50. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 76.
51. This phrasing comes from Inge Scholl’s memoir, The White Rose.
52. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, pp. 203–6.
53. Zimmermann, “Years in Berlin,” pp. 58–59.
54. Ibid., p. 61.
55. Ibid., pp. 61–62.
56. Ibid., p. 61.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., pp. 61–62.
59. Ibid., p. 62.
60. Ibid.
61. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 207.
62. Zimmermann, “Years in Berlin,” p. 62.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. Busing, “Reminiscences of Finkenwalde,” p. 1108.
66. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures, p. 53.
67. Although he kept the apartment in Berlin, he lived in the town of Güstow/Inselsee.
68. Barlach remained, in any case, an expressionist whose primary language was “the human figure” and the objects “through which and in which he lives, suffers, rejoices, feels, thinks.” He once complained that he could feel no compassion in Kandinsky’s “dots, specks, lines and smudges.” Werner, “When Artists Protest,” p. 627.
69. Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, p. 1004.
70. Zimmermann, “Years in Berlin,” p. 67.
71. De Gruchy, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” DBW, vol. 3, p. 1.
72. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 3, p. 30.
73. Ibid., pp. 30–31.
74. Ibid., p. 81.
75. De Gruchy, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” in ibid., p. 3.
76. Bonhoeffer cited in Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 173.
77. Bonhoeffer cited in Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 93.
78. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 13, p. 217.
CHAPTER EIGHT Theological Storm Troopers On the March
1. Bonhoeffer to Erwin Sutz, October 8, 1931, cited in Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, p. 124.
2. Vladimir Nabokov, cited in Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), while living in Berlin had spoken of the “hopeless, godless vacancy of satisfied faces.” p. 90.
3. The description comes from Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1966), p. 67.
4. Also known as the Faith Movement, not to be confused with the German Faith Movement. Regarding Luther’s influence on the German Christians, Doris Bergen writes, “Heroes of German history proved more amenable to manly revision than biblical figures. For many German Christians Martin Luther exemplified the fusion of manliness, Christianity, and Germanness. Although he was not a soldier, Luther’s rejection of monasticism and celibacy gave him solid potential as a paragon of manliness. In a publication of the German Christian Women’s Service in 1937, a leading German Christian described Luther’s marriage as a ‘defiant declaration of war on a totally mistaken kind of piety.’ Luther, that author maintained, demonstrated no sultry sensuality,’ only ‘healthy, straightforward, strong masculinity.’ Another German Christian blamed the emasculation of the church in Germany on neglect of Luther. He described the ‘effeminacy’ that had invaded the church through ‘sentimental’ sermons, ‘religious kitsch,’ the ‘overly sweet picture of Jesus that the Nazarenes and others have produced,’ and a ‘pious English sing-song’ form of church music. Since the German Enlightenment, he argued, appreciation of Luther had declined and, in his view, that was why the church had ‘lost so many men.’ ” Bergen, The Twisted Cross, p. 75.
5. The scholar and theologian Keith Clements writes, “The German Church Struggle was very much shaped by the historical complexities of the German church scene. Since the Reformation, Protestantism in Germany had comprised many wholly autonomous regional churches [the Landeskirchen]. Such churches had been formed on the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, that is, the religion of a population within a given region was determined by the ruler of government of that territory. Of the twenty-eight regional churches that existed in 1933, twenty were Lutheran in confession, two Reformed and the remaining six were United—among them the Old Prussian Union Church, established in 1817, which was by far the largest and included eight provincial churches. While some forms of cooperation among them had been devised, one could speak only very loosely of the ‘German Evangelical Church’ as an umbrella terms for these churches collectively.” Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 13, p. 4.
6. Scharffennorth notes this notation on the lecture: “Lic. Dr. Bonhoeffer (Dietrich) Rund[funk-] Vortrag Funk-St[un]de am 1.2. [1933 um] 17.45 Uhr” ([Dr. Bonhoeffer [(Dietrich]) Radio Lecture Funkstunde on February 1, 1933, at 5:45 p.m.),] in DBW, vol. 12, p. 268.
