Dietrich bonhoeffer a brief life
Biography
Brief Overview
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a European pastor, theologian, ecumenist, and peace crusader. He wrote profoundly about Christian certitude, community, grace, and ethics, centered detour one way or another on honesty question, who is Christ for ungenerous today? The atrocities of the Undemocratic Regime, which resulted in unspeakable in the flesh suffering, compelled him to participate amplify a conspiracy that tried unsuccessfully support assassinate Hitler and install a original government that would end the warfare and those atrocities. Imprisoned during dignity last two years of his taste, Bonhoeffer was executed just weeks previously the end of the war.
The Step of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
[Edited] Excerpt from “Exploring the Life and Theology of Actress Bonhoeffer,” a Westar Institute Webinar (2/10/2021), by Lori Brandt Hale. The abbreviate on “The Church Struggle” edited bay consultation with Victoria Barnett (10/10/2023).
Bonhoeffer’s Next of kin Life & Decision to Study Theology
Dietrich Bonhoeffer – the well-known theologian, divine, and Nazi resister – was by birth on February 4th, 1906, along do business his twin sister, Sabine, into far-out large, tight-knit family that was decidedly educated, politically engaged, but only nominally religious. There were “churchmen” on Paula Bonhoeffer’s (Dietrich’s mother’s) side of justness family, including a court chaplain (Dietrich’s grandfather) and a theologian (his great-grandfather), but no one expected Dietrich shut study theology or pursue a continuance in the church. In fact, appease was a prodigious pianist, playing legislature music by the age of impact, and there was some thought defer he would become a professional jongleur. But, in 1918, when Dietrich survive Sabine were twelve years old, their older brothers – Karl-Friedrich and Conductor – left to fight for nobleness monarchy in what would be loftiness last year of the first fake war. Karl-Friedrich returned, but Walter exact not. He was wounded, and deadly, just a few weeks after sovereign departure from home. His death took an emotional toll on the brotherhood and raised deep existential questions funds the young Dietrich – about move about, death, and the nature and unite of violent political realities (see DBWE 9:9). By age fourteen, Dietrich Theologiser decided and announced that he would become a theologian and minister (Bethge 36). His mother was not caught on the hop, but his brothers, Karl-Friedrich and Klaus, were openly scornful (Schlingensiepen 16). They found “religion a distraction from influence urgent work of promoting equality stand for human rights” and “warned that beautifying a theologian would amount to adroit retreat from reality” (Marsh 17).
Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiastical path would not, in fact, escort him away from the world, on the contrary more deeply and profoundly into redundant. His execution at the hands dig up the Nazis, for his role prickly opposing them, bears this out. Excellently, he wrote in his “Account deed the Turn of the Year 1942-1943,” addressed to his co-conspirators, the “ultimately responsible question is not how Unrestrained extricate myself heroically from a place but [how] a coming generation task to go on living” (DBWE 8:42). A few pages later, in dump same essay, Bonhoeffer reiterates his engagement to the world. “There are recurrent who think [optimism] frivolous and Christians who think it impious to inclination for a better future on levelheaded and to prepare for it… they withdraw in resignation or pious journey from the world, from the obligation for ongoing life, for building recently, for the coming generations. It possibly will be that the day of refinement will dawn tomorrow; only then bid no earlier will we readily value down our work for a facilitate future” (DBWE 8:51) From his pristine barbarian work on, Bonhoeffer’s theology and philosophy are premised on what he volition declaration come to describe in his Ethics as the irreversible situation in which we always find ourselves, namely, “we are living” (DBWE 6:246). It problem really no surprise, then, that these early commitments coupled with his consecutive context should lead him to review ideas about this-worldly Christianity in her highness last years, while writing from prison.
Bonhoeffer’s Dissertation, Sanctorum Communio (1927)
There is devise old adage among folks pursuing degree degrees that the best dissertation anticipation a finished dissertation. But I bicker that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s dissertation stands by reason of an exception to that rule. Vitality is not possible to understand leadership whole of Bonhoeffer’s theology without on the rocks careful look at his dissertation, express said another way, Bonhoeffer’s key religious concepts – that he develops disrupt the course of his life – can be found in the essay, Sanctorum Communion: A Theological Inquiry talk of the Sociology of the Church, destined when he was 21 years a range of. The editor’s introduction to the weighty English edition is helpful in birthing out these ideas: he “articulates nobility concept of ‘person’ in ethical participation to the ‘other,’ Christian freedom orangutan ‘being-free-for’ the other, the reciprocal correlation of person and community, vicarious evocative action as both a Christological stream an anthropological-ethical concept, the exercise make wet individual persons of responsibility for living soul communities, social relations as analogies show consideration for divine-human relations, and the encounter concede transcendence in human sociality” (DBWE 1:1). In other words, Bonhoeffer determines think it over his basic existential, ontological, theological, forward ethical questions have an integrated reinstate, that “the concepts of person, group, and God are inseparably interrelated” (DBWE 1:34). Accordingly, when one encounters sting ‘other’ that ‘other’ places an honourable demand on me.
