On the morning of April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in the Flossenbürg in Bavaria by an SS officer (the SS was the elite guard of the ). The 39-year-old was hanged — just one month before the end of after the German Reich finally collapsed.
Bonhoeffer had resisted ‘s National Socialist dictatorship not with weapons, but with words, deeds, and unwavering faith. He went from being a preacher to a conspirator.
He is venerated and celebrated around the world — by liberal theologians, human rights activists, democratic activists, left-wing activists, conservatives, but also by right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists, and Christian nationalist supporters of US President .
But why do so many different groups invoke him? What did Bonhoeffer’s thinking and message really stand for?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau (now Wrocław in Poland) to a wealthy, intellectual family. He graduated from high school at the age of just 17. A career in academia seemed to await him, but the highly gifted young man opted for theology.
One particularly formative experience was his time studying in the US in 1930-31, where the Protestant became acquainted with the African-American civil rights movement. It was there that he realized that faith could not just be a personal conviction — it had to actively oppose injustice.
“Bonhoeffer was convinced that Christians are not only responsible for themselves but also for others and for the world. We live in relationships and bear responsibility in relationships, above all for the weak,” explained the first chairman of the German-speaking section of the International Bonhoeffer Society (IBG), Professor Florian Höhne, in an interview with DW.
From theologian to resistance fighter
Once back in Germany, Bonhoeffer watched with growing horror as the church aligned itself with the Nazi state. How other pastors and clergy swore allegiance to Hitler. Bonhoeffer joined the Confessing Church, an opposition movement of Protestant Christians. It was founded in 1934 in response to Nazi efforts to bring the Protestant Church under state control to impose National Socialist racist ideas on it. As one of its leading figures, Bonhoeffer fought against assimilation and manipulation.
Over time, he realized that preaching alone was not enough. And so, he became part of a plot against Hitler. From 1939, Bonhoeffer worked for the German military’s counter-espionage service. But secretly, he was an intermediary for the resistance. “He didn’t take part in an assassination attempt himself, but he knew about the plans to overthrow Hitler,” says Florian Höhne.
Plans to overthrow Hitler and hopes for peace
Bonhoeffer had two main tasks in the resistance: “He was to use his contacts with Christian churches and religious communities abroad to exchange information so that the Allies would know about these plans to overthrow Hitler. And to broker options for the period afterwards, to convey messages from the Allies that they approved of the coup plans and would not simply continue the war but would be prepared to negotiate peace,” explains Höhne. His second task was “to be a kind of spiritual advisor to his co-conspirators and to advise them in conflicts of conscience.”
However, Bonhoeffer’s connections to the resistance were discovered. On April 5, 1943, he was arrested by the Nazi Gestapo. During the two years of his imprisonment before his execution without trial, he continued to write theological and socio-political texts.
During this time, he wrote about his motivations for joining the fight against the Nazi dictatorship: “Inactive waiting and dully looking on are not Christian responses. Christians are called to action and sympathy not through their own firsthand experiences but by the immediate experience of their brothers, for whose sake Christ suffered.”
A multifaceted legacy
After the war, Bonhoeffer became an icon, a role model of a faith that does not cower, but takes action. Many of his books became international bestsellers and his life has been made into a controversial movie.
His legacy has been interpreted in very different ways. While liberal theologians, democracy and human rights activists celebrate him as a fighter for social justice and Christian responsibility, right-wing conservatives and Christian nationalists, especially in the US, interpret him as a champion against the supposed encroachment of the state.
For Trump supporters, in particular, Bonhoeffer is a figure symbolizing rebellion against the so-called Deep State — the idea that there is a secret power structure controlling politics and society from within the official government. He is referenced also in the controversial conservative political playbook Project 2025. Some draw parallels between Bonhoeffer’s fight against Hitler and their own opposition to abortion, LGBTQ rights, and vaccination laws.
Descendants speak out against the misappropriation of Bonhoeffer
Theologians from the US and Germany, Bonhoeffer’s descendants, and the International Bonhoeffer Society (IBG) are all strongly opposed to the misappropriation of his legacy. In an open letter from October 2024, the IBG denounced the fact that Bonhoeffer’s life and work were increasingly being used by Christian nationalists to legitimize political violence.
It is true that Bonhoeffer grappled with the question of when disobedience becomes a duty. But his resistance was directed against a totalitarian regime of oppression, not indiscriminately against state institutions. “Bonhoeffer was a Christian pacifist who only considered the possibility of violence after intense deliberation. But his thinking was shaped by the pursuit of peace and the question of what unites Christians across national borders,” emphasizes IBG Chairman Höhne. “His commitment was to the weak and disenfranchised.”
Höhne attributes Bonhoeffer’s influence to his fascinating life story, which inspires people across political, theological, and ideological lines — not least because he defended his convictions with his life. He adds that Bonhoeffer appeals to a wide variety of tendencies because his work is multi-layered and open to different interpretations. “The writings from his last years in particular were left fragmentary and the more fragmentary a work is, the easier it is to read different things into it.”
What can Bonhoeffer’s thinking teach us today about current political and ethical issues? Höhne emphasizes Bonhoeffer’s understanding of responsibility in particular, “which teaches us not to strive for an abstract, absolute morality, but to do that which is the best in relative terms — that which is necessary in the respective situation.” He also says that we can learn a lot from him about “responsibility towards those who are weaker.”
This article was originally written in German.
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