7. These scripts were titled “The Führer and the Individual in the Younger Generation.”
8. Stern, Dreams and Delusions, p. 144.
9. Bonhoeffer cited in ibid., p. 144.
10. Almost immediately after Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933, Bonhoeffer began to send messages abroad about the German situation. Victoria Barnett, “The Rise and Fall of the Confessing Church,” Lecture, University of Virginia, February 9, 2009.
11. Intended originally to hold communists, trade unionists, and political dissidents, the medieval town twenty kilometers northeast of Munich would become a symbol of the horrific actions carried out against Jews within the camp’s walls, and more generally for the existence of radical evil.
12. 1940, Oxford; 1947, returned to Göttingen; 1951–71, judge in the federal constitutional court, Karlsruhe.
13. Scharffennorth in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, pp. 506–8.
14. Bonhoeffer to Reinhold Niebuhr in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 94.
15. In fact, the Reich conference of the German Christians in Berlin, a week before the Reichstag passed the Aryan paragraph, had issued a demand for the “synchronization of church and state.”
16. “Leaders in the existing church administration countered with a proposal to draft a new constitution and organize a single Evangelical Church in place of the twenty-eight independent regional churches.” Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, pp. 100–1.
17. Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler, p. 47.
18. Ibid.
19. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 264.
20. Zimmermann, “Years in Berlin,” p. 63.
21. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, pp. 373–74. No transcript of Bonhoeffer’s words at this public exchange exists. Quotations come from writings of spring 1933.
22. Scholder, Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 1, pp. 446–47.
23. Ibid.
24. Keith Clements, “Forward,” in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 13, p. 3ff. Gertrud Staewen’s recently discovered correspondence reveals the “story of her important connections with Bonhoeffer from the early 1930s, including opening his mind to the importance of urban youth work, then risking her life in the process of hiding Berlin Jews and helping others escape deportation.”
25. Shelley Baranowski, “Church History: The 1933 German Protestant Church Elections: Machtpolitik or Accommodation?,” Church History 49 (1980): 304.
26. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 101.
27. Glenn Stassen, conversation with author.
28. Regarding the number of Jewish Christians in the Reich, the historian Aleksandar-Sasa Vuletic estimates that in 1933 there were 350,000 non-Aryan Christians in Nazi Germany. These were Christians classified by the Nazis as either full Jewish, half Jewish, or quarter Jewish, thus non-Aryan; many of these—although the exact number is not known—were children and grandchildren of marriages between Christians and Jews who had been baptized. Vuletic, Christen judischer Herkunft im Dritten Reich: Verfolgung und organisierte Selbsthilfe 1933–1939, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte, Abteilung Universalgeschichte, no. 169 (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1999), pp. x, 368.
29. See Stern, Dreams and Delusions, p. 186.
30. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
: A Biography, pp. 275–76.
31. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 13, p. 42.
32. Robert McAfee Brown, “1984: Orwell and Barmen.” Robert McAfee Brown, whose name is symbolic for engaged theologian and ethicist, is perhaps best known for being able to write clearly—in, for example, in Theology in a New Key: Responding to Liberation Theology and Saying Yes and Saying No: On Rendering to God and Caesar. His “1984: Orwell and Barmen” article is adapted from a Christian Century lecture delivered in Seattle in April 1984. This article appeared in the Christian Century, August 15–22, 1984, p. 770. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission.
33. “One important phrase is drawn verbatim from Karl Barth’s Theologische Existenz Heute (June 1933, p. 52) as well as Barth’s conclusion: “If the German Evangelical Church excludes Jewish Christians or treats them as second-class Christians, it ceases to be a Christian church.”
