u00f8 Conference, and later because Bonhoeffer was urgently needed in Germany for the work of the Confessing Church. After the war Gerhard Jacobi said with some pride that he was the one who had thwarted this intention of Bonhoeffer\u2019s. Jacobi had indeed never had much understanding of Bonhoeffer\u2019s ideas: \u2018At my instigation, the Confessing Church called Bonhoeffer to a preachers\u2019 seminary which was to be set up \u2026 I also wanted to keep Bonhoeffer away from India by directing him towards a serious task to be done with young Germans.\u2019
\nThere was no one in the Confessing Church who took the decisions of the Confessing Synod of Dahlem more seriously than did Bonhoeffer. He urgently advised the Council of Brethren of the Confessing Church not to leave ecumenical relations to Heckel, but rather to take them in hand itself. He assured his friends that, after Fan\u00f8, no representatives of churches in other countries would come to M\u00fcller\u2019s installation as Reich Bishop, and his prediction proved correct. The only bishop at the ceremony in Berlin Cathedral who did not belong to the German Christians was Theodor Heckel who, at the laying on of hands, quoted Psalm 144: \u2018Happy are the people to whom such blessings fall.\u2019 One wonders whether it was clear to him that this was a verse from the Hebrew Bible, from the Jewish tradition. In Fan\u00f8, when asked about the Aryan paragraph, his answer had been: \u2018That is not my province.\u2019
\nTo get the German congregations abroad to secede from the Foreign Office of the Reich Church, Bonhoeffer proposed, at a London meeting of the congregations in England, that they place themselves under the authority of the Confessing Church. Though Heckel managed to drive a wedge between the German pastors in England, the majority of their congregations declared their independence from his Foreign Office. At the same time the Overseas Seminary of the Church at Ilsenburg in the Harz Mountains declared itself to be under the auspices of the Confessing Church, thus earning the enmity of Bishop Heckel. It was in fact a friend of Bonhoeffer\u2019s from student days, Helmut R\u00f6\u00dfler, serving a congregation in Holland, who wrote at Heckel\u2019s behest to all the German pastors abroad that the only right thing to do was to stay out of the church dispute in Germany. This meant the end of his and Bonhoeffer\u2019s friendship. At that time the Confessing Church did have an \u2018ecumenical advisory board\u2019, but, despite Bonhoeffer\u2019s urging, it never set up an office for ecumenical affairs and work abroad. Probably it didn\u2019t have enough money to do so.<\/p>\n
Plans for the future<\/p>\n
The Youth Conference on Fan\u00f8 brought Bonhoeffer a chance to see Jean Lasserre again, the friend with whom he had had the conversation in New York about what it means, according to the Sermon on the Mount, to be a Christian. Soon after the conference, he visited Lasserre at his mining village church in the north of France. Like other guests there, Bonhoeffer took part in street preaching as part of an evangelization drive. He was deeply impressed by Lasserre\u2019s solidarity with the poor folk in his congregation. Lasserre\u2019s idea that one should live according to the Sermon on the Mount was looming larger than ever in Bonhoeffer\u2019s thoughts.<\/p>\n
Dietrich Bonhoeffer with Jean Lasserre during the Fan\u00f8 Conference, August 1934<\/p>\n
When Bonhoeffer went to England, he must have known that he would be returning to Germany in the not too distant future. But he wanted to return under conditions in which he had a say. The concept taking shape in his mind was that of an action group of young, unattached persons committed to theology; the sort of actions they should undertake was what he had wanted to study at Gandhi\u2019s ashram. Some time earlier he had asked Professor St\u00e4hlin what he would think of a community of Protestants living together, upon which St\u00e4hlin expressed the desire to enlist him for the \u2018Berneuchener\u2019 liturgical movement of which he himself was the president. The Berneuchener aimed to revitalize the church through renewal of its worship, taking many of their ideas from monasticism.
\nIn the meantime, however, St\u00e4hlin had opposed the resolutions of the Dahlem Synod, so he was no longer the partner Bonhoeffer was seeking. Instead, at Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s suggestion, he turned to the Bruderhof movement founded by Eberhard Arnold. Arnold\u2019s son was studying in Birmingham and met with Bonhoeffer in London. He reported to his father that Bonhoeffer wanted to found a sort of Protestant monastery, with \u2018spiritual exercises, confessional etc.\u2019 and was planning to study with Gandhi.<\/p>\n
The assumption is that though they do not know the will of God for our time, they want to try to live exactly according to Jesus\u2019 words and by thorough study of the Bible to discern God\u2019s will. Unfortunately Bonhoeffer makes a distinction between theology students and lay persons \u2026 The essential seems to me the fact that behind Bonhoeffer stands a group of sixty to seventy young persons who are seriously struggling to recognize and to do God\u2019s will \u2026 and are prepared to do everything to further this cause \u2026 It would be wonderful if we could make common cause with this group. (DBWE 13, 158\u201360)<\/p>\n
It is fascinating to see Bonhoeffer in London, already describing to young Hardy Arnold what he was to make come true, over a year later in Finkenwalde: a House of Brethren, where six other pastors (though not fifty or more) joined with him in training pastors-to-be, and were available for a diversity of other services, for the Confessing Church.
\nHardy Arnold had not fully understood the points that Bonhoeffer made. For example, Bonhoeffer must have talked about the necessity of intensive Bible study in order to know God\u2019s concrete commandments for the present time. The Bruderhof Community believed instead in the \u2018outpouring of the Spirit\u2019 that took place if only a group of people agreed unanimously to live together in Christian faith. However, in the end Bonhoeffer apparently did not have time to meet with Eberhard Arnold at his Rh\u00f6nhof community.
\nBonhoeffer and Rieger did not get to India either. But Bishop Bell had written not only to Gandhi about them, but also to three monastic communities belonging to the Church of England; Bonhoeffer also wanted to see how a \u2018life together\u2019 would look in the context of the Anglican Church. He had written to his brother Karl Friedrich in January 1935:<\/p>\n
The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together and do this. (DBWE 13, 285)<\/p>\n
To receive inspiration for developing such an effort, Bonhoeffer and Rieger paid visits to the Society of St John the Evangelist in Oxford (founded 1865), the Society of the Resurrection in Mirfield (1892) and the Society of the Sacred Mission in Kelham (1893). These were the first communities in the restoration of the monastic movement in the Anglican Church. All three have made great contributions to the educational work of the Church, and in training a new generation of priests, but as with all monasteries there are certain differences among them. With British humour, these were described as follows: in Oxford the use of tobacco is strictly forbidden, while in Mirfield smoking is allowed and in Kelham one is expected to smoke.
\nThis trip became Bonhoeffer\u2019s preparation for his work as director of a preachers\u2019 seminary. The Anglican monks made a deep impression on him. The set times for prayer observed by monks seem restrictive to the individual; but even for Protestant Christians, they can create a space for community life to develop. They establish a predetermined spiritual order, in which private thoughts\u2014even pious private thoughts\u2014are excluded for a short while. In this an outstanding role is played by the Psalms of the Old Testament. The visitors also found that during leisure time in English monasteries\u2014which is as much a part of their day as prayer\u2014monks could play football (soccer to Americans) and tennis. We shall meet all of this again at Bonhoeffer\u2019s seminary.
\nDuring this period, in the interests of the church struggle, Dietrich Bonhoeffer apparently decided to put aside thoughts of marriage. Members of the House of Brethren, which he wanted to found, should be available to serve the Church wherever they might be needed, without consideration for the needs of a wife or children. The director of the House must of course take the lead in this renunciation.<\/p>\n
As newly appointed director of the Church seminary in Zingst<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer had indicated to Bishop Bell even before the Saar plebiscite that if the Saarland were annexed by Germany, there would be a considerable surge of refugees reaching Britain. He was able to make the first preparations for aiding them himself, with Bell\u2019s help, before he left London. He found lodgings for refugees, raised money and gave pastoral care himself to many of the new arrivals. Among the people whom Bonhoeffer aided during the first weeks of this migration was Armin T. Wegner, the German author who, as a war reporter, had witnessed the Armenian genocide. Wegner had protested to Hitler against the way Jews were being treated, and escaped to England after being tortured by the Nazis. Former Transport Minister Treviranus was also compelled to flee, and his son was confirmed by Bonhoeffer at Sydenham Church in London.
\nThe work with refugees was greatly expanded later on. In 1935, after Bonhoeffer had returned to Germany, Rieger followed Bonhoeffer in coordinating the work for refugees with Bishop Bell. In 1938 Bonhoeffer\u2019s twin sister Sabine and her family were also to seek asylum in England. Her husband, Professor Gerhard Leibholz, was to succeed his brother-in-law as adviser to the Bishop of Chichester on all matters having to do with church and politics in Germany.<\/p>\n
7. Finkenwalde (1935\u20131937)<\/p>\n
A preachers\u2019 seminary in Pomerania<\/p>\n
When he said goodbye in London, Bonhoeffer had said that he was going to become the director of a Confessing Church preachers\u2019 seminary in D\u00fcsseldorf. In Germany at that time the Reich Church had its preachers\u2019 seminaries, which were recognized by the state; beginning in 1935 there were also seminaries of the Confessing Church which, however, were considered \u2018illegal\u2019 before they even started their work. This is why, before Bonhoeffer arrived from London, a wise lawyer had advised the Council of Brethren to find a less conspicuous location than the large city of D\u00fcsseldorf in west Germany, in a densely populated industrial area well provided with \u2018security\u2019 by the Gestapo. So a suitable site was being sought in the Province of Brandenburg, in the countryside around Berlin and beyond, but by the time the seminarians arrived nothing had yet been found. However, the Westphalian School Bible Club had a youth holiday camp at Zingst on the Baltic Sea, which it made available for the first two months; there the seminary could at least get started, though under rather primitive conditions. After that, they were able to move to a country estate near the Baltic seaport of Stettin in Pomerania, where a house stood empty.
\nWe have enthusiastic accounts of the beginnings of this seminary given by the first group that began their work with Bonhoeffer in Zingst. Many of these candidates for ordination had attended Bonhoeffer\u2019s lectures in Berlin and had taken part in his retreats in Biesenthal, or in the Fan\u00f8 Conference. They were happy to be back with this teacher who was scarcely any older than they were and who had impressed them so strongly from the first time they heard him. Though the accommodation at Zingst was very basic, the nearness of the Baltic shore made up for this. Bonhoeffer often held sessions among the sand dunes, and on especially warm afternoons was known to call off work altogether in favour of a swim in the sea and community sports. The more ambitious sportsmen among the ordinands were not too happy to discover that their director could run faster than they could and was almost unbeatable at table tennis. Those new to the group, who came from the Rhineland and the provinces of Saxony and East Pomerania, soon felt at home in this atmosphere. It was a time when the Confessing Church was apparently becoming well established, and victory over the German Christians seemed within reach. So the first seminary course took place amid generally high spirits and in confidence that director and candidates for ordination were on the right side.
\nThe main house on the Finkenwalde estate had most recently served as a boarding school and therefore had a gymnasium which could serve as a chapel. But some necessary furniture and furnishings were lacking. Seminarian Winfried Maechler wrote a plea in verse:<\/p>\n
We want to move everything
\nto Finkenwalde near Stettin.
\nThere stands an empty old estate
\nfor which we do not have to wait.
\nIt is in utter disrepair
\nwith a few beds and cupboards there
\nstanding in the house\u2019s hall \u2026<\/p>\n
The appeal was not without success. Local congregations of the Confessing Church sent everything that was needed. Then, however, the seminary began to run out of food, so the next poem was sent out, with the moving verse: \u2018\u2026 This poem then is admonition \/ Even theologians need nutrition\u2019 (DB-ER, 426\u201327). The Pomeranian country estate owners did themselves proud. A telephone call came one day: \u2018This is the railroad freight yard. A live pig has just arrived for Pastor Bonhoeffer.\u2019
\nThe boarding school gymnasium became a simple but beautiful chapel for the seminary. The music room soon had two Bechstein grand pianos, one of which had recently arrived from London. The library\u2019s basic inventory consisted of Bonhoeffer\u2019s personal stock of books. The pictures on the wall were also his, and so were some of the comfortable armchairs and the large collection of phonograph records, including black American spirituals, which were almost unknown in Germany at the time.
\nAny account of Finkenwalde written today must not fail to mention especially one of the candidates for ordination who became Bonhoeffer\u2019s students at that time. Eberhard Bethge was a pastor\u2019s son from a village east of Magdeburg in central Germany; together with a few friends, he had been expelled from the preachers\u2019 seminary in Wittenberg. These young men had protested against the Reich Bishop, had placed themselves under the care of the Confessing Church and were referred to Bonhoeffer\u2019s seminary to complete their preparation for the parish ministry.<\/p>\n
The chapel of the seminary and the Confessing Church congregation at Finkenwalde<\/p>\n
Eberhard Bethge soon became Bonhoeffer\u2019s closest friend. This could have had a negative effect on the sense of community in Finkenwalde, especially since there was a group from Berlin who could have asserted their entitlement to a special relationship with their revered teacher, having known him longer. But no one could resist the charm of this \u2018country boy\u2019. Bonhoeffer once wrote to Bethge, years later:<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know a single person who can\u2019t stand you, whereas I know quite a few who can\u2019t stand me. I don\u2019t have a hard time with that; wherever I find opponents, I also find friends, and that\u2019s enough for me. But it\u2019s due to your being open and modest by nature, whereas I\u2019m reserved and more demanding. (DBWE 8, II\/101)<\/p>\n
Eberhard Bethge had a capacity to enter into Bonhoeffer\u2019s thinking, and to draw him out by means of questions, which Bonhoeffer found extraordinarily stimulating and which had a generally positive effect on the studies at Finkenwalde. Bethge was also a competent organizer and could take over many of the director\u2019s tasks, so that a seminarian from the Rhineland said with a grin, \u2018Eberhard is the \u201cF\u00fchrer\u2019s deputy\u201d \u2019. Bethge started a choir, and through it introduced into the seminary the principles of a movement in the teaching of singing which, in the 1930s, was leading to a renewal in music education, music in the home and not least of all church music in Germany. Until then, apart from Johann Sebastian Bach, Bonhoeffer had been familiar mainly with the classical and romantic composers, from Mozart to Hugo Wolf and Richard Strau\u00df, and had played much of their music. There were great moments when he and one of the ordinands sat down at the two pianos and gave a Bach or Beethoven concert. But Eberhard Bethge got the listeners to start making music too, and Bonhoeffer learned from him to appreciate older masters such as Heinrich Sch\u00fctz, Johann Hermann Schein and Samuel Scheidt.
\nAt the beginning of his time in Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer became acquainted with the widow of a Pomeranian nobleman, Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, who in due course became a motherly friend to him. She had a lively interest in theology and a hearty loathing for Hitler and his cronies. Bonhoeffer had seen to it that a Confessing Church congregation was started at Finkenwalde, and Ruth von Kleist heard about it. She lived on her estate at Klein-Kr\u00f6ssin, but kept a city apartment in Stettin so that her grandchildren could go to school there. Before long she was attending worship regularly at Finkenwalde and became a benefactress of the seminary. Her grandchildren came to church with her, and Bonhoeffer later confirmed some of them. He soon became a welcome guest on their parents\u2019 estates, and friends of theirs also took an interest in him.
\nThe old manor house at Finkenwalde was not actually very well suited for concentrated study. The seminary had to improvise in many ways, beginning with obtaining food for its dining hall. All the ordinands had to share one large dormitory, which certainly could have been a disturbing factor. But, as Bethge writes in his biography of Bonhoeffer, this was prevented by two things: the daily routine promoted by Bonhoeffer, and \u2018the inspiration offered by his own way of working\u2019. Every morning and evening there was a long prayer service. As in the English monasteries, the Psalms were said in rotation. The Psalm was followed by a hymn, a chapter from the Old Testament, a set verse from a hymn\u2014the same one was used over several weeks\u2014and a chapter from the New Testament. Then Bonhoeffer offered a long prayer in his own words, followed by the Lord\u2019s Prayer. The service ended with another verse from a hymn, which stayed the same for several weeks. In this way the future pastors learned many hymns by heart. Only on Sundays did Bonhoeffer offer a brief homily.
\nThis order of worship had a great influence on all Finkenwaldians, even though at first some of them would gladly have stayed away. What became almost more important to them, however, was a rule instituted by their director\u2014never to talk about another member of the group in that person\u2019s absence, or if such a thing did happen, to tell the person about it afterwards. \u2018The participants learned almost as much from their failures to observe this simple rule, and from their renewed resolution to keep it, as they did from the sermons and exegeses\u2019, said Bethge.
\nSermons and exegeses were, however, the focus of the hours that followed each day. In half a year each ordinand was supposed to learn how to prepare a sermon, to teach religion, to give pastoral care, and to baptize, marry and bury. This was a considerable assignment. Of course the ordinands already had the knowledge acquired from their university courses. But many things were completely new to them, for example the daily practice of meditation. Every morning after breakfast they were asked to think reflectively, alone for half an hour, on a text from Luther\u2019s Bible. Each text was set for a whole week of daily meditation. Most of the ordinands had trouble getting used to this practice. Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann wrote:<\/p>\n
Half an hour of concentration: it is amazing what comes into your head during that time. The mind moves around, memories arise, dreams awaken. Suddenly anger flares up. When we told Bonhoeffer of this, he said that was all right, things have to come into the open; but they must also be tamed in and through prayer.<\/p>\n
In a letter to his brother-in-law, R\u00fcdiger Schleicher, Bonhoeffer described how to meditate. When reading the Bible, he said, he didn\u2019t want to decide according to his own notions what was of God and what was of human origin. If one did that, one might encounter only a \u2018divine double\u2019 of one\u2019s own self.<\/p>\n
I read [the Bible] every morning and evening, and often during the day. Every day I take a text\u2014the same one for a whole week at a time\u2014and try to immerse myself completely in it, truly hear it. I know that without this I couldn\u2019t live right anymore, and certainly couldn\u2019t believe. Every day there are also more things that puzzle me; these are still the completely superficial things that we just hang onto. In Hildesheim the other day I saw some medieval art again, and it struck me how much more they understood about the Bible in those days \u2026 Maybe this is a very primitive thing. But you wouldn\u2019t believe what a joy it is to find one\u2019s way back from the wrong tracks where so much theology leads one, to these primitive things again. And I think in matters of faith we are all equally primitive, in every age. (DBW 14, 147\u201348)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer saw very quickly that his intention for the preachers\u2019 seminary to constitute a community living and learning together could not be carried out if all members of this community except the director and his assistant left Finkenwalde at the end of half a year and were replaced by a new group of ordinands. He therefore reminded the Confessing Church\u2019s Council of Brethren that it had consented, after he returned from England, to allow him to found a House of Brethren as a spiritual centre. Of his first group of students, six wanted to stay and were allowed to do so, and with them Bonhoeffer was able to pursue the ideas inspired by his visits to the Anglican monasteries.
\nEach member of the House of Brethren received a particular assignment. One became pastor of the Confessing Church congregation at Finkenwalde; another became chaplain to the students at the nearby University of Greifswald, where the faculty of theology was determined to keep itself and its students out of the church struggle. This faculty accordingly had a rather strained relationship with Bonhoeffer and his ordinands, which made things especially hard for the one assigned as chaplain. Eberhard Bethge worked on theology with the group at Finkenwalde. The chief task for all members of the House of Brethren, however, was to maintain their \u2018life together\u2019 with its firm rules. Thus, as each new group of ordinands arrived, they found a monastic community life already established and did not have to be persuaded to adapt themselves to it.
\nIn 1937, when Finkenwalde had been closed on the orders of Himmler\u2019s deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, Bonhoeffer wrote a little book entitled Life Together (Gemeinsames Leben). Its five chapters, Community [Gemeinschaft], The Day Together, The Day Alone, Service and Confession [Beichte] and the Lord\u2019s Supper, describe his experience in the preachers\u2019 seminary and the House of Brethren. He was able to have it printed at the time, and it has been reprinted many times since, both in German and translated into other languages, including English.
\nThere was no lack of criticism and suspicion of the work going on at Finkenwalde. Bonhoeffer\u2019s ideas were not everyone\u2019s cup of tea. Many of his colleagues considered them \u2018monkish\u2019, and there were some strange rumours in circulation about the seminary. Not least among those who expressed astonishment was Karl Barth (DBW 14, 253). But more and more candidates for ordination were asking to be assigned to Bonhoeffer\u2019s seminary.
\nBonhoeffer kept to his once-weekly lectures at the University of Berlin with an iron will. If he were to be ousted from the state faculty of theology, then his opponents would have to push for it actively; he had no intention whatsoever of withdrawing voluntarily. His regular trips to Berlin, however, were even more important for another reason: they enabled him to visit his friends who were leaders of the Confessing Church, and to speak with his very well-informed relatives about current developments. When he got back to Finkenwalde, and after the midday meal, he could usually be found sitting together with his assistant, Wilhelm Rott.<\/p>\n
The picture is unforgettable: the small wooden staircase, Dietrich sitting on it with his legs crossed, reaching now and then for a cigarette, or accepting a cup of coffee from the only coffee machine in the house. He had been in Berlin yesterday; he told us about it. When he came home late in the evening, he gave those waiting up for him one of his exciting reports on the deviations and embroilments of that time of church committees, about spiritual and worldly affairs, politics of the church and of the state, about those who were standing firm, those who were wavering and those who fell. But there was more: characteristic details which did not escape his sharp observation and could not be told to a larger audience.<\/p>\n
The Reich Ministry for Church Affairs fights against the Church<\/p>\n
Hitler and his followers did not fail to notice that the Confessing Church had not only gained respect and influence, but that in court it was almost always found to be in the right. This they were not willing to tolerate any longer. So from March to July 1935 three new laws appeared, designed to look like the state\u2019s care for the Church\u2019s welfare but actually intended to shackle it. The first was signed by Hermann G\u00f6ring as prime minister of Prussia and provided \u2018finance\u2019 departments\u2019 for the Prussian provincial churches, which were to \u2018guarantee\u2019 local church assets and contributions; in reality, however, this meant that local Confessing pastors in the Old Prussian Union could no longer take up their usual collections without risking prison. The other two laws were signed by Hitler himself, because they applied to the entire nation. One created a \u2018Legislative Authority for [the administration of] Legal Matters in the German Evangelical Church\u2019. Thus it denied the Confessing Church access to the regular public courts. It was one of Hitler\u2019s countless violations of German law.
\nThe other of Hitler\u2019s decrees, one which was to prove particularly drastic, created a Ministry for Church Affairs headed by Hanns Kerl, who was one of Hitler\u2019s old comrades-in-arms and had his confidence. Kerrl had lost his position as Prussian Minister of Justice due to synchronization, and was to be compensated for it. It was said of him that he was the only Nazi leader who knew the sayings of the Bible, but he was noted particularly for having described the Party\u2019s policies toward the Church as blunders on several occasions. Along with regional Party leader Wilhelm Kube, he was one of the few highly placed Nazi functionaries who wanted to see the nineteenth-century dream of a \u2018national church for all Germans\u2019 realized.
\nHitler may have thought that the appointment of Kerrl, who had sharply criticized August J\u00e4ger and his methods, would serve as a cooperative gesture towards the Protestant churches. He charged Kerrl with \u2018pacifying\u2019 the Protestant church. The new Reich Church Minister attempted to do so by issuing a Law for the Protection of the German Evangelical Church. Its 17 Decrees on Implementation, which were published gradually one after the other, had the effect of tying the hands of the Confessing Church almost completely. They also made cooperation between the \u2018destroyed\u2019 and \u2018intact\u2019 provincial churches increasingly difficult.
\nThis new law nullified the authority of all church governing bodies, whether of the Reich Church, the German Christians or the Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church, including the authority of the Reich Bishop. These were replaced by committees which were now recognized as being in charge, one for the German Evangelical Church as a whole and one for each of the provincial churches. As president of the Reich Church Committee, Kerrl recalled General Superintendent Wilhelm Zoellner from retirement; Zoellner was a church leader who thought in terms of the whole nation, and had never belonged to the German Christian movement. As committee members Kerrl chose people representing all different points of view, for the committees of the provincial churches as well as at the national level. The \u2018intact\u2019 churches were subject to the Reich Church Committee, but did not have to form their own committees. Otto Dibelius protested by means of a pamphlet, The State Church is Here; among those who helped distribute it were the ordinands of Finkenwalde. Before the printed copies could be confiscated, thousands were already in circulation.
