Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Biography Timeline: February 4, 1906, born, along with his twin sister, Sabine, in Breslau, Germany, two of the eight children of Karl Bonhoeffer and Paula (von Hase) Bonhoeffer; 1912, family moves to Berlin, where father teaches neurology and psychiatry and heads University Hospital, being Germany=s leading empirical psychologist; 1919, announces he has decided to become a theologian; March 15, 1921, confirmed at Grunewald Church, Berlin; grows up in comfortable bourgeois circumstances; 1924-1927, writes his dissertation, ASanctorum Communio,@ at the University of Berlin, and awarded his doctorate with honors at the age of 21; 1928, serves as vicar of a German Lutheran congregation in Barcelona; July 1930, AAct and Being,@ his qualifying thesis allowing him to teach at the University of Berlin, accepted; 1930-1931, spends postgraduate year at Union Theological Seminary in New York (including regular work at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem); 1931, appointed youth secretary of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches; August 1931, assumes post as a lecturer in theology at the University of Berlin in; November 1931, ordained at St. Matthias Church, Berlin; 1931-1932, presents lectures later published as Creation and Fall; January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor; February 1, 1933, Bonhoeffer=s radio talk AChanges in the Concept of the Leader Principle@ is cut off air before completion; 1933, gives final lecture courses at Berlin-- later published as Christ the Center; September 7, 1933, collaborates with Martin Niemoeller to organize the Pastors= Emergency League, a group of 2000 Lutheran pastors opposed to the control of the state church by the Nazis, before assuming the pastorate of the German Evangelical Church, Sydenham, and the Reformed Church of St. Paul in London; 1934, becomes member of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work; May 1934, Confessing Church organized at Barmen, Germany; 1935, assumes leadership of the Confessing Church's clandestine seminary at Zingsthof by the Baltic Sea--a school relocated later that year to Finkenwalde in Pomerania; August 1-5, 1936, preaches at Olympic Village, and thereafter authorization to teach on University of Berlin faculty is withdrawn; October, 1937, Finckenwalde Seminary closed by Gestapo; February 1938, begins participation in Abwehr resistance circle with the task of being a courier and diplomat to the British government on behalf of the resistance; 1940-1943, in between his activities for the resistance, stays at Ettal (Benedictine monastery outside of Munich) as he works on a book, what will become Ethics; January 17, 1943, becomes engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer; spring 1943, attempts to help group of Jews escape to Switzerland; April 5, 1943, arrested and imprisoned; July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Hitler=s life fails; October 8, 1944, transferred to cellar of Gestapo prison in Prinz Albrecht Strasse; February 5, 1945, transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp; April 3, 1945, moved to Regensberg; April 5, 1945, moved to Schonborg; April 8, 1945, transported to Flossenburg and court-martialed; April 9, 1945, is executed by hanging, on Himmler=s orders, in Flossenbürg concentration camp; burial place ultimately unknown; April 30, 1945, Hitler commits suicide in the Führerbunker, beneath the Reich Chancellery buildings in Berlin, effectively ending World War II on the European front; July 27, 1945, memorial services for Bonhoeffer held at Holy Trinity Church, London, England, after the encouragement of Bishop of Chichester; April 9, 1946, memorial service held in Berlin; memorial erected in Dorotheenstadt cemetery, Berlin; 1951, first German edition of prison letters written during final two years of his life, collected/edited by his student and friend, Eberhard Bethge, published as Widerstand und Ergebung (meaning Resistance and Submission); 1953, first English edition of prison letters published as Prisoner for God and later as Letters and Papers from Prison; 1973, International Bonhoeffer Society - English Language Section founded; 2015, The Bonhoeffer Center website begins.
Born a twin on February 4, 1906, in Breslau, Germany, the second of eight children of Karl Bonhoeffer and Paula (von Hase) Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would become one of the most admired Christians the world has ever seen.(1) Though he grew up in comfortable bourgeois circumstances, and though his precocious intellect
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