Bonhoeffer (2003) | Full Movie | Martin Doblmeier | Klaus Maria Brandauer | Adele Schmidt

oh we have been silent witnesses of evil deeds we have been drenched by many storms we have learned the art of equivocation and pretense experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open are we still of any use dietrich i think the most important thing that my uncle did was to realize from the start how evil nazism was then i think how brave it was of this small group of people to think that they could fight together with other companions this monstrous machine and that they were prepared to give their lives to do this you can almost sense that eventually he is going to somehow do something to put a spoke in the wheel of the third reich he could have such a very deep faith in god even in the midst of incredible darkness he was so clever and he knew so well theology and he knew all the points in which i was a weak man i like chocolate and he would bring me chocolate he was my best friend dietrich bonhoeffer was born in breslau germany february 1906 10 minutes before his twin sister sabina he was the sixth of eight children and the youngest boy his father carl bonhoeffer was a renowned psychiatrist and professor at the university of berlin his mother paula van gaasa came from a prominent family her grandfather was a chaplain of the prussian court until he chastised the emperor for his attitude towards the poor and was dismissed the bonhoeffer home was in grunervald a privileged district on the outskirts of berlin when the world war one broke out in 1914 the german churches unanimously supported the war effort they were fully convinced by the propaganda that this war had been imposed on germany by her encircling enemies out of a sense of envy who wanted to stop the german developments and german cultural and spiritual and political expansion they automatically became enthusiastic believers that indeed god was on their side dietrich's older brother walter volunteered for the front he was 18. on the night before walter's departure the bonhoeffer family gathered to say goodbye dietrich's twin sister remembered the evening guitris had on his own initiative practiced the song now at last we say god speed on your journey and in the evening before walter left he played it for him the next day we saw walter off at the station when the train started moving my mother run alongside calling out to walter it's only space that separates us and for a long time those words moved us deeply a fortnight later walter was killed it was a time bonhoeffer wrote when death stood before the door of almost every house and called for entrance the millions of men returned from the war totally disillusioned and regarding the religious establishment of the bunch of hypocrites the churches suffered a tremendous loss of credibility and therefore of support i think the the death of walter certainly had a part of an influence on him to enter the ministry and to study theology where he would deal directly with the reality of death it gave him a passion when he preached against war and when he became a known advocate of the pacifist solution to the problems of the world world war one left germany and much of europe in ruins for the allies the peace treaty was designed to assure that germany would never again bring the world to war for many germans the terms were national humiliation in the years that followed the monarchy was gone replaced by a fragile democracy and germany became a nation of contrasts and change in berlin professors lawyers and doctors often gathered around the bonhoeffer table for debates about politics carl bonhoeffer was an ardent supporter of the new weimar government the bonhoeffer family held deep political convictions but it was not very religious so when dietrich announced his plans to study theology the family reacted with some shock the bonifa family is a very very conservative used to be a very conservative family but conservative in the best way you know in the sense of being open for everything new but never lose the roots where you're coming from you know and never lose the values you are coming from what you need to understand i think about bonifa in terms of the church was that his experience of the church as he grew up here in germany during the weimar period it wasn't a very positive one i mean the family seldom went to church the boniface weren't great church goers uh and even bonifa himself when even after he decided to be a theologian a pastor didn't often go to church um and the reason was that uh well the church well you know it's important i suppose but uh you know you're an individual christian and uh and so forth and the church is a society of people who belong together and perhaps worship from time to time no sense of real fundamental community in which you discover who you really are in your relationship with other people and discover that that's the reality of christ existing in the world today in 1924 bonhoeffer began his studies in theology at the university of berlin it was a time when theology was being re-examined against the horrors of the great war and a young swiss theologian carl bart was gaining fame carl bart's great observation was every part of the conflicting parties in the first world war reclaimed god for themselves made of the one christian god a tribal god of german british french people and so on this was a catastrophe for christianity i think that what barth was aiming his theology against in the aftermath of the great war was the human pretentiousness that uh what human beings contrived to do would have god's blessing boris's insistence on