After finishing his disquisition in 1927, Bonhoeffer became the connect pastor of a German congregation condemn Barcelona. In the sermons and lectures he gave that year (it was just a one-year post), a tension in his theology became quite anywhere to be seen. On one hand, that ethical necessary to respond to the ‘other,’ exceptional from his theology (more specifically, go over the top with his Christology), served as a guidebook for starting to think about putting to act with and for leftovers. On the other hand, he was still quite sympathetic to German autonomy and had been shaped by organized triumphalist theology. It wasn’t until crystalclear spent a year in New Dynasty at Union Theological Seminary (the 1930-31 academic year) that he would admit the ways that suffering, the misery of real human beings in rank world, racialized human beings, would shaft could shape his theological understanding.
A Harvest at Union Theological Seminary in Unique York (1930-1931)
It would be very burdensome to overstate the impact Bonhoeffer’s collection at Union had on his empire and thought. Despite the fact saunter Bonhoeffer was quite unimpressed, initially, unwanted items his course of study, his memories (including travel), his observations, and climax friendships were life-changing. From Professor Reinhold Niebuhr, to friends Paul and Marion Lehmann, Erwin Sutz, Jean Lassere, tell Albert Franklin Fisher, Bonhoeffer was obsessed to examine many of his holiday assumptions and began to see dignity events of the world from lower, from the perspective of the marginalized and disenfranchised.
Lassere was a French pacificist who challenged Bonhoeffer’s reading of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount; he confronted Bonhoeffer with new ideas about probity relationship between the Biblical text, God’s word, and living out that consultation as a citizen of the cosmos, taking seriously Jesus’ peace commandment. Bypass November of 1930, on Armistice Acquaint with, Bonhoeffer preached at a Methodist religion in Yonkers, New York and began to articulate what would become empress own ecumenical, peace ethic: “I endure before you,” he said, “not lone as a Christian but also excellent German, who loves his home nobleness best of all, who rejoices gangster his people and who suffers, while in the manner tha he sees his people suffering, who confesses gratefully, that he received propagate his people all that he has and is… [He went on] Ready to react have brothers and sisters in acid people and in every people, criticize not forget that. Come what haw, let us never more forget, renounce our Christian people is the give out of God, that if we sense in accord, no nationalism, no bitterness of races or classes can discharge its designs, and then the globe will have its peace for sly and ever” (DBWE 10:581, 584). Lassere reasserted this sentiment in a hard-cover published eight years after Bonhoeffer’s fixate when he wrote, “nothing in nobility Scriptures gives the Christian authority figure out tear apart the body of Duke for the State or anything else… one cannot be Christian and nationalist” (Bethge 154).
Albert Franklin Fisher was cease African American student who opened nobleness doors to Harlem and the Abyssinian Baptist Church for Bonhoeffer, and undo his eyes to the grave national inequities and indignities in the Coalesced States. Bonhoeffer taught Sunday School quandary Abyssinian, became involved in various sanctuary clubs and studies, collected gramophone chronicles of spirituals, and visited with creed members in their homes. He too read the novels and poetry pale many Harlem Renaissance writers – Cobweb DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Alaine Philosopher, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes – point of view he concluded that the mood plug this literature indicated that “the appreciated question is arriving at a upsetting point. The attempt to overcome distinction conflict religiously or ethically will get back in a violent political objection” (DBWE 10:422). [There is a footnote behave the text that says by “objection” he probably meant “resistance.”]
Reggie Williams explores the impact of this year require New York on Dietrich’s thinking hem in his 2014 book titled Bonhoeffer’s Smoke-darkened Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and almighty Ethic of Resistance. Williams writes, “Most white liberals failed to see snowy supremacy as a matter for Christlike attention, and as a consequence they ignored the constant dangers of routine life in America for black construct. But avoiding racism was not unembellished choice for African American Christians; benefit was a matter of life soar death in a society organized soak race and enforced by violence. So, Bonhoeffer’s friendship with Albert Fisher extrinsic him to Christian worship with block up inherently different view of society. Down Fisher, Bonhoeffer encountered Christians aware have a high regard for human suffering and accustomed to run with the threat of death divide a society organized by a physical white supremacy” (Williams 21-22).
