Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer ˈboːnhœfɐ}}, born the February 4th 1906 with Breslau (pol. Wrocław), dead the April 9th 1945 with the Concentration camp of Flossenbürg in Bavaria, close to the current border germano-Czech, Pasteur evangelic, Theology N and militant antifascist.

His/her father was Psychiatre and Professor in Médecine. Dietrich studies theology with Tübingen dice the 17 years age; it continues then its studies with Berlin and the Union Theological Seminary of New York, to finally finish them in Berlin, where it writes Sanctorum communio (" the communion of the saints"), which enabled him to obtain the Doctorat in theology. In 1930 it receives its Habilitation and is aggregate university of Berlin.

As from the years 1932 - 1933, Bonhoeffer moves away more and more from its university career, being devoted rather to its pastoral activity. Its course coincides with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany: little by little, the ideology Nazi E becomes the dominant ideology in Germany. It leaves then for London, where it carries on the activity of Pasteur of 1933 with 1935. After its return in Germany it joined the confessing Église. Within this framework, Bonhoeffer is opposed actively to the ideology Nazi: he sees in her a threat for the Christians, the Germans and all humanity. Its sermons are generally pacifist: he invites the believers to be opposed to the Nazism and alarm his faithful of the extent of the threats which he represents: thus, as of 1934, at the time of an oecumenical meeting of young Protestants to the Denmark, it underlines the threat of war which the Nazism could cause.

Its standpoint could not remain been unaware of a long time by the Nazi regime and quickly (in 1935) its rights were officially withdrawn to him to teach. It then constitutes in semi-clandestinity a Séminaire, in the locality of Finkenwalde (today Zdroje, a district of Stettin (Szczecin)). This community is in complete opposition with the leaders of the Church Luthérien of Germany of the time, who supported the mode hitlérien mainly. Bonhoeffer did not only wish to be able to quote the words of the Gospel freely, but it was also ready to risk its life while being opposed to Hitler and by helping the Juif S in their escape. He affirms thus that " the Church is not really Église, only when it exists for those which do not form part " of it; , and the " postulates; to have unconditional of the Church towards the victims of all the social systems, even if they do not belong to the community of the Christians ".

Its organization is dissolved by the Gestapo in 1937, and its attempt to take again its activity in the surroundings of Koszalin finishes one year later by the arrest of several of its participants. In 1938, it contacts officers of the German army opposed to the Nazism, maintaining a permanent contact with the Protestant Churches abroad. Before the release of the Second world war, during spring 1939, it goes to England, or it has a discussion with the évèque one of Chichester George Bell, then with the the United States, from where it returns in 1940. In spite of the prohibition which is made to him publish, to teach and preach, it ties close contacts with the Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr (intelligence service of the German staff). Thanks to him it obtains papers which allow him to a certain extent to be protected against Gestapo, like moving relatively easily in Germany and abroad. During one of its voyages to Stockholm, it meets George Bell again, by the intermediary of which it transmits to the British evidence of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis; he also asks him of the assistance (in the name of the group of conspirators to which belongbelonged inter alia the general Hans Oster and Ludwig Beck) to eliminate Hitler. The British however regarded these requests as the work of a provocative agent and did not undertake any action.

In January 1943, it marries Marie von Wedemayer. The April 5th of the same year, it is arrété under the inculpation d'" weakening of the potential of war of Allemagne" , in the absence of concrete evidence of its participation in the plot against Adolf Hitler. The influence of Wilhelm Canaris was not sufficient to allow its release, but allowed however its transfer of the prisons of Gestapo towards a prison relatively less severe in Berlin, where it could write many texts, collected after war in the work entitled Widerstand und Ergebung (" Resistance and soumission"). Bonhoeffer did not accept the possibility of escape which was proposed to him, and after the assassination attempt against Hitler the July 20th 1944 and the discovery of the plotters (among whom Wilhelm Canaris and its collaborators like Bonhoeffer itself), Pasteur was again transferred in October 1944 in the prisons from Gestapo. It was transferred thereafter towards the concentration camp from Buchenwald. Even with the approach of the final defeat, Hitler did not forget Bonhoeffer: the April 9th 1945, two weeks before the entry of the American troops in Germany, Bonhoeffer as well as the admiral Canaris and the Oster general were brought before the martial court, were considered to be guilty and condemned to hanging in the concentration camp of Flossenbürg. Thought of Bonhoeffer, and its considerations about the " Christianity without religiosité" , what accentuates even more its martyrdom, had a dominating impact on Protestant theology according to war in Great Britain and in the United States.

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