\nThis measure of Kerrl\u2019s was a serious attack, for the state did not have the legal right to set up church governing bodies. From this point on, the opposition was no longer within the Church, but was now a political opposition. Anyone who resisted the Church Ministry\u2019s decrees was refusing to obey Hitler\u2019s government. No one felt the effects of this second phase of the church struggle more keenly than did the church colleges in Wuppertal, Berlin and Bethel, the Overseas Seminary in Ilsenburg and the five preachers\u2019 seminaries which the Confessing Church had established to keep its younger generation out of the Reich Church. All those studying at these institutions or preparing for the parish ministry\u2014and there may have been well over a thousand such young people\u2014along with their teachers, had placed themselves, for good or ill, under the care of the Confessing Church, which now had to look after them financially as well as spiritually. They were known as \u2018illegals\u2019, because this kind of education was now forbidden by law for both teachers and students.
\nLike Finkenwalde, all these institutions had begun their work with enthusiasm and readiness to sacrifice. The question now was how long they could go on. The \u2018intact\u2019 churches did not have this problem. For them everything, including the education of their next generation of pastors, was the same as ever. They only stood to gain by distancing themselves gradually from the resolutions made at the Dahlem Synod, since the new Church Ministry left them alone. Soon after the Barmen Synod they had formed the Lutheran Council, which represented their concerns. The Councils of Brethren of the \u2018destroyed\u2019 churches, however, from which this Lutheran Council was increasingly keeping its distance, had to defend their own work and pastoral training. The state was not immediately able to track down all of this, but combated whatever it did find with great severity.
\nFrom our viewpoint today it is hard to understand the attitude of the \u2018intact\u2019 churches. At that time the reasons for it were taken very seriously, in particular by committed Christians. The Old Prussian Union was a church in which Lutheran, Reformed and United Churches had been bound together by royal decree since 1817, and that included fellowship at the communion table, although local congregations kept their confessional identity. When this was introduced, however, force had been used, especially in Silesia. During the nineteenth century more than 200,000 Lutherans emigrated from Prussia, mostly to the USA, in order to remain loyal to their Lutheran faith. For the churches outside Prussia, there was a stigma attached to the union church. They claimed that in Prussia even the Lutheran local churches no longer followed pure Lutheran doctrine. This was combined with the old prejudice of southern Germans against Prussia, a \u2018non-theological factor\u2019 that was still playing a significant role during Hitler\u2019s time.
\nBy setting up its Ministry of Church Affairs in 1935, Hitler\u2019s state caused the Confessing Church to fall apart into two groups that engaged in a bitter feud with one another. Now every member was either a \u2018Lutheran\u2019 or a Dahlemite, and among the most resolute Dahlemites was Bonhoeffer. We have already spoken of Luther\u2019s doctrine of the \u2018two kingdoms\u2019 (see Chapter 5, \u2018The Church and the Jewish Question\u2019). Bonhoeffer could be quite vehement on this subject; as a Lutheran theologian, he accused the Lutheran Council and its followers of being, with their willingness to adapt to the state, the ones who were turning Luther\u2019s original idea into a heresy.
\nAnd indeed, until 1945 the Lutheran bishops issued decrees and signed statements of which, after the Third Reich ended, they could only be ashamed. For example, after the failed coup of 20 July 1944 they ordered prayers of thanksgiving said that the life of the F\u00fchrer had been saved, with a text that, even at the time, outraged many worshippers in their churches. The division also had the effect that the Confessing Church\u2019s ecumenical friends no longer knew which way to turn. So Bonhoeffer continued the struggle on two fronts: with the Councils of Brethren on behalf of the Dahlem resolutions, and within the ecumenical community against the policies of Heckel\u2019s Foreign Office and for better information sharing. It is amazing how much energy and time he was able to invest in this in addition to his work in Finkenwalde. What helped was that, in his lectures at the seminary and in the weekly major discussion evenings at Finkenwalde, he was able to develop many of the theological ideas he needed in order to achieve clarity on both fronts.<\/p>\n
Ecumenical tasks and theological essays<\/p>\n
As an expert in ecumenical matters, Bonhoeffer had more interruptions than he liked in his ongoing work in Finkenwalde, but he saw that the Confessing Church urgently needed him to stay active ecumenically. During the first semester at Finkenwalde he was sent twice to see Bishop Bell, and in Germany he had to attend several meetings on ecumenical issues. This brought the conflict between Bonhoeffer and the Geneva staff out into the open. He was demanding of them the courage to stand up for the Confessing Church and thus for the truth of the gospel, whereas they were increasingly inclined to listen to Heckel. This was why Bonhoeffer cancelled his attendance at the youth conference in Chamby, which he was supposed to direct. His adversary Sch\u00f6nfeld very quickly found someone to take his place, and wrote to Eugen Gerstenmaier in the Church Foreign Office, before the new youth conference director, an American, made his introductory visit there:<\/p>\n
You know yourself, of course, how important it is \u2026 especially in ecumenical work, to have a man who is really well-suited for this task. If we had not found this solution, we in the Research Department would have tried every means to bring to an end this work as it has been carried out until now. (DBW 14, 164)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer had not actually wanted to attend the main 1936 ecumenical conference at Chamby either, because Zoellner, as President of the Reich Church Committee, was claiming the sole right to represent the German church, and Heckel, pleased to be rid of the Reich Bishop, was supporting him with all his might. But neither had reckoned with Bishop Bell\u2019s tenacity. Bell declared that President Koch and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were nevertheless members of the Council on Life and Work, and two further representatives of the Confessing Church were to be invited as guests. Of course Bonhoeffer found this unsatisfactory, but since the Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church said that he must go, he and Eberhard Bethge set off for Switzerland together. It was the first and last time that a delegation from the Confessing Church appeared in an official capacity at an ecumenical conference. They were not even mentioned as such in the minutes. Bonhoeffer did not ask to speak at any time, and he avoided the Reich Church delegation with Zoellner and Heckel.
\nThus he was able to make full use of the days in Chamby to inform Bishop Bell and Bishop Ammundsen about the new situation with the Ministry of Church Affairs and the committees. Meanwhile, Zoellner gave a major speech at the conference about the situation of the German church, and even the Confessing Church representatives were so impressed that they asked him why he didn\u2019t come over to their side. Bishop Ammundsen later recalled that Zoellner said goodbye to one of the Confessing Church representatives with the words, \u2018See you in concentration camp.\u2019 Within a year, Zoellner had recognized what he had become involved in as head of the Reich committee, and resigned.
\nBy the time of the Oxford World Conference on Life and Work in 1937, no representatives of the German Evangelical Church were allowed to participate anymore, on Hitler\u2019s orders\u2014not even Heckel, although he made great efforts to be allowed to go. Still later, in 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and W. A. Visser \u2018t Hooft of the Netherlands, the new ecumenical General Secretary, were able to turn over a new leaf in the work of the ecumenical movement with the church in Germany.
\nBecause Bonhoeffer felt that the theological decisions being made at the time by the ecumenical movement were unclear and wrong, and because he also found that his own church must to some extent share the blame for this, in 1935 he undertook to write an essay on \u2018The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement\u2019, which was published in the journal Evangelische Theologie. It analyses the unequal relations between the two partners and draws conclusions from them.<\/p>\n
Under the onslaught of new nationalism, the fact that Christ\u2019s Church does not stop at national and racial boundaries, but reaches beyond them, so powerfully attested in the New Testament and in the confessional writings, has been far too easily forgotten and denied. Even where it was found impossible to make a theoretical refutation, voices have never ceased to declare emphatically that of course a conversation with foreign Christians about so-called internal German church matters was unthinkable, and that any judgement or public position on these things from outside would be impossible and reprehensible.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer praised the ecumenical movement\u2019s willingness, despite this defensiveness, on a number of occasions to raise its voice on behalf of the Confessing Church in Germany, and the ecumenical recognition that the German church struggle was about the proclamation of the gospel and needed to be fought on behalf of all Christendom. He said that the Confessing Church had brought the ecumenical movement face to face with the issue of confessing the faith.<\/p>\n
To this confession as it has been authoritatively expounded in the decisions of the Synods of Barmen and Dahlem, there is only a Yes or No \u2026 This is an unheard-of claim. But this is the only way in which the Confessing Church can enter into ecumenical conversations.<\/p>\n
The ecumenical movement, Bonhoeffer wrote, must answer the question: upon what authority does it speak? It must not allow the necessary theological dialogues on this topic to be misused to cover up the true situation.<\/p>\n
Theological conversation [between churches of different confessions] will become a bad joke by concealing the fact that it is properly concerned not with unauthoritative discussion, but with responsible, legitimate decisions of the church \u2026 The Confessing Church knows of the fatal ambivalence of any theological conversation and presses for a clear church decision.<\/p>\n
The simplest way to deal with such clear criticism is not to take any notice of it, and this was the attitude adopted by the Geneva office towards Bonhoeffer\u2019s essay.
\nA second essay, however, which he published a year later in the same journal, could not be hushed up so completely. The measures taken by Kerrl, the Minister for Church Affairs, were tightening their grip. Besides German Christians and the Reich Church, there were now also those who followed the \u2018committees\u2019, as well as the Dahlemites, the Lutheran Council people and the \u2018neutrals\u2019. How was one supposed to find one\u2019s way through all of that, and how was a Christian plain and simple supposed to know where he or she belonged, when even pastors of churches disagreed to such an extent?
\nBonhoeffer wrote a 29-page essay, \u2018On the Church Community\u2019, in which the words Scheidung (distinction), Entscheidung (decision) and entscheiden (decide) occur 53 times. This essay made him known overnight in all the provincial churches and provoked a fierce discussion. One sentence in particular so outraged the critics that they declared that anyone who wrote such a thing must be dismissed by the leadership of the Confessing Church from the job of training its pastors. This sentence, which could still raise indignation among older theologians long after the Second World War, said: \u2018Whoever knowingly separates himself from the Confessing Church separates himself from salvation\u2019 (DBW 14, 676). This borrows from the centuries-old phrase extra ecclesiam nulla salus\u2014outside the Church there is no salvation\u2014which Bonhoeffer also, purposefully, cites in this connection. A corrupted version was very soon in circulation, to wit: \u2018If you haven\u2019t got a red card you\u2019re not going to heaven.\u2019 This referred to the membership cards distributed earlier by the Confessing Church.
\nBonhoeffer had touched a sensitive nerve when he said that for pious and right-believing people, such as General Superintendent Zoellner, to work with the committees still didn\u2019t make the committee work any better, since church leadership imposed by the state is not church leadership, and a church that allows pure and false doctrines to be preached together is not a church. He also refused to admit the possibility for anyone to be \u2018neutral\u2019.<\/p>\n
In the first place, it has to be said that in reality there are no \u2018neutrals\u2019. They actually belong to the other side \u2026 It is not possible to take a clear position in regard to them, because their own position is not unambiguous, because the boundary they draw between themselves and the true Church is not clear. (DBW 14, 678\u201389)<\/p>\n
The word \u2018boundary\u2019 was important to Bonhoeffer. It was the German Christians with their Aryan paragraph and other heresies who had set up a boundary over against the Church of the gospel, a boundary which was a barrier to fellowship. The Church itself does not create any boundaries, but through its confession of faith makes clear that those who teach heresy have shut themselves out. The Church takes cognizance\u2014and it can only do so through decisions made by synods\u2014that it has encountered here an insurmountable boundary (DBW 14, 678\u201389).
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s essay appeared at a time when many Confessing Church pastors had just made the decision to work with the committees or to submit to them. Having Zoellner in charge of the committee work seemed to them a guarantee that German Christian rule was at an end. They felt that in Bonhoeffer\u2019s essay they were being treated as though they had fallen away from the faith, which was indeed the way he viewed them. On page after page of the essay he insisted that a decision was called for; that the cause was that of every individual believer but above all a cause of the Church.
\nIn early 1936 Bonhoeffer held a Bible study on King David, which he subsequently published in the journal Junge Kirche (DBW 14, 878ff.). The professional theologians paid no attention to it, but it was reviled in the Nazi press. Bonhoeffer had had the audacity to speak of Judah, the worldwide enemy, as the \u2018eternal people\u2019, the \u2018true nobility\u2019, and \u2018the people of God\u2019. The reaction was different to a Bible study on Ezra and Nehemiah, in which he did not even mention the time and place in which these two books of the Bible were written (DBW 14, 930ff.). It was printed in the same journal and unleashed an intense debate. Friedrich Baumg\u00e4rtel, Professor of Old Testament at Greifswald, wrote that Bonhoeffer was leading his ordinands astray with unscholarly thinking. He was able to prove that Bonhoeffer had treated the text in an arbitrary fashion by simply ignoring the content of verses which spoke of state assistance in rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem and of the protection of a state commissar, because this did not fit with his argumentation (DB-ER 528). The faculty in which Baumg\u00e4rtel taught had stood up for the committees and against the Confessing Church, and was annoyed by the fact that when Bonhoeffer preached in a Greifswald church almost 500 people attended worship, especially students.
\nThe Old Testament was the one theological discipline that Bonhoeffer had neglected somewhat during his own studies. Thus it was no wonder that his Bible study was rejected even by Old Testament scholars in the Confessing Church. His friend Gerhard von Rad, with whom he had often played music when they were schoolboys, wrote in his diary that he ought to \u2018take Bonhoeffer by the collar\u2019 here. Rad had shown, as no one else had done, that there was no need to bend Old Testament texts out of shape in order to interpret them in the spirit of the Confessing Church. So during a visit of Bonhoeffer\u2019s to the University of Jena, the two theologians, friends since their youth, had a lively but very friendly dispute over the interpretation of the Old Testament for the present time.<\/p>\n
Enthusiasm and tribulation<\/p>\n
Through these personal attacks on Bonhoeffer, \u2018decision\u2019 had also become a key word for every individual Finkenwaldian. So we must now look back again and see how the seminary experienced the measures taken by the Ministry of Church Affairs.
\nMinister Kerrl may have raised hopes when he invited each of the different Protestant church groups to send representatives to a meeting with him. He began with Committee President Zoellner and his colleagues, including a few men who until then had been working within the Confessing Church. When this group proposed that some especially radical German Christian members be dismissed from the Reich committee, he left the room instead of replying. This did not bode well for the future. His second meeting was with the Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church chaired by Bishop Marahrens. To its representatives, he proposed that the Councils of Brethren should dissolve themselves, before he compelled them by force to do so. To his third meeting he invited representatives of the Dahlemites, and towards them the Minister was harsh and uninterested in any compromise. He said he \u2018didn\u2019t want to hear anything more about heresy\u2019. He announced that now he would put everything to rights, so that \u2018no loose end is left for a mouse to chew\u2019. This sentence, alien in a theological context, made the rounds of the Confessing Church; in particular it was reported that when the speaker of the group tried to explain what the Confessing Church was about, Kerrl said to him, \u2018Why talk so much? As far as I\u2019m concerned it\u2019s quite pointless.\u2019 The speaker replied, \u2018I note that the Reich Minister considers what we have to say pointless. Then we will end the negotiations.\u2019 (DB-ER 495)
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s conclusion, on hearing the report of this meeting, was that the Confessing Church was very close to being banned altogether. He wrote to his former ordinands:<\/p>\n
We write to let you know that you will not be left on your own in the days to come. After recent events we must now reckon seriously with the possibility of the Confessing Church being banned \u2026 Even a forbidden Church Administration will remain irrevocably ours \u2026 No directive that invalidates or goes against our Church Administration may be complied with, unless on explicit instructions from the church leadership \u2026 (DB-ER 496)<\/p>\n
This was exactly what it meant to be a Dahlemite, and the ordinands at Finkenwalde saw this no differently from the way their director saw it.
\nOne of the most difficult but important decisions that should have been made was missed, to Bonhoeffer\u2019s deep disappointment. From 23 to 26 September 1935, the synod of the Old Prussian Confessing Church met in Steglitz in west Berlin. Franz Hildebrandt telephoned to Bonhoeffer from Dahlem, saying there was a danger that the synod, while still condemning the Aryan paragraph for use by the Church, would explicitly accept it for use by the state. After giving his morning lecture at the University in Berlin, Bonhoeffer went to Steglitz and met there the entire Finkenwalde seminary, which had come to act as a \u2018pressure group\u2019. The synod meeting showed that there really was no longer firm unity, now that Kerrl was making enticing peace offers. Shouldn\u2019t the Church make concessions to the state, in its own interest? The discussion went back and forth, any move towards weakening greeted by heckling from the Finkenwaldians.
\nIn the end, by dint of great effort, a collapse of the Confessing Church front was averted. The synod stood by its earlier decisions, including the rejection of the Aryan paragraph. Bonhoeffer nevertheless considered it a fatefully missed opportunity, since the synod had allowed its agenda for discussion to be dictated by the government rather than setting its own priorities. He had wanted to see it finally take a stand on behalf of the Jews who were being persecuted. On 15 September, at the national Party Rally, Hitler had announced the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws; Bonhoeffer felt that the Old Prussian Confessing Synod should not fail to state its position against these.
\nOn 2 December 1935, the Reich Minister of Church Affairs declared the Confessing Church to be illegal by forbidding it to hire employees, issue proclamations and circular letters, or raise funds through collections and subscriptions except as authorized by the committees\u2014pastors who were being paid salaries previously still received them, but otherwise taking up any offerings for one\u2019s church was punishable by prison\u2014and, especially, holding examinations and ordinations of candidates for the church\u2019s ministry. This meant the end of Finkenwalde and the other Confessing seminaries unless they were prepared to disobey the government (DB-ER 496\u201397).
\nIn the evening of 2 December, Bonhoeffer called all the Finkenwaldians together, explained the new situation to them and gave his reasons for his decision to continue the work of the seminary. He left the seminarians free to decide individually whether they wanted to leave or stay. What should become of the seminary\u2019s work was for the leadership of the Confessing Church to decide, but the Councils of Brethren were dependent on the individual willingness to carry on of the ordinands under their care. It must have been an impressive evening at Finkenwalde. All those present declared that they wanted to continue their studies and their life with the House of Brethren, despite the government prohibition upon them. Bonhoeffer then wrote to Niem\u00f6ller:<\/p>\n
Despite the seriousness of the situation we are very happy and confident. For the rest we act in accordance with Matthias Claudius\u2019s wonderful hymn \u2026
\nI pray that God may grant \/ the little that I want;
\nFor if he doth the sparrows feed \/ will he not fill my daily need? (DB-ER 497)<\/p>\n
Which is right: \u2018Let every person be subject to the governing authorities\u2019 (Romans 13:1) or \u2018We must obey God rather than any human authority\u2019 (Acts 5:29)? Both are in the Bible. For the Finkenwaldians during the years of the church struggle, it was not even worth discussing, since the government was already in the wrong according to the laws of the land.
\nThe first great debate after the synod of Steglitz took place very near Finkenwalde, in Bredow, a district of the city of Stettin. The day after Christmas, a holiday, found 200 pastors there, wrestling all day long about which way the Confessing Church should go in Pomerania. Now that the German Christians no longer held power, and Zoellner, a highly respected Protestant church leader was the head of the new church government, was it really necessary to go on fighting? Wasn\u2019t it finally time to settle down to the real work of the Church, in well-deserved peace? This was the view of many who had stood up loyally for the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer tried to present his radical understanding of the situation as persuasively as possible.<\/p>\n
Instead of going forward, we are standing still and asking who are we really\u2014a church, a movement or a group?\u2026 But we must not been seen like that! By standing still we lose everything; the church can exist only by going forward. The way ahead is shown us by the beacons of the synods: Barmen as a tower against the subversion of church doctrine, Dahlem the tower against the subversion of the ecclesiastical order. Barmen holds the sword forged by the Word. Without Dahlem, however, Barmen would be like a weapon carelessly left in the hands of a foreign power\u2019s general staff. A third synod (Oeynhausen) must now provide our defence against the subversion of the church by the world as, in the shape of the Nazi state, it intervenes through its finance departments, Legislative Authority and committees, and is now tearing into separate groups the church of those who confess our faith. Here we cannot and must not give in one single time! (DB-ER 499)<\/p>\n
Although there had been an agreement not to indulge in applause or disapproval, the atmosphere in the hall became quite stormy, and the Finkenwaldians did not remain on the sidelines either. They were criticized for this by a well-respected Stettin pastor, and Bonhoeffer defended them: \u2018I do not enter such meetings as would a Quaker who on principle must await the directions of the Holy Spirit, but rather as one who arrives on a battlefield where God\u2019s Word is in conflict with all manner of human opinions \u2026\u2019 (DB-ER 500). And with regard to a judgement expressed by his student, Winfried Krause, Bonhoeffer asserted that Krause had not called Bishop Marahrens \u2018a traitor\u2019, but had said that he had betrayed the church\u2014an essential distinction. It was a judgement about an objective decision and action, not about a person. The theological justice of this statement could be disputed. \u2018And my only factual objection to it would be that Marahrens could not possibly betray the Confessing Church, since he had never belonged to it\u2019 (DB-ER 500).
\nWhile it was said of Martin Niem\u00f6ller that he was best suited for an open field of battle, the Bishop of Hanover was precisely unsuited for such conflict. Some Confessing Church people were apt to relate with a smirk that the bishop\u2019s children had sung at his silver wedding anniversary, \u2018He doesn\u2019t say yes, he doesn\u2019t say no, he says let\u2019s wait and see!\u2019 because this was exactly his attitude toward conflicts in the Church. When August J\u00e4ger tried to take the Hanover provincial church into the Reich Church by force, the bishop could neither sign the agreement nor break off the negotiations. The matter was finally resolved by his withdrawing for a while. Then he was said to be \u2018detained\u2019, because if the bishop were detained, his deputy could sign on behalf of the provincial church. In the same half-hearted way as he had done with legal administrator J\u00e4ger, Marahrens yielded to the new Minister of Church affairs on every disputed point. No battles could be won with such an ally at one\u2019s side. This is why Bonhoeffer said that Marahrens had never belonged to the Confessing Church.
\nIn the studies undertaken by Bonhoeffer and his students, significant portions were defined by the church struggle. Nevertheless, in their half-year in the seminary, the ordinands had to cover an impressive syllabus. There was much to learn about the parish ministry: about pastoral visits and pastoral conversations, teaching religion, Sunday school, baptizing children, conducting weddings and funerals. At the university there was no opportunity, or only insufficient ones, to work on all this.
\nBonhoeffer and his assistant, Wilhelm Rott, held daily practice sessions in preaching and teaching; each ordinand had to prepare and deliver sermons and class sessions for discussion by the whole group. However, an ordinand\u2019s sermon was not criticized as such, so as not to \u2018talk it to death\u2019. On all the above-mentioned practical areas of parish work, Bonhoeffer also gave lectures; but more important was his aim to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of every individual candidate. How well he knew each of his students by the end of their training is shown by the assessments he wrote for the Confessing Church authorities. Bonhoeffer had reservations about psychological probing, but he described his students with sensitivity, and made suggestions not only concerning their placement but about what should be especially kept in mind for each (for an example, see DBW 14, 288\u201389).
\nWith groups of students, even during the first Finkenwalde course, Bonhoeffer made trips by bicycle to two church districts to support lonely Confessing Church pastors, to make pastoral visits in their villages, and to lecture and hold services. This strengthened the host pastors as well as preparing Bonhoeffer\u2019s ordinands for the work they would soon be doing. The only way they would have of obtaining a pastorate, since the normal procedure was controlled by the \u2018committees\u2019, was through owners of estates who were patrons of village churches and had the right to choose their pastors. A few could be taken on at a pittance as assistants to Confessing Church pastors who were already serving in parishes by 1933.
\nIn 1936 the entire seminary went to the Belgard church district in East Pomerania, now northwest Poland. In each village, four of the brethren spent a week visiting church members and leading children\u2019s groups and Bible studies. On four of the days, evening worship was held in the village church, at which one of the four ordinands gave a 10-minute homily. With hymns and prayers, each service lasted about an hour. In all the villages the response was stronger than expected. In other areas the seminary visited later, however, they met with rejection and enmity. It was no wonder that how to deal with \u2018dead congregations\u2019 later became a topic of lively discussions in the seminary.