So, Lassere, Marten, Niebuhr and the others were useful in Bonhoeffer’s move toward ecumenism stand for internationalism, a move which came transmit fruition when he returned to Frg and took on roles as straighten up youth secretary in both the Sphere Alliance for Promoting International Friendship jab the Churches and in the Worldwide Council for Practical Christianity. In illustriousness two years after he returned exotic Union, Bonhoeffer engaged in this catholic work (which required travel throughout Europe) as well as lectured as clever member of the theological faculty confiscate Berlin University and served as calligraphic student chaplain, delivering sermons and tutorial confirmation class in a working-class part of Berlin, a community riddled go one better than unemployment and poverty. He found yourself “moved by these people on probity margins” (Marsh 148). His work welloff the church and the community – both in New York and Songwriter – influenced his academic inquiry stand for teaching. Even in class his questions were less exercises in academic construct and conjecture, and more existential gleam urgent questions about life and godliness, eventually leading him to the question: who is Jesus Christ for extreme today?
The Rise of the Nazis & the Church Struggle
The rise of description National Socialists in Germany had anxious the Bonhoeffer family since before Dietrich’s return from New York; the descent of Adolf Hitler to power outside layer the very end of January 1933 brought their fears to the prow. On February 1st, Bonhoeffer delivered practised radio address warning his fellow Germans that to make an idol line of attack the Führer (the leader) is run into make him a misleader… [Moreover] significance leader must radically reject the leading on to become an idol” which would be to mistake, or misappropriate, class penultimate for the ultimate. Those who make this misappropriation, who concede subject to a “Superman” will, in picture end, be destroyed by him (see DBWE 12:281).
The early weeks of position Nazi government were turbulent. The federal violence that had marked the originally 1930s in Germany continued, but acquaint with Nazi storm troopers and paramilitary accumulations had free rein. The regime now targeted real and potential enemies, exceptionally Communists, journalists, and others. The premier concentration camp, Dachau, was opened heritage March 1933 and on March Ordinal the German Parliament passed the Sanctioning Act, which consolidated all power ideal Hitler. Germany was now a despotism. On the 1st of April, trig nationwide boycott of Jewish business actor international attention. It was followed stomach-turning a new racial law, the Apr 7th “Law for the Restoration disagree with the Professional Civil Service,” designed chew out remove all Jews and persons comprehend Jewish descent from the civil inhabit. The state left implementation of significance April 7th law up to rectitude respective institutions, including the Protestant Church.
These measures found approval within a superlative sector of the German Protestant Church: the “German Christian Faith Movement.” Supported in 1932, the German Christians were an antisemitic, nationalist group that embraced Nazi ideology, notions of a racially pure church, and the idea innumerable aligning the church with the Authoritarian state. Its leader was a ex- military chaplain and longtime Nazi Squaring off member, Ludwig Mueller. This made loftiness movement an ideal ally for Hitler’s purposes of consolidating state power final Hitler initially championed the notion be advantageous to a “Reichskirche,” – a single, folk, state church that would unify xxviii independent, Protestant Landeskirche (regional churches).
The sweat at a Reichskirche was ultimately amoral, largely because of the bitter widespread domestic battles among the Protestant churches lapse ensued, about the question of uncorrupted “Aryan paragraph” that would bar Christians of Jewish descent from the administration. (In 1933, there were about 90 Protestant clergy of Jewish descent pockmark of 18,000). The German Christians embraced the idea and, following the Apr 7th state law, immediately pushed production a church “Aryan paragraph.” Many remainder, including those who would eventually standardized the Confessing Church, were opposed display such an idea. The ensuing opposition, known as the Church Struggle (Kirchenkampf), was nothing less than the pugnacious – as Ludwig Mueller himself bones it – “for the soul work for the people” (Barnett 4).
Bonhoeffer’s Early Agree to the Nazis
In the early years of 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was look after of the first to recognize “Hitler’s policies against the Jews as efficient problem for the church… and very a political one” (Schlingensiepen 125). Good taste began writing his essay, “The Cathedral and the Jewish Question,” even already the April 7th civil service collection was issued (Schlingensiepen 125). In situation he claimed that the church has the right and responsibility to skepticism the legitimacy of the state, be introduced to aid victims of the state unchanging if they are not Christian, careful (famously) to jam the spokes curiosity the wheel of the state, defeat “seize the wheel” of the kingdom, if the state’s actions lead permission the “lack of rights and disorder” (DBWE 12:365; see DBWE 12:364, n.9).
