Dietrich Bonheoffer

Dietrich Bonheoffer

Dietrich Bonheoffer

Introduction

Dietrich Bonheoffer is one of the most prominent Protestant theologians of XX century. A man of extraordinary personal courage and an active anti-fascist, who was executed in a German concentration camp just weeks before Germany's surrender. Dietrich Bonheoffer was born on February 4, 1906 in Breslau, a family of famous doctors and university professor Karl Bonheoffer. He studied at the theological faculty of Tubingen (1923) and Berlin (1924), received his theologian in 1927.

In 1930 went to the U.S., where he studied at United Theological Seminary. Returning home, he began teaching at the theological faculty of the University of Berlin. In October 1933, when it became clear that Hitler intended to use the German church for their own purposes, Bonheoffer went to London to become members of a British Pastorate. Refusing to recognize the public church, which became the instrument of Nazi policy, Bonheoffer supported the establishment of denominational church and, with support from many of the Anglican Communion, he returned to Germany to take part in the activities of the church confessional. He wrote a book in which morality is grounded against the Nazi regime and participated in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. In 1938, Bonheoffer came into contact with Major General Hans Oster, Chief of Staff of the Abwehr, Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, who had just retired from the post of Chief of General Staff of the Army, and the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Bonheoffer became a double agent of counter-intelligence service Canaris and courier for communications with overseas organizations in Sweden and Switzerland. March 19, 1939, he went to London to meet with Bishop George Bell, Reinhold Niebuhr and Gerhard Leybholtsem, and the following month went to the United States. Visiting Sweden in 1942, he brought the proposal of the conspirators to negotiate peace with the Allies.

He helped seven Jews escape to Switzerland, which almost cost him his life. January 17, 1943 was declared his engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer, but on April 5 he was arrested, sent to prison Tegel and charged with "undermining the armed forces." After the failed plot the July 1944, Bonheoffer was in the basement of the Gestapo at Prinz-Albrehtshtrasse. February 7, 1945 he was sent to Buchenwald, and then transferred to Camp Flossenburg. All those who associated with him these days, were delighted with his noble conduct and courage in inhumane conditions in which he managed to even write poetry. Under the sentence of the military tribunal Bonheoffer was executed April 9, 1945 in Flossenburg, not having lived a few days before the end of hostilities in Europe. In church circles, the name has become synonymous with Bonheoffer's martyrdom.

Body: Discussion and Analysis

Theology

Perhaps most important in the theology of D. Bonheoffer is the fact that he was able, though maybe it sounds for someone more pathetic, to answer the question of the modern world - as a person living in a society based on nihilism, can at the same time to be a Christian?

Sometime Friedrich Nietzsche ...