\nAs soon as former Finkenwaldians had their pastoral assignments, they found themselves rather isolated and keenly missed the \u2018life together\u2019 at the seminary. Bonhoeffer informed and supported them through a pastoral newsletter. It was now forbidden for the Confessing Church to circulate newsletters, but if they were in envelopes addressed by hand and put into different post-boxes they didn\u2019t arouse any suspicions. Former ordinands were also invited to retreats at Finkenwalde. Most of Bonhoeffer\u2019s students were later called up for military service and lost their lives in the war, but the small group that survived had a sense of belonging together which lasted all their lives and was evident to everyone who came into contact with them.
\nOn 4 February 1936, the second Finkenwalde course celebrated Bonhoeffer\u2019s thirtieth birthday with him. He told stories about Barcelona, Mexico and London. Suddenly, one of the ordinands asked whether they, too, might express a wish for Bonhoeffer\u2019s birthday. Could he, with the help of his ecumenical contacts, arrange a seminary trip to Sweden? Bonhoeffer\u2014with characteristic spontaneity\u2014promised that same evening he would do so.
\nBefore the Church Foreign Office of the Reich Church or the secret police (Gestapo) got wind of these plans, Bonhoeffer had obtained an official invitation from the Church of Sweden, free board and lodgings had been promised the seminarians, and they had left by boat from Stettin. He had the advice of Birger Forell, the chaplain at the Swedish embassy in Berlin, who was a great friend and helper of the Confessing Church. The seminarians were warmly welcomed everywhere in Sweden; their hosts even made a celebration of their visit. The Archbishop and the widow of his predecessor, the great ecumenicist Nathan S\u00f6derblum, at whose grave an impressive memorial service was held, invited ordinands to stay in their homes, as did many other members of local churches. The main Swedish newspapers carried the event on their front pages.
\nDelighted though the ordinands were with their journey, and cordially received as they had been, the repercussions afterwards were not so pleasant, and once again Theodor Heckel was involved. He drafted a letter for Zoellner to send to Archbishop Eidem in Uppsala, asking whether his invitation to the Finkenwaldians should be understood as a statement by the Church of Sweden against the leadership of the German Evangelical Church. The Archbishop hastened to reply that it was a purely private invitation, but after his secretary corrected him he was obliged to admit that it had taken place through official channels in Sweden. In short, there were a number of embarrassing consequences. Heckel, having once again been outmanoeuvred by Bonhoeffer through his ecumenical contacts, wanted finally to get revenge on this opponent who since 1933 had called him an accomplice in heresy. He wrote to the Prussian church committee:<\/p>\n
Lecturer and Pastor Bonhoeffer, director of a confessional seminary in Finkenwalde near Stettin, has received an invitation from the Ecumenical Committee of the Church of Sweden to visit Sweden with the confessional seminary. The ramifications of this action for foreign policy are being dealt with by the appropriate authorities. I feel impelled, however, to draw the attention of the provincial church committee to the fact that this incident has brought Dr Bonhoeffer very much into the public eye. Since he can be accused of being a pacifist and an enemy of the state, it might well be advisable for the provincial church committee to dissociate itself from him and take steps to assure that he will no longer train German theology students. (DB-ER 511\u201312)<\/p>\n
As dangerous as it could be for Bonhoeffer to be so denounced, another consequence of the trip to Sweden was more drastic for him. He lost his venia legendi, his right to lecture at the University of Berlin. He had not noticed that, since June 1935, university lecturers were not allowed to travel abroad without official permission. The Minister of Education wrote to him that he had not only failed to obtain permission to travel abroad, but had also continued to direct a seminary which, under the Fifth Decree on the Implementation of the Law for the Protection of the German Evangelical Church, no longer had the right to exist. He was therefore permanently excluded from the university lecturing staff (DBW 14, 213). Furthermore, Finkenwalde, in its remote corner of the country, was now in the authorities\u2019 field of vision.<\/p>\n
The Memorandum to Hitler from the Confessing Church<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer often made his comrades-in-arms uncomfortable because he felt the Confessing Church was too timid in its resistance. In 1934 he had written from London to his friend Sutz:<\/p>\n
And while I\u2019m working with the church opposition with all my might, it\u2019s perfectly clear to me that this opposition is only a very temporary transitional phase on the way to an opposition of a very different kind, and that very few of those involved in this preliminary skirmish are going to be there for that second struggle. I believe that all of Christendom should be praying with us for the coming of resistance \u2018to the point of shedding blood\u2019 [Hebrews 12:4] and for the finding of people who can suffer it through. Simply suffering is what it will be about, not parries, blows or thrusts such as may still be allowed and possible in the preliminary battles; the real struggle that perhaps lies ahead must be one of simply suffering through in faith. Then, perhaps then God will acknowledge his church again with his word, but until then a great deal must be believed, and prayed, and suffered. (DBWE 13, 135)<\/p>\n
For him, the Steglitz synod had been far too much about self-defence, about preserving the existence of the Confessing Church. Then he heard that the new Provisional Administration and the Reich Council of Brethren of his church were writing a memorandum that was to be presented to Hitler. One of the members of the three committees preparing the draft was Franz Hildebrandt, who also worked on the final version and asked Bonhoeffer for advice several times during the process. The memorandum was a clear statement of position against the policies of the Third Reich. It was not intended to be published, since the aim was to offer Hitler a possibility for discussion of the facts. It was handed in to the Reich Chancellory on 4 June 1936. The issues were addressed in seven main sections:<\/p>\n
1. It had been said that the victory over Bolshevism represented the defeat of the enemy which had also been fighting against Christianity and the Church. \u2018What we are experiencing is that the fight against the Christian church has never, since 1918, been so alive and effective in the German nation.\u2019 This was a danger to the people, especially to youth.
\n2. It must be asked what the formulation in the Party programme which claimed that it stood on the ground of \u2018positive Christianity\u2019 actually meant.
\n3. The recent \u2018pacification work\u2019 of Kerrl through the Ministry of Church Affairs may have cleared up some shortcomings, but it was muzzling the churches.
\n4. In breach of existing agreements, young people, schools, universities and the press were being forcibly de-Christianized under the slogan \u2018deconfessionalization\u2019.
\n5. The fifth point, since it most clearly concerns the conflict with the state, is quoted here verbatim:<\/p>\n
Protestant members of National Socialist organizations are being required to commit themselves without reservation to the [Nazi] world view. This world view is very frequently proposed as a positive replacement for Christianity, which has to be given up. But while blood, race, national heritage and honour are elevated to the status of eternal values, a Protestant Christian, according to the First Commandment, cannot accept this. While people of the Aryan race are glorified, God\u2019s Word testifies that all human beings are sinful. While the [Nazi] view imposes on Christians an anti-Semitism which commits them to hatred of the Jews, Christians are commanded to love our neighbours. This lays an especially heavy burden on the conscience of our Protestant church members, since it is their duty as Christian parents to combat this anti-Christian thinking in their children.<\/p>\n
6. There was also anxiety about the moral precepts, essentially alien to Christianity, which were being propagated by elements within the Party. \u2018By and large, anything is considered good nowadays, if it benefits our Volk.\u2019
\n7. In many ways the F\u00fchrer was the object of a veneration that belonged to God alone. \u2018We, however, ask that the people of our nation be free to go forward into the future following the cross of Christ as their standard, that their grandchildren may not curse them some day \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
Hitler had no intention whatever of replying; he did not even acknowledge receipt of the memorandum. It is possible that he never even saw it, since the Reich Chancellery office sent it to the Ministry of Church Affairs, as the \u2018appropriate\u2019 destination, and the Ministry forwarded it on to the Evangelical High Church Council in Berlin. After six weeks had passed, the Morning Post in England reported the existence of such a document, and on 23 July the entire text, word for word, appeared in the Swiss paper Basler Nachrichten. For those who had sent it to Hitler, who had wanted to avoid this very outcome, this was a heavy blow. The Provisional Administration of the Confessing Church now sought to prove that the memorandum was intended as an act of genuine loyalty and not as an attack. Letters were sent to the administrations and Councils of Brethren of the provincial Confessing churches to say that the publication had occurred without the knowledge or assistance of the church leaders. They even went to the presidential office of the Reich Chancellery and asked for an investigation, since it was suspected that the leak must be on the side of the government.
\nThe memorandum made a deep impression abroad, as a sign of courageous resistance. What it did in Germany was to increase the gulf between the Dahlemites and the members of the Lutheran Council, since the latter immediately distanced themselves in every way from the authors of the memorandum, whom the press was decrying as guilty of high treason. When it was suggested that the memorandum be made the basis of a pulpit proclamation, the representatives of the \u2018intact\u2019 churches stayed away from the Reich Council of Brethren meeting, thus depriving it of a quorum needed to take action. Bonhoeffer wrote at the time to the former Finkenwaldians:<\/p>\n
Dear Brothers, we can all tell that things have started moving once more in our church. We do not know where they will go. What makes me most anxious of all is the Lutheran Council. We are faced with the announcement of a Lutheran Reich church. Then we shall have the Confessing Church for which many yearn. And the incomprehensible thing is that we shall not be able to participate. Then our conscience will be racked with fear and anguish \u2026 may God build a wall around us so that we can keep together. (DB-ER 534)<\/p>\n
While the writers of the memorandum still had no idea who had leaked it to the foreign press, Bonhoeffer had managed to find out. Two of his former students, Werner Koch and Ernst Tillich, had both had a hand in it. Tillich had been one of Bonhoeffer\u2019s students in Berlin before 1933, but had ended all contact with him since then. Werner Koch had taken part in the second course at Finkenwalde and in the trip to Sweden. He was a gifted journalist and, on Karl Barth\u2019s recommendation, had provided several important foreign news organizations with information and articles. Several Confessing Church staff members knew about this and were troubled, so Koch was sent as a pastoral assistant to Wuppertal in order to separate him from his sources of information in Berlin. Friedrich Wei\u00dfler, the Jewish Christian head of the Provisional Administration office, had one of the only three copies of the memorandum in his safe, and Ernst Tillich had been able to borrow it overnight. Without Wei\u00dfler\u2019s knowledge he had not only made some notes, but had copied out the text word for word. He had made contact with the Basler Nachrichten through Koch.
\nThe secret could not be kept very long. Tillich and Wei\u00dfler were arrested on 6 October, Koch on 13 November 1936. On 13 February 1937 all three of them were sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, where Wei\u00dfler died six days later after being tortured as a Jew. Koch was released in December 1938, Tillich in 1939.
\nEmil Fackenheim, a Jewish fellow prisoner in Sachsenhausen who survived, found out long after the war from Bethge\u2019s biography of Bonhoeffer why Ernst Tillich had been sent to the camp. Tillich had told his fellow prisoners only that he had circulated an anti-Nazi pamphlet. Fackenheim is exactly right in remarking that the authors of the memorandum\u2014\u2018naively, to say the least\u2019\u2014had expected an answer from Hitler.<\/p>\n
And then two of these people, Werner Koch and Ernst Tillich, leaked the memorandum to the foreign press, thereby transforming a heroic, but certainly futile gesture into a tremendous political act \u2026 The Nazis would certainly have murdered Tillich if he had talked around about what he had done. So, well over thirty years later, I understood that I had been that close to a historical event.<\/p>\n
In case Hitler did not reply, the authors of the memorandum had planned to demonstrate, through a proclamation from the Church\u2019s pulpits, that the Church was not completely silent. That the authors pursued this intent, after being labelled as \u2018traitors to the Fatherland\u2019, was certainly courageous; they had just seen for the first time, through the consequences of the leak to the press, what the Nazi state did to people who spoke the truth openly. During that time, Bonhoeffer came across a placard in a bookshop in Berlin:<\/p>\n
After the end of the Olympiade
\nwe\u2019ll beat the CC to marmalade,
\nThen we\u2019ll chuck out the Jew,
\nthe CC will end too.
\n(DB-ER 536: \u2018CC\u2019 = Confessing Church)<\/p>\n
The memorandum was edited into a\u2014rather less radical\u2014proclamation, and thousands of copies of a flyer were also printed. Since severe reprisals were expected, the Provisional Administration of the Confessing Church had ordered Bonhoeffer to go to the ecumenical conference at Chamby, despite his decision not to attend. He was charged with giving bishops Bell and Ammundsen precise information in case a dramatic conflict with the government should ensue.
\nA large number of Confessing Church pastors read out the proclamation, including former Finkenwalde seminarians in their lonely villages. Nothing happened to any of them. We know today that the Gestapo had received orders not to interfere. The Olympic Games were about to be held in Berlin, so that Germany was more than ever in the spotlight of the whole world. But the police did register the names of those pastors who read the proclamation. Since no heavy strife had resulted, Bonhoeffer and Bethge took a few days after the conference in Switzerland for a brief trip to Rome, the city Bonhoeffer had loved best since his stay there at the age of 18.<\/p>\n
The Cost of Discipleship and the end of Finkenwalde<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer could still, even now, take time off from the work of the seminary on hot days and head for the beach with his students; there were games and laughter. For the keen sports fans among his students, he bought tickets to Olympic events, and for two ordinands whose dream was to fly, a trip to Berlin by plane. It was only lack of discipline that he couldn\u2019t stand, due to his somewhat \u2018tyrannical nature\u2019 (DBWE 8, II\/79).
\nFor the winter semester 1936\u20131937 there was an especially gifted group of ordinands at Finkenwalde, and theology was pursued there even more passionately than before. Sometimes it even seemed as though the heated battles on the outside no longer existed. During this high point in the seminary\u2019s work, suddenly there was word that the Finkenwalde estate was to be sold. To avert such a catastrophe, Friedrich Justus Perels, the legal adviser to the Confessing Church, came from Berlin and solved the problems involved so cleverly that the seminary was able to carry on. In the process, a close and trusting friendship developed between Perels and Bonhoeffer, which was to be important to both of them when they became members of the inner circle of the Resistance movement.
\nIt was at this time that a sharp dispute broke out in Pomerania\u2014somewhat later than in the other church provinces\u2014as to whether to go over to Zoellner\u2019s committee system after all. Reinhold von Thadden, who after the war was to be the initiator of the Protestant church conventions (Kirchentage) in Germany, organized a large assembly to discuss the matter in October 1936 in Stettin. Bonhoeffer, who had turned up with all his ordinands from Finkenwalde, was strongly attacked. When someone quoted him as having said that anyone who didn\u2019t have a \u2018red card\u2019 could not be saved, he jumped up and called out, \u2018Bonhoeffer here. You\u2019re misquoting!\u2019 When it was said further that Pastors Pecina and Brandenburg, who had refused to leave their pastorates on orders from the government, were \u2018needlessly and purposelessly fanatical\u2019, the Finkenwaldians could only be restrained with difficulty, since Willi Brandenburg was a former Finkenwalde seminarian who had been imprisoned for his resistance, and was sitting in their midst.
\nAt the end of this vehement dispute it was decided that all participants should submit written statements as to whether the provincial Council of Brethren should continue to govern the Confessing Church in Pomerania, or should yield its responsibility to the provincial church committee. The vote turned out better than expected: the assembly of Confessing Church pastors decided 181 to 58 in favour of the Council of Brethren. But the phalanx of the Confessing Church was beginning to crumble on all sides. A month later, Zoellner was able to announce that the Lutheran Council had declared its willingness to work with the committees. It was not long until one or another of Bonhoeffer\u2019s former students was having himself \u2018legalized\u2019. The consistories of the provincial churches were making it easy for ordinands of the Confessing Church. An ordinand had only to come over to them and say he wanted to be assigned to a pastorate, and he would receive a job, a parsonage and a salary. Many of the Finkenwalde graduates were under pressure from their parents or fianc\u00e9es not to be more courageous than necessary. Bonhoeffer and the members of the House of Brethren struggled to keep each one, and it was a heavy blow to all concerned every time the fellowship suffered a break. In the Rhineland during that time, 200 Confessing ordinands had themselves \u2018legalized\u2019, while 200 remained \u2018illegal\u2019; in Bonhoeffer\u2019s sphere, only a few took the step of going over to the consistories.
\nZoellner, who as committee president was the leading clergyman of the state-dependent German Evangelical Church, was in no way willing to tolerate German Christian excesses in a few of the smaller provincial churches. In the northern city of L\u00fcbeck, the German Christians had attempted to have all pastors belonging to the Confessing Church dismissed. They persisted in this cause even when courts declared it to be contrary to the law. Zoellner thereupon arranged to preach in L\u00fcbeck on 4 February 1937. When the police prevented him from entering the pulpit there, he submitted his resignation, on 12 February, along with the other members of the Reich Church Committee. Since not all of the provincial church committees followed them in doing so, Kerrl as Minister for Church Affairs was able to give a speech to a remnant of committee people, in which he called for bringing \u2018the preaching of the church into the correct relationship with National Socialism\u2019.
\nSome of his statements in that speech were so unfounded that Otto Dibelius was moved to write another of his letters of protest.<\/p>\n
According to the report I have here, the Catholic bishop Count Galen and the Protestant General Superintendent Zoellner tried to tell you what Christianity is about, namely the recognition that Jesus is the Son of God. This, you claim, is ridiculous and merely a side issue. You say all that is needed is to be influenced by the figure of Jesus, and to live by a Christianity of good deeds \u2026 The New Testament says nothing about the will of God being given to us in our blood. It says only that everything human is cursed with selfishness, and that the will of God is proclaimed to humankind through Jesus Christ, the Living Word \u2026 You said the priests are claiming that Jesus was a Jew; they speak of St Paul as a Jew, and say that salvation is from the Jews. This, you say, will not do! As far as I can remember, the church never used to emphasize this in earlier times. But now that it is being denied, the church has to say, \u2018Yes indeed, Jesus of Nazareth is a Jew! and that salvation is from the Jews is written in the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John.\u2019 You may certainly not forbid pastors to say what is in the Bible.<\/p>\n
Such open speaking made Dibelius popular with the Finkenwaldians. Like so many others, he had been wrong about Hitler in 1933; but after that he didn\u2019t keep still or keep his distance, but rather protested strongly against Nazism. So it is unjust to call him, as does Hans-Ulrich Wehler, \u2018one of the most disastrous figures in twentieth-century German Protestantism\u2019.
\nDuring the confused situation after Zoellner\u2019s resignation, Hitler again made a surprise announcement, ordering that church elections be held. The Church, \u2018in full freedom, may now provide itself with a new constitution and thereby a new order as determined by its members\u2019. But these elections were never held. Announcing them was just part of the game of hopes, disappointments and renewed hopes through which church groups were kept in suspense through the years.
\nIn place of the committees, there now appeared Dr Friedrich Werner, who on 20 March 1937 became director of the state-dependent German Evangelical Church\u2019s chancellery and president of the Evangelical High Church Council in Berlin. He was a lawyer, totally uninterested in issues of Christian confession, and a high-ranking Nazi Party member. In 1933 he had been on the presidium of the Brown Synod. Now Kerrl conferred on him full authority to govern the Church. Werner appointed Albert Freitag, a notorious representative of the German Christians, as head of personnel. From 10 December 1937 until the end of the war these two \u2018governed\u2019 the German Evangelical Church, trying to suffocate whatever was left of the Confessing Church through decrees and orders. For example, they banned worship services from being held in \u2018unconsecrated buildings\u2019. This affected all the Confessing congregations that were obliged to meet in homes or in public meeting halls because German Christians were in control of the local churches. Anyone who resisted could be arrested, and from now on the number of pastors being sent to prison rose steadily.
\nSince 1933, worship services in the Confessing Church had included praying for those who had been arrested, by name; this too was now forbidden. Confessing congregations also were forbidden to take up collections, since this was an offence against the state\u2019s law on collections. The main point of attack, however, was the training of the next generation of pastors. Lecturers at the church colleges were forbidden to exercise their profession. Anyone who tried to get around this ban was arrested. Thus the end of Finkenwalde and the four other Confessing preachers\u2019 seminaries could be foreseen. These and many other such measures were being steered from behind the scenes by the former district president in Hildesheim, Dr Hermann Muhs, whom Kerrl had made head administrator in the Ministry for Church Affairs. In all the provincial church offices and consistories there were still properly appointed officials from the time before 1933, but they no longer had any authority. The power exercised by Werner and Freitag was unlimited.
\nThe cynicism evident in the way these two operated had the good effect of bringing the estranged wings of the Confessing Church together again. In March 1937 the Reich Council of Brethren held a full meeting, as it had not done for a long time. But this spurred on people like Werner to intensify their persecution. In June, a meeting of the Reich Council of Brethren in Berlin was broken up and eight of its members were arrested. When such things happened, Bonhoeffer immediately went to Berlin to see if he could help. In this way, when on 2 July 1937 he went to discuss the situation with Niem\u00f6ller and Hildebrandt, he fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.
\nNiem\u00f6ller had been arrested that morning. He was not to return until after the war; although he was acquitted in the forced trial held against him, Hitler made him his \u2018personal prisoner\u2019 and had him sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In his parsonage that day, Bonhoeffer found several men of the Confessing Church trying to deal with the new situation, when suddenly the Gestapo appeared with orders to search the house. The visitors watched as Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s study was turned upside down. Behind a picture on the wall, a safe was found, containing 30,000 Reichsmarks belonging to the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League, of which the police took possession. The visitors were released by evening, after having to give their particulars, and allowed to go home.
\nAll this had seemed to take place without any grave danger, but for Bonhoeffer the day brought a decided break in his life. His friend Franz Hildebrandt, who had been among those present, and preached in Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s pulpit at the Dahlem church on 12 and 18 July, was arrested for announcing the collections for the Confessing Church and reading the list of names for intercessory prayer. As a \u2018non-Aryan\u2019 his situation was precarious, but Bonhoeffer\u2019s parents and many other friends exerted every possible influence, so that after four weeks he was released. Since the police had not found his passport, he was able to emigrate to England, where Julius Rieger took him on as assistant preacher in his congregation.
\nBefore we come to the end of the work at Finkenwalde, we must speak of the book that grew out of Bonhoeffer\u2019s lectures there and his discussions with those who heard them. The preparations for this book go back to Bonhoeffer\u2019s time in London, and even before that. The first inspiration had been his conversations with Jean Lasserre in New York. Bonhoeffer\u2019s stirring phrase, \u2018Christianity entails decision\u2019, was now sharpened to the more precise point that faith means making a decision, for there is no faith without obedience. For several semesters at Finkenwalde Bonhoeffer lectured to his ordinands on being disciples of Christ, and in so doing he placed the Gospels, especially the Sermon on the Mount, at the centre of the Christian life.
\nAt all Nazi public events there were speeches about \u2018F\u00fchrer and followers\u2019. During the war these were made into a song with the refrain, \u2018F\u00fchrer, command, we\u2019ll follow you [wir folgen dir]\u2019. When Bonhoeffer called his lecture course Nachfolge (following, or discipleship), he was not only using a New Testament concept, but also contrasting it expressly to a term widely used by the Nazis.
\nDuring the political dispute, which was discussed almost daily in Finkenwalde, he developed the idea that, contrary to the usual Lutheran interpretation, the Sermon on the Mount was intended not only to lead human beings to the conviction that they are sinners who can be saved only through faith in the grace of God; even more, Jesus required consistent obedience from his followers. Anyone who claimed otherwise was preaching \u2018cheap grace\u2019. \u2018Only the believers obey, and only the obedient believe. It is really unfaithfulness to the Bible to have the first statement without the second\u2019 (DBWE 4, 63). This statement had the effect of a \u2018thunderbolt of insight\u2019 on Bonhoeffer\u2019s students, according to a description at the time in Finkenwalde (DBW 14, 989).
\nThe book Discipleship (first published in English as The Cost of Discipleship), completed in 1937, grew out of these lectures of Bonhoeffer\u2019s. It caused a stir, especially because this interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount was new for Protestant churches. This caused the shorter second part, which interpreted the apostolic letters\u2014notably the theology of the apostle Paul\u2014to receive less attention. Of course Eberhard Bethge had a point when, in his discussion of the book in his Bonhoeffer biography, he called the chapter \u2018Discipleship and the Cross\u2019 (DBWE 4, 84ff) a \u2018cornerstone of the work from the beginning\u2019 (DB-ER 450).