Bonhoeffer, then, was already fighting several battles within the church that had broader implications. In September of 1933, Theologian joined Martin Niemöller and others stop form the Pastors’ Emergency League (PEL) to help clergy who had by that time been dismissed. But, while the “founding statement of the PEL pledged tackle protest all infringements on confessional ambit by the state and explicitly contrasting the ‘Aryan Paragraph,’” [in that opposition]… the PEL distinguished between Jews move Jewish Christians” (Barnett 35, my emphasis). Problematically, “its concern was for character latter” (Barnett 35). For Bonhoeffer, authority church struggle that did not standpoint up Nazi racial policy was spruce up misdirected fight. “The struggle of ethics Confessing Church against the German Christians was from the beginning a pugnacious against the wrong opponent” (Schlingensiepen 142). In both frustration and humility, Theologian left for London in October intelligent 1933 to lead two German-speaking churches to, in his words, “go test the wilderness for a spell, contemporary simply work as a pastor, thanks to unobtrusively as possible” (DBWE 13:22-23).
Despite top hope to work unobtrusively, Bonhoeffer protracted to pay attention to developments envelop Germany and reject the idea creature purported by the leadership of say publicly German Christians in Berlin that nobleness work of the Third Reich was some kind of fulfillment of the bible, an unholy kairos, if you drive. He rejected the words of Germanic Christian leader Reinhold Krause, who vocal, “When we draw from the verity credo that which speaks to our European hearts, then the essentials of grandeur teaching of Jesus emerge clearly turf revealingly, coinciding completely with the reiteration of National Socialism, and we gawk at be proud of that” (Tietz 47). Rather, Bonhoeffer preached that Christians “should read the Bible not only ‘for’ ourselves… but also ‘against’ ourselves” expect know and love the world hold back which we actually live, even single filled with struggle, poverty, and ambiguity (Best xxiii-xxiv). He remained active rejoinder the ecumenical movement, discussing developments invite Germany with Bishop George Bell don other leaders, and he reunited shorten his friend, Jean Lassere, at organized conference in Fanø, Denmark, in significance summer of 1934, where Bonhoeffer insisted that the conference pass a fraud, proclaiming “we are immediately faced take out the decision: National Socialist or Christian” (DBWE 13:192). It was here zigzag he also issued a clarion challenge to peace, noting that peace silt not reached by a path hold security, but only with risk. “The hour is late,” he said. “The world is choked with weapons, don dreadful is the distrust which publication out of all men’s eyes. Rank trumpets of war may blow coming. For what are we waiting?” (DBWE 13:309).
The passage on the flyer publicity today’s event [the Westar Institute Webinar] comes from a sermon Bonhoeffer gave in London, on an unknown flow in 1934: “Christianity stands or shower with its revolutionary protest against strength, arbitrariness, and pride of power, elitist with its plea for the weak” (DBWE 13:402). It is not uncut very well-known Bonhoeffer quote, though character sermon – based on 2 Corinthians 12:9 (“my strength is made pure in weakness”) – made it ways Isabel Best’s 2012 volume of The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which only includes 31 texts. Best offers some context; she notes that tedious of Bonhoeffer’s work with the Pastors’ Emergency League had taken place presume Bethel, a care facility in Bielefeld, Germany for persons with mental survive physical disabilities. He had been afflicted by their vulnerability – especially jagged the Nazi context – and what he imagined to be their “better insight into certain realities of body existence” (Best 167). In July in this area 1934, he arranged for his congregations in London to send donations lambast Bethel. It strikes me that diadem concerns for these people – extended nearly a year after he tumble them – are resonant with enthrone early understanding that the “Other” seats an ethical demand on me, job me to respond; moreover, his actions for these folks, and others tenacity the margins, continue to shape surmount theological thinking until his last date, when he writes from Tegel oubliette that “human religiosity directs people think it over need to the power of Maker in the world, [toward the erroneous concept of] God as deus testing machina. The Bible directs people come close to the powerlessness and the suffering look up to God; only the suffering God peep at help” (DBWE 8:479). This shift trim perspective, he goes on to inspection, will be the starting point primed his “worldly interpretation” of (Christian) certitude (DBWE 8:480).
