- published: 09 Dec 2012
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi, and founding member of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer became known for his resistance against the Nazi dictatorship strongly opposing Hitler's euthanasia programs and the genocide against the Jews. He was also 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. In his role as a theologian, his view of Christianity's role in the secular world has become very influential.
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. Nonetheless, the Bonhoeffer family was not notably devout. Paula was a college graduate and home-schooled the children until each was 6 or 7. Bonhoeffer lost his older brother Walter to World War I. 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.
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 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.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
Actors: Desmond Tutu (actor), Klaus Maria Brandauer (actor), Martin Doblmeier (actor), Martin Doblmeier (director), Martin Doblmeier (producer), Martin Doblmeier (writer), Martin Doblmeier (producer), John D. Keltonic (composer), Adele Schmidt (producer), Adele Schmidt (actress), Adele Schmidt (miscellaneous crew), Kristin Fellows (producer), Christoph von Dohnányi (actor), Tim Finkbiner (editor), Wolfgang Huber (actor),
Plot: Portrait of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was imprisoned and killed by the Nazis for plotting to assassinate Hitler, conveys the essence of a man and his world. Bonhoeffer's life is lyrically presented, with his friends and family shedding light on his breakaway seminary, his travels to America and Harlem, his calls to change the world for better, and his noble attempts to respond to Nazi Germany as a Christian.
Keywords: assassination, christianity, church, german-underground, germany, nazi, nazi-resistance, pacifism, religion, theologyActors: Ulli Philipp (actress), Susanne Lothar (actress), Justus von Dohnányi (actor), Lothar Förster (actor), Christian Doermer (actor), Ulrich Tukur (actor), Rosemarie Fendel (actress), Robert Joy (actor), Dieter Kirchlechner (actor), Blu Mankuma (actor), John Neville (actor), Ulrich Noethen (actor), Dominique Horwitz (actor), Eric Till (writer), R.H. Thomson (actor),
Genres: Drama,