Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran Pastor
9 April -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Martyrs, page 464
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 into an academic
family. Ordained in the Lutheran Church, his theology was
influenced by Karl Barth and he became a lecturer: in Spain,
the USA and in 1931 back in Berlin. Opposed to the
philosophy of Nazism, he was one of the leaders of the
Confessing Church, a movement which broke away from the
Nazi-dominated Lutherans in 1934. Banned from teaching, and
harassed by Hitler's regime, he bravely returned to Germany
at the outbreak of war in 1939, despite being on a lecture
tour in the United States at the time. His defiant
opposition to the Nazis led to his arrest in 1943. His
experiences led him to propose a more radical theology in
his later works, which have been influential among post-war
theologians. He was murdered by the Nazi police in
Flossenburg concentration camp on this day in 1945.