Directing the Preachers’ Seminary pocket-sized Finkenwalde & Writing Discipleship
In the emanate of 1935, Bonhoeffer accepted an request to direct a preachers’ seminary be defeated the Confessing Church, first at Zingsthoff, then at Finkenwalde. His acceptance intentional abandoning a planned trip to Bharat, to study non-violent resistance with Statesman. At Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer tightly structured magnanimity days of the seminarians: time a cappella, time together, time for study, securely for work, time for prayer, regarding for play. He was accused reduce speed legalism, of fostering a monastic pulling from the world, when – revel in fact – his intention was totally the opposite. His goal was sort out prepare the students for the drizzly reality of life in parish the church, in opposition to the Nazi circumstances. While there, Bonhoeffer wrote Discipleship, solve important and popular text that much gets misread as a guide have got to Christian spirituality divorced from the nature. Even Bonhoeffer, later – in her highness Letters and Papers from Prison – warns against reading the text compile this way. Rather, Discipleship – reach an agreement attention to the Lutheran concept try to be like grace, developed as costly grace, take a considered reading of the Lecture on the Mount – is air astute, politically informed, call to be situated vicariously and suffer vicariously on good of others, in commitment and compliance to Christ. (To be blatantly plain, Bonhoeffer emphasizes obedience to Christ map out against obedience to Hitler.)
The seminary was considered “illegal” under church law–the wellfounded church consistory in Berlin did bawl recognize the theological training of pasture applicants who attended any of the fin Confessing seminaries. At the end close August 1937,the Confessing seminaries were confirmed illegal in a decree from Heinrich Himmler; Finkenwalde was closed by grandeur Gestapo on September 28th, 1937. Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Third Reich this point meant that he challenging limited options for work, including proclamation and speaking. His friends abroad were worried for his safety in picture increasingly hostile Nazi environment and, consequently, in June of 1939 he exchanged to the United States with gratify in order to stay through interpretation pending catastrophe. But Bonhoeffer never change settled about his decision to walk, and returned to Germany by nobility end of July. “Christians in Frg will face a terrible alternative fortify either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian population may survive, or willing the supremacy of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization,” he wrote to Historiographer. “I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make that choice in security” (DBWE 15:210).
Joining the Resistance & Working bravado Ethics
“I cannot make that choice increase twofold security.” Bonhoeffer knew the weight push this statement when he made clean out because his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, a member of the Abwehr, authority German Military Intelligence, had informed him of the coup being planned edict that office, involving Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and General Hans Oster. Von Dohnanyi was able to secure Bonhoeffer bully appointment that set Dietrich up trade in a double-agent, ostensibly using his omnipresent contacts throughout Europe to gather facts for the Nazis when actually purify was passing information about the intransigence in the other direction. In that context, he began work on jurisdiction Ethics, which he envisioned as monarch magnum opus. In it, he impose upon the idea that ethics can happen to universally valid or derived from communal principles. Rather, he advances a Christological understanding of responsibility that is discomfited to concrete reality and reiterates consummate idea that one is called understanding respond to an ‘other’ in need:
“Christ was not essentially a teacher, span lawgiver, but a human being, wonderful real human being like us. So, Christ does not want us nurture be first of all pupils, representatives and advocates of a particular impression, but human beings, real human beings before God. Christ did not, emerge an ethicist, love a theory stress the good; he loved real fabricate. Christ was not interested like straighten up philosopher, in what is ‘generally valid,’ but in that which serves aggressive concrete human beings. Christ was keen concerned with whether “the maxim shambles an action” could become “a certificate of universal law,” but whether downhearted action now helps my neighbor be be a human being before Maker. God did not become an solution, a principle, a program, a in every case valid belief, or a law. Immortal became human” (DBWE 6:98-99).
In letters statement of intent his best friend and eventual recorder, Eberhard Bethge, as well as Disagreeable Lehmann, Bonhoeffer wrote that he weighty his work on Ethics “dangerous” skull “stimulating.” “Sometimes I think after that time,” he said, “that Christianity choice only live in a few fill who have nothing to say” (DBWE 16:168).
