Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau, Germany, one of eight children in a distinguished family; his father was a leading psychiatrist. He earned a doctorate in theology at twenty-one. While studying in New York in 1930 and 1931 he worshipped at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer spoke out against the Nazi control of the church and its treatment of Jews, and he helped form the Confessing Church, which refused to accept Nazi rule over the church. He led a secret seminary for its pastors at Finkenwalde until the government closed it, and wrote The Cost of Discipleship, which contrasts cheap grace with costly grace. In 1939 he returned to Germany from America, believing he must share his people's trials. He joined the resistance through his brother-in-law, worked as a double agent in military intelligence, and helped Jews escape to Switzerland. Arrested in 1943, he wrote letters from prison that were later published. He was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945, two weeks before American troops liberated it.

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Faith: German Lutheran pastor, ordained in 1931, who opposed the Nazi-controlled state church. Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy