A Helpful Time Table of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life

Sometimes, it is helpful to see a timetable of a person’s life. Below is one Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I found this is at…

1906

4. February: the twins and Sabine Dietrich Bonhoeffer are born. They are the children of Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology Karl Bonhoeffer and his wife Paula (born von Hase).

1912 Moving the family to Berlin.

1923-1927

Protestant theology studies in Tuebingen, Rome and Berlin.

1927

Promotion in Berlin with the work “Sanctorum communio. An investigation of Sociology of the Church”.

1928

January: Bonhoeffer, the first theological exam.

Vicariate in Barcelona.

1929/30

Assistant at the Berlin Theological Faculty.

1930

Study stay at the Union Theological Seminary in New York (USA).

1931-1933

Lecturer at the University of Berlin and student priest at Berlin’s Technical University.

Bonhoeffer learns from Karl Barth in Bonn.

1933-1935

After Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor, he travels to Britain to care for the German Protestant community in London Sydenham.

1934

As the head of the German youth delegation, he takes an ecumenical meeting at Fanoe (Denmark) and warns in its “peace speech” from the looming threat of war.

1935-1937

Representatives of the “Confessional Church, Christianity and the Nazi racial ideology as incompatible with each other, Bonhoeffer ask for his return to Germany. Although he was aware of the risk Bekennens in the National Christian socialism is aware he follows the call to run the preacher seminary of “Confessional Church in Zingst and Finkenwerder Grove (near Stettin).

1936

August: His teaching permit is revoked for universities.

1937

A decree Heinrich Himmler, means the closure of the preacher Finkenwalder seminary. The work of Bonhoeffer goes underground.

1939

Bonhoeffer rejected an appeal in the United States and returns just before the start of the Second World War from a lecture tour of North America back to Germany.

1940

Bonhoeffer receives speech and writing ban.

Bonhoeffer’s siblings, Klaus Bonhoeffer and Christine von Dohnanyi, are involved in the resistance.

1940-1943

He receives the news about his brother Hans von Dohnanyi’s connection to the political-military resistance to Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who in office abroad / security supreme command of the Wehrmacht (OKW). As trust builds, Bonhoeffer becomes involved because of the help of his ecumenical contacts between the Western governments and the German resistance.

1942

In Sweden, he meets with a representative of the German opposition George Bell (1883-1949), the Bishop of Chichester. Both discuss peace plans for the elimination of Hitler. The British Foreign Ministry refuses, with a new German government to conclude peace, without such capitulated unconditionally.

1943

7. January: Engagements with Maria von Wedemeyer.

5. April: Bonhoeffer by the Secret State Police (Gestapo) under the accusation of military force arrested decomposition.

1943-1945

Detention in a military prison Berlin-Tegel, in Berlin’s Gestapo prison in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and in the concentration camps (KZ) Buchenwald.

1944

Only after the failed assassination attempt of 20 July 1944, Bonhoeffer’s resistance activity demonstrated.

1945

February: He moves into the camp Flossenbürg.

8. April: Shortly before the liberation of the camp by the U.S. Army, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster of an SS-state court are sentenced to death.

9. April: In the early morning hours, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is executed by the strand.

1996

6. April 1945 and rehabilitated Bonhoeffer.