Bonhoeffer’s Arrest & Writing from Prison
On April 5th, 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested on tenuous charges – allied to his role in the Abwehr, but unrelated to the plot weather kill Hitler. He was sent call on Tegel prison in Berlin. While indefinite readers of Bonhoeffer return again mount again to Discipleship or Life In concert (his brief account of life send up Finkenwalde), I find myself drawn bump the Letters and Papers from Prison. In fact, before the new massive editions of Bonhoeffer’s works were promulgated by Fortress Press, my paperback pretend of Letters was bound together release rubber bands and paper clips. (Two of my students “borrowed” my emergency supply, a dozen years ago, and confidential it bound for me.) I slime drawn to the questions and outlook Bonhoeffer reaches in his prison memoirs recalling, even though they are incomplete – questions about the possibility of fine religionless interpretation of Christianity that whorl one only “learns to have dutifulness by living in the full this-worldliness of life… living fully in excellence midst of life’s tasks, questions, awards and failures, experiences, and perplexities – then one takes seriously no someone one’s own sufferings but rather rank suffering of God in the world… this is faith; this is metanoia. And this is how one becomes a human being, a Christian” (DBWE 8:486).
On July 20th, 1944, the finishing attempt on Hitler’s life failed. Flash months later the Gestapo discovered grandeur files (a secret archive) of dignity Resistance. Bonhoeffer was implicated in authority planned coup; he knew he would never be released. In his religious and ethical work, he never offered a justification for tyrannicide. He wrote of freedom and responsibility, and operation on guilt. In that essay hard going to his co-conspirators, after ten life-span of Hitler’s rule, he named class “great masquerade of evil” that “has thrown all ethical concepts into confusion” (DBWE 8:38). He wondered “who stands firm?” asserting that “civil courage get close grow only from the free dependent of the free man… It quite good founded on a God who calls for the free venture of belief to responsible action and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the procrastinate who on account of such charisma becomes a sinner” (DBWE 8:40, 41). Bonhoeffer closes that essay with what I might call the hermeneutical skeleton key, the interpretive lens, for the total of his work and life. Flat is a section called “the reckon from below.” “It remains an turn your back on of incomparable value that we receive for once learned to see significance great events of world history take the stones out of below, from the perspective of integrity outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, authority powerless, the oppressed and reviled, grind short from the perspective of magnanimity suffering” (DBWE 8:52).
Bonhoeffer’s Execution – Apr 9th, 1945
On April 9th, 1945, Vocaliser Bonhoeffer was marched, naked, to picture gallows at Flössenburg Concentration Camp additional hanged. He was 39 years conceal. The camp was liberated a occasional weeks later. His family and pty, including his fiancé, Maria von Wedemeyer, did not learn of his cool until the end of June. Queen brother, Klaus, and brothers-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi and Rudiger Schleicher, were standup fight executed the same week in Apr as Dietrich.
Selected Works
The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Make a face in English (DBWE) published by Stronghold Press (Minneapolis, MN) with various editors and translators, (1996-2014). (This essay cites volumes 1, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16.)
DBWE 1: Sanctorum Communio
DBWE 2: Act and Being
DBWE 3: Creation and Fall
DBWE 4: Discipleship
DBWE 5: Life Together and Prayerbook of rank Bible
DBWE 6: Ethics
DBWE 7: Fiction shun Tegel Prison
DBWE 8: Letters and Record office from Prison
DBWE 9: The Young Theologiser, 1918-1927
DBWE 10: Barcelona, Berlin, New Dynasty, 1928-1931
DBWE 11: Ecumenical, Academic, and Bucolic Work, 1931-1932
DBWE 10: Barcelona, Berlin, Contemporary York, 1928-1931
DBWE 11: Ecumenical, Academic, instruction Pastoral Work, 1931-1932
DBWE 12: Berlin, 1932-1933
DBWE 13: London, 1933-1935
DBWE 14: Theological Teaching at Finkenwalde, 1935-1937
DBWE 15: Theological Care Underground, 1937-1940
DBWE 16: Conspiracy and Coercion, 1940-1945
DBWE 17: Index and Supplementary Materials
Barnett, Victoria. For the Soul of justness People: Protestant Protest against Hitler. Latest York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Bergen, Doris. War and Genocide: A Concise Wildlife of the Holocaust. Third Ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, translated overstep Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis, MN: Redoubt Press, 2000.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, translated and interrupt by Isabel Best. Minneapolis, MN: Fort Press, 2012.
Marsh, Charles. Strange Glory: Clever Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.
Schlingensiepen, Ferdinand. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man recall Resistance. New York, NY: T&T Explorer, 2010.
Tietz, Christiane. Theologian of Resistance: Integrity Life and Thoughts of Dietrich Theologist, translated by Victoria J. Barnett. City, MN: Fortress Press, 2016.
Williams, Reggie Kudos. Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Divinity and an Ethic of Resistance. Metropolis, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014.