Ethics and the Will of God: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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• published: 06 May 2012
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906 -- April 9, 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi, and founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and executed by hanging in April 1945, 23 days before the Nazis' surrender. His view of Christianity's role in the secular world has become very influential. Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ]; 20 April 1889 -- 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust. Krista Tippett (née Weedman, born November 9, 1960) is a broadcaster, journalist, and author. She is best known for creating and hosting the public radio program On Being (formerly Speaking of Faith), distributed and produced by American Public Media. The program is currently broadcast on more than 200 public radio stations in the United States and globally via NPR Worldwide, its website, and its podcast. Tippett's first book, Speaking of Faith — Why Religion Matters and How to Talk about It, was published In 2008. Of the book, the author Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, "Her intelligence is like a salve for all who have been wounded or marginalized by the God Wars On Being (also known as Krista Tippett on Being, formerly known as Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett) is a weekly public radio program about "religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas", produced by American Public Media. Initially launched as a monthly broadcast in 2001 with Minnesota Public Radio, the program became a national weekly broadcast in 2003 airing on NPR stations across the United States. Operating from a neutral position, the program explores the relationship between religion and the human experience around the world. Speaking of Faith was awarded its first Webby Award in 2005—the first public radio program to win the juried prize—and a second in 2008. That same year, the program was given a George Foster Peabody Award for its radio and online production of "The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi" in 2007. Tippett believes that "what most Americans want, whether they are religious or not, is for the religious voice in our public life to be more constructive—to reflect the capacity religion has to nourish lives and communities." The radio program also spawned the book Speaking of Faith — Why Religion Matters and How to Talk about It. Written by Tippett, it was published in 2007. Ethics and the Will of God: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer [02.02.2006] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose life spanned the rise and fall of Hitler's Germany, offers us a model of personal morality and conscience in the most troubled and immoral of times. His resistance of Nazi ideology, while much of the German church succumbed, is a testament to his moral vision and faith. Krista speaks with producer Martin Doblmeier, whose 2003 documentary chronicled Bonhoeffer's life and thought, about the legacy of this unusual theologian. Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 with his twin sister Sabine to a prominent middle-class family in Breslau (Wrocław), the sixth of eight children. His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was one of the most distinguished neurologists in Germany as a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Berlin and the director of the psychiatric clinic at Charité Hospital in Berlin. His mother, Paula von Hase, was a daughter of Klara von Hase, a countess by marriage who had been a pupil of Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt, and a granddaughter of Karl von Hase, the distinguished church historian and preacher to the court of Kaiser Wilhelm II. His sister Christel married Hans von Dohnanyi, one of the conspirators against Hitler. His twin sister Sabine married Gerhard Leibholz, a notable jurist of Jewish descent who had been baptized as a child. Expected to follow his father into psychiatry, Bonhoeffer surprised and dismayed his parents when he decided as a teenager to become a theologian and later a pastor. When his older brother told him not to waste his life in such a "poor, feeble, boring, petty, bourgeois institution as the church", fourteen-year-old Dietrich replied, "If what you say is true, I shall reform it!" This German theologian wrestled with religious principles in the thick of political and personal crisis during Hitler's regime. Filmmaker Martin Doblmeier explores Bonhoeffer's religious creativity and the present-day resonance of his ideas. © "On Being" Podcast 2006 © "The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer" Art by 'On Being' 2006