\nThe second part makes no bones about the fact that Christians are persecuted in this world and are therefore lonely, and that they must spare no effort in remaining faithful. \u2018The church-community moves through the world like a sealed train passing through foreign territory\u2019 (DBWE 4, 260). This image of a \u2018sealed train\u2019 neatly reflects the situation of the Confessing Church, the influence of which was being combated and increasingly pushed back by the Nazi authorities and the Reich Church, which followed Hitler\u2019s lead.
\nOn thorough examination, it is striking that the last chapter of the book, entitled \u2018The Image of Christ\u2019, takes up the theme of \u2018Discipleship and the Cross\u2019 in another way, which one might call \u2018mystical\u2019; and it is not by chance that this theme is the result of a decision that Bonhoeffer had to make, almost completely alone, at that time. It includes a passage that, while much gentler than his sermon in London on Jeremiah, reflects again moments of the absolute presence of God.<\/p>\n
To those who have heard the call to be disciples of Jesus Christ is given the incomprehensible great promise that they are to become like Christ \u2026 All those who submit themselves completely to Jesus Christ will, indeed must, bear his image. They become sons and daughters of God; they stand next to Christ, their invisible brother, who bears the same form as they do, the image of God. (DBWE 4, 281)<\/p>\n
The form of Christ on earth is the form of death [Todesgestalt] of the Crucified One \u2026 It is into this image that the disciple\u2019s life must be transformed. It is a life in the image and likeness of Christ\u2019s death (Philippians 3:10; Romans 6:4\u20135). (DBWE 4, 285)<\/p>\n
Christ honours only a few of his followers with being in the most intimate community with his suffering, that is, with martyrdom. It is here that the life of the disciple is most profoundly identical with the likeness of Jesus Christ\u2019s form of death. It is by Christians\u2019 being publicly disgraced, having to suffer and be put to death for the sake of Christ, that Christ himself attains visible form within his community. However, from baptism all the way to martyrdom, it is the same suffering and the same death. It is the new creation of the image of God through the Crucified One. All those who remain in community with the Incarnate and Crucified One and in whom he gained his form will also become like the Glorified and Risen One. \u2018We will bear the image of the heavenly human being\u2019 (1 Corinthians 15:49). \u2018We will be like him, for we will behold him as he is\u2019 (1 John 3:2). The image of the Risen One will transform those who look at it in the same way as the image of the Crucified One. (DBWE 4, 285f)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer is speaking here not only of the communion of suffering, which the ordinands were ready to take upon themselves together with their director, and did take upon themselves; he is also speaking explicitly of martyrdom, in which there can no longer be any communion of sufferers. There were reasons why Bonhoeffer came to speak of this. He felt personally obligated by Jesus\u2019 commandment to peace to refuse military service whenever war broke out, and he was certain that it would. But he wanted neither to discuss this idea with his ordinands nor to challenge them to follow him on a course which would end in a death sentence.
\nThe few leaders in the Confessing Church who had any idea that Bonhoeffer was contemplating such a thing were horrified. The Protestant church had neither theological concepts, nor yet any examples, of conscientious objection to military service. That Luther had expressly forbidden the participation of any Christian in an unjust war had long been forgotten, and if Bonhoeffer, one of the best-known theologians in the Confessing Church, should declare Hitler\u2019s war to be an unjust war, there was no doubt that the whole Church would be endangered. The German secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Dr Hermann St\u00f6hr, took this stance at the beginning of the Second World War and was executed. There had been attempts to save him, but the Confessing Church did not stand up for him or for the step he had taken. Some friends in the Confessing Church were happy when Bonhoeffer was invited to the USA in the spring of 1939, hoping that war might break out while he was there, catching him by surprise and preventing his return.
\nThat the Finkenwalde seminary was able to continue its work undisturbed, after the new church administration imposed by Kerrl\u2019s ministry had begun its attacks, amazed many people. Were the authorities purposely looking the other way? There had been cases in which members of the Gestapo had protected Confessing Church pastors and their work. Even the Finkenwaldians\u2019 mission trips were not disturbed. The fifth seminary course finished up with a few sunny days on the Baltic shore. The evening farewell celebration was held on 8 September, and everyone left on vacation.<\/p>\n
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the shore of the Baltic Sea. Photo taken by Helmut Morlinhaus in 1937<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer and Bethge took a holiday in Bavaria. On the way back at the end of September, they were at Bonhoeffer\u2019s twin sister\u2019s home in G\u00f6ttingen when they received a telephone call from Stettin. The Gestapo had arrived at Finkenwalde, served orders to quit on the housekeeper, Erna Struwe and the inspector of studies, Fritz Onnasch, the successor of Wilhelm Rott, and then sealed the doors of the seminary rooms. There were many appeals. The old Field Marshal August von Mackensen sent a handwritten letter of protest to Minister Kerrl; but the order was not rescinded. \u2018We must obey God rather than any human authority,\u2019 says the New Testament. On this basis, despite the ban by the government, Bonhoeffer did not consider his mission to train pastors for the Confessing Church to be at an end.<\/p>\n
7. Finkenwalde (1935\u20131937)<\/p>\n
A preachers\u2019 seminary in Pomerania<\/p>\n
When he said goodbye in London, Bonhoeffer had said that he was going to become the director of a Confessing Church preachers\u2019 seminary in D\u00fcsseldorf. In Germany at that time the Reich Church had its preachers\u2019 seminaries, which were recognized by the state; beginning in 1935 there were also seminaries of the Confessing Church which, however, were considered \u2018illegal\u2019 before they even started their work. This is why, before Bonhoeffer arrived from London, a wise lawyer had advised the Council of Brethren to find a less conspicuous location than the large city of D\u00fcsseldorf in west Germany, in a densely populated industrial area well provided with \u2018security\u2019 by the Gestapo. So a suitable site was being sought in the Province of Brandenburg, in the countryside around Berlin and beyond, but by the time the seminarians arrived nothing had yet been found. However, the Westphalian School Bible Club had a youth holiday camp at Zingst on the Baltic Sea, which it made available for the first two months; there the seminary could at least get started, though under rather primitive conditions. After that, they were able to move to a country estate near the Baltic seaport of Stettin in Pomerania, where a house stood empty.
\nWe have enthusiastic accounts of the beginnings of this seminary given by the first group that began their work with Bonhoeffer in Zingst. Many of these candidates for ordination had attended Bonhoeffer\u2019s lectures in Berlin and had taken part in his retreats in Biesenthal, or in the Fan\u00f8 Conference. They were happy to be back with this teacher who was scarcely any older than they were and who had impressed them so strongly from the first time they heard him. Though the accommodation at Zingst was very basic, the nearness of the Baltic shore made up for this. Bonhoeffer often held sessions among the sand dunes, and on especially warm afternoons was known to call off work altogether in favour of a swim in the sea and community sports. The more ambitious sportsmen among the ordinands were not too happy to discover that their director could run faster than they could and was almost unbeatable at table tennis. Those new to the group, who came from the Rhineland and the provinces of Saxony and East Pomerania, soon felt at home in this atmosphere. It was a time when the Confessing Church was apparently becoming well established, and victory over the German Christians seemed within reach. So the first seminary course took place amid generally high spirits and in confidence that director and candidates for ordination were on the right side.
\nThe main house on the Finkenwalde estate had most recently served as a boarding school and therefore had a gymnasium which could serve as a chapel. But some necessary furniture and furnishings were lacking. Seminarian Winfried Maechler wrote a plea in verse:<\/p>\n
We want to move everything
\nto Finkenwalde near Stettin.
\nThere stands an empty old estate
\nfor which we do not have to wait.
\nIt is in utter disrepair
\nwith a few beds and cupboards there
\nstanding in the house\u2019s hall \u2026<\/p>\n
The appeal was not without success. Local congregations of the Confessing Church sent everything that was needed. Then, however, the seminary began to run out of food, so the next poem was sent out, with the moving verse: \u2018\u2026 This poem then is admonition \/ Even theologians need nutrition\u2019 (DB-ER, 426\u201327). The Pomeranian country estate owners did themselves proud. A telephone call came one day: \u2018This is the railroad freight yard. A live pig has just arrived for Pastor Bonhoeffer.\u2019
\nThe boarding school gymnasium became a simple but beautiful chapel for the seminary. The music room soon had two Bechstein grand pianos, one of which had recently arrived from London. The library\u2019s basic inventory consisted of Bonhoeffer\u2019s personal stock of books. The pictures on the wall were also his, and so were some of the comfortable armchairs and the large collection of phonograph records, including black American spirituals, which were almost unknown in Germany at the time.
\nAny account of Finkenwalde written today must not fail to mention especially one of the candidates for ordination who became Bonhoeffer\u2019s students at that time. Eberhard Bethge was a pastor\u2019s son from a village east of Magdeburg in central Germany; together with a few friends, he had been expelled from the preachers\u2019 seminary in Wittenberg. These young men had protested against the Reich Bishop, had placed themselves under the care of the Confessing Church and were referred to Bonhoeffer\u2019s seminary to complete their preparation for the parish ministry.<\/p>\n
The chapel of the seminary and the Confessing Church congregation at Finkenwalde<\/p>\n
Eberhard Bethge soon became Bonhoeffer\u2019s closest friend. This could have had a negative effect on the sense of community in Finkenwalde, especially since there was a group from Berlin who could have asserted their entitlement to a special relationship with their revered teacher, having known him longer. But no one could resist the charm of this \u2018country boy\u2019. Bonhoeffer once wrote to Bethge, years later:<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know a single person who can\u2019t stand you, whereas I know quite a few who can\u2019t stand me. I don\u2019t have a hard time with that; wherever I find opponents, I also find friends, and that\u2019s enough for me. But it\u2019s due to your being open and modest by nature, whereas I\u2019m reserved and more demanding. (DBWE 8, II\/101)<\/p>\n
Eberhard Bethge had a capacity to enter into Bonhoeffer\u2019s thinking, and to draw him out by means of questions, which Bonhoeffer found extraordinarily stimulating and which had a generally positive effect on the studies at Finkenwalde. Bethge was also a competent organizer and could take over many of the director\u2019s tasks, so that a seminarian from the Rhineland said with a grin, \u2018Eberhard is the \u201cF\u00fchrer\u2019s deputy\u201d \u2019. Bethge started a choir, and through it introduced into the seminary the principles of a movement in the teaching of singing which, in the 1930s, was leading to a renewal in music education, music in the home and not least of all church music in Germany. Until then, apart from Johann Sebastian Bach, Bonhoeffer had been familiar mainly with the classical and romantic composers, from Mozart to Hugo Wolf and Richard Strau\u00df, and had played much of their music. There were great moments when he and one of the ordinands sat down at the two pianos and gave a Bach or Beethoven concert. But Eberhard Bethge got the listeners to start making music too, and Bonhoeffer learned from him to appreciate older masters such as Heinrich Sch\u00fctz, Johann Hermann Schein and Samuel Scheidt.
\nAt the beginning of his time in Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer became acquainted with the widow of a Pomeranian nobleman, Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, who in due course became a motherly friend to him. She had a lively interest in theology and a hearty loathing for Hitler and his cronies. Bonhoeffer had seen to it that a Confessing Church congregation was started at Finkenwalde, and Ruth von Kleist heard about it. She lived on her estate at Klein-Kr\u00f6ssin, but kept a city apartment in Stettin so that her grandchildren could go to school there. Before long she was attending worship regularly at Finkenwalde and became a benefactress of the seminary. Her grandchildren came to church with her, and Bonhoeffer later confirmed some of them. He soon became a welcome guest on their parents\u2019 estates, and friends of theirs also took an interest in him.
\nThe old manor house at Finkenwalde was not actually very well suited for concentrated study. The seminary had to improvise in many ways, beginning with obtaining food for its dining hall. All the ordinands had to share one large dormitory, which certainly could have been a disturbing factor. But, as Bethge writes in his biography of Bonhoeffer, this was prevented by two things: the daily routine promoted by Bonhoeffer, and \u2018the inspiration offered by his own way of working\u2019. Every morning and evening there was a long prayer service. As in the English monasteries, the Psalms were said in rotation. The Psalm was followed by a hymn, a chapter from the Old Testament, a set verse from a hymn\u2014the same one was used over several weeks\u2014and a chapter from the New Testament. Then Bonhoeffer offered a long prayer in his own words, followed by the Lord\u2019s Prayer. The service ended with another verse from a hymn, which stayed the same for several weeks. In this way the future pastors learned many hymns by heart. Only on Sundays did Bonhoeffer offer a brief homily.
\nThis order of worship had a great influence on all Finkenwaldians, even though at first some of them would gladly have stayed away. What became almost more important to them, however, was a rule instituted by their director\u2014never to talk about another member of the group in that person\u2019s absence, or if such a thing did happen, to tell the person about it afterwards. \u2018The participants learned almost as much from their failures to observe this simple rule, and from their renewed resolution to keep it, as they did from the sermons and exegeses\u2019, said Bethge.
\nSermons and exegeses were, however, the focus of the hours that followed each day. In half a year each ordinand was supposed to learn how to prepare a sermon, to teach religion, to give pastoral care, and to baptize, marry and bury. This was a considerable assignment. Of course the ordinands already had the knowledge acquired from their university courses. But many things were completely new to them, for example the daily practice of meditation. Every morning after breakfast they were asked to think reflectively, alone for half an hour, on a text from Luther\u2019s Bible. Each text was set for a whole week of daily meditation. Most of the ordinands had trouble getting used to this practice. Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann wrote:<\/p>\n
Half an hour of concentration: it is amazing what comes into your head during that time. The mind moves around, memories arise, dreams awaken. Suddenly anger flares up. When we told Bonhoeffer of this, he said that was all right, things have to come into the open; but they must also be tamed in and through prayer.<\/p>\n
In a letter to his brother-in-law, R\u00fcdiger Schleicher, Bonhoeffer described how to meditate. When reading the Bible, he said, he didn\u2019t want to decide according to his own notions what was of God and what was of human origin. If one did that, one might encounter only a \u2018divine double\u2019 of one\u2019s own self.<\/p>\n
I read [the Bible] every morning and evening, and often during the day. Every day I take a text\u2014the same one for a whole week at a time\u2014and try to immerse myself completely in it, truly hear it. I know that without this I couldn\u2019t live right anymore, and certainly couldn\u2019t believe. Every day there are also more things that puzzle me; these are still the completely superficial things that we just hang onto. In Hildesheim the other day I saw some medieval art again, and it struck me how much more they understood about the Bible in those days \u2026 Maybe this is a very primitive thing. But you wouldn\u2019t believe what a joy it is to find one\u2019s way back from the wrong tracks where so much theology leads one, to these primitive things again. And I think in matters of faith we are all equally primitive, in every age. (DBW 14, 147\u201348)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer saw very quickly that his intention for the preachers\u2019 seminary to constitute a community living and learning together could not be carried out if all members of this community except the director and his assistant left Finkenwalde at the end of half a year and were replaced by a new group of ordinands. He therefore reminded the Confessing Church\u2019s Council of Brethren that it had consented, after he returned from England, to allow him to found a House of Brethren as a spiritual centre. Of his first group of students, six wanted to stay and were allowed to do so, and with them Bonhoeffer was able to pursue the ideas inspired by his visits to the Anglican monasteries.
\nEach member of the House of Brethren received a particular assignment. One became pastor of the Confessing Church congregation at Finkenwalde; another became chaplain to the students at the nearby University of Greifswald, where the faculty of theology was determined to keep itself and its students out of the church struggle. This faculty accordingly had a rather strained relationship with Bonhoeffer and his ordinands, which made things especially hard for the one assigned as chaplain. Eberhard Bethge worked on theology with the group at Finkenwalde. The chief task for all members of the House of Brethren, however, was to maintain their \u2018life together\u2019 with its firm rules. Thus, as each new group of ordinands arrived, they found a monastic community life already established and did not have to be persuaded to adapt themselves to it.
\nIn 1937, when Finkenwalde had been closed on the orders of Himmler\u2019s deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, Bonhoeffer wrote a little book entitled Life Together (Gemeinsames Leben). Its five chapters, Community [Gemeinschaft], The Day Together, The Day Alone, Service and Confession [Beichte] and the Lord\u2019s Supper, describe his experience in the preachers\u2019 seminary and the House of Brethren. He was able to have it printed at the time, and it has been reprinted many times since, both in German and translated into other languages, including English.
\nThere was no lack of criticism and suspicion of the work going on at Finkenwalde. Bonhoeffer\u2019s ideas were not everyone\u2019s cup of tea. Many of his colleagues considered them \u2018monkish\u2019, and there were some strange rumours in circulation about the seminary. Not least among those who expressed astonishment was Karl Barth (DBW 14, 253). But more and more candidates for ordination were asking to be assigned to Bonhoeffer\u2019s seminary.
\nBonhoeffer kept to his once-weekly lectures at the University of Berlin with an iron will. If he were to be ousted from the state faculty of theology, then his opponents would have to push for it actively; he had no intention whatsoever of withdrawing voluntarily. His regular trips to Berlin, however, were even more important for another reason: they enabled him to visit his friends who were leaders of the Confessing Church, and to speak with his very well-informed relatives about current developments. When he got back to Finkenwalde, and after the midday meal, he could usually be found sitting together with his assistant, Wilhelm Rott.<\/p>\n
The picture is unforgettable: the small wooden staircase, Dietrich sitting on it with his legs crossed, reaching now and then for a cigarette, or accepting a cup of coffee from the only coffee machine in the house. He had been in Berlin yesterday; he told us about it. When he came home late in the evening, he gave those waiting up for him one of his exciting reports on the deviations and embroilments of that time of church committees, about spiritual and worldly affairs, politics of the church and of the state, about those who were standing firm, those who were wavering and those who fell. But there was more: characteristic details which did not escape his sharp observation and could not be told to a larger audience.<\/p>\n
The Reich Ministry for Church Affairs fights against the Church<\/p>\n
Hitler and his followers did not fail to notice that the Confessing Church had not only gained respect and influence, but that in court it was almost always found to be in the right. This they were not willing to tolerate any longer. So from March to July 1935 three new laws appeared, designed to look like the state\u2019s care for the Church\u2019s welfare but actually intended to shackle it. The first was signed by Hermann G\u00f6ring as prime minister of Prussia and provided \u2018finance\u2019 departments\u2019 for the Prussian provincial churches, which were to \u2018guarantee\u2019 local church assets and contributions; in reality, however, this meant that local Confessing pastors in the Old Prussian Union could no longer take up their usual collections without risking prison. The other two laws were signed by Hitler himself, because they applied to the entire nation. One created a \u2018Legislative Authority for [the administration of] Legal Matters in the German Evangelical Church\u2019. Thus it denied the Confessing Church access to the regular public courts. It was one of Hitler\u2019s countless violations of German law.
\nThe other of Hitler\u2019s decrees, one which was to prove particularly drastic, created a Ministry for Church Affairs headed by Hanns Kerl, who was one of Hitler\u2019s old comrades-in-arms and had his confidence. Kerrl had lost his position as Prussian Minister of Justice due to synchronization, and was to be compensated for it. It was said of him that he was the only Nazi leader who knew the sayings of the Bible, but he was noted particularly for having described the Party\u2019s policies toward the Church as blunders on several occasions. Along with regional Party leader Wilhelm Kube, he was one of the few highly placed Nazi functionaries who wanted to see the nineteenth-century dream of a \u2018national church for all Germans\u2019 realized.
\nHitler may have thought that the appointment of Kerrl, who had sharply criticized August J\u00e4ger and his methods, would serve as a cooperative gesture towards the Protestant churches. He charged Kerrl with \u2018pacifying\u2019 the Protestant church. The new Reich Church Minister attempted to do so by issuing a Law for the Protection of the German Evangelical Church. Its 17 Decrees on Implementation, which were published gradually one after the other, had the effect of tying the hands of the Confessing Church almost completely. They also made cooperation between the \u2018destroyed\u2019 and \u2018intact\u2019 provincial churches increasingly difficult.
\nThis new law nullified the authority of all church governing bodies, whether of the Reich Church, the German Christians or the Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church, including the authority of the Reich Bishop. These were replaced by committees which were now recognized as being in charge, one for the German Evangelical Church as a whole and one for each of the provincial churches. As president of the Reich Church Committee, Kerrl recalled General Superintendent Wilhelm Zoellner from retirement; Zoellner was a church leader who thought in terms of the whole nation, and had never belonged to the German Christian movement. As committee members Kerrl chose people representing all different points of view, for the committees of the provincial churches as well as at the national level. The \u2018intact\u2019 churches were subject to the Reich Church Committee, but did not have to form their own committees. Otto Dibelius protested by means of a pamphlet, The State Church is Here; among those who helped distribute it were the ordinands of Finkenwalde. Before the printed copies could be confiscated, thousands were already in circulation.
\nThis measure of Kerrl\u2019s was a serious attack, for the state did not have the legal right to set up church governing bodies. From this point on, the opposition was no longer within the Church, but was now a political opposition. Anyone who resisted the Church Ministry\u2019s decrees was refusing to obey Hitler\u2019s government. No one felt the effects of this second phase of the church struggle more keenly than did the church colleges in Wuppertal, Berlin and Bethel, the Overseas Seminary in Ilsenburg and the five preachers\u2019 seminaries which the Confessing Church had established to keep its younger generation out of the Reich Church. All those studying at these institutions or preparing for the parish ministry\u2014and there may have been well over a thousand such young people\u2014along with their teachers, had placed themselves, for good or ill, under the care of the Confessing Church, which now had to look after them financially as well as spiritually. They were known as \u2018illegals\u2019, because this kind of education was now forbidden by law for both teachers and students.
\nLike Finkenwalde, all these institutions had begun their work with enthusiasm and readiness to sacrifice. The question now was how long they could go on. The \u2018intact\u2019 churches did not have this problem. For them everything, including the education of their next generation of pastors, was the same as ever. They only stood to gain by distancing themselves gradually from the resolutions made at the Dahlem Synod, since the new Church Ministry left them alone. Soon after the Barmen Synod they had formed the Lutheran Council, which represented their concerns. The Councils of Brethren of the \u2018destroyed\u2019 churches, however, from which this Lutheran Council was increasingly keeping its distance, had to defend their own work and pastoral training. The state was not immediately able to track down all of this, but combated whatever it did find with great severity.
\nFrom our viewpoint today it is hard to understand the attitude of the \u2018intact\u2019 churches. At that time the reasons for it were taken very seriously, in particular by committed Christians. The Old Prussian Union was a church in which Lutheran, Reformed and United Churches had been bound together by royal decree since 1817, and that included fellowship at the communion table, although local congregations kept their confessional identity. When this was introduced, however, force had been used, especially in Silesia. During the nineteenth century more than 200,000 Lutherans emigrated from Prussia, mostly to the USA, in order to remain loyal to their Lutheran faith. For the churches outside Prussia, there was a stigma attached to the union church. They claimed that in Prussia even the Lutheran local churches no longer followed pure Lutheran doctrine. This was combined with the old prejudice of southern Germans against Prussia, a \u2018non-theological factor\u2019 that was still playing a significant role during Hitler\u2019s time.
\nBy setting up its Ministry of Church Affairs in 1935, Hitler\u2019s state caused the Confessing Church to fall apart into two groups that engaged in a bitter feud with one another. Now every member was either a \u2018Lutheran\u2019 or a Dahlemite, and among the most resolute Dahlemites was Bonhoeffer. We have already spoken of Luther\u2019s doctrine of the \u2018two kingdoms\u2019 (see Chapter 5, \u2018The Church and the Jewish Question\u2019). Bonhoeffer could be quite vehement on this subject; as a Lutheran theologian, he accused the Lutheran Council and its followers of being, with their willingness to adapt to the state, the ones who were turning Luther\u2019s original idea into a heresy.
