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What was life like at the Preacher’s Seminary at Finkenwalde under the direction of Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
In the Finkenwalde preacher’s seminary, they engaged in serious theology and carefully observed and discussed politics and church politics. The pressures from within and without to subject themselves to the national church were strongly felt by many of the vicars. Above all, after seminary was over, they stood alone functioning in their congregations, needing support…
(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 39).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer(1906-1945)By Elihai Braun
Education Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands out among the Christian leaders during the Nazi era, for he was one of the few to actively resist the racist actions of the Nazi regime. In addition to his legacy of courageous opposition to Nazism, Bonhoeffer’s theological writings are still widely read in Christian communities throughout the world. EducationDietrich Bonhoeffer was the sixth child of Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, born in Breslau, Germany, on February 4, 1906. He completed his studies in Tübingen and Berlin. In 1928, he served as vicar in the German parish in Barcelona; and in 1930, he completed his theological examinations at Union Seminary in New York. During this period, he became active in the ecumenical movement and accumulated international contacts that would later aid his efforts in the resistance. In 1931, Bonhoeffer took a teaching position with the theological faculty in Berlin. There he produced many of his theological writings, in which he took a traditional viewpoint in Jewish-Christian relations, believing that the Jewish people must ultimately accept Jesus as the Messiah. This theological work greatly increased his prominence in the Christian German community. Hitler Rises to PowerAfter years of political instability under the Weimar republic, most Christian institutions were relieved with the ascent of the nationalistic Nazi dictatorship. The German Evangelical Church, the foremost Protestant church in Germany, welcomed Hitler‘s government in 1933. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, however, although a member of the German Evangelical Church, was not complacent. In his April 1933 essay, The Church and the Jewish Question, he assailed Nazi state persecution. Bonhoeffer’s defense of the Jews, however, was based on Christian supersessionism – the Christian belief that Christianity had superseded Judaism as the new chosen people of God. Despite his outspoken defense of victims of Nazi persecution, Bonhoeffer still maintained, on a religious level, that the “Jewish question” would ultimately be solved through Jewish conversion to Christianity. The Church strongly advocated this view, as did the ecumenical movements most responsible for aiding Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism. In The Church and the Jewish Question (1933), Bonhoeffer pledged to fight political injustice. The Nazi injustice must not go unquestioned, and the victims of this injustice must not go unaided, regardless of their religion, Bonhoeffer wrote. With Hitler‘s ascent, non-Aryans were prohibited from taking parish posts, and when Bonhoeffer was offered such a post in the fall of 1933, he refused it in protest of the racist policy. Disheartened by the German Church’s complacency with the Nazi regime, he decided to accept a position at a German-speaking congregation in London. The opponents of Nazi interference in Church affairs formed the “Confessing Church,” and some members, including Bonhoeffer, advocated open resistance against Nazism. The more moderate Protestants made what they saw as necessary compromises to retain their clerical authority despite expanding Nazi control. But under increasing Gestapo scrutiny, the Confessing Church was soon immobilized. Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to teach at Finkenwalde, a Confessing Church seminary, where he continued to train clergy for the Confessing Church. But the official church barred his students from taking its clerical posts. In August 1937, the regime announced the Himmler Decree, which declared the training and examination of Confessing ministry candidates illegal. Finkenwalde was closed in September 1937; some of Bonhoeffer’s students were arrested. ResistanceBonhoeffer went into hiding for the next two years; he traveled secretly from one eastern German village to another to help his students in their small illegal parishes. In January 1938, he was banned from Berlin, and in September 1940, he was forbidden to speak in public. In the midst of political turmoil, Bonhoeffer continued to question the proper role of a Christian in Nazi Germany. When German synagogues and Jewish businesses were burned and demolished on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, Bonhoeffer immediately left for Berlin, despite having been banned by the Gestapo, to investigate the destruction. After his return, when his students were discussing the theological significance of Kristallnacht, Bonhoeffer rejected the theory that Kristallnacht had resulted from “the curse which had haunted the Jews since Jesus’ death on the cross.” Instead, Bonhoeffer called the pogrom an example of the “sheer violence” of Nazism’s “godless face.”2 The Confessing