26 APRIL - Flipbook - Page 37
9th April - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran
Pastor and martyr
In this current world few people consider standing up to tyrants, no matter what the cost.
That kind of courage has been in the headlines
since the war in Ukraine began, as many brave
people have defied Putin9s oppression and elsewhere in the world in Iran and other parts of the
world where conflict exists.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not have Putin to contend with, but Hitler. Bonhoeffer did not back
down either, when the time came.
Bonhoeffer grew up with no thought of ever defying the leader of Germany. Nothing could have been further from his mind or background. Born
at Breslau in Silesia (now the Polish city of Wroclaw) in 1906, Bonhoeffer
was the son of an academic. In 1912, his father was appointed to be
Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Berlin university, and so the
family moved to Berlin.
Bonhoeffer never even considered going into politics. Instead, he studied
theology in Tubingen, Berlin and New York, before returning to Berlin as
a lecturer in theology in 1931.
But though Bonhoeffer did not chase political trouble, it soon came to
him. For on 30th January 1933 Adolf Hitler, leader of the National
Socialist German Workers' Party, had come to power. His totalitarian
approach left no room for anyone in public life to disagree with him
including anyone in the two major churches - Lutheran and Catholic.
But Bonhoeffer refused to be compliant, and joined the Confessing
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