\nAnd indeed, until 1945 the Lutheran bishops issued decrees and signed statements of which, after the Third Reich ended, they could only be ashamed. For example, after the failed coup of 20 July 1944 they ordered prayers of thanksgiving said that the life of the F\u00fchrer had been saved, with a text that, even at the time, outraged many worshippers in their churches. The division also had the effect that the Confessing Church\u2019s ecumenical friends no longer knew which way to turn. So Bonhoeffer continued the struggle on two fronts: with the Councils of Brethren on behalf of the Dahlem resolutions, and within the ecumenical community against the policies of Heckel\u2019s Foreign Office and for better information sharing. It is amazing how much energy and time he was able to invest in this in addition to his work in Finkenwalde. What helped was that, in his lectures at the seminary and in the weekly major discussion evenings at Finkenwalde, he was able to develop many of the theological ideas he needed in order to achieve clarity on both fronts.<\/p>\n
Ecumenical tasks and theological essays<\/p>\n
As an expert in ecumenical matters, Bonhoeffer had more interruptions than he liked in his ongoing work in Finkenwalde, but he saw that the Confessing Church urgently needed him to stay active ecumenically. During the first semester at Finkenwalde he was sent twice to see Bishop Bell, and in Germany he had to attend several meetings on ecumenical issues. This brought the conflict between Bonhoeffer and the Geneva staff out into the open. He was demanding of them the courage to stand up for the Confessing Church and thus for the truth of the gospel, whereas they were increasingly inclined to listen to Heckel. This was why Bonhoeffer cancelled his attendance at the youth conference in Chamby, which he was supposed to direct. His adversary Sch\u00f6nfeld very quickly found someone to take his place, and wrote to Eugen Gerstenmaier in the Church Foreign Office, before the new youth conference director, an American, made his introductory visit there:<\/p>\n
You know yourself, of course, how important it is \u2026 especially in ecumenical work, to have a man who is really well-suited for this task. If we had not found this solution, we in the Research Department would have tried every means to bring to an end this work as it has been carried out until now. (DBW 14, 164)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer had not actually wanted to attend the main 1936 ecumenical conference at Chamby either, because Zoellner, as President of the Reich Church Committee, was claiming the sole right to represent the German church, and Heckel, pleased to be rid of the Reich Bishop, was supporting him with all his might. But neither had reckoned with Bishop Bell\u2019s tenacity. Bell declared that President Koch and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were nevertheless members of the Council on Life and Work, and two further representatives of the Confessing Church were to be invited as guests. Of course Bonhoeffer found this unsatisfactory, but since the Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church said that he must go, he and Eberhard Bethge set off for Switzerland together. It was the first and last time that a delegation from the Confessing Church appeared in an official capacity at an ecumenical conference. They were not even mentioned as such in the minutes. Bonhoeffer did not ask to speak at any time, and he avoided the Reich Church delegation with Zoellner and Heckel.
\nThus he was able to make full use of the days in Chamby to inform Bishop Bell and Bishop Ammundsen about the new situation with the Ministry of Church Affairs and the committees. Meanwhile, Zoellner gave a major speech at the conference about the situation of the German church, and even the Confessing Church representatives were so impressed that they asked him why he didn\u2019t come over to their side. Bishop Ammundsen later recalled that Zoellner said goodbye to one of the Confessing Church representatives with the words, \u2018See you in concentration camp.\u2019 Within a year, Zoellner had recognized what he had become involved in as head of the Reich committee, and resigned.
\nBy the time of the Oxford World Conference on Life and Work in 1937, no representatives of the German Evangelical Church were allowed to participate anymore, on Hitler\u2019s orders\u2014not even Heckel, although he made great efforts to be allowed to go. Still later, in 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and W. A. Visser \u2018t Hooft of the Netherlands, the new ecumenical General Secretary, were able to turn over a new leaf in the work of the ecumenical movement with the church in Germany.
\nBecause Bonhoeffer felt that the theological decisions being made at the time by the ecumenical movement were unclear and wrong, and because he also found that his own church must to some extent share the blame for this, in 1935 he undertook to write an essay on \u2018The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement\u2019, which was published in the journal Evangelische Theologie. It analyses the unequal relations between the two partners and draws conclusions from them.<\/p>\n
Under the onslaught of new nationalism, the fact that Christ\u2019s Church does not stop at national and racial boundaries, but reaches beyond them, so powerfully attested in the New Testament and in the confessional writings, has been far too easily forgotten and denied. Even where it was found impossible to make a theoretical refutation, voices have never ceased to declare emphatically that of course a conversation with foreign Christians about so-called internal German church matters was unthinkable, and that any judgement or public position on these things from outside would be impossible and reprehensible.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer praised the ecumenical movement\u2019s willingness, despite this defensiveness, on a number of occasions to raise its voice on behalf of the Confessing Church in Germany, and the ecumenical recognition that the German church struggle was about the proclamation of the gospel and needed to be fought on behalf of all Christendom. He said that the Confessing Church had brought the ecumenical movement face to face with the issue of confessing the faith.<\/p>\n
To this confession as it has been authoritatively expounded in the decisions of the Synods of Barmen and Dahlem, there is only a Yes or No \u2026 This is an unheard-of claim. But this is the only way in which the Confessing Church can enter into ecumenical conversations.<\/p>\n
The ecumenical movement, Bonhoeffer wrote, must answer the question: upon what authority does it speak? It must not allow the necessary theological dialogues on this topic to be misused to cover up the true situation.<\/p>\n
Theological conversation [between churches of different confessions] will become a bad joke by concealing the fact that it is properly concerned not with unauthoritative discussion, but with responsible, legitimate decisions of the church \u2026 The Confessing Church knows of the fatal ambivalence of any theological conversation and presses for a clear church decision.<\/p>\n
The simplest way to deal with such clear criticism is not to take any notice of it, and this was the attitude adopted by the Geneva office towards Bonhoeffer\u2019s essay.
\nA second essay, however, which he published a year later in the same journal, could not be hushed up so completely. The measures taken by Kerrl, the Minister for Church Affairs, were tightening their grip. Besides German Christians and the Reich Church, there were now also those who followed the \u2018committees\u2019, as well as the Dahlemites, the Lutheran Council people and the \u2018neutrals\u2019. How was one supposed to find one\u2019s way through all of that, and how was a Christian plain and simple supposed to know where he or she belonged, when even pastors of churches disagreed to such an extent?
\nBonhoeffer wrote a 29-page essay, \u2018On the Church Community\u2019, in which the words Scheidung (distinction), Entscheidung (decision) and entscheiden (decide) occur 53 times. This essay made him known overnight in all the provincial churches and provoked a fierce discussion. One sentence in particular so outraged the critics that they declared that anyone who wrote such a thing must be dismissed by the leadership of the Confessing Church from the job of training its pastors. This sentence, which could still raise indignation among older theologians long after the Second World War, said: \u2018Whoever knowingly separates himself from the Confessing Church separates himself from salvation\u2019 (DBW 14, 676). This borrows from the centuries-old phrase extra ecclesiam nulla salus\u2014outside the Church there is no salvation\u2014which Bonhoeffer also, purposefully, cites in this connection. A corrupted version was very soon in circulation, to wit: \u2018If you haven\u2019t got a red card you\u2019re not going to heaven.\u2019 This referred to the membership cards distributed earlier by the Confessing Church.
\nBonhoeffer had touched a sensitive nerve when he said that for pious and right-believing people, such as General Superintendent Zoellner, to work with the committees still didn\u2019t make the committee work any better, since church leadership imposed by the state is not church leadership, and a church that allows pure and false doctrines to be preached together is not a church. He also refused to admit the possibility for anyone to be \u2018neutral\u2019.<\/p>\n
In the first place, it has to be said that in reality there are no \u2018neutrals\u2019. They actually belong to the other side \u2026 It is not possible to take a clear position in regard to them, because their own position is not unambiguous, because the boundary they draw between themselves and the true Church is not clear. (DBW 14, 678\u201389)<\/p>\n
The word \u2018boundary\u2019 was important to Bonhoeffer. It was the German Christians with their Aryan paragraph and other heresies who had set up a boundary over against the Church of the gospel, a boundary which was a barrier to fellowship. The Church itself does not create any boundaries, but through its confession of faith makes clear that those who teach heresy have shut themselves out. The Church takes cognizance\u2014and it can only do so through decisions made by synods\u2014that it has encountered here an insurmountable boundary (DBW 14, 678\u201389).
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s essay appeared at a time when many Confessing Church pastors had just made the decision to work with the committees or to submit to them. Having Zoellner in charge of the committee work seemed to them a guarantee that German Christian rule was at an end. They felt that in Bonhoeffer\u2019s essay they were being treated as though they had fallen away from the faith, which was indeed the way he viewed them. On page after page of the essay he insisted that a decision was called for; that the cause was that of every individual believer but above all a cause of the Church.
\nIn early 1936 Bonhoeffer held a Bible study on King David, which he subsequently published in the journal Junge Kirche (DBW 14, 878ff.). The professional theologians paid no attention to it, but it was reviled in the Nazi press. Bonhoeffer had had the audacity to speak of Judah, the worldwide enemy, as the \u2018eternal people\u2019, the \u2018true nobility\u2019, and \u2018the people of God\u2019. The reaction was different to a Bible study on Ezra and Nehemiah, in which he did not even mention the time and place in which these two books of the Bible were written (DBW 14, 930ff.). It was printed in the same journal and unleashed an intense debate. Friedrich Baumg\u00e4rtel, Professor of Old Testament at Greifswald, wrote that Bonhoeffer was leading his ordinands astray with unscholarly thinking. He was able to prove that Bonhoeffer had treated the text in an arbitrary fashion by simply ignoring the content of verses which spoke of state assistance in rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem and of the protection of a state commissar, because this did not fit with his argumentation (DB-ER 528). The faculty in which Baumg\u00e4rtel taught had stood up for the committees and against the Confessing Church, and was annoyed by the fact that when Bonhoeffer preached in a Greifswald church almost 500 people attended worship, especially students.
\nThe Old Testament was the one theological discipline that Bonhoeffer had neglected somewhat during his own studies. Thus it was no wonder that his Bible study was rejected even by Old Testament scholars in the Confessing Church. His friend Gerhard von Rad, with whom he had often played music when they were schoolboys, wrote in his diary that he ought to \u2018take Bonhoeffer by the collar\u2019 here. Rad had shown, as no one else had done, that there was no need to bend Old Testament texts out of shape in order to interpret them in the spirit of the Confessing Church. So during a visit of Bonhoeffer\u2019s to the University of Jena, the two theologians, friends since their youth, had a lively but very friendly dispute over the interpretation of the Old Testament for the present time.<\/p>\n
Enthusiasm and tribulation<\/p>\n
Through these personal attacks on Bonhoeffer, \u2018decision\u2019 had also become a key word for every individual Finkenwaldian. So we must now look back again and see how the seminary experienced the measures taken by the Ministry of Church Affairs.
\nMinister Kerrl may have raised hopes when he invited each of the different Protestant church groups to send representatives to a meeting with him. He began with Committee President Zoellner and his colleagues, including a few men who until then had been working within the Confessing Church. When this group proposed that some especially radical German Christian members be dismissed from the Reich committee, he left the room instead of replying. This did not bode well for the future. His second meeting was with the Provisional Church Administration of the Confessing Church chaired by Bishop Marahrens. To its representatives, he proposed that the Councils of Brethren should dissolve themselves, before he compelled them by force to do so. To his third meeting he invited representatives of the Dahlemites, and towards them the Minister was harsh and uninterested in any compromise. He said he \u2018didn\u2019t want to hear anything more about heresy\u2019. He announced that now he would put everything to rights, so that \u2018no loose end is left for a mouse to chew\u2019. This sentence, alien in a theological context, made the rounds of the Confessing Church; in particular it was reported that when the speaker of the group tried to explain what the Confessing Church was about, Kerrl said to him, \u2018Why talk so much? As far as I\u2019m concerned it\u2019s quite pointless.\u2019 The speaker replied, \u2018I note that the Reich Minister considers what we have to say pointless. Then we will end the negotiations.\u2019 (DB-ER 495)
\nBonhoeffer\u2019s conclusion, on hearing the report of this meeting, was that the Confessing Church was very close to being banned altogether. He wrote to his former ordinands:<\/p>\n
We write to let you know that you will not be left on your own in the days to come. After recent events we must now reckon seriously with the possibility of the Confessing Church being banned \u2026 Even a forbidden Church Administration will remain irrevocably ours \u2026 No directive that invalidates or goes against our Church Administration may be complied with, unless on explicit instructions from the church leadership \u2026 (DB-ER 496)<\/p>\n
This was exactly what it meant to be a Dahlemite, and the ordinands at Finkenwalde saw this no differently from the way their director saw it.
\nOne of the most difficult but important decisions that should have been made was missed, to Bonhoeffer\u2019s deep disappointment. From 23 to 26 September 1935, the synod of the Old Prussian Confessing Church met in Steglitz in west Berlin. Franz Hildebrandt telephoned to Bonhoeffer from Dahlem, saying there was a danger that the synod, while still condemning the Aryan paragraph for use by the Church, would explicitly accept it for use by the state. After giving his morning lecture at the University in Berlin, Bonhoeffer went to Steglitz and met there the entire Finkenwalde seminary, which had come to act as a \u2018pressure group\u2019. The synod meeting showed that there really was no longer firm unity, now that Kerrl was making enticing peace offers. Shouldn\u2019t the Church make concessions to the state, in its own interest? The discussion went back and forth, any move towards weakening greeted by heckling from the Finkenwaldians.
\nIn the end, by dint of great effort, a collapse of the Confessing Church front was averted. The synod stood by its earlier decisions, including the rejection of the Aryan paragraph. Bonhoeffer nevertheless considered it a fatefully missed opportunity, since the synod had allowed its agenda for discussion to be dictated by the government rather than setting its own priorities. He had wanted to see it finally take a stand on behalf of the Jews who were being persecuted. On 15 September, at the national Party Rally, Hitler had announced the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws; Bonhoeffer felt that the Old Prussian Confessing Synod should not fail to state its position against these.
\nOn 2 December 1935, the Reich Minister of Church Affairs declared the Confessing Church to be illegal by forbidding it to hire employees, issue proclamations and circular letters, or raise funds through collections and subscriptions except as authorized by the committees\u2014pastors who were being paid salaries previously still received them, but otherwise taking up any offerings for one\u2019s church was punishable by prison\u2014and, especially, holding examinations and ordinations of candidates for the church\u2019s ministry. This meant the end of Finkenwalde and the other Confessing seminaries unless they were prepared to disobey the government (DB-ER 496\u201397).
\nIn the evening of 2 December, Bonhoeffer called all the Finkenwaldians together, explained the new situation to them and gave his reasons for his decision to continue the work of the seminary. He left the seminarians free to decide individually whether they wanted to leave or stay. What should become of the seminary\u2019s work was for the leadership of the Confessing Church to decide, but the Councils of Brethren were dependent on the individual willingness to carry on of the ordinands under their care. It must have been an impressive evening at Finkenwalde. All those present declared that they wanted to continue their studies and their life with the House of Brethren, despite the government prohibition upon them. Bonhoeffer then wrote to Niem\u00f6ller:<\/p>\n
Despite the seriousness of the situation we are very happy and confident. For the rest we act in accordance with Matthias Claudius\u2019s wonderful hymn \u2026
\nI pray that God may grant \/ the little that I want;
\nFor if he doth the sparrows feed \/ will he not fill my daily need? (DB-ER 497)<\/p>\n
Which is right: \u2018Let every person be subject to the governing authorities\u2019 (Romans 13:1) or \u2018We must obey God rather than any human authority\u2019 (Acts 5:29)? Both are in the Bible. For the Finkenwaldians during the years of the church struggle, it was not even worth discussing, since the government was already in the wrong according to the laws of the land.
\nThe first great debate after the synod of Steglitz took place very near Finkenwalde, in Bredow, a district of the city of Stettin. The day after Christmas, a holiday, found 200 pastors there, wrestling all day long about which way the Confessing Church should go in Pomerania. Now that the German Christians no longer held power, and Zoellner, a highly respected Protestant church leader was the head of the new church government, was it really necessary to go on fighting? Wasn\u2019t it finally time to settle down to the real work of the Church, in well-deserved peace? This was the view of many who had stood up loyally for the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer tried to present his radical understanding of the situation as persuasively as possible.<\/p>\n
Instead of going forward, we are standing still and asking who are we really\u2014a church, a movement or a group?\u2026 But we must not been seen like that! By standing still we lose everything; the church can exist only by going forward. The way ahead is shown us by the beacons of the synods: Barmen as a tower against the subversion of church doctrine, Dahlem the tower against the subversion of the ecclesiastical order. Barmen holds the sword forged by the Word. Without Dahlem, however, Barmen would be like a weapon carelessly left in the hands of a foreign power\u2019s general staff. A third synod (Oeynhausen) must now provide our defence against the subversion of the church by the world as, in the shape of the Nazi state, it intervenes through its finance departments, Legislative Authority and committees, and is now tearing into separate groups the church of those who confess our faith. Here we cannot and must not give in one single time! (DB-ER 499)<\/p>\n
Although there had been an agreement not to indulge in applause or disapproval, the atmosphere in the hall became quite stormy, and the Finkenwaldians did not remain on the sidelines either. They were criticized for this by a well-respected Stettin pastor, and Bonhoeffer defended them: \u2018I do not enter such meetings as would a Quaker who on principle must await the directions of the Holy Spirit, but rather as one who arrives on a battlefield where God\u2019s Word is in conflict with all manner of human opinions \u2026\u2019 (DB-ER 500). And with regard to a judgement expressed by his student, Winfried Krause, Bonhoeffer asserted that Krause had not called Bishop Marahrens \u2018a traitor\u2019, but had said that he had betrayed the church\u2014an essential distinction. It was a judgement about an objective decision and action, not about a person. The theological justice of this statement could be disputed. \u2018And my only factual objection to it would be that Marahrens could not possibly betray the Confessing Church, since he had never belonged to it\u2019 (DB-ER 500).
\nWhile it was said of Martin Niem\u00f6ller that he was best suited for an open field of battle, the Bishop of Hanover was precisely unsuited for such conflict. Some Confessing Church people were apt to relate with a smirk that the bishop\u2019s children had sung at his silver wedding anniversary, \u2018He doesn\u2019t say yes, he doesn\u2019t say no, he says let\u2019s wait and see!\u2019 because this was exactly his attitude toward conflicts in the Church. When August J\u00e4ger tried to take the Hanover provincial church into the Reich Church by force, the bishop could neither sign the agreement nor break off the negotiations. The matter was finally resolved by his withdrawing for a while. Then he was said to be \u2018detained\u2019, because if the bishop were detained, his deputy could sign on behalf of the provincial church. In the same half-hearted way as he had done with legal administrator J\u00e4ger, Marahrens yielded to the new Minister of Church affairs on every disputed point. No battles could be won with such an ally at one\u2019s side. This is why Bonhoeffer said that Marahrens had never belonged to the Confessing Church.
\nIn the studies undertaken by Bonhoeffer and his students, significant portions were defined by the church struggle. Nevertheless, in their half-year in the seminary, the ordinands had to cover an impressive syllabus. There was much to learn about the parish ministry: about pastoral visits and pastoral conversations, teaching religion, Sunday school, baptizing children, conducting weddings and funerals. At the university there was no opportunity, or only insufficient ones, to work on all this.
\nBonhoeffer and his assistant, Wilhelm Rott, held daily practice sessions in preaching and teaching; each ordinand had to prepare and deliver sermons and class sessions for discussion by the whole group. However, an ordinand\u2019s sermon was not criticized as such, so as not to \u2018talk it to death\u2019. On all the above-mentioned practical areas of parish work, Bonhoeffer also gave lectures; but more important was his aim to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of every individual candidate. How well he knew each of his students by the end of their training is shown by the assessments he wrote for the Confessing Church authorities. Bonhoeffer had reservations about psychological probing, but he described his students with sensitivity, and made suggestions not only concerning their placement but about what should be especially kept in mind for each (for an example, see DBW 14, 288\u201389).
\nWith groups of students, even during the first Finkenwalde course, Bonhoeffer made trips by bicycle to two church districts to support lonely Confessing Church pastors, to make pastoral visits in their villages, and to lecture and hold services. This strengthened the host pastors as well as preparing Bonhoeffer\u2019s ordinands for the work they would soon be doing. The only way they would have of obtaining a pastorate, since the normal procedure was controlled by the \u2018committees\u2019, was through owners of estates who were patrons of village churches and had the right to choose their pastors. A few could be taken on at a pittance as assistants to Confessing Church pastors who were already serving in parishes by 1933.
\nIn 1936 the entire seminary went to the Belgard church district in East Pomerania, now northwest Poland. In each village, four of the brethren spent a week visiting church members and leading children\u2019s groups and Bible studies. On four of the days, evening worship was held in the village church, at which one of the four ordinands gave a 10-minute homily. With hymns and prayers, each service lasted about an hour. In all the villages the response was stronger than expected. In other areas the seminary visited later, however, they met with rejection and enmity. It was no wonder that how to deal with \u2018dead congregations\u2019 later became a topic of lively discussions in the seminary.
\nAs soon as former Finkenwaldians had their pastoral assignments, they found themselves rather isolated and keenly missed the \u2018life together\u2019 at the seminary. Bonhoeffer informed and supported them through a pastoral newsletter. It was now forbidden for the Confessing Church to circulate newsletters, but if they were in envelopes addressed by hand and put into different post-boxes they didn\u2019t arouse any suspicions. Former ordinands were also invited to retreats at Finkenwalde. Most of Bonhoeffer\u2019s students were later called up for military service and lost their lives in the war, but the small group that survived had a sense of belonging together which lasted all their lives and was evident to everyone who came into contact with them.
\nOn 4 February 1936, the second Finkenwalde course celebrated Bonhoeffer\u2019s thirtieth birthday with him. He told stories about Barcelona, Mexico and London. Suddenly, one of the ordinands asked whether they, too, might express a wish for Bonhoeffer\u2019s birthday. Could he, with the help of his ecumenical contacts, arrange a seminary trip to Sweden? Bonhoeffer\u2014with characteristic spontaneity\u2014promised that same evening he would do so.
\nBefore the Church Foreign Office of the Reich Church or the secret police (Gestapo) got wind of these plans, Bonhoeffer had obtained an official invitation from the Church of Sweden, free board and lodgings had been promised the seminarians, and they had left by boat from Stettin. He had the advice of Birger Forell, the chaplain at the Swedish embassy in Berlin, who was a great friend and helper of the Confessing Church. The seminarians were warmly welcomed everywhere in Sweden; their hosts even made a celebration of their visit. The Archbishop and the widow of his predecessor, the great ecumenicist Nathan S\u00f6derblum, at whose grave an impressive memorial service was held, invited ordinands to stay in their homes, as did many other members of local churches. The main Swedish newspapers carried the event on their front pages.
