German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a Lutheran Pastor and participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, and a founding member of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer is said to be one of the few men who saw Nazism for what it was.
Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany. His father was a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry. His mother was a committed Christian who devoted herself to running the household and raising their eight children. When he was six the family moved to Berlin.
In 1933 as Hitler seized power, Bonhoeffer joined efforts to oppose Hitler, even though such resistance was forbidden by law. He stood within the context of love for those who had to endure severe injustice. The Gestapo first banned him from preaching, then teaching, and finally any kind of public speaking. Bonhoeffer joined a secret group of high-ranking military officers in the intelligence office who planned to end the National Socialist Regime by killing Hitler.
He was arrested in 1943 after money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced to him. He was charged with conspiracy and imprisoned in Berlin for a year and a half. In 1944 an attempt was made to assassinate Hitler- it failed and many were found to be involved in the plot, including Bonhoeffer. He was imprisoned again in Berlin and then taken to Buchenwald concentration camp. Eventually he was taken to Flossenburg, where in April of 1945 he was condemned and hanged.
Before the hanging, Pastor Bonhoeffer was stripped of his clothing, ridiculed by the guards, and led naked in to the execution yard. A lack of sufficient gallows caused Hitler to use meat hooks from slaughterhouses to slowly hoist the victim by a noose formed of piano wire. Asphyxiation is thought to have taken a half and hour.
His most widely read book, The Cost of Discipleship, is one which I have carried with me from state to state through the years of our ministry. The book begins “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.”
Many of his notes were smuggled out and published as letters and poems from prison. My favorite work of this great German Christian is a melancholy poem entitled Who Am I? Please read it carefully and see the key points he is making. Who are we? The song of the melancholy as he seeks his identity in Christ.
Who Am I?
Who Am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country- house
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
Compressing my throat
Who am I?
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest O God, I am Thine!
March 4, 1946