Dietrich Bonhoeffer

German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident (1906–1945)

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Lived 1906–1945, aged 39Germany

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Wikipedia
62 languages
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Era
1906–1945
Aged 39
Awards
1
recognised work

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

A Lutheran pastor who wrote one of modern Christianity's most-read books, then joined a conspiracy to kill Hitler and was hanged for it three weeks before Germany surrendered.

Biography

About

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born 4 February 1906 in Germany and became a neo-orthodox theologian and founding member of the Confessing Church. His 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship became a modern classic, reshaping how Christians thought about faith in the secular world. He opposed the Nazi dictatorship openly — challenging the euthanasia program and the genocidal persecution of Jews when silence was safer. The Gestapo arrested him in April 1943 and held him at Tegel Prison for a year and a half before transferring him to Flossenbürg concentration camp. Accused of ties to the 20 July plot to ass…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

said25 May 1944

How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge.

— Letter to Eberhard Bethge (25 May 1944), Letters and papers from Prison (1997), p. 311

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

said9 Apr 1938

Your Yes to God demands your No to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and the poor, to all godlessness and mocking of the holy.

— "The Gift of Faith" (9 April 1938), in The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012), p. 203

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

said1937

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares.

— p 43

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

said1937