\nDelighted though the ordinands were with their journey, and cordially received as they had been, the repercussions afterwards were not so pleasant, and once again Theodor Heckel was involved. He drafted a letter for Zoellner to send to Archbishop Eidem in Uppsala, asking whether his invitation to the Finkenwaldians should be understood as a statement by the Church of Sweden against the leadership of the German Evangelical Church. The Archbishop hastened to reply that it was a purely private invitation, but after his secretary corrected him he was obliged to admit that it had taken place through official channels in Sweden. In short, there were a number of embarrassing consequences. Heckel, having once again been outmanoeuvred by Bonhoeffer through his ecumenical contacts, wanted finally to get revenge on this opponent who since 1933 had called him an accomplice in heresy. He wrote to the Prussian church committee:<\/p>\n
Lecturer and Pastor Bonhoeffer, director of a confessional seminary in Finkenwalde near Stettin, has received an invitation from the Ecumenical Committee of the Church of Sweden to visit Sweden with the confessional seminary. The ramifications of this action for foreign policy are being dealt with by the appropriate authorities. I feel impelled, however, to draw the attention of the provincial church committee to the fact that this incident has brought Dr Bonhoeffer very much into the public eye. Since he can be accused of being a pacifist and an enemy of the state, it might well be advisable for the provincial church committee to dissociate itself from him and take steps to assure that he will no longer train German theology students. (DB-ER 511\u201312)<\/p>\n
As dangerous as it could be for Bonhoeffer to be so denounced, another consequence of the trip to Sweden was more drastic for him. He lost his venia legendi, his right to lecture at the University of Berlin. He had not noticed that, since June 1935, university lecturers were not allowed to travel abroad without official permission. The Minister of Education wrote to him that he had not only failed to obtain permission to travel abroad, but had also continued to direct a seminary which, under the Fifth Decree on the Implementation of the Law for the Protection of the German Evangelical Church, no longer had the right to exist. He was therefore permanently excluded from the university lecturing staff (DBW 14, 213). Furthermore, Finkenwalde, in its remote corner of the country, was now in the authorities\u2019 field of vision.<\/p>\n
The Memorandum to Hitler from the Confessing Church<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer often made his comrades-in-arms uncomfortable because he felt the Confessing Church was too timid in its resistance. In 1934 he had written from London to his friend Sutz:<\/p>\n
And while I\u2019m working with the church opposition with all my might, it\u2019s perfectly clear to me that this opposition is only a very temporary transitional phase on the way to an opposition of a very different kind, and that very few of those involved in this preliminary skirmish are going to be there for that second struggle. I believe that all of Christendom should be praying with us for the coming of resistance \u2018to the point of shedding blood\u2019 [Hebrews 12:4] and for the finding of people who can suffer it through. Simply suffering is what it will be about, not parries, blows or thrusts such as may still be allowed and possible in the preliminary battles; the real struggle that perhaps lies ahead must be one of simply suffering through in faith. Then, perhaps then God will acknowledge his church again with his word, but until then a great deal must be believed, and prayed, and suffered. (DBWE 13, 135)<\/p>\n
For him, the Steglitz synod had been far too much about self-defence, about preserving the existence of the Confessing Church. Then he heard that the new Provisional Administration and the Reich Council of Brethren of his church were writing a memorandum that was to be presented to Hitler. One of the members of the three committees preparing the draft was Franz Hildebrandt, who also worked on the final version and asked Bonhoeffer for advice several times during the process. The memorandum was a clear statement of position against the policies of the Third Reich. It was not intended to be published, since the aim was to offer Hitler a possibility for discussion of the facts. It was handed in to the Reich Chancellory on 4 June 1936. The issues were addressed in seven main sections:<\/p>\n
1. It had been said that the victory over Bolshevism represented the defeat of the enemy which had also been fighting against Christianity and the Church. \u2018What we are experiencing is that the fight against the Christian church has never, since 1918, been so alive and effective in the German nation.\u2019 This was a danger to the people, especially to youth.
\n2. It must be asked what the formulation in the Party programme which claimed that it stood on the ground of \u2018positive Christianity\u2019 actually meant.
\n3. The recent \u2018pacification work\u2019 of Kerrl through the Ministry of Church Affairs may have cleared up some shortcomings, but it was muzzling the churches.
\n4. In breach of existing agreements, young people, schools, universities and the press were being forcibly de-Christianized under the slogan \u2018deconfessionalization\u2019.
\n5. The fifth point, since it most clearly concerns the conflict with the state, is quoted here verbatim:<\/p>\n
Protestant members of National Socialist organizations are being required to commit themselves without reservation to the [Nazi] world view. This world view is very frequently proposed as a positive replacement for Christianity, which has to be given up. But while blood, race, national heritage and honour are elevated to the status of eternal values, a Protestant Christian, according to the First Commandment, cannot accept this. While people of the Aryan race are glorified, God\u2019s Word testifies that all human beings are sinful. While the [Nazi] view imposes on Christians an anti-Semitism which commits them to hatred of the Jews, Christians are commanded to love our neighbours. This lays an especially heavy burden on the conscience of our Protestant church members, since it is their duty as Christian parents to combat this anti-Christian thinking in their children.<\/p>\n
6. There was also anxiety about the moral precepts, essentially alien to Christianity, which were being propagated by elements within the Party. \u2018By and large, anything is considered good nowadays, if it benefits our Volk.\u2019
\n7. In many ways the F\u00fchrer was the object of a veneration that belonged to God alone. \u2018We, however, ask that the people of our nation be free to go forward into the future following the cross of Christ as their standard, that their grandchildren may not curse them some day \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
Hitler had no intention whatever of replying; he did not even acknowledge receipt of the memorandum. It is possible that he never even saw it, since the Reich Chancellery office sent it to the Ministry of Church Affairs, as the \u2018appropriate\u2019 destination, and the Ministry forwarded it on to the Evangelical High Church Council in Berlin. After six weeks had passed, the Morning Post in England reported the existence of such a document, and on 23 July the entire text, word for word, appeared in the Swiss paper Basler Nachrichten. For those who had sent it to Hitler, who had wanted to avoid this very outcome, this was a heavy blow. The Provisional Administration of the Confessing Church now sought to prove that the memorandum was intended as an act of genuine loyalty and not as an attack. Letters were sent to the administrations and Councils of Brethren of the provincial Confessing churches to say that the publication had occurred without the knowledge or assistance of the church leaders. They even went to the presidential office of the Reich Chancellery and asked for an investigation, since it was suspected that the leak must be on the side of the government.
\nThe memorandum made a deep impression abroad, as a sign of courageous resistance. What it did in Germany was to increase the gulf between the Dahlemites and the members of the Lutheran Council, since the latter immediately distanced themselves in every way from the authors of the memorandum, whom the press was decrying as guilty of high treason. When it was suggested that the memorandum be made the basis of a pulpit proclamation, the representatives of the \u2018intact\u2019 churches stayed away from the Reich Council of Brethren meeting, thus depriving it of a quorum needed to take action. Bonhoeffer wrote at the time to the former Finkenwaldians:<\/p>\n
Dear Brothers, we can all tell that things have started moving once more in our church. We do not know where they will go. What makes me most anxious of all is the Lutheran Council. We are faced with the announcement of a Lutheran Reich church. Then we shall have the Confessing Church for which many yearn. And the incomprehensible thing is that we shall not be able to participate. Then our conscience will be racked with fear and anguish \u2026 may God build a wall around us so that we can keep together. (DB-ER 534)<\/p>\n
While the writers of the memorandum still had no idea who had leaked it to the foreign press, Bonhoeffer had managed to find out. Two of his former students, Werner Koch and Ernst Tillich, had both had a hand in it. Tillich had been one of Bonhoeffer\u2019s students in Berlin before 1933, but had ended all contact with him since then. Werner Koch had taken part in the second course at Finkenwalde and in the trip to Sweden. He was a gifted journalist and, on Karl Barth\u2019s recommendation, had provided several important foreign news organizations with information and articles. Several Confessing Church staff members knew about this and were troubled, so Koch was sent as a pastoral assistant to Wuppertal in order to separate him from his sources of information in Berlin. Friedrich Wei\u00dfler, the Jewish Christian head of the Provisional Administration office, had one of the only three copies of the memorandum in his safe, and Ernst Tillich had been able to borrow it overnight. Without Wei\u00dfler\u2019s knowledge he had not only made some notes, but had copied out the text word for word. He had made contact with the Basler Nachrichten through Koch.
\nThe secret could not be kept very long. Tillich and Wei\u00dfler were arrested on 6 October, Koch on 13 November 1936. On 13 February 1937 all three of them were sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, where Wei\u00dfler died six days later after being tortured as a Jew. Koch was released in December 1938, Tillich in 1939.
\nEmil Fackenheim, a Jewish fellow prisoner in Sachsenhausen who survived, found out long after the war from Bethge\u2019s biography of Bonhoeffer why Ernst Tillich had been sent to the camp. Tillich had told his fellow prisoners only that he had circulated an anti-Nazi pamphlet. Fackenheim is exactly right in remarking that the authors of the memorandum\u2014\u2018naively, to say the least\u2019\u2014had expected an answer from Hitler.<\/p>\n
And then two of these people, Werner Koch and Ernst Tillich, leaked the memorandum to the foreign press, thereby transforming a heroic, but certainly futile gesture into a tremendous political act \u2026 The Nazis would certainly have murdered Tillich if he had talked around about what he had done. So, well over thirty years later, I understood that I had been that close to a historical event.<\/p>\n
In case Hitler did not reply, the authors of the memorandum had planned to demonstrate, through a proclamation from the Church\u2019s pulpits, that the Church was not completely silent. That the authors pursued this intent, after being labelled as \u2018traitors to the Fatherland\u2019, was certainly courageous; they had just seen for the first time, through the consequences of the leak to the press, what the Nazi state did to people who spoke the truth openly. During that time, Bonhoeffer came across a placard in a bookshop in Berlin:<\/p>\n
After the end of the Olympiade
\nwe\u2019ll beat the CC to marmalade,
\nThen we\u2019ll chuck out the Jew,
\nthe CC will end too.
\n(DB-ER 536: \u2018CC\u2019 = Confessing Church)<\/p>\n
The memorandum was edited into a\u2014rather less radical\u2014proclamation, and thousands of copies of a flyer were also printed. Since severe reprisals were expected, the Provisional Administration of the Confessing Church had ordered Bonhoeffer to go to the ecumenical conference at Chamby, despite his decision not to attend. He was charged with giving bishops Bell and Ammundsen precise information in case a dramatic conflict with the government should ensue.
\nA large number of Confessing Church pastors read out the proclamation, including former Finkenwalde seminarians in their lonely villages. Nothing happened to any of them. We know today that the Gestapo had received orders not to interfere. The Olympic Games were about to be held in Berlin, so that Germany was more than ever in the spotlight of the whole world. But the police did register the names of those pastors who read the proclamation. Since no heavy strife had resulted, Bonhoeffer and Bethge took a few days after the conference in Switzerland for a brief trip to Rome, the city Bonhoeffer had loved best since his stay there at the age of 18.<\/p>\n
The Cost of Discipleship and the end of Finkenwalde<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer could still, even now, take time off from the work of the seminary on hot days and head for the beach with his students; there were games and laughter. For the keen sports fans among his students, he bought tickets to Olympic events, and for two ordinands whose dream was to fly, a trip to Berlin by plane. It was only lack of discipline that he couldn\u2019t stand, due to his somewhat \u2018tyrannical nature\u2019 (DBWE 8, II\/79).
\nFor the winter semester 1936\u20131937 there was an especially gifted group of ordinands at Finkenwalde, and theology was pursued there even more passionately than before. Sometimes it even seemed as though the heated battles on the outside no longer existed. During this high point in the seminary\u2019s work, suddenly there was word that the Finkenwalde estate was to be sold. To avert such a catastrophe, Friedrich Justus Perels, the legal adviser to the Confessing Church, came from Berlin and solved the problems involved so cleverly that the seminary was able to carry on. In the process, a close and trusting friendship developed between Perels and Bonhoeffer, which was to be important to both of them when they became members of the inner circle of the Resistance movement.
\nIt was at this time that a sharp dispute broke out in Pomerania\u2014somewhat later than in the other church provinces\u2014as to whether to go over to Zoellner\u2019s committee system after all. Reinhold von Thadden, who after the war was to be the initiator of the Protestant church conventions (Kirchentage) in Germany, organized a large assembly to discuss the matter in October 1936 in Stettin. Bonhoeffer, who had turned up with all his ordinands from Finkenwalde, was strongly attacked. When someone quoted him as having said that anyone who didn\u2019t have a \u2018red card\u2019 could not be saved, he jumped up and called out, \u2018Bonhoeffer here. You\u2019re misquoting!\u2019 When it was said further that Pastors Pecina and Brandenburg, who had refused to leave their pastorates on orders from the government, were \u2018needlessly and purposelessly fanatical\u2019, the Finkenwaldians could only be restrained with difficulty, since Willi Brandenburg was a former Finkenwalde seminarian who had been imprisoned for his resistance, and was sitting in their midst.
\nAt the end of this vehement dispute it was decided that all participants should submit written statements as to whether the provincial Council of Brethren should continue to govern the Confessing Church in Pomerania, or should yield its responsibility to the provincial church committee. The vote turned out better than expected: the assembly of Confessing Church pastors decided 181 to 58 in favour of the Council of Brethren. But the phalanx of the Confessing Church was beginning to crumble on all sides. A month later, Zoellner was able to announce that the Lutheran Council had declared its willingness to work with the committees. It was not long until one or another of Bonhoeffer\u2019s former students was having himself \u2018legalized\u2019. The consistories of the provincial churches were making it easy for ordinands of the Confessing Church. An ordinand had only to come over to them and say he wanted to be assigned to a pastorate, and he would receive a job, a parsonage and a salary. Many of the Finkenwalde graduates were under pressure from their parents or fianc\u00e9es not to be more courageous than necessary. Bonhoeffer and the members of the House of Brethren struggled to keep each one, and it was a heavy blow to all concerned every time the fellowship suffered a break. In the Rhineland during that time, 200 Confessing ordinands had themselves \u2018legalized\u2019, while 200 remained \u2018illegal\u2019; in Bonhoeffer\u2019s sphere, only a few took the step of going over to the consistories.
\nZoellner, who as committee president was the leading clergyman of the state-dependent German Evangelical Church, was in no way willing to tolerate German Christian excesses in a few of the smaller provincial churches. In the northern city of L\u00fcbeck, the German Christians had attempted to have all pastors belonging to the Confessing Church dismissed. They persisted in this cause even when courts declared it to be contrary to the law. Zoellner thereupon arranged to preach in L\u00fcbeck on 4 February 1937. When the police prevented him from entering the pulpit there, he submitted his resignation, on 12 February, along with the other members of the Reich Church Committee. Since not all of the provincial church committees followed them in doing so, Kerrl as Minister for Church Affairs was able to give a speech to a remnant of committee people, in which he called for bringing \u2018the preaching of the church into the correct relationship with National Socialism\u2019.
\nSome of his statements in that speech were so unfounded that Otto Dibelius was moved to write another of his letters of protest.<\/p>\n
According to the report I have here, the Catholic bishop Count Galen and the Protestant General Superintendent Zoellner tried to tell you what Christianity is about, namely the recognition that Jesus is the Son of God. This, you claim, is ridiculous and merely a side issue. You say all that is needed is to be influenced by the figure of Jesus, and to live by a Christianity of good deeds \u2026 The New Testament says nothing about the will of God being given to us in our blood. It says only that everything human is cursed with selfishness, and that the will of God is proclaimed to humankind through Jesus Christ, the Living Word \u2026 You said the priests are claiming that Jesus was a Jew; they speak of St Paul as a Jew, and say that salvation is from the Jews. This, you say, will not do! As far as I can remember, the church never used to emphasize this in earlier times. But now that it is being denied, the church has to say, \u2018Yes indeed, Jesus of Nazareth is a Jew! and that salvation is from the Jews is written in the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John.\u2019 You may certainly not forbid pastors to say what is in the Bible.<\/p>\n
Such open speaking made Dibelius popular with the Finkenwaldians. Like so many others, he had been wrong about Hitler in 1933; but after that he didn\u2019t keep still or keep his distance, but rather protested strongly against Nazism. So it is unjust to call him, as does Hans-Ulrich Wehler, \u2018one of the most disastrous figures in twentieth-century German Protestantism\u2019.
\nDuring the confused situation after Zoellner\u2019s resignation, Hitler again made a surprise announcement, ordering that church elections be held. The Church, \u2018in full freedom, may now provide itself with a new constitution and thereby a new order as determined by its members\u2019. But these elections were never held. Announcing them was just part of the game of hopes, disappointments and renewed hopes through which church groups were kept in suspense through the years.
\nIn place of the committees, there now appeared Dr Friedrich Werner, who on 20 March 1937 became director of the state-dependent German Evangelical Church\u2019s chancellery and president of the Evangelical High Church Council in Berlin. He was a lawyer, totally uninterested in issues of Christian confession, and a high-ranking Nazi Party member. In 1933 he had been on the presidium of the Brown Synod. Now Kerrl conferred on him full authority to govern the Church. Werner appointed Albert Freitag, a notorious representative of the German Christians, as head of personnel. From 10 December 1937 until the end of the war these two \u2018governed\u2019 the German Evangelical Church, trying to suffocate whatever was left of the Confessing Church through decrees and orders. For example, they banned worship services from being held in \u2018unconsecrated buildings\u2019. This affected all the Confessing congregations that were obliged to meet in homes or in public meeting halls because German Christians were in control of the local churches. Anyone who resisted could be arrested, and from now on the number of pastors being sent to prison rose steadily.
\nSince 1933, worship services in the Confessing Church had included praying for those who had been arrested, by name; this too was now forbidden. Confessing congregations also were forbidden to take up collections, since this was an offence against the state\u2019s law on collections. The main point of attack, however, was the training of the next generation of pastors. Lecturers at the church colleges were forbidden to exercise their profession. Anyone who tried to get around this ban was arrested. Thus the end of Finkenwalde and the four other Confessing preachers\u2019 seminaries could be foreseen. These and many other such measures were being steered from behind the scenes by the former district president in Hildesheim, Dr Hermann Muhs, whom Kerrl had made head administrator in the Ministry for Church Affairs. In all the provincial church offices and consistories there were still properly appointed officials from the time before 1933, but they no longer had any authority. The power exercised by Werner and Freitag was unlimited.
\nThe cynicism evident in the way these two operated had the good effect of bringing the estranged wings of the Confessing Church together again. In March 1937 the Reich Council of Brethren held a full meeting, as it had not done for a long time. But this spurred on people like Werner to intensify their persecution. In June, a meeting of the Reich Council of Brethren in Berlin was broken up and eight of its members were arrested. When such things happened, Bonhoeffer immediately went to Berlin to see if he could help. In this way, when on 2 July 1937 he went to discuss the situation with Niem\u00f6ller and Hildebrandt, he fell into the clutches of the Gestapo.
\nNiem\u00f6ller had been arrested that morning. He was not to return until after the war; although he was acquitted in the forced trial held against him, Hitler made him his \u2018personal prisoner\u2019 and had him sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In his parsonage that day, Bonhoeffer found several men of the Confessing Church trying to deal with the new situation, when suddenly the Gestapo appeared with orders to search the house. The visitors watched as Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s study was turned upside down. Behind a picture on the wall, a safe was found, containing 30,000 Reichsmarks belonging to the Pastors\u2019 Emergency League, of which the police took possession. The visitors were released by evening, after having to give their particulars, and allowed to go home.
\nAll this had seemed to take place without any grave danger, but for Bonhoeffer the day brought a decided break in his life. His friend Franz Hildebrandt, who had been among those present, and preached in Niem\u00f6ller\u2019s pulpit at the Dahlem church on 12 and 18 July, was arrested for announcing the collections for the Confessing Church and reading the list of names for intercessory prayer. As a \u2018non-Aryan\u2019 his situation was precarious, but Bonhoeffer\u2019s parents and many other friends exerted every possible influence, so that after four weeks he was released. Since the police had not found his passport, he was able to emigrate to England, where Julius Rieger took him on as assistant preacher in his congregation.
\nBefore we come to the end of the work at Finkenwalde, we must speak of the book that grew out of Bonhoeffer\u2019s lectures there and his discussions with those who heard them. The preparations for this book go back to Bonhoeffer\u2019s time in London, and even before that. The first inspiration had been his conversations with Jean Lasserre in New York. Bonhoeffer\u2019s stirring phrase, \u2018Christianity entails decision\u2019, was now sharpened to the more precise point that faith means making a decision, for there is no faith without obedience. For several semesters at Finkenwalde Bonhoeffer lectured to his ordinands on being disciples of Christ, and in so doing he placed the Gospels, especially the Sermon on the Mount, at the centre of the Christian life.
\nAt all Nazi public events there were speeches about \u2018F\u00fchrer and followers\u2019. During the war these were made into a song with the refrain, \u2018F\u00fchrer, command, we\u2019ll follow you [wir folgen dir]\u2019. When Bonhoeffer called his lecture course Nachfolge (following, or discipleship), he was not only using a New Testament concept, but also contrasting it expressly to a term widely used by the Nazis.
\nDuring the political dispute, which was discussed almost daily in Finkenwalde, he developed the idea that, contrary to the usual Lutheran interpretation, the Sermon on the Mount was intended not only to lead human beings to the conviction that they are sinners who can be saved only through faith in the grace of God; even more, Jesus required consistent obedience from his followers. Anyone who claimed otherwise was preaching \u2018cheap grace\u2019. \u2018Only the believers obey, and only the obedient believe. It is really unfaithfulness to the Bible to have the first statement without the second\u2019 (DBWE 4, 63). This statement had the effect of a \u2018thunderbolt of insight\u2019 on Bonhoeffer\u2019s students, according to a description at the time in Finkenwalde (DBW 14, 989).
\nThe book Discipleship (first published in English as The Cost of Discipleship), completed in 1937, grew out of these lectures of Bonhoeffer\u2019s. It caused a stir, especially because this interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount was new for Protestant churches. This caused the shorter second part, which interpreted the apostolic letters\u2014notably the theology of the apostle Paul\u2014to receive less attention. Of course Eberhard Bethge had a point when, in his discussion of the book in his Bonhoeffer biography, he called the chapter \u2018Discipleship and the Cross\u2019 (DBWE 4, 84ff) a \u2018cornerstone of the work from the beginning\u2019 (DB-ER 450).
\nThe second part makes no bones about the fact that Christians are persecuted in this world and are therefore lonely, and that they must spare no effort in remaining faithful. \u2018The church-community moves through the world like a sealed train passing through foreign territory\u2019 (DBWE 4, 260). This image of a \u2018sealed train\u2019 neatly reflects the situation of the Confessing Church, the influence of which was being combated and increasingly pushed back by the Nazi authorities and the Reich Church, which followed Hitler\u2019s lead.
\nOn thorough examination, it is striking that the last chapter of the book, entitled \u2018The Image of Christ\u2019, takes up the theme of \u2018Discipleship and the Cross\u2019 in another way, which one might call \u2018mystical\u2019; and it is not by chance that this theme is the result of a decision that Bonhoeffer had to make, almost completely alone, at that time. It includes a passage that, while much gentler than his sermon in London on Jeremiah, reflects again moments of the absolute presence of God.<\/p>\n
To those who have heard the call to be disciples of Jesus Christ is given the incomprehensible great promise that they are to become like Christ \u2026 All those who submit themselves completely to Jesus Christ will, indeed must, bear his image. They become sons and daughters of God; they stand next to Christ, their invisible brother, who bears the same form as they do, the image of God. (DBWE 4, 281)<\/p>\n
The form of Christ on earth is the form of death [Todesgestalt] of the Crucified One \u2026 It is into this image that the disciple\u2019s life must be transformed. It is a life in the image and likeness of Christ\u2019s death (Philippians 3:10; Romans 6:4\u20135). (DBWE 4, 285)<\/p>\n
Christ honours only a few of his followers with being in the most intimate community with his suffering, that is, with martyrdom. It is here that the life of the disciple is most profoundly identical with the likeness of Jesus Christ\u2019s form of death. It is by Christians\u2019 being publicly disgraced, having to suffer and be put to death for the sake of Christ, that Christ himself attains visible form within his community. However, from baptism all the way to martyrdom, it is the same suffering and the same death. It is the new creation of the image of God through the Crucified One. All those who remain in community with the Incarnate and Crucified One and in whom he gained his form will also become like the Glorified and Risen One. \u2018We will bear the image of the heavenly human being\u2019 (1 Corinthians 15:49). \u2018We will be like him, for we will behold him as he is\u2019 (1 John 3:2). The image of the Risen One will transform those who look at it in the same way as the image of the Crucified One. (DBWE 4, 285f)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer is speaking here not only of the communion of suffering, which the ordinands were ready to take upon themselves together with their director, and did take upon themselves; he is also speaking explicitly of martyrdom, in which there can no longer be any communion of sufferers. There were reasons why Bonhoeffer came to speak of this. He felt personally obligated by Jesus\u2019 commandment to peace to refuse military service whenever war broke out, and he was certain that it would. But he wanted neither to discuss this idea with his ordinands nor to challenge them to follow him on a course which would end in a death sentence.