the primacy of god's word as the dominating judge of all human behavior and as the source of all revelation and therefore as the inner core of what a church is supposed to be please bonhoeffer very much at the age of 21 bonhoeffer received his doctorate summa [ __ ] laude in his thesis bonhoeffer defined the church as the physical manifestation of christ on earth christ existing as community he titled it sanctorum communio the communion of saints carl bart later called sanctorum communio a theological miracle christ is really present only in the community the church is the presence of christ just as christ is the presence of god but our church today is bourgeois the best proof is that poor working classes have turned away from the church whereas the bourgeois the petty officials the artisans and the merchants have remained when the community is split is christ himself divided it's it's astounding really that he was only 21 when he got his doctoral dissertation finished he got involved in writing this dissertation not primarily about the church but primarily about human community from a christian perspective god intends us to be in relationship with others if we're going to be fully human god's desire was not just for a whole bunch of individuals who happened to be christian but for a new community a new humanity and within that context bonifa wanted to locate the church as the means to that end but the notion of church as a way to create community was set against the growing anger on the streets of germany the late 1920s were a time of economic and political uncertainty massive unemployment and mounting inflation some called for the reinstatement of the monarchy others for a communist revolution the chaos provided the ideal climate for a new party of hardline nationalists that appealed both to industrial leaders and the working class the national socialists led by adolf hitler in september 1930 as hitler continued his rise dietrich bonhoeffer sailed aboard the columbus for new york feel the way my heart keeps noticing the roaring 20s were over and america was descending into a widespread depression i'm in the seventh heaven it's easy to guess my baby says yes i know i've just thrown a gravy bonhoeffer came to new york on a teaching fellowship to union theological seminary in upper manhattan initially bonhoeffer was disturbed by the casual classroom style which was very different from the more rigid german approach at union he studied under reinhold niebuhr who often used the work of contemporary black writers to teach theology reinhold nebor is considered by many to be the father of social ethics in this country he achieved fame because of the way he was able to criticize the social ills of the united states offer practical solutions therefore it's surprising when we read in bonhoeffer's uh journal that uh he didn't like reinhold nebor what he found lacking uh was the christocentrism that he had come to admire in carl barth and that of course became the centerpiece of his own writings at this time but later a lot of what nebor was driving at came to enter into bonhoeffer's own way of thinking that the purpose of theology the purpose of ethics is to change this world for the better at union seminary bonhoeffer began a friendship with franklin fischer one of union's few black students fisher introduced bonhoeffer to harlem's abyssinian baptist church it was unlike anything bonhoeffer had ever experienced it was a large impressive stone building which uh had in its membership great pride that this was not a building worn out by white people and then sold to blacks it was a building which they built for themselves and it was just as big and just as impressive as any building that any white church had ever built they had the best of preaching a man like adam clayton powell senior was a towering giant in a pulpit as well as a physically towering giant with a mane of gray hair at abyssinian bonhoeffer discovered a community encouraged by powell to be emotional in the expression of their faith and he witnessed for the first time the political and social engagement of a church powell reflected the the fact that throughout his history the black church the black pulpit had had social conscience so here was a man of considerable intelligence uh and training a man of real passion solid biblical commitment who was also involved in the social issues of his time the political issues of his time bonhoeffer wrote home to his family i have had the chance to hear the gospels preached in black churches here one can truly speak and hear about sin and grace in the love of god even forms we are not used to in contrast to the often didactic style of white preaching the black christ is breached with rapturous passion and vision bonhoeffer also wrote that in america blacks sing before audiences of whites who applaud them wildly yet still deny them equal rights over the next months bonhoeffer taught sunday school in harlem and he bought recordings of his favorite spirituals apparently he did not come across as a kind of arrogant eternalistic know-it-all kind of guy but someone who was eager to learn and humbled by the experience about what he did not fully understand recognizing that there was something quite profound at work in the church bonhoeffer began a friendship with another union student that marked his life jean-lucere was a deeply committed pacifist and in the post-world war one era when friendships between french and germans were rare the two became close lesser told bonhoeffer nothing in scriptures gives a christian the right to destroy the body of christ the simple reading of the