Just two words” “

The people who gave to history great composers, Bach and Beethoven, and great thinkers, Kant and Hegel, showed that even in the dark century of the Shoah not everything is black: the “White Rose” students in Munich, the circle of Kreisau of von Moltke, Father R. Mayer, and all those who coalesced around these groups, are witnesses of a new way of thinking and acting; they are beacons of light amid the dark and sombre shadows of the twentieth century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer belonged to this widespread army of resistance, also in various countries of Europe, because he thought and acted differently, sealing by his death by hanging his courage and his Christian conscience, before the Nazi falsehood. Good blood does not lie, goes the saying, and the history of the large and close-knit Bonhoeffer family confirms it: his grandmother was 91 years old when, imperturbable as ever, she challenged the cordon of the SA on 21 March 1933, when the law of lese majesty restricted even further the network of political resistance. Her versatile grandson, theologian, pastor, musician, writer and animator of the young, made the same challenge. He did so not only by thinking and thus forming new consciences, capable of posing questions to themselves and giving new answers, but also by gathering together the young who eschewed the uniform of the Nazi youth in summer camps in which the joyous and spartan life, typical of adolescents, was combined with a real analysis of the situation and deep prayer. Dietrich as a student, though he came from a well-to-do and cultivated family, experienced all the difficulties of a Germany in which galloping inflation reigned. In late April 1923 he was forced to travel from Berlin to Tübingen on slow trains, in what was then fourth class, and needed 48 hours to reach his destination. On 27 October 1923 he wrote to his parents: “Each meal costs a billion marks”. He was posed a question, the reply to which could have cost him his life (later sacrificed not to the dictatorship but to the truth of Christ)): “Is Hitler the Anti-Christ?”. The greatest certainty reigned that Bonhoeffer would answer in the affirmative, supporting his view with a series of appropriate citations. All the greater was the surprise when the answer came: “no, Hitler is not the Anti-Christ; he’s not great enough for that. The Anti-Christ uses him, but he’s not stupid like him!”. Flossembürg was already looming… He had long reflected and even longer served, with utter dedication, the Christian flock entrusted to him, to whom he transmitted the truth of God’s eruption into history, in the person of Christ, now with the cultivated language of his books, now with the popular and direct idiom of his sermons, and always with a lucid distinction that testifies to his political intelligence. The Bible that Bonhoeffer always had in his hand, and even more so in his heart, contains a marginal annotation that, in its laconic brevity, would cross the centuries: in Psalm 74, against the verse that says “They burned all the meeting places of God in the land”, he wrote just the date “9.11.38”. It is the date of the infamous Kristallnacht. Cristiana Dobner Discalced Carmelite Sister Bonhoeffer did not incite uprisings, or terrorist attacks. His attitude was imbued by the Gospel, by the presence of Christ. He demonstrated in himself how much he wanted the youth who flocked in ever larger numbers round him to learn as a rule of life just two words, though two words that subvert both the usual mindset and action: Resistance and Surrender, which also became the title of one of his famous books. The young pastor asked for much. He wanted opponents of the regime to unite. He wanted positive forces to co-exist in the person, undoubtedly more explosive than violence or the passivity fit only for sheep. He wanted people to oppose with toughness and rigour, but to give themselves totally to their brothers, in the meekness of Christ. By now a mature man, Bonhoeffer experienced tender love for the young Marie von Wedemeyer, and then expressed all the delicacy of his mind, together with the experience of the scandalous laceration of the death inflicted on Christ for the good of all mankind. He who, in life, was able to enjoy everything and who dreamt of a serene and joyful future, in a different reality, expressed himself as follows: I hold out my hands And pray And experience the new reality. Everything that has past returns to you Like the most living part of life, Through gratitude and repentance. Grasp God in past forgiveness and goodness, Pray that he may assist you today and in the day to come. For Europe today and for the Europe to come Bonhoeffer remains one of the most luminous witnesses, one of the most powerful reminders of our Christian roots, and of the urgent need to revitalise them to remain with love and hope within the history of Europe and the world. Cristiana Dobner Biographical profile Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born at Breslau on 4 February 1906. In 1912 his family moved to Berlin where his father Karl was appointed to the chair of psychiatry and neurology. In April 1918 his brother Walter died on the front during the First World War. Dietrich came of age in 1923 and began his theological studies at the university of Tübingen, where he remained for two semesters. In the following year he spent three months in Rome: during the trip, he paid a brief visit to North Africa. From the summer semester he continued his theological studies in Berlin. Sanctorum Communio is the title of his dissertation, supervised by Prof. R. Seeberg and discussed on 17 December 1927. A month later he took his first theological examination. On 15 February 1928 he began a period as curate in Barcelona. After serving as assistant to Prof. Lutgert in Berlin between 1929-1930, he took his second theological examination on 8 July 1930 and ten days later passed his Habilitation, qualifying him to teach at the University of Berlin, with a thesis on Act and Being. On 31 July of the following year he gave his inaugural lecture, while his Sanctorum Communio was published in September. He then began a postgraduate year at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He returned to Berlin in June 1931 and took a two-month course given by Karl Barth in Bonn. He then became an untenured lecturer in the Theological Faculty of the University of Berlin. He was elected secretary of the youth of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches (Life and Work) in 1931. Act and Being was published. In October he became pastor to the students of the Technische Hochschule in Berlin and received his ordination on 11 November. 1933 was the year of the rise to power of Hitler and Bonhoeffer took part in the organization of an ecclesiastical opposition against the dictatorship. In April he gave a lecture on “The Church in response to the Jewish question”. At Bethel (September) he participated in the drafting of the so-called Bethel Confession, which gave rise to the anti-Nazi movement, the Confessing Church. In October he assumed a post as pastor in London. Between 1934 and 1936 he dedicated himself to meetings and conferences with study trips to Denmark and Sweden. On 5 August 1936 his authorization to teach was withdrawn. In October 1937 the Gestapo closed the Finkenwalde Seminary, which Bonhoeffer had directed since 1935. His work continued in “collective pastorates” underground. He published Sequela in November of the same year, while 27 pupils of Finkenwalde were arrested. In January 1938 he was prohibited from residing in Berlin, a ban later lifted. In September he wrote Life Together. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he began an activity as conspirator acting as courier of the resistance group within the secret services of the army (1940). He was prohibited from speaking in public and ordered to communicate his movements to the authorities. In 1941 he was banned from publishing, but at the same time participated in an operation of Canaris to save a small number of Jews. In May 1942 he was in Switzerland to prepare the escape of Jews. In the same year he became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer. On 5 April 1943 he was arrested and held in Tegel prison where he wrote letters and notes that would form the substance of Resistance and Surrender. In October 1944 Bonhoeffer was transferred to the underground prison of the Gestapo on the Prinz-Albrecht Strasse. On 7 February 1945 he was taken to the death camp of Buchenwald and from thence first to Schönberg, then to Flossenbürg, where he was hanged on 9 April 1945.