Today marks the 65th anniversary of German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death in a Flossenburg prison camp during the closing days of the Second World War, on Monday, April 9, 1945. For his role in a high-level resistance movement opposing Adolf Hitler and National Socialism in Germany, Bonhoeffer and several others were executed by hanging early that Monday morning.
Bonhoeffer had been arrested and taken into custody on April 5, 1943 and, after more than two years of imprisonment, Bonhoeffer's execution was carried out by direct order of Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS) - less than 1 month before Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies (on May 7, 1945), and only 8 days after Easter Sunday of that year.
In fact, less than 24 hours prior to his death the next day, Bonhoeffer submitted to requests from his fellow prisoners to hold a worship service the Sunday morning following Easter. Survivors remember that during this impromptu worship service Bonhoeffer read from and discussed two texts: Isaiah 53:5, "And with his wounds we are healed," and 1 Peter 1:3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..."
Sometime thereafter, knowing he would soon be executed, Bonhoeffer asked another prisoner named Payne Best, if Best survived the war, to deliver a last message to one of his friends in England - George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester - with whom Bonhoeffer had developed a close friendship through their ecumenical work together. Among his last known words, Bonhoeffer succinctly stated in this farewell message to Bell, "This is the end - for me the beginning of life."
Ten years later, the camp doctor who had been present during the executions wrote:
On the morning of that day between five and six o'clock the prisoners, including Admiral Canaris, General Ostler...and state attorney Dr. Sack were taken from their cells and the verdicts of the court martial read out to them. Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor, praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this unusually lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.
My hope and prayer is that we might actively remember those saints of the faith that have variously gone before us, imperfect men and women made perfect in and through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Today, in pausing to remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the 65th anniversary of his death, included below is a short poem he wrote in June of 1944 from his small and stark cell within Tegel Prison (in Berlin), one of Bonhoeffer's many writings that were smuggled out during his imprisonment (and later collected in Letters and Papers from Prison):
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Who Am I?
Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my prison cell poised, cheerful and sturdy, like a nobleman from his country estate.
Who am I? They often tell me I would speak with my guards freely, pleasantly and firmly, as if I had it to command.
Who am I? I have also been told that I suffer the days of misfortune with serenity, smiles and pride, as someone accustomed to victory.
Am I really what others say about me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning and sick, like a bird in its cage, struggling for the breath of life, as though someone were choking my throat; hungering for colors, for flowers, for the songs of birds, thirsting for kind words and human closeness, shaking with anger at capricious tyranny and the pettiest slurs, bedeviled by anxiety, awaiting great events that might never occur, fearfully powerless and worried for friends far away, weary and empty in prayer, in thinking, in doing, weak, and ready to take leave of it all.
Who am I?
This man or that other?
Am I then this man today and tomorrow another?
Am I both all at once?
An imposter to others, but to me little more than a whining, despicable weakling?
Does what is in me compare to a vanquished army, that flees in disorder before a battle already won?
Who am I?
They mock me these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, you know me, O God.
You know I am yours.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Highly recommended texts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer include: Life Together (often published with Prayerbook of the Bible), Cost of Discipleship, Ethics, Letters and Papers from Prison, Creation and Fall, Christ the Center; and his two doctoral dissertations, Sanctorum Communion and Act and Being.
Historical background on Bonhoeffer's last days and execution cited from his definitive biography: Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 926-928.
The poem "Who Am I?" cited from an excellent reader on Bonhoeffer: Geffrey B. Kelly and E. Burton Nelson, editors, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Testament to Freedom (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1990, 1995), 514.
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