sermon on the mount compels one who is sincere to to refuse to take part in in the war because almost everything a man does in warfare is contrary to the gospel and to the ethics of the gospel and the drama is that for centuries the churches have said well but on the level of the country and defending the country the gospel ethics is suspended we are authorized not to respect it and that was the point of our discussions i suppose if you had to ask people about what is christianity all about some would say it's putting into practice what jesus taught in the sermon on the mount the question then is well how does one love one's enemy what does it mean that the blessed are the poor for they all inherit the earth and those kinds of things what does all this mean in traditional german lutheranism the sermon on the mount was so impossible for anybody to keep that the way in which it was handled traditionally was to say that sermon on the mountain made us aware of how sinful we are because we just can't do any of that lesser helps bonifa to understand that the sermon on the mount isn't simply something to make us feel sinful something to put into practice now this stayed with bonifa for from that time onwards which was quite a fresh thought that jesus actually intended us to live like this while in america bonhoeffer read accounts of the mounting economic crisis in germany seven million unemployed that is 15 or 20 million people hungry i don't know how germany or the individual will survive it will our church survive yet another catastrophe one wonders will it not really be the end unless we become something completely different in the summer of 1931 bonhoeffer left america and returned home hitler often spoke about the almighty and the almighty was behind the scenery of the destiny of the german people ah so this was a completely ideological god who justified the own estimations and own expectations of the people who justified the exclusion of others who justified the idea of a superiority of the german people republic foreign on january 30th 1933 adolf hitler became chancellor of germany focus yes foreign foreign two days later as germany continued celebrating its new leader bonhoeffer spoke by radio to a national audience he was three days shy of his 27th birthday yet he delivered one of the first public criticisms of the new chancellor in a speech entitled the younger generation's changed view of the concept of furor should the leader allow himself to succumb to the wishes of those he leads who will always seek to turn him into an idol then the image of the leader will become the image of the misleader this is the leader who makes the idol of himself and his office and thus marks god before bonhoeffer could finish his talk the broadcast was cut off in march hitler celebrated the start of spring and the reopening of the newly elected reichstag at the historic garrison church in potsdam the event was to symbolize the start of a new nation built on traditional values there is no doubt that a great many church people fell for this they wanted to have this kind of leadership they were desperately anxious to get the churches back into the mainstream of national life how could they restore their credibility how could they restore their congregations throughout its history the protestant church of germany was comprised of independent regional churches growing out of the new nationalism nazi sympathizers helped to establish the first united reich church of germany when reich bishop ludwig mueller was installed he announced in his sermon that the struggle for the church was over that the struggle for the soul of the people had just begun and i think that was the struggle in which the church found itself as of january 30th 1933 whether it was aware of this or not that it was doing battle with an ideological dictatorship a totalitarian regime that really wasn't interested in preserving the christian church it was interested in maintaining its own ideology and gaining total control as hitler enjoyed growing support within the churches bonhoeffer continued to teach theology in berlin until hmm of the hindi foreign please oh oh bonhoeffer's grandmother julie toffel refused to comply with the jewish boycott and that day went to her usual shops the nazi men sr troops stormtroopers which stood there before it and were supposed not to let the people go in this 90 year old woman they just couldn't do anything against her they didn't hold her up and they came out again then with her with their shopping and said i buy there where i always used to buy my things tito's mother was very very keen on the church to do something she asked dietrich and his friend what is a is the church going to do the church has got to do something about the jewish question one week after the boycott the nazis instituted the aryan paragraph new laws that prohibited people of jewish ancestry from holding positions in civil service for many the laws only legalized anti-jewish sentiments in the church dating back to martin luther we have to distinguish clearly anti-judaism and anti-semitism it's not in order to give any excuse for the anti-judaistic tradition in christian theology and christian life but we understand the situation of the 20th century only when we really allies that an additional namely racist element came to it lotus anti-judaism is not racist it is an anti-judaism which grows out of faith he sees a conflict of faith between jews and christians and he gives a completely wrong interpretation of it but what comes during the 19th century the identification of a theological conflict with a racist interpretation