Church resistance expanded its efforts to help “non-Aryan” refugees leave the country. One member of the resistance movement was the passionate anti-Nazi, Hans von Dohnanyi, a lawyer married to Bonhoeffer’s sister. In early 1939, Dohnanyi was transferred from the Justice Department to the Armed Forces High Command Office of Military Intelligence, and used his new post to inform Bonhoeffer that war was imminent. Bonhoeffer, knowing that he would never fight in Hitler’s army, left the country in June 1939 for a teaching position at Union Seminary in New York. But upon arrival in the United States, Bonhoeffer realized that he had been mistaken, that if he did not lead his people during the difficult years of war and turmoil, then he could not partake in the postwar revival of German Christan life. His place, he decided, was in Germany; he returned only a month after his departure, in July 1939. He undertook a more active effort to undermine the regime. With international contacts in the ecumenical movement, he became a crucial leader in the German underground movement. In October 1940, despite previous Gestapo tracking, Bonhoeffer gained employment as an agent for Hans von Dohnanyi’s Office of Military Intelligence, supposedly working for the expansion of Nazism. In reality, he worked for the expansion of the anti-Nazi resistance. During his 1941 and 1942 visits to Italy, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries, he attempted to gain foreign support for the resistance movement. ArrestWhile plans to topple Hitler progressed only slowly, the need to evacuate more Jewish refugees became increasingly urgent. In early 1943, however, the Gestapo, which had traced Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi’s large monetary sums intended for Jewish immigrants, foiled plans for a new refugee rescue mission. Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested in April 1943. Initially, the Gestapo believed that Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were embezzling money for their own interests. Then the truth began to leak out, and Bonhoeffer was subsequently charged with conspiring to rescue Jews, using official travel for other interests, and abusing his intelligence position to keep Confessing Church pastors out of the military. But the extent of Bonhoeffer’s resistance activities was not fully realized for months. In October 1944, Bonhoeffer was moved to the Gestapo prison in Berlin. In February 1945, he was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp, and then to the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was hanged on April 9, 1945. Hans von Dohnanyi was executed soonthereafter. Notes1 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. “After Ten Years.” Letters and Papers from Prison. Enlarged Edition, Eberhard Bethge, ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971, p. 5. Selected Bibliography for Dietrich BonhoefferBonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Simon & Schuster. |
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Bonhoeffer collected his lectures on common life in his book Life Together. Next to Letters and Papers from Prison, it has had the widest distribution to date. It was immediately reprinted three times the year it appeared. Quite simple, obvious, but often rules of living together are found there:
Nobody is too good for the lowest service. Those who
worry about the loss of time entailed by such small,
outward acts of helpfulness are usually taking their
own work too seriously. We must be ready to allow
ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our
plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily,
by sending people across our path with their demands and
requests. We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with
our more important daily tasks, just as the priest–perhaps
reading the Bible–passed by the man who had fallen
among robbers.
(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 38-39).
Last Sunday evening, Harvey Oaks Baptist Church formally celebrated my Doctor of Ministry graduation from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
The time in Finkenwalde marked the young theologians for the rest of their lives. Along with them, Bonhoeffer led a consistent Christian life; and in partnership with him, the young theologians gained the power to withstand the burdens and oppressions that they were exposed to in their work within the Confessing Church
(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 38)
The vicars who came to the Preacher’s Seminary at Finkenwalde had already decided for the Confessing Church and against the national church
(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 37).
…was put on hold. Actually, this visit never took place.
Bonhoeffer postponed his burning desire to learn something about nonviolent resistance in India–he had already made an appointment with Mahatma Gandhi–and followed the call to Pomerania. For some time, he had planned to go to India…Dietrich had also hoped to be able to learn something there for the German situation.
But now he was to lead a preacher’s Seminary
(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 36-37).
This was an educational venue for theologians who were preparing for the pastorate after their study at the university…
(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 36)
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