34. “A Christian Church cannot exclude from its communion a member on whom the sacrament of baptism has been bestowed, without degrading baptism to a purely formal rite to which the Christian communion that administers it is indifferent. It is precisely in baptism that God calls man into this concrete Church and into its communion.” Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 372.
35. As in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” this second statement, “The Jewish Christian Question as Status Confessionis,” while affirming the responsibility of the church, was to help all victims of the Nazi repression, the call to a status confessionis pertained only to the church’s adoption of the Aryan paragraph. Nowhere does he say that this “state of confession”—an intense and public solidarity with the church’s indispensible convictions—also bears on the state’s treatment of non-Christian Jews.
36. Rasmussen, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Version,” DBW, vol. 12, p. 30.
37. Ibid.
38. Jack Forstman, Christian Faith in Dark Times: Theological Conflicts in the Shadow of Hitler (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), p. 12.
39. See Rasmussen, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Version.” A principle enforced by the bishop of Berlin/German Evangelical Church. See also Gerlach, And the Witnesses Were Silent, pp. 36–38, 77–78.
40. Victoria J. Barnett, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Vision,” Christian Century, April 26, 1995, pp. 454–57.
41. My discussion of Bonhoeffer and the Jews is indebted to the Ruth Zerner’s excellent analysis, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews.” Jewish Social Studies. Summer/Fall75, Vol. 37 Issue 3/4, pp. 235-50.
42. “A shameful part of the record of many church leaders, even in the Confessing Church, was their support for allowing congregations to decide whether they could ‘handle’ a ‘Jewish Christian’ pastor.” Rasmussen, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Version,” in DBW, vol. 12, p. 373.
43. Two early works that documented this were Judaism and Christianity Under the Impact of National Socialism, ed. Otto Dov Kulka and Paul Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel and Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1987), and The Grey Book: A Collection of Protests Against Anti-Semitism and the Persecution of Jews, Issued by Non-Roman Church Leaders During Hitler’s Rule, ed. Johan Snoek (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). Armin Boyens’s two-volume work, Kirchenkampf und Ökumene: Darstellung und Dokumentation (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1969 and 1973) also provides detailed historical background.
44. The lectures were later edited by Eberhard Bethge from student notes and published originally under the title Christ the Center.
45. The published lectures are based on the notes of students Gadow, Pfeiffer, Sperling, and Zimmermann, among which there is extensive agreement.
46. Leith, “Introduction,” Creeds of the Churches, p. 1.
47. Larry Rasmussen continues: “It is not too much to say that Bonhoeffer’s Christology was not only the theological ground for his critique of National Socialism; it was the basis for his efforts to find a way beyond the church crisis and beyond the church itself.” “Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition,” in DBW, vol. 12, pp. 37–38.
48. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 359.
49. Cited in Davies, Infected Christianity, p. 43.
50. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 356.
51. Ibid., p. 314.
52. Available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1988/jun/16/heidegger-and-the-nazis/?pagination=false (accessed February 17, 2013).
53. See Safranski, Martin Heidegger, p. 228.
54. Heidegger cited in ibid., p. 228. The image of the autumn suns comes from Heidegger’s tribute to Albert Leo Schlageter, given on May 26, 1933.
55. Koonz, The Nazi Conscience, p. 55.
56. Martin Heidegger, “Declaration of Support for Adolf Hitler,” November 11, 1933.
57. Bonhoeffer probably wrote at the request of his sister Christine and her husband, Hans von Dohnányi, who knew Landshut from Hamburg.
58. Correspondence with Victoria Barnett, March 3, 2014; DBWE, vol. 12, p. 589.
59. The line is from Heine’s 1821 play, Almansor. The original reference is to the burning of the Quran during the Spanish Inquisition.
60. The few exceptions, besides Bonhoeffer, were the older professors who “openly disliked the brown regime, Deißmann above all, who saw the fruits of decades of ecumenical work vanish. But critical statements could be heard only in small circles. Others, especially the younger ones, offensively took the other side.” Wendebourg, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Berliner Universität.”
