BONHOEFFER

US, 2003, 90 minutes, Colour.
Voice: Klaus Maria Brandauer.
Directed by Martin Dobelmeier.

Synopsis/ Review and questions by Sister Rose Pacatte FSP. Scriptural Reflection by Peter Malone

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his twin sister Sabine were born on February 6, 1906 in Breslau, Germany (now in Poland). He was the sixth child of eight and the youngest son. The family was well-educated and Lutheran but they only went to church occasionally. In 1912 the family moved to Berlin. When Germany went to war in 1914 to fight the perceived enemies encircling Germany and the country’s culture, Dietrich’s older brother, Walter signed up and was killed two weeks later. This, as well as the national disillusionment with Germany’s churches because they had sided with the choice to make war, had a profound effect on Dietrich. He realized how wrong it was to make pre-emptive war. When it came time to begin university he decided to study theology and pacifism as the ways to solve the problems in society. He attended college at Tübingen and received his doctorate in theology from the University of Berlin and was ordained a Lutheran pastor.

In 1930, Bonhoeffer went to New York for a year to teach theology at the Union Theological Seminary. There he sometimes worshipped at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. He would listen to Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. preach about the political and social engagement of the church in order that human and civil rights would be a reality especially for American blacks. Bonhoeffer wrote home, “The black Christ is preached with rapturous passion and vision� as compared to the didactic sermons of his own country. The Protestant cultural theologian Reinhold Niebuhr also influenced him.

During this time Bonhoeffer came to understand Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and 6 and Luke 6) as a call to discipleship characterized by a person’s ongoing free response to Christ and social responsibility.

In 1931, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany and took up teaching and writing, became involved in the international ecumenical movement, and helped found the “confessing church� seminary that trained pastors in a new kind of “monasticism� or lived Christianity that was accessible to all. In 1933 he was ordained. He was one of the first members of any church to speak out publicly against the Third Reich. Two days after Hitler was installed as Chancellor of Germany, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address attacking Hitler and was cut off.

The “Jewish question� or the “final solution�, that is the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people, came to weigh heavily upon him. Although Bonhoeffer never preached or taught resistance explicitly, ethical questions about how a Christian ought to act when governments like the Nazi’s had changed all the rules were with him always. He lived in continual discernment and when he decided to act, he made his first contacts with members of the Hitler resistance. It was 1938. Because he could travel abroad, he worked as a double agent, especially by passing information.

In 1939 Bonhoeffer became part of the group that planned to assassinate Hitler and was able to work as a double agent because he could travel abroad. Through his church contacts he endeavored to spur the British and other foreign governments to take action against Hitler – to no avail. That same year his twin sister, her Jewish husband and their two daughters escaped to England. In 1943 Bonhoeffer was arrested and jailed for eighteen months for conspiracy when money he was passing to the Hitler resistance was traced to him. On April 5, 1943, the day after the failure of the second attempt to assassinate the Fuehrer in which Bonhoeffer was involved, he was arrested along with other family members who were also part of the conspiracy. He led an exemplary life in prison and with his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rudiger Schleicher was executed by hanging on April 9, 1945, barely a month before the end of the war.

More than sixty years after his death, the life and theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer continues to fascinate people who hear about him or read his gentle yet challenging book “The Cost of Discipleship.�

Bonhoeffer was about five years in the making. It was released in 2003 and at least the fourth film to appear recently in English made about the man whom many think of us a martyr and saint of the Lutheran Church(in German, Evangelische Kirch Deutschland or EKD )and the Anglican Church. A drama, Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace was released in 2000. It was directed and co-written by Eric Till who also directed the excellent film Luther in 2003 starring Ralph Fiennes. A one-person play by Al Skaggs was released in 1994, A View from the Underside: The

Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a documentary Hanged from a Twisted Cross, directed by T.N. Mohan, in 1996.

Bonhoeffer is a well-crafted and thought-provoking documentary that tells an inspiring story for all seasons. In addition, it is an authentic contribution to the study of Christian holiness, history and ecumenism. Filmmaker Martin Doblmeier has taken great care to include historical photographs obtained from the EKD, family members and other historical archives in Germany. Only about thirty seconds of actual footage of Bonhoeffer exists and it is in the film. Two of Bonhoeffer’s nieces and some of his students provide an authentic voice to the narration. Also featured is Bonhoeffer’s close friend, Eberhard Bethge (1909 – 2002) who among other works, pieced together Bonhoeffer’s writings to publish his Ethics in 1949. Klaus Maria Brandauer (Out of Africa) is the voice of Bonhoeffer.

The film merges Bonhoeffer’s biography with his moral and faith development with the historical moment in which he lived. The film also makes abundantly clear how the religious temperature and the social situations of Bonhoeffer’s times provided a context for the German people, the churches and the nation to identify religion with patriotism - to devastating effect.

It is not difficult to initiate a dialogue between Bonhoeffer and the scriptures. The scriptures governed and gave meaning to his life. He was an apostle of the Sermon on the Mount and he measured the success or failure of his life by the Beatitudes.

