"Whoever I am"” “

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born to an upper middle class Berlin family at Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) on 4 February 1906. He studied theology at Tübingen and at the University of Berlin, completing his studies with the famous dissertation “Sanctorum Communio”. A pupil of A. von Harnack, he was a pastor in German evangelical parishes in Barcelona and London. He then became an untenured lecturer in theology at the University of Berlin in 1932. There he began his mounting criticism of Nazism. In 1933, in a radio broadcast, he called Hitler not a Führer but a Verführer (seducer). The broadcast was immediately interrupted. In 1936 he was banned from university teaching and left Berlin. During the war he actively participated in the anti-Nazi resistance. In 1943 he was arrested and imprisoned in the military prison of Tegel. In 1945 he was deported to the concentration camp of Buchenwald, and then to Flossenburg, in the Upper Palatinate, where he was hanged on 9 April. The letters and notes he wrote during his imprisonment were posthumously published under the title “Resistance and Capitulation”, the work that contributed most to his fame. Bonhoeffer had published “Act and Being” in 1931, “Sequela” in 1937, “Community Life” in 1938. But the works that, according to the author, were to be his major contribution were not published until after his death: “Ethics” (1949); “Temptation” (1953); and “The Grown-Up World” (1955-66). Here is an article of CRISTIANA DOBNER. The greater the historical awareness of anyone who observes the past century, in all its dynamics (political, social and religious), the more his admiration for the witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer will grow: in particular, admiration – to use a word typical of the Catholic lexicon – of his “martyrdom”. But how did someone, who wanted to be a man of peace and of Christ, come to lend his support to the 20 July (1944) plot to assassinate Hitler? “If a madman (driving along the street) were to plough his car onto a crowded pavement – Bonhoeffer replied – as a pastor I could not be satisfied with burying the dead and consoling the families. If I were to find myself there, I would feel bound to pursue the driver and wrest the driving wheel from his hands”. The question of “how” to live for the Gospel in a society whose parameters had now become atheist or irreligious had been posed early in the life of the young Bonhoeffer: he assumed the concrete commitment in history, he took the risk of involvement when, all around him, personal and social maturity was acquired by discrediting and abandoning the hypothesis of God. For Bonhoeffer it is faith that counts, the faith that is rooted in life and that eliminates any notion of God intervening in history like a puppet-master manipulating the strings of a marionette. Bonhoeffer did no more than counter the pagan vision of a God, agent of resolution at any cost, with the Christian vision of a God who is so much involved in history as to give the life of his Son, Christ and his death that imbues life with new meaning. Life, in its totality, is assumed in Christ: this is the Christian ethic, founded on Christ, at once God and Man. Only then will the dichotomy disappear, because God and man are affirmed in a single move: God is not remote from us, but at the centre, in the midst of our life. The freedom, of thought and judgement, of the young Protestant pastor is independent of prejudices or positions to be safeguarded at all costs, even at the price of truth. He kept a diary during his journey to Rome: “It is gratifying to see here so many deeply wrapt faces, to whom not all the things said against Catholicism can apply. Both children and adults confess with a sincere fervour that is moving. That does not mean that confession necessarily leads to a life full of scruples; even though this often happens and will always happen with the more austere persons… For the simpler people it’s the only way to speak with God, whereas for those more religiously evolved it’s the realization of the idea of the Church that finds its fullness in confession and absolution”. Bonhoeffer experienced a progression, described and expressed by his biographer and friend Bethge: “At the age of twenty Bonhoeffer said to the theologians: your theme is the church! At the age of thirty he said to the Church: your theme is the world! At the age of forty, he said to the world: your theme, which is abandonment, is the theme itself of God”. The being rooted in Christ enabled him to confront the outcome of his martyrdom, first prison and then execution. He himself asked himself where he could find the strength to live: “Who am I? They often tell me I leave my cell calmly, cheerfully and resolutely like a lord from his castle. Who am I? They often tell me I speak to my warders freely, affably and clearly as if it were up to me to give the orders. Who am I? They also tell me I support the days of misfortune imperturbably, smilingly and proudly like someone accustomed to win. Who am I? This posing questions to myself is a mockery. Whoever I am, thou knowest me, O God, I am thine!” Bonhoeffer wrote to his young fiancée: God is with us in the evening and in the morning and, you may be certain, in every new day. In history: God and man together, in Jesus Christ.