1906–1945

Introduction

portrait

Born: Feb­ru­ary 4, 1906, Bres­lau, Si­lesia, Ger­ma­ny (now Wro­cław, Po­land).

Died: Ap­ril 9, 1945, Floss­en­bürg con­cen­tra­tion camp, Ger­ma­ny (exe­cut­ed by hang­ing).

Buried: Lo­ca­tion un­known. Ce­no­taphs in his hon­or are lo­cated in Wro­cław and Ber­lin.

Biography

Dietrich was the son of Karl and Pau­la Bon­hoef­fer.

He stu­died theo­lo­gy at Tü­bing­en Uni­ver­si­ty. From 1928–30, he served a Ger­man par­ish in Bar­ce­lo­na, Spain.

In 1930, he re­ceived a Sloane Fel­low­ship, which en­abled him to at­tend Union Theo­lo­gic­al Se­mi­na­ry in New York Ci­ty, where he fin­ished his theo­lo­gic­al stu­dies.

In 1931, he be­came a lec­tur­er in Theo­lo­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ber­lin, and was or­dained in No­vem­ber that year at St. Mat­thi­as Lu­ther­an Church in Ber­lin.

Bonhoeffer is per­haps best re­mem­bered for his re­sist­ance to the Nazis’ ra­cial po­li­cies, which caused his im­pri­son­ment. A lat­er ac­cu­sa­tion of com­pli­ci­ty in a plot to as­sas­sin­ate Ad­olf Hit­ler led to his exe­cu­tion.

Works

Sources

Lyrics

  1. Von gut­en Mäch­ten