As preparation for a consideration of the Beatitudes, we can look at the book of Isaiah, the prophet of the holiness of God, the prophet of the sacred In Chapter 6 of Isaiah we read of his call in the Temple that tells of his sense of sinfulness but also his willingness to be God’s messenger. Isaiah describes the gifts of the Spirit that will be poured out on the true Son of David: wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, and fear of the Lord. Bonhoeffer was to learn that this gift of fear was not one of fearfulness; rather it was a gift of awe. He said that he began to realize that while the Sermon on the Mount made us aware of how sinful we are he understood that Jesus intended us to live the precepts of the Sermon. The community of disciples who lived the Sermon would image the hopes of Isaiah about the time when true justice and peace would reign, when “all the world will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.�

St. Paul was a disciple of the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. One of his most impassioned pieces of writing on this theme is his quasi-diatribe against the Galatians for their failure to follow through in practice what he had preached to them. He is eloquent about the sinful consequences of this infidelity which could lead to a community tearing itself to pieces. He then moves on to a language of the Spirit and of the fruits of the Spirit that include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It can rightfully be said that Bonhoeffer embraced the teachings of Isaiah and Paul as a summary of the Beatitudes.

The other discovery that Bonhoeffer made that has important implications for our spiritual lives is what he called “costly grace�, that is, God’s help that enables us to live up to Jesus’ teaching. The ability to live a life, even a virtuous life, without the cross and the incarnate Jesus or to live virtuously for self but not for one’s neighbor was, for him, grace but merely “cheap grace�.

Taking up the cross, in both joys and sorrows in a way that showed love for God and neighbour, was true discipleship that demanded costly grace.

When this spirituality was applied to the Christian church, especially the EKD, as a whole, he realised that the church exists only when it is exists for others. This became increasingly evident to him when he experienced first hand the arrogant principles of the Third Reich and its persecution of the Jews. In order for Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, to stay open for worship, the Third Reich demanded that they not protest or interfere with the government. To keep the Catholic churches open and safe, Pope Pius XI signed the 1933 Concordat agreeing to not interfere with the Nazi government thus effectively silencing the Catholic voice. To control the Protestant churches, Hitler appointed Ludwig Muller as a bishop to head the first ever national church of Germany. According to Bonhoeffer, the issue facing the Christian churches under Hitler was not that they have freedom to preach the Gospel or keep their doors open but that the Church stand by the victims of the Reich through action.

The movie takes us through Bonhoeffer’s life and his spiritual growth. We see him discover the Beatitudes. We hear quotations from his lectures and writings that show the profound affect the Gospels made on him. The Beatitudes led him to pacifism but, in an extraordinary paradox, they taught him that justice was not passive. This led him to the plot against Hitler and his imprisonment and hanging.

When Bonhoeffer wrote his Ethics (published in English in 1955), he knew that he was not exploring abstract concepts or elaborating rules on conduct. He was exploring the Sermon on the Mount as it related to life-situations to discover how the will of God would be revealed among the possibilities of action open to us.

1. Bonhoeffer’s early life with his family, his education, the First World War, the influence of his brother’s death, and decision to study theology?

2. Bonhoeffer’s decision to study in New York; the influence of the African American Christian church on Bonhoeffer’s theology and spirituality; his return to Germany and the rise of Nazism; his grace concern over the “Jewish question� and his speech on the radio criticizing Hitler that is cut off?

3. His decision to join in the resistance against Hitler; his travels to other countries and pleas for help that end in failure; his decision to join in the attempt to assassinate Hitler; his failure, capture, time in prison, and execution?

4. Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation was about the church as community and he titled it Sanctorum Comunio – the communion of saints. Bonhoeffer wrote, “Christ is really only present in the community. The church is the presence of Christ just as Christ is the presence of God.� He expressed his faith and understanding about Christ in what we would call today a “theology of communio� or “incarnation� because he held that “God expects us to be in relationship to others if we are to be fully human.� To Bonhoeffer, a new community meant a new humanity and within this community is the church. Bonhoeffer soon came to the conclusion that social consciousness and the Christianity of real, everyday life had to be integrated in order to be “church� in the modern world. Do you agree with Bonhoeffer’s conclusion? Why or why not?

5. The Sermon on the Mount, according to Bonhoeffer, had become an excuse for his co-believers not to act. Why? Because the practice of the Beatitudes equalled perfection and perfection was impossible to attain so there was no reason to bother trying. Bonhoeffer saw that this attitude created, in practice, a dichotomy between the religious life of the people and political life. To counter this growing rift between faith and life, he consistently taught – and lived – a radical Christian life that sounded like an oxymoron but which in reality integrated faith and life: “for the sake of real people the church must be thoroughly worldly…. Real secularity consists in the church being able to renounce all privileges and all property but never Christ’s Word and the forgiveness of sins. With Christ and the forgiveness of sins to fall back on, the church is free to give up everything else.� What does Christian perfection mean to you? Does it mean to love without limit or to follow all that Jesus taught to the letter? Is it possible to strive for perfection? Is it worth the effort? Why? What do the Beatitudes mean to you? What examples do we have in the lives of holy people in contemporary church history that support Bonhoeffer’s approach to living the Beatitudes?

6. Bonhoeffer used to say, “…it is not only my task to look after the victims of madmen who drive a motorcar down a crowded street, but to do all in my power to stop their driving at all.� The believer, therefore, is called to live the Beatitudes in action and in relation to others in order to be blessed. There was no beatitude for a Christian without action in the world. This was the source of his ethics and his morality: to promote human dignity and social justice in solidarity with all people in the name of Christ. However, many people debate how he shifted from pacifism to becoming part of the attempt to assassinate Hitler. Research the Church’s position on pacifism, pre-emptive war, violence, love for our brothers and sisters whoever they may be. Bonhoeffer’s decision must not have been reached easily. Talk about what you would have done if you had been a Christian in Germany from the rise of Hitler through the end of World War II and knew that people, your neighbors, were being systematically exterminated.