\nThe few leaders in the Confessing Church who had any idea that Bonhoeffer was contemplating such a thing were horrified. The Protestant church had neither theological concepts, nor yet any examples, of conscientious objection to military service. That Luther had expressly forbidden the participation of any Christian in an unjust war had long been forgotten, and if Bonhoeffer, one of the best-known theologians in the Confessing Church, should declare Hitler\u2019s war to be an unjust war, there was no doubt that the whole Church would be endangered. The German secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Dr Hermann St\u00f6hr, took this stance at the beginning of the Second World War and was executed. There had been attempts to save him, but the Confessing Church did not stand up for him or for the step he had taken. Some friends in the Confessing Church were happy when Bonhoeffer was invited to the USA in the spring of 1939, hoping that war might break out while he was there, catching him by surprise and preventing his return.
\nThat the Finkenwalde seminary was able to continue its work undisturbed, after the new church administration imposed by Kerrl\u2019s ministry had begun its attacks, amazed many people. Were the authorities purposely looking the other way? There had been cases in which members of the Gestapo had protected Confessing Church pastors and their work. Even the Finkenwaldians\u2019 mission trips were not disturbed. The fifth seminary course finished up with a few sunny days on the Baltic shore. The evening farewell celebration was held on 8 September, and everyone left on vacation.<\/p>\n
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the shore of the Baltic Sea. Photo taken by Helmut Morlinhaus in 1937<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer and Bethge took a holiday in Bavaria. On the way back at the end of September, they were at Bonhoeffer\u2019s twin sister\u2019s home in G\u00f6ttingen when they received a telephone call from Stettin. The Gestapo had arrived at Finkenwalde, served orders to quit on the housekeeper, Erna Struwe and the inspector of studies, Fritz Onnasch, the successor of Wilhelm Rott, and then sealed the doors of the seminary rooms. There were many appeals. The old Field Marshal August von Mackensen sent a handwritten letter of protest to Minister Kerrl; but the order was not rescinded. \u2018We must obey God rather than any human authority,\u2019 says the New Testament. On this basis, despite the ban by the government, Bonhoeffer did not consider his mission to train pastors for the Confessing Church to be at an end.<\/p>\n
8. In the Woods of East Pomerania (1938\u20131940)<\/p>\n
The collective pastorates<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer\u2019s superiors and colleagues in the Confessing Church were as convinced as he was that the training of pastors must continue; the question was only how to go about this. The East Prussian seminary under Hans Iwand had been hastily moved to Dortmund in the western Ruhr district, but once there had soon been broken up; Iwand and a number of others were now in prison. A more effective solution was found to replace Finkenwalde. The towns of K\u00f6slin and Schlawe in east Pomerania, about 100 and 125 miles east of Stettin respectively, each had a church district superintendent who not only belonged to the Confessing Church but also had managed to keep his pastorates largely free of German Christians.
\nSuperintendent Onnasch in K\u00f6slin had a very large parsonage, in which he could offer lodgings to as many as ten ordinands. He assigned these ordinands pro forma to Confessing Church pastors in his district as apprentice pastoral assistants. His son Fritz, who had already been inspector of studies in Finkenwalde, continued in that role at K\u00f6slin, while Eberhard Bethge assumed it for Schlawe. In Schlawe, Superintendent Block also arranged for the ordinands to be assigned, on paper, to dependable Confessing Church pastors, and to be registered with the police as residents of the town in that capacity. However, rather than actually living scattered in these various parishes, they and Eberhard Bethge all lived together still further east in the village of Gro\u00df Schl\u00f6nwitz, in a little parsonage with crooked walls, bent by the strong winds of the north German plain. Here the group could live only if it had its own transport, so besides Bonhoeffer\u2019s car they obtained another one and also a motorcycle. Bonhoeffer spent half of each week in K\u00f6slin and the other half in Gro\u00df Schl\u00f6nwitz, as well as alternating weekends with each group. His residence was registered in Schlawe at the home of Superintendent Block, who was especially adroit at dealing with police enquiries.
\nIn Finkenwalde Bonhoeffer had been able to lead five seminary courses, for five groups of ordinands; in K\u00f6slin and Schlawe, he was able to offer five more. It was no longer possible to maintain the House of Brethren, but community life was carried on in the form developed at Finkenwalde. Especially because life in the new locations was more primitive and in many ways harder than it had been near Stettin, Bonhoeffer insisted on leisure time, relaxing on the Baltic shore and games in the evening. One ordinand, who like so many of Bonhoeffer\u2019s students was later killed in the war, wrote to him after participating in the \u2018collective pastorate\u2019:<\/p>\n
Eberhard Bethge and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Gro\u00df Schl\u00f6nwitz<\/p>\n
I did not come to Schl\u00f6nwitz eagerly or hopefully \u2026 I thought of it as a necessary evil that one had to bear with a good grace and go through for the sake of self-discipline \u2026 It all turned out differently from the way I had feared. Instead of the stuffy atmosphere of theological cant, I found a world that embraced a good deal of what I love and need; straightforward theological work in a friendly community \u2026 brotherhood under the Word irrespective of the person, and with it all, open-mindedness and creativity that still makes this fallen creation lovable\u2014music, literature, sport and the beauty of the earth\u2014a grand way of life \u2026 When I look back today, I have a fine clear picture before me: the brothers sitting down to their afternoon coffee with bread and jam. The chief has come back after being away rather a long time \u2026 Now we get the latest news, and the world breaks into the peacefulness and simplicity of life on a Pomeranian estate. (DB-ER 592\u20133)<\/p>\n
After a time the community life became even more primitive, when the parsonage in Schl\u00f6nwitz was needed by its pastor, and Bethge and his group had to move to a small, quite isolated house, Sigurdshof. Water had to be fetched from a pump at the edge of the deep Pomerian forest; food, and coal for heating, had to be brought from far away, and in winter everything was buried under deep snow.
\nAt the end of June 1938, Bonhoeffer invited all the former seminarians to a retreat at Zingst, back where it all started. Forty-five young pastors came, and Bonhoeffer was especially happy that some had even made the long journey from the Rhineland, or from East Prussia (today divided between Russia and Poland). It was the time when the Confessing Church was truly at its lowest ebb, and Bonhoeffer made passionate efforts to ensure that his former students remained loyal to it.
\nThe collective pastorates, in turn, lasted until after Hitler\u2019s invasion of Poland. This final period of Bonhoeffer\u2019s work as a teacher of theology took place during one of the most depressing times of his life.<\/p>\n
\u2018They belong to the other side\u2019<\/p>\n
In early 1938, official church president Werner gave orders that on Hitler\u2019s 49th birthday in April, all Protestant pastors must swear an \u2018oath of allegiance to the F\u00fchrer and Reich Chancellor\u2019 (Hitler\u2019s two titles). Werner\u2019s decree included the words, \u2018Anyone who refuses to take the oath is to be dismissed.\u2019 It was the time just following the annexation of Austria, which had been greeted with a wave of enthusiasm nationwide, so that any pastor who expressed reservations about Werner\u2019s order came under a cloud; \u2018the nation could not depend on him\u2019. German Christians took the oath immediately, \u2018with joyful hearts and in obedience to an inner command\u2019. Confessing Church pastors, however, felt that they had been ordered to to break their ordination vow, for the text that accompanied this oath described it as more than the recognition of the duty, according to the New Testament, to \u2018be subject to the governing authorities\u2019. It meant being in \u2018the most intimate solidarity with the Third Reich \u2026 and with the man who created that community and embodies it\u2019.
\nNo explanation is needed as to why Bonhoeffer found this loyalty oath reprehensible; however, like all the \u2018illegal pastors\u2019, he was not on any list of Werner\u2019s, so he was not being asked to take the oath. For the many Confessing Church pastors who had taken up their pastorates before 1933, however, it was another matter. Though they didn\u2019t acknowlege the Old Prussion Union represented by Werner as their legitimate Church, they still received their monthly salaries from it. (This was just one of the many confusing situations in the church struggle in Germany.) Before any synod of the Confessing Church could even discuss the matter, many of them had already taken the oath, and then, on 31 July 1938, the Old Prussian Confessing Synod\u2014after agonizing deliberations in pastoral conferences and among friends\u2014made it a matter which each clergyman was free to decide for himself. Bonhoeffer and his ordinands travelled from one pastors\u2019 meeting to another, trying to prevent the clergy from taking the oath, but since they themselves were not affected, they had no success with their arguments. The whole matter became one of the most shameful defeats of the Confessing Church, for, after the great majority of pastors had taken the oath, Reich Party chief Bormann wrote to the local party chiefs that it was the churches themselves which had prescribed the oath; it only had significance within the churches. For the state and the Party, it was irrelevant whether a pastor had taken the oath or not.
\nAt that time, Karl Barth asked the leadership of the Confessing Church, \u2018Was there and is there really no one among you who can lead you back to the simplicity of the straight and narrow way?\u2019 (DB-ER 602) And Bonhoeffer wrote to the Council of Brethren:<\/p>\n
It is a hard step for a Confessing pastor to be compelled to oppose the decision of an Old Prussian Confessing synod, particularly when he can look back with nothing but great thankfulness and respect on the service that synod has rendered until now. (DB-ER 602)<\/p>\n
The Confessing Church has never left its younger clergy so alone as it has in the case of this irrevocable decision \u2026 Will the Confessing Church be willing to confess publicly its guilt and the rupture within its ranks? Will it find the room it now needs for prayer for forgiveness and a fresh start? (DB-ER 603)<\/p>\n
One of the patterns of the church struggle was that, after every disaster which pushed the Dahlemites and the southern German bishops apart, a few men wrestled to restore the unity of the Confessing front. They were able to get conversations going, but these conversations were snuffed out very quickly by increased pressure from the government. Each of these attempts to restore unity worried Bonhoeffer, since he expected that they could only result in shabby compromises. The negotiations toward reconciliation in the summer of 1938 were begun, not least, at the urging of Hans Joachim Iwand who, after his preachers\u2019 seminary had been closed and after serving a jail sentence, had become pastor of a large church in Dortmund. Iwand had never stopped trying to win over his Lutheran friends in Bavaria, especially Bishop Meiser. So it was that, at this time, provincial \u2018intact churches\u2019, members of the Confessing Church who had cooperated with the committees, and Dahlemites together with neutrals, negotiated a reconciliation, in the city of Essen in the Ruhr valley. They had decided to give the decisive weight to the first thesis of the Barmen confession. Bonhoeffer was horrified. He wrote to one of his students:<\/p>\n
Here we are being haunted by the ghost of Essen, which is turning the heads of the best people we have. I can see only confusion and apostasy to come. The planned agreement on the Barmen 1st thesis (without even mentioning the name Barmen, of which we are almost obliged to be ashamed these days in the Confessing Church!) \u2026 is simply untruthfulness and abandonment of God\u2019s grace revealed to us in Barmen and Dahlem. (DBW 15, 42\u201343)<\/p>\n
Let us keep in mind that in Bonhoeffer\u2019s estimation, there could not be any \u2018neutrals\u2019: \u2018they belong to the other side\u2019. After writing a letter of protest to the whole Council of Brethren, Bonhoeffer wrote to Wilhelm Niesel, the Council member responsible for the \u2018illegals\u2019, that is, for the preachers\u2019 seminaries and ordinands who wanted nothing to do with the consistories of the official church: \u2018The new draft is the most disastrous document in the history of the Confessing Church. Even when we cannot expect it ever to be put into practice, it must be rejected\u2019 (DBW 15, 42). He asked that the younger brethren be heard on the subject, and Niesel would be the only one in a position to arrange that. The most original comment that was made on this episode came from Bonhoeffer\u2019s old friend Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, who wrote to Bethge at the time:<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know anything about legal matters, but it looks to me like the founding of a \u2018cattle-raisers\u2019 association\u2019, as though the church has sold itself away \u2026 The Essen draft seems to me nothing but plain unvarnished unbelief; all I have to do is look at the potpourri of signatures. (DB-ER 604)<\/p>\n
These negotiations in Essen ended in failure, in a way that was particularly humiliating for the Confessing Church. In September 1938 it looked as though Hitler had decided to attack Czechoslovakia. As tanks were already parading through Berlin, members of the Confessing Church drew up a liturgy for a prayer service which included a daring confession of guilt and a prayer for peace. A wild cry of hatred was raised against it in the newspapers, which were all synchronized and under Goebbels\u2019 control. Almost at the same time as the prayer liturgy, a letter was made known which Karl Barth had written to the Czech professor of theology Josef Hrom\u00e1dka, including these words about the imminent war:<\/p>\n
Every Czech soldier who fights and suffers will be doing so for us too, and\u2014I say this without reservation\u2014he will also be doing it for the church of Jesus, which in the atmosphere of Hitler and Mussolini must become the victim either of ridicule or of extermination. (DB-ER 606)<\/p>\n
The SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps (the Black Corps) claimed that they now had sufficient proof that the prayer liturgy was \u2018treasonable action in clerical garb\u2019. Suddenly the men of the Dahlem wing found themselves standing alone, for their negotiating partners in the Essen conversations were distancing themselves from them in open declarations. It did no good for the authors of the prayer liturgy to assert that they had nothing to do with Barth\u2019s letter. They were put on unpaid leave until the disciplinary process that was to result in their removal from office, and this measure was extended to all those who had supported them. Bishop Wurm of Stuttgart, who as much as anyone had left the authors of the prayer liturgy in the lurch, confessed after the war that the \u2018power of darkness\u2019 over him had been \u2018greater than the power of light\u2019 (DB-ER 606). Bishop Meiser never uttered a word to show that he regretted what he had done in this and many similar situations.
\nThe war did not begin after all at that time, because the Western powers and Mussolini reached the famous agreement with Hitler at Munich. Czechoslovakia had to cede to the German Reich those of its territories in which the Sudeten Germans lived, and Hitler declared that with this all the German territorial claims had finally been fulfilled.
\nOn 9 November 1938, synagogues were ablaze all over Germany. A young Jew whose parents had been expelled from Germany to Poland had shot the German diplomat Ernst von Rath in Paris, seriously wounding him. When Rath died a few days later, Goebbels had already organized the \u2018spontaneous\u2019 revenge of the German people, carried out not by them but by SS and SA militia, dressed as civilians. The synagogues were set on fire and Jewish homes and businesses devastated; the streets full of broken glass caused that night to be known in German as the Kristallnacht. Many Jews were tortured, around 100 were murdered and 30,000 were deported to concentration camps. The Confessing Church no longer had the strength to protest. It had been thrown completely off balance by Werner\u2019s decrees. Only isolated individuals still felt able to speak out. In a repentant sermon the following Sunday, Pastor Julius von Jan in Oberlenningen, W\u00fcrttemberg said:<\/p>\n
Who would have thought that this single crime in Paris could result in so many crimes committed here in Germany? Now we are facing the consequences of our great apostasy, our falling away from God and Christ, of organized anti-Christianity. Passions are being unleashed and the commandments of God ignored. Houses of God which were sacred for others are being burnt down, the property of others is being plundered or destroyed. Men who have served our nation loyally and conscientiously fulfilled their duties have been thrown into concentration camps, merely because they belong to another race. Those in authority may not admit to any injustice, but to the healthy good sense of our people it is quite clear, even though no one dares speak of it.<\/p>\n
Pastor von Jan was hauled out of his parsonage by 500 demonstrators from outside his village and beaten to a pulp. He was dragged through a raging crowd to the town hall, where he was interrogated and thrown into prison, and remained there until the US Army freed him in 1945.
\nIn Bonn, the wife and sons of the internationally known expert in ancient Near Eastern studies, Paul Kahle, had been aiding Jewish business people; on the morning after this pogrom, she and her eldest son were surprised by a policemen while helping to clean up the shop where she had always bought her household linens. The son had to appear before the university\u2019s court, where he was expelled from university study \u2018because of the seriousness of his offence\u2019. Furious hate articles appeared in the press, and the family received massive threats. They were able to flee the country just in time.
\nHow degraded the moral values of large parts of the population had become at that early date is shown by a letter to Kahle from one of his former students, who at that time held the chair in Oriental Studies at the University of G\u00f6ttingen, addressing him as \u2018My dear and honoured colleague\u2019:<\/p>\n
You surely remember the case of a former rector of Bonn University, who got into bad trouble because his wife shopped at a Jewish butcher shop; that could actually have been a warning \u2026 We younger colleagues regret that, due to the insensitive behaviour of Mrs Kahle, it has been made impossible for you to conclude your university career with due honour.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer was with his group of ordinands in the woods of Gro\u00df Schl\u00f6nwitz when the synagogue in K\u00f6slin was set afire, and only found out later what had happened. His thoughts were the same as those of Pastor von Jan and of Helmut Gollwitzer, who had made a public protest in a worship service in Dahlem. That Bonhoeffer did not react in the same way as these brave colleagues does not indicate a lack of courage, but rather that in 1938 he already felt that a fundamentally different form of resistance against Nazism was necessary. He had been initiated into the plans for a coup. In his Bible, during those days, he underlined the sentence in Psalm 74 that says, \u2018they burned all the meeting-places of God in the land\u2019. Next to it he wrote the date: 9 Nov. 1938.
\nThere were still Confessing Church pastors, but almost anything they did could be declared illegal and could lead to their salaries being stopped or to a prison sentence. Any of them could be dismissed from his ministry without any reason being given. For example, it was a sufficient offence to take in a Confessing Church ordinand and have him work in one\u2019s parish. Werner wanted to break down the resistance of the young Confessing Church pastors by depriving them of every possibility of finding work. In this situation, many of Bonhoeffer\u2019s former students felt insecure and uncertain. But what they called a \u2018new situation\u2019, he called a \u2018smoke screen\u2019. \u2018Do not let us persuade ourselves that over there, in the ranks of the consistory, we would be free to attend to our business. Once there, we shall have surrendered all internal authority, because we have not remained in the truth\u2019 (DB-ER 614).
\nBonhoeffer gave a detailed position statement on \u2018legalization\u2019 through the consistories; this was circulated in the form of a memorandum. It was discussed, praised and, above all, vehemently attacked. But there were those who fought alongside him, and on 28 January 1939 the Confessing Church Synod in Nikolassee, west Berlin, adopted a clear resolution against \u2018legalization\u2019. After that terrible year, 1938, Bonhoeffer experienced this as a liberation. He shared it in his newsletter, \u2018Since I last wrote, much has become clearer \u2026\u2019 (DBW 15, 170).<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer\u2019s path to joining the Resistance<\/p>\n
From 1933 onward, Bonhoeffer was better informed than most of his colleagues about what was really going on in Germany. He got his information, as long as it was possible, from the foreign press and foreign radio broadcasts. He brought back news from his travels; but above all he made use of his family contacts. His parents, his brothers and sisters and their spouses had all been opposed to Hitler from the beginning, and each of them had friends and acquaintances who also disapproved of the Nazi regime and had access to information. Bonhoeffer\u2019s brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi was the Ministry of Justice staff member that worked most closely with the Minister, Dr Franz G\u00fcrtner, who protected him as long as it was at all possible, and this position allowed him to find out much sooner than most people what was being planned by the government, the SS or the Party leadership. Dohnanyi had already begun in 1933 to record and document all the legal offences of the Nazis, and he kept this file up to date.
\nDohnanyi was one of the first to try and recruit others to help overthrow Hitler\u2019s government. His own opposition was already no secret, since he refused to become a member of the Party. Because of this, a group of fanatical Nazis within the Ministry of Justice, including Roland Freisler, who was later to be the death-dealing judge for conspirators, denounced Dohnanyi to Martin Bormann, Hitler\u2019s Chancellery Secretary. Bormann then forced G\u00fcrtner to remove Dohnanyi from his position in the Justice Ministry; nevertheless, G\u00fcrtner was able to have his trusted assistant appointed a supreme court judge (Reichsgerichtsrat) in Leipzig, even though Dohnanyi would normally have been considered too young for a seat on the highest court in the land. Bonhoeffer was afraid he was being cut off from his most important source of information, but his brother-in-law had agreed to give a weekly lecture in Berlin and thus be able to continue meeting with the persons most important to him.
\nOn 5 November 1937, Hitler had for the first time laid out for the top officers of the three branches of his armed forces (Wehrmacht) his concrete plans for war. Werner Blomberg, commander in chief of the whole armed forces, and Werner von Fritsch, commander in chief of the army, had raised political and military objections to the plans and were fired from their posts. Hitler himself took over the supreme command of the Wehrmacht and named Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch as successor to Fritsch. Soon afterwards, Hans von Dohnanyi met Hitler\u2019s aide-de-camp, Captain Fritz Wiedemann. They had encountered one another often, when Dohnanyi went to the Reich Chancellery with G\u00fcrtner, and had come to trust one another. Wiedemann told Dohnanyi that, on 5 November, Hitler had said, \u2018Every generation needs its own war, and I shall take care that this generation gets its war.\u2019 Dohnanyi was outraged, and Wiedemann said to him, \u2018I grant you that nothing but a revolver is any use here, but who is to do it? I cannot help murder someone who has entrusted me with his personal safety\u2019 (DB-ER 627).
\nTo keep General Fritsch from speaking out and to make an outcast of him, the SS had slandered him as a homosexual, by falsely attributing the homosexual acts of a cavalry captain named Frisch to the General. Hitler, who found this very convenient, handed the \u2018Fritsch case\u2019 over to the Minister of Justice, who passed the files on to Dohnanyi, saying, \u2018You will know for yourself which end of the rope to pull.\u2019 Investigation soon showed that the case had been manipulated by the SS. Anger at this brought Dohnanyi together with a whole group of influential military men: Dr Karl Sack of the military judiciary, Colonel Hans Oster, chief of staff for Admiral Canaris, and other opponents of Hitler with whom he could make plans for a coup. They were counting on the army not to stand for these defamatory attacks on its commander in chief. With the support of General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the General Staff, it was decided that Fritsch should send a message to SS chief Heinrich Himmler, challenging him to a duel. The text of this message was drafted by Dohnanyi. But Fritsch hesitated, and by marching into Austria in February 1938 Hitler achieved such a massive political triumph that the army chiefs declared that the proper moment had passed. Those who had been parties to this first attempt at a coup nonetheless realized that Hitler could be overthrown, if it were possible to gain the cooperation of the right military authorities.
\nBonhoeffer was initiated into all this by Hans von Dohnanyi, and because he was among those who knew about it, his attitude changed. For years he had been fighting to persuade the whole clergy to act as Pastor von Jan in W\u00fcrttemberg had done in response to the pogrom night. But by the time he himself heard about the pogrom, he already knew about the conspiracy, and in it, there was only one goal; everything depended on putting Hitler out of action. If one were to take risks at all, it must be only for this purpose. \u2018The use of camouflage became a moral duty\u2019, in Bethge\u2019s words. The old Latin saying, dixi et salvavi animam meam, \u2018I have said it and thus have saved my soul\u2019, which had been Bonhoeffer\u2019s watchword during the early years of the church struggle, was no longer in force for him as an initiate into the conspiracy. His course now called for him to give up public protest, to the point of raising his arm in the despised Hitler salute. And anyone who possibly could was obliged to try to work his way into a key position.
\nThe Munich agreement between Hitler and British Prime Minister Chamberlain was celebrated at the time in many countries as a success for peace. In reality it only postponed the war, for Hitler was annoyed that his negotiating partners, by compromising with him, had taken away his reason for going to war, and he was determined to do so anyway. What few people, such as the Bonhoeffers, knew at the time was that \u2018Munich\u2019 had thwarted the second attempt at a coup by the Resistance group that had been brought together by the Fritsch crisis.
\nFranz Halder, the new Chief of General Staff, was ready to launch the coup as soon as Hitler gave the order to attack Czechoslovakia. General von Witzleben, the military commander of the Berlin-Brandenburg district, was then to march on the Reich Chancellery and have Hitler taken prisoner. What happened instead was that, after his success in Munich, Hitler altered the tasks of the General Staff, leaving it without much power, and Witzleben was moved to a lesser command in Frankfurt on the Main. So the Resistance group around Colonel Oster and Hans von Dohnanyi could now only attempt, with all necessary caution, to seek out new contacts with opponents of Hitler within the military. General Ludwig Beck, who had been Halder\u2019s predecessor, had resigned on 18 August 1938 because of Hitler\u2019s plans for war. He had submitted a memorandum to Brauchitsch which said:<\/p>\n
The final decisions for the nation\u2019s existence are at stake here; history will charge those leaders [of the Wehrmacht divisions] with having blood on their hands if they do not act in accordance with their professional and political knowledge and conscience. Their obedience as soldiers must have a limit where their knowledge, their conscience and their responsibility forbid the execution of a command.
