Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1906–1945, Germany
German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He opposed the Nazi regime from the beginning, helped found the Confessing Church, ran the illegal seminary at Finkenwalde, joined the military conspiracy against Hitler, was arrested in 1943, imprisoned at Tegel and then at the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, and was executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945, three weeks before the German surrender. He was thirty-nine and engaged to be married. He wrote The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together, and the Letters and Papers from Prison.
On their voice
20th century German Lutheran, clear-eyed and willing to live with paradox. His prison writings are the most personal: he wrote to his parents, to his friend Eberhard Bethge, to Maria von Wedemeyer his fiancée. He was aware that what he was writing might be his last words. He coined "cheap grace" — grace that costs nothing, discipleship without the cross — and meant it as an indictment. He also coined "religionless Christianity" — the question of what faith means when the religious props are stripped away. Both of these were lived questions, not academic ones.
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