Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 1940-1945

Works #16

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mark S. Brocker (Editor), Lisa E. Dahill (Translator)

This volume, published in the year of the one hundredth anniversary of Bonhoeffer's birth, documents Bonhoeffer's life under the increasing restraints and fateful events of World War II Germany. In hundreds of letters, including ten never-before-published letters to his fiance, Maria von Wedemeyer, as well as official documents, short original pieces, and a few final sermons, the volume sheds light on Bonhoeffer's active resistance to and increasing involvement in the conspiracy against the Hitler regime, his arrest, and his long imprisonment. Finally, Bonhoeffer's many exchanges with his family, fiance, and closest friends, demonstrate the affection and solidarity that accompanied Bonhoeffer to his prison cell, concentration camp, and eventual death.

Genres: Theology

882 pages, Hardcover

First published June 19, 2006

About the author

Works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Protestant theologian of Germany, concern Christianity in the modern world; for his role in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, people executed him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer served as a Lutheran pastor. He, also a participant in the movement of Resistance against Nazism and a member, founded the confessing church. Members of the Abwehr, the military intelligence office planned his involvement, which resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent hanging in April 1945 shortly before the end of the war. His secular view influenced very many people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietric...

Reviews

[Jon Coutts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible volume. It has unfinished essays in political theology aimed at a post-war restart for a nation needing both a coup and collective repentance. It has biblical reflections on questions like how to tell the truth (written in the context of investigation by an oppressive state) or how to appreciate infant baptism (written in response to a proposal to enforce rebaptism for church-purification). It has moving letters to former seminarians on the front lines which encourage them in the midst of doubt and dissolution and death. It has the enraptured letters of an intimate friendship which endures through the darkness of years to come. It has touching exchanges with a kindly grandmother-in-the-faith which become tense in the face of her meddling in his romantic life. It has letters to his future fiance which are strained and flowery at once. It has the fictional diary entries of a man under investigation as well as the record of his interrogation and indictment. It has his comminique with church contacts that serve the interests of both ecumenism and espionage. And of course it has Dietrich's last words from prison, smuggled out orally, which are all too brief and bittersweet.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the stuff with him and Barth. The time period alone makes this volume a page turner.

[Neil White · Rating 4 out of 5]

This final volume of letters, teaching, and sermons from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's short life covers the time period when Ethics was worked on and mostly precedes Letters and Papers from Prison. There is less of Bonhoeffer's theological reflections than in previous works for two primary reasons: he has been prohibited from speaking and teaching by the Gestapo and his double identity as a part of the conspiracy to eliminate Hitler. His writings during this period are much more guarded than in previous times, but it is also makes the boldness of Ethics and Letters and Papers from prison more surprising.