\nIt shows a lack of stature and a failure to understand his task, if in such times a soldier in the highest position sees his duties and tasks only within the limited context of his military orders, without being conscious that his highest responsibility is to the people as a whole.
\nExceptional times call for exceptional actions! (DB-ER 629)<\/p>\n
From that point on, Beck no longer had any influence in the military, but for the military opposition he would be the future commander.
\nThe Bonhoeffer family had discussed on many occasions whether Dietrich\u2019s twin sister Sabine and her family should stay on in Germany. Shouldn\u2019t the Leibholz parents, if only for the sake of their two young daughters, get away from the anti-Semitism and hate campaigns? But what could a German lawyer, even such a gifted one as Gerhard Leibholz, do in a foreign country? Then, in 1938, Hans von Dohnanyi reported that a new regulation on names, to identify people of Jewish origin, was expected soon. Their passports were to be stamped with a large J, and the first name \u2018Israel\u2019 would be imposed on men, the first name \u2018Sarah\u2019 on women. Thus emigration, as soon as possible, appeared unavoidable.
\nDietrich Bonhoeffer travelled with his sister and her family, along with Eberhard Bethge, part of the way to Switzerland on 9 September, and with the help of his London connections did what he could to ease their move to England. Bishop Bell and other friends made special efforts to help. Gerhard Leibholz received a scholarship from the provisional World Council of Churches and was invited to lecture on political science at Magdalen College, Oxford. Bishop Bell had just become a member of the House of Lords in the British Parliament, and found in Leibholz an intelligent adviser, outstandingly well informed about all matters having to do with Germany and the danger of war.
\nThrough his brother Hans, Gerhard Leibholz had a contact with Franz Koenigs, a banker in Amsterdam who was energetically helping emigrating Jews and also had connections with the Resistance in the German military. Koenigs was married to Countess Anna Kalckreuth, a cousin of Paula Bonhoeffer\u2019s. He met with Klaus Bonhoeffer in Spain in 1941, and earlier the same year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was so interested that he arranged a second conversation the next day (DBWE 16, 133). There was also a contact with Hans von Dohnanyi. Hans Leibholz brought reports written about Germany by Koenigs to London at regular intervals. However, this came to an end when Hitler\u2019s troops invaded the Netherlands and Hans Leibholz took his own life. In the autumn of 1941, not long after his conversations with Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Franz Koenigs was killed at the main railway station in Cologne, under circumstances that have never been clarified.
\nThe crisis over Czechoslovakia caused the issue of Bonhoeffer\u2019s military service to become acute faster than he had expected. On 3 November 1938, along with all men of military age, he had to have his name recorded in the Military Registration Record at his place of residence. Henceforth the authorities there\u2014in Bonhoeffer\u2019s case, in Schlawe\u2014had to be informed of any change of address, any significant travel on holiday, and particularly any journeys abroad. In Schlawe a Major Kleist was in charge of the military registration office, so Bonhoeffer\u2019s friends in the extended Kleist family and the doughty Superintendent Block were still able, without great difficulty, to get him permission to visit his sister in England. Shortly thereafter, his father was able to be among those who helped him obtain a permit for a trip to the USA.
\nIn the time between Bonhoeffer\u2019s entry into the Military Registration Record\u2014from which point he had to count on being called up for induction, beginning with a medical exam\u2014until his precipitated return from the United States, Bonhoeffer went through a severe crisis in his life. Not only did his contact with Dohnanyi appear to be at risk due to Dohnanyi\u2019s move to Leipzig, but also no progress was being seen in the rebuilding of the Resistance cell. Bonhoeffer was feeling the effects on his strength of the constant travel back and forth between K\u00f6slin and Schlawe, not to mention the many trips to Berlin. He could no longer manage to do any of the concentrated theological work to which he was accustomed. But most of all he was depressed over the setbacks which the Confessing Church had suffered: the disgrace over the oath of allegiance, the crumbling away of the \u2018Confessing front\u2019 after the publication of the prayer liturgy, the crippling debate about \u2018legalization\u2019, and the silence following the pogrom.<\/p>\n
Bishop Bell (standing, holding a book) with a group of German pastors and their spouses of Jewish origin who were persecuted in Germany<\/p>\n
All this seemed to confront him with the question: was it worthwhile, this struggle which was consuming the crucial years of his life? Was it right to object conscientiously to military service, at the sacrifice of his own life, when no one in the Confessing Church could even understand such a sacrifice, much less approve of it? And what of his being party to the conspiracy? Wasn\u2019t that a mission in which people belonging to the military could be useful, but not a theologian?
\n\u2018Only the believers obey, and only the obedient believe.\u2019 He still thought this way, but he no longer saw how it could be put into action. There was no one with whom he could talk about all of this openly. Members of his family would have been immediately concerned about saving his life, not about his theological insights. The churchmen would have pressed for more readiness to compromise on the part of this young theologian, whom they all considered highly gifted, but much too radical. There was just one person who would have an understanding for all of it, and who would give good counsel: George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester. When on 10 March 1939 Bonhoeffer took the night train to Ostend, Belgium for the Channel crossing, it was these very personal questions that he wanted to clarify, besides wanting to see his sister and her family again. In addition he had taken on some ecumenical tasks on behalf of the Confessing Church.
\nThe weeks he spent in London were extraordinarily full. There were moving reunions with the family and with Franz Hildebrandt. Bonhoeffer saw his colleagues from his time in Sydenham, where he gave a lecture. He also met with the 40 German pastors and their families whom Bishop Bell had brought to England to protect them from the consequences of the anti-Jewish laws. During this meeting, the news was spreading that Hitler had broken the agreement made in Munich and had marched into Prague. Once again, war had come that much nearer. With his brother-in-law and Julius Rieger, Bonhoeffer travelled to Sussex, where Reinhold Niebuhr, who was by then considered the most important theologian in the United States, was on holiday. There it was decided that Niebuhr would arrange for Bonhoeffer to be invited to give some lectures in the United States.
\nThe Confessing Church had asked Bonhoeffer to meet with Canon Leonard Hodgson in Oxford, general secretary of Faith and Order and assistant to Archbishop William Temple for ecumenical concerns. He wanted to try with Hodgson to resolve the tiresome problem of how the Confessing Church could take part in ecumenical conferences without having to go through Heckel\u2019s Foreign Office. The issue was no longer to demand that the Geneva office decide in favour of the Confessing Church and against the Reich Church, but only that the church opposition in Germany be heard and be able to participate at all. Bonhoeffer wanted to get as far as having a knowledgeable person such as Franz Hildebrandt accepted as a liaison.
\nBut Hodgson put him off with the old business of the regulations which had so often been held up to him before, according to which the Confessing Church was a group within the German Evangelical Church and the ecumenical community did not have the right to make distinctions between true church and false church. Ecumenical meetings could invite guests, but anything else would mean taking sides with one group against the other, and that could not be done. Bonhoeffer was disconsolate, for he knew that no passports would be issued for \u2018guests\u2019 from the Confessing Church. That Hodgson also knew this is shown by a letter he wrote to Archbishop Temple, which said that in case Heckel alone received a passport, and no one from the Confessing Church got one, the ecumenical community \u2018would nevertheless have maintained its impartiality\u2019 (DB-ER 644).
\nFortunately the conversation with Hodgson was not the only ecumenical experience that Bonhoeffer had while in England. He heard that the successor to Henriod as head of the Geneva office, the Dutchman W. A. Visser \u2018t Hooft, who had studied under Karl Barth, was coming to London and arranged to meet him at Paddington railway station. After the war, Visser \u2018t Hooft described their conversation:<\/p>\n
We had heard a great deal about each other, but it was surprising how quickly we were able to get beyond the first stage of merely feeling our way, into the deeper realm of real conversation\u2014that, in fact, he was soon treating me as an old friend. (DB-ER 646)<\/p>\n
As the two walked up and down the platform, Bonhoeffer portrayed the situation in Germany, and his personal dilemma: shouldn\u2019t one refuse to obey a government which was consciously heading straight for war and breaking all the commandments of God?<\/p>\n
I remember his acute questions better than his answers; but I think I learned more from his questions than he did from my answers. In the hazy world between \u2018Munich\u2019 and \u2018Warsaw\u2019, in which hardly anyone dared to formulate the real problems clearly, this questioning voice had a liberating effect on me. (DB-ER 646\u201347)<\/p>\n
When Bonhoeffer later made contact with the ecumenical offices in Geneva on behalf of the Resistance movement, he had in Visser \u2018t Hooft, from the first moment, a dependable colleague and friend.
\nHowever, the most important conversation for Bonhoeffer during this trip to England was the one with Bishop Bell. Immediately upon arriving in London, he had written to his fatherly friend of his struggle with the question of conscientious objection to military service. This was a step he felt compelled to take, but of course he could also see what such refusal would mean for the Confessing Church. The Bishop lost no time in inviting him to Chichester, where the two had a long conversation. Bonhoeffer sent Bell a sincere note of thanks before leaving London, but that is all we know about their encounter. However, it appears that Bishop Bell showed great understanding and sympathy for Bonhoeffer\u2019s question as to whether he should leave Germany. The final decision had to be made by Bonhoeffer a few months later in New York, without anyone there to advise him.
\nOn Hitler\u2019s birthday, 18 April 1939, in the official journal of the German Evangelical Church, church president Werner published a text extolling the F\u00fchrer and Reich Chancellor:<\/p>\n
In him God has given the German people a real miracle worker; thus Luther named those who were truly great, whom God has sent out from time to time according to his free counsel and will, that they may work powerfully in the breadth and depth of history, showing their people and the world new goals, paving the way to a living future and bringing in a new age. In deepest gratitude, the German people and also German Protestant Christendom are experiencing once again this mighty event, Germany\u2019s hour, which has risen upon us with Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Werner was hemming in the work of the Confessing Church even more with further decrees. A few days before, he had signed and included in the official church journal the Godesberg declaration, a statement in which, it was claimed, pastors and local church members from different currents in the church were speaking with one voice:<\/p>\n
With all the powers of faith and of the active life we serve the man who has brought our people out of bondage and hardship to freedom and glorious greatness \u2026 National Socialism combats every abuse of the churches by political power and makes the National Socialist world view, the racially appropriate beliefs of the German Volk, obligatory for all; thus it continues the work of Martin Luther on the ideological and political side and helps us recover, in its religious aspect, a true understanding of the Christian faith \u2026 The Christian faith is the unbridgeable opposite to Judaism \u2026 All supra-national or international churchliness of a Roman Catholic or World-Protestant type is a political degeneration of Christianity. A fruitful development of genuine Christian faith is possible only within the given orders of creation.<\/p>\n
That Werner published such monstrous statements in the official church journal should not have surprised anyone; however, that Bishop Heckel adopted them and that a number of men of the Church, including Bishop Marahrens, were willing to sign them in a scarcely less venomous form was another matter. But now came a sign that, with the new General Secretary in Geneva, a new ecumenical spirit had entered in there. As a message from Geneva to the World Council member churches, a statement was sent in response to the Godesberg Declaration, initiated by Visser \u2018t Hooft and signed by Archbishop Temple and other World Council members, as follows:<\/p>\n
The national structure of the Christian Church is not an essential element of its life \u2026 But the recognition of \u2026 spiritual unity \u2026 irrespective of race, nation or sex (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11) belongs to the essence of the Church. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of the Jewish hope \u2026 The Christian Church \u2026 rejoices in maintaining fellowship with those of the Jewish race who have accepted that Gospel \u2026 The Church is bound to proclaim [Christ\u2019s] lordship over all areas of life, including politics and ideology.<\/p>\n
Heckel, who was regarded by Hodgson and many others as the legitimate representative of the ecumenical community in Germany, wired:<\/p>\n
Expect immediate withdrawal declaration to the churches which greatly exceeds competence, is based on wrong understanding of factual general church situation in Germany and represents an intolerable intervention in domestic German affairs. German Evangelical Church.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer was in London while these new developments in the German Evangelical Church were taking place. They were hardly what he needed to renew his courage, so he stayed in England longer than he had originally planned, hoping that perhaps the outbreak of war would catch him there. This was to come only months later; but in England, Bonhoeffer could sense the stark U-turn which the political mood had taken. After Hitler\u2019s triumphant march into Prague the British people no longer wanted peace at any price, but welcomed the government\u2019s guarantee to defend Poland, the next country that Hitler had in his sights.<\/p>\n
9. New York (1939)<\/p>\n
\u2018One who believes will not run away\u2019<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer was only back in Germany for a month and a half before he left on his second journey abroad in the year 1939. He had to try to avoid being called up for induction, since after his medical exam probably his departure would no longer be allowed. And he had to convince the Council of the Confessing Church, which was very unwilling to do without him as a teacher of theology, that his intended trip was necessary, without bringing out too plainly his personal difficulties.
\nSaying goodbye on 2 June at Berlin\u2019s Tempelhof Airport, from where he was to fly to London and, with his brother Karl-Friedrich, board the ship for America at Southampton, England, turned out to be harder than he had expected. It had not been possible, in so little time, to find anyone to replace him as director of the collective pastorates, and Werner\u2019s latest decrees were robbing many of his friends of their last shreds of courage. Could he leave his church brethren in the lurch in such circumstances? In Sigurdshof, where Eberhard Bethge was holding the fort and had been obliged to shoulder the main burden of the work, a message lay on the table for Bonhoeffer\u2019s substitute: \u2018To my successor: He will find here one of the finest tasks in the Confessing Church\u2019 and, following requests about the subjects of instruction, a sentence was added: \u2018He is asked \u2026 to go for walks with the brethren as much as possible, or to be with them in some other way\u2019 (DB-ER 649).<\/p>\n
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the deck of the SS Bremen during the crossing to America, 1939<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer had scarcely landed in New York in June 1939 before he began to feel that his journey amounted to running away. His diary, which gives us a glimpse of his inner struggles, is among the most arresting texts he has left us. Reading it today, we can still experience how hard making decisions could be for him and how tormented he was by the lack of certainty as to whether he had done the right thing. Even on the ship that was taking him to New York, he began, in his travel diary, a dialogue with the Bible in which his thoughts were guided by the readings in his Moravian daily devotions (Losungen) book.<\/p>\n
8 June 1939, Zechariah 7:9 \u2018Render true judgements, show kindness and mercy to one another.\u2019 This I beg of you, my brethren at home. I do not want to be spared, in your thoughts \u2026 9 June, Isaiah 41:9 \u2018You are my servant, I have chosen you and not cast you off\u2019 \u2026 Great programmes always simply lead us to where we are; but we ought to be found only where God is \u2026 Or have I, after all, avoided the place where God is? the place where God is for me? No, God says, you are my servant. 11 June, Psalm 44:21 \u2018For [God] knows the secrets of the heart\u2019 \u2026 If only the doubts about my own course had been overcome. (DB-ER 650)<\/p>\n
On 13 June he had breakfast in New York with Dr Henry Smith Leiper, executive secretary of the Federal Council of Churches, who had organized his stay. Bonhoeffer told him even in this first conversation that he wanted to return to Germany in a year\u2019s time at the latest. The Americans had expected him to stay permanently.
\nThe diary shows that these first hours in the United States were almost unendurable for Bonhoeffer. He was homesick for Germany and missed the brothers in the collective pastorates. \u2018The first lonely hours are difficult. I do not understand why I am here, whether it was a sensible thing to do, whether the results will be worthwhile.\u2019 He wasn\u2019t getting any news from home, and this tormented him. The next day, after prayers in the home of Dr Henry Sloane Coffin, president of Union Theological Seminary, he wrote: \u2018I was almost overcome by the short prayer\u2014the whole family knelt down\u2014in which we thought of the German brothers.\u2019<\/p>\n
15 June. Since yesterday evening I haven\u2019t been able to stop thinking about Germany. I would not have thought it possible that at my age, after so many years abroad, one could get so dreadfully homesick \u2026 The whole burden of self-reproach because of a wrong decision comes back again and almost overwhelms me \u2026 How happy I was in the evening, when I opened the Losungen once again and read, \u2018My heart rejoices that you are pleased to help me.\u2019 (DB-ER 652)<\/p>\n
As he had done before, Bonhoeffer tried to find comfort in verses of hymns that he especially loved. But this time it was epitaphs on tombs that spoke to him. The first was a verse by the novelist Fritz Reuter which is on his tombstone in Eisenach. Bonhoeffer had quoted it in his homily at the funeral of his grandmother.<\/p>\n
Beginning and end, O Lord, are in thy hands,
\nThe span between them was my life, was mine.
\nThough in the dark I sought my way in vain,
\nclear light awaits me, Lord, with thee at home.
\n(DBW 14, 920\u201325)<\/p>\n
The second inscription reveals an even more ardent longing for the world beyond. It comes from S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard\u2019s grave:<\/p>\n
A short while yet, and it is won
\nOf painful strife there will be none.
\nRefreshed by life-streams, thirsting never,
\nI\u2019ll talk with Jesus for ever and ever.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer was trying to do some work, since he was to give some lectures in English, but he found his knowledge of English completely insufficient. \u2018How many years, decades even, it takes to learn German, and I still don\u2019t know it properly. I shall never learn English.\u2019 Even that was a reason to return home soon. Without the language, he felt himself lost and hopelessly lonely.
\nOn 20 June 1939, Bonhoeffer\u2019s destiny was decided. Dr Leiper had invited him to discuss the work that was being proposed to him in the United States. The evening before, he wandered aimlessly around the streets of Manhattan for a long time.<\/p>\n
19 June\u2014No news from Germany the whole day, waiting in vain from one post to the next. It is no use getting angry \u2026 I want to know what is happening to the work over there, whether all is well or whether I am needed. I want to have some sign from over there before the meeting tomorrow. Perhaps it is a good thing that it has not come \u2026<\/p>\n
Visited Leiper. The decision has been made. I have refused. They were clearly disappointed, and rather upset. It probably means more for me than I can see at the moment. God alone knows what. It is remarkable how I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion, of inner dishonesty, or is it a sign that we are guided without our knowing, or is it both?\u2026 Today\u2019s Losung speaks dreadfully harshly of God\u2019s incorruptible judgement. He certainly sees how much personal feeling, how much anxiety there is in today\u2019s decision, however brave it may seem. The reasons that one gives for an action to others and to oneself are certainly inadequate. One can give a reason for everything. (DB-ER 653\u201354)<\/p>\n
It felt like a final decision, and Bonhoeffer entrusted it to God. \u2018At the end of the day I can only ask God to give a merciful judgement on today and all its decisions. It is now in his hands.\u2019 But the next day he wrote, \u2018Of course I still keep having second thoughts \u2026\u2019 Bonhoeffer wondered whether his incomprehensible homesickness was a sign that would make his return easier, or whether it was \u2018irresponsible, with so many other people involved, simply to say No to one\u2019s own future and that of so many others?\u2019 (DB-ER 653\u20134). The Catholic theologian Ernst Feil says, \u2018[Bonhoeffer] knew of the point where our thoughts and correlative insights have their boundaries and where we must become prepared to make decisions in darkness, even in the darkness of guilt.\u2019<\/p>\n
The journey home<\/p>\n
On the last day, Paul Lehmann was still wrestling with him\u2014couldn\u2019t he stay; shouldn\u2019t he really stay?\u2014but Bonhoeffer stood firm. On 7 July he and his brother Karl-Friedrich, who had given some lectures in Chicago, boarded one of the last ships on which it was possible to return to Germany before war broke out. His diary says:<\/p>\n
I am glad to have been over there, and glad to be on my way home again. I have perhaps learned more during this month than in the whole year nine years ago; at least I have acquired some important insight for all future personal decisions. Probably this visit will have a great effect on me \u2026 Since I have been on the ship my inner ambiguity about the future has ceased. I can think of my shortened time in America without reproaches. (DB-ER 658, 661)<\/p>\n
Beginning in New York, but also on the ship and later in Berlin, Bonhoeffer was busy writing an essay, \u2018Protestantism without Reformation\u2019. He wanted to make clear in his own mind why the Christian \u2018denominations\u2019 in the USA not only are so called, instead of \u2018confessions\u2019 as in Europe, but are actually different from \u2018confessions\u2019. Did it have something to do with the fact that so many Americans had emigrated from Europe on account of their faith? For Bonhoeffer these were existential questions, in the context of the journey which had brought him to America.<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer\u2019s last meeting with his twin sister Sabine in Oxford in July 1939<\/p>\n
Perseverance to the end can be necessary; to flee may be permissible, and even necessary. The flight of Christians under persecution does not of itself signify apostasy and disgrace, for God does not call everyone to martyrdom. Not to flee, but to disavow one\u2019s faith, is sin; that is to say, that there can be a situation where flight is equivalent to renunciation, just as on the other hand flight itself can be a part of martyrdom. The Protestant refugees who journeyed to the unknown country America did not find themselves in a paradise, but in a situation that called for hard labour. They accepted the struggle of building colonies for the sake of living out their faith in freedom, without struggle. This sheds light on the destiny of Christian refugees as such. They claimed for themselves the right to forgo the ultimate suffering, in order to be able to worship God in quietness and peace. Now, in the place of refuge, there is no more justification for the struggle to go on \u2026
\nIn this way, the concept of tolerance becomes, for American Christians, the concept on which everything Christian is based \u2026 Having to do without an ultimate resolution of the question of truth remains, for Christian refugees, the hardest task they face all their lives long. In the last resort, it is faithfulness to their own church history that is expressed in this peculiar relativism of the question of truth in the thoughts and actions of American Christians. (DB-ER 660)<\/p>\n
Bonhoeffer with Bethge and Traub<\/p>\n
Here Bonhoeffer is seeing the ecumenical issues decidedly differently from the way he did in his essay on \u2018The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement\u2019. It did not disturb him much that he could not have this one published; he simply left it in his desk.
\nThe brothers disembarked at Southampton and took the train to London. From there, Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer flew home. Dietrich stayed a further ten days at his sister\u2019s home, planning to continue his journey by train to visit colleagues in Dortmund and friends in Elberfeld. In Dortmund it was Hans Joachim Iwand, who was still renewing his efforts to reconcile Lutherans and Dahlemites with one another, and in the process was prepared to compromise. In Elberfeld it was Hermann Albert Hesse who, along with his four sons, belonged to the small group of German theologians and pastors who refused any compromise. Thus the Hesses were men after Bonhoeffer\u2019s own heart. Hermann Albert Hesse and his youngest son, Helmuth, were later sent to Dachau because of their protests against the deportation of Jews, and Helmuth Hesse died there after 10 days in the concentration camp.
\nWhile in London, Bonhoeffer heard of the death of another unwavering witness. He was teaching his nieces English nursery rhymes when Julius Rieger came, called him outside and told him that Pastor Paul Schneider from the Rhineland, who had refused to leave his church in Hunsr\u00fcck despite government expulsion orders, had been murdered in Buchenwald. This was the sort of martyrdom which Bonhoeffer had long considered necessary, a pure witness to the faith; one could not seek it out for oneself, but when one was called to it by God, it was a very particular sign of God\u2019s nearness. However, since he had known about the plans to overthrow Hitler, it had seemed to Bonhoeffer that this way was no longer open to him.
\nHe received an invitation from Edinburgh to give the \u2018Croall Lectures\u2019 there the next winter, a theological lecture series at the university, endowed by a wealthy Scotsman. Bonhoeffer accepted immediately and proposed the theme \u2018Death in the Christian Message\u2019. Once home, he began right away preparing for these lectures, but the war put an end to this and many other plans that Bonhoeffer and his contemporaries had. To his fatherly friend the Bishop of Chichester he wrote a letter of farewell from London. It had not been possible to see him. On 25 July 1939, his sister and her family came with him to Victoria Station. That this was goodbye forever they could not yet know, but they had to reckon with the possibility. Not long afterwards, German troops invaded Poland. The Second World War had begun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Max Diestel as \u2018discoverer\u2019 of Bonhoeffer \u2018Christianity entails decision.\u2019 With these words began Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u2019s first sermon in 1925. One can either be wholly Christian or not at all is what that means. And what decides whether one is or not, is whether one follows up one\u2019s confession of faith with appropriate actions, whatever that … <\/p>\n