Hero for Peace
It’s the birthday of the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born in Breslau, Prussia (1906). He came from a family of Lutheran theologians. In 1930 he hopped a ship for New York City to study at the Union Theological Seminary. And when Bonhoeffer returned to Berlin he suddenly saw the anti-Semitism that had been brewing in his country with a new clarity. When Hitler took power in 1933 Bonhoeffer made a speech on the radio denouncing the Nazis. He became the head of an underground seminary and published his book The Cost of Discipleship (1937), which became one of the most influential works on the theology of social justice.
… the quieter my surroundings, the more vividly I sense my connection with you…
Though he’d previously been a pacifist, Bonhoeffer decided to join a plot to assassinate Hitler. The plot was a failure and Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943.
Just before he was arrested he got engaged to a young woman named Maria von Wedemeyer. They began a correspondence while he was in prison and it was to her that he wrote many of his final thoughts about theology and life. The correspondence between him and Maria was collected in the book Love Letters From Cell 92 (1994).
In his final letter to her, Bonhoeffer wrote, “I have often found that the quieter my surroundings, the more vividly I sense my connection with you.” He was executed a few months later.
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