61. Wendebourg writes that Seeberg had been “by far the most active, aggressive and most influential propaganda-maker in terms of publications of the total war” among the Protestant professors of theology during World War I, and contributed “with all his power to the destabilization” of the Weimar Republic. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 104. It shows more than a little naïveté that Bonhoeffer turned to Erich Seeberg for help in saving Tillich from dismissal. Bonhoeffer told Seeberg, “Even just my own gratitude for what I have learned from Tillich on many occasions gives me the courage to turn to you, and ask if you might initiate such a process among the faculty.” Seeberg politely declined to intervene.
64. Rasmussen, “Introduction to the English Version,” DBW, vol. 12, p. 24.
65. Cited in Conway, The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, p. 46.
66. Bonhoeffer, DWB, vol. 12, p. 134.
67. He also claimed this for the ideas of the world and the self, but my purpose here is not to provide a summary of Kant’s epistemology. That can be found in my doctoral dissertation “Philosophy and Community in the Early Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” chapter 4, University of Virginia, 1989.
68. Schleiermacher, On Religion, p. 39.
69. Ibid., p. 43.
70. Barth, The Humanity of God, pp. 25–26.
71. Ibid.
72. “Minutes of Meeting ‘The Struggle for the Church,’ ” in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, pp. 123–25.
73. Julius Rieger in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 13, p. 48.
74. Ibid.
75. “The Reich law that set the date for these elections [the church elections set for July 23, 1933] was newly enacted and controversial (the state had not previously been involved in church elections); this was the basis for the subsequent argument by the church opposition that the elections were not legitimate,” writes Larry Rasmussen in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 140. See also Helmreich, German Churches Under Hitler, pp. 140–41.
76. Baranowski, “Church History,” p. 298.
77. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 131.
78. Ibid.
79. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 13, p. 30.
80. On July 14, 1933, the Reich had enacted the Law for the Prevention of Children with Hereditary Diseases (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses), which gave the government the right to subject according to which certain persons with mental and physical disabilities inherite
d diseases were subject to compulsory sterilization. By the end of the decade, the grounds, gardens, and spacious interiors of the Bethel Clinic would become an extension of Hitler’s T4 euthanasia program.
81. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 157.
82. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Barmen Confession,” in Kelly and Nelson, eds., A Testament to Freedom, p. 143.
83. Ernst-Albert Scharffennorth, the editor of Bonhoeffer’s 1932–33 papers, explains that if one accepts Gerhard Stratenwerth’s handwritten notes—Stratenwerth was a colleague of Bodelschwingh’s in Bethel—those responsible for the various sections of the August version of the Confession are “I. Bonhoeffer and Sasse; II. Merz; III. Bonhoeffer; IV/1 through VI/2. Bonhoeffer and Fischer; VI/3a. Stratenwerth; VI/3b. Merz; VI/4–5. Stratenwerth; VI/6. Vischer and Merz; VI/7. Stratenwerth.” (HA Bethel, 2/39–209), 12; facsimile reprint in Carter, Confession at Bethel, p. 295. See also Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 362.
84. Bonhoeffer to Karl Barth, September 9, 1933, in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 165.
85. Bonhoeffer to Helmut Rößler, December 25, 1932, DBW, vol. 12, p. 83.
86. Barth to Bonhoeffer, September 11, 1933, in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 12, p. 166.
87. Rasmussen cited in ibid.“Editor’s Note,” DBW, vol. 12, p. 163.
88. Sasse writing in agreement with Bonhoeffer, in DBW, vol. 12, p. 169.
89. Rasmussen, “Editor’s Introduction to the English Version,” p. 42.
90. Julius Richter had become a professor at the University of Berlin, author of the five-volume History of Missions, and, since his involvement in the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, a loyal ecumenist.
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