this brings the dynamic which leads up to the cruelties of the nazi regime soon the climate of anti-semitism affected bonhoeffer directly his twin sister sabina was married to gerhart leipoltz who was of jewish ancestry when gerhart's father died bonhoeffer was asked to preach at the funeral he declined he consulted the church authorities who advised him not to do it obviously they were being very cautious in view of the national socialist policies towards the church and towards the jew at the time bonhoeffer later on was dreadfully ashamed that he had gone along with that advice i am tormented by the thought that i did not do as you asked me as a matter of course to be honest i cannot think what made me behave as i did how could i have been so afraid at the time so all i can do is ask you to forgive my weakness then i know now for certain that there are two have behaved differently deeply against mounting anti-jewish sentiment bonhoeffer delivered a talk to fellow pastors entitled the church and the jewish question in it bonhoeffer issued a direct challenge to the church to stand with the jews we can say that bonifa was one of the first if not the first german evangelical theologian to make a statement of this kind which indicated that the church couldn't stand by and let this happen without doing something about it the church has three possible ways it can act against the state first it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate second it can aid the victims of the state action the church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society even if they do not belong to the christian society the third possibility is not just bandage the victims of the wheel but to gem a spoke in the wheel itself clearly the church in the jewish christian is a watershed moment it's a document in which you can almost sense that eventually he is going to somehow do something to put a spoke in the wheel of the third reich it's so easy to be sucked in by the structures and to be sucked into by a false kind of loyalty and ending up maybe with a false church when god grabs you by the scruff of the neck then although theoretically you have a freedom to say no in another sense actually you can't say no because it's like jeremiah god you have cheated me you called me to be a prophet against the people that i love and all that i proclaim is words of doom and judgment and yet if i say i will shut up i can't in the south of germany where national socialism had its start the majority religion was traditionally roman catholic from the beginning catholic political groups resisted hitler's rise but by the summer of 1933 their fear for the loss of freedoms under a hitler government brought catholic leadership to the negotiation table nazi leaders met with representatives of the vatican including cardinal eugenio pacelli the future pope pius xii together they signed a concordat that promised the catholic church autonomy in exchange for its pledge not to organize against the regime it was one of hitler's first diplomatic victories the concordat undoubtedly provided the new regime with increased status but more importantly it negative the possibility that the catholic church would in fact organize resistance to the regime and unfortunately of course this was because the majority of the bishops catholic bishops assumed that of hitler was a catholic and that he would behave legally and conservatively that was the widespread assumption but the excesses of the nazis the use of force in their pursuit of power and their intrusion into the workings of the church began to disturb even the most loyal protestant pastors martin niemuller a decorated hero in world war one and now a prominent pastor in berlin led a protest particularly against the aryan clause together with bonhoeffer he tapped into a growing resentment of nazi policies and created the pastors emergency league over time more than 7 000 pastors joined yet the majority of the 20 000 pastors refused for bonhoeffer the growing division within the church was deeply troubling he wrote to carl barton i felt that i was in radical opposition to all my friends that my views of matters were taking me more and more into isolation and i saw no reason why i should see these things more correctly than so many able and good pastors to whom i looked up bonhoeffer removed himself from the crisis by accepting a position with a german church in london england he began a friendship with bishop george bell of chichester what they shared in common was a belief in the ecumenical movement both as a way to renew the church and as a way to build a lasting peace with bell's help bonhoeffer received an invitation to travel to india to study non-violent resistance under gandhi back home the gestapo intensified its harassment of dissident pastors and many were jailed hitler youth threw a bomb into the parsonage of martin nemuler after he preached a sermon entitled god is my fuhrer by may 1934 many churchmen had reached a point of decision more than 100 gathered in the city of barman and issued a statement of civil disobedience written principally by carl bart the barman declaration established the basis of a breakaway group known as the confessing church we confessed christ because we were obeying now the barman declaration at no other powers in the church refusing to obey the modern nazified beliefs it is very interesting at baum and nothing is said about the jews at all and when when bonifa comes back uh 18 months later after he had gone to london and becomes involved in the church struggle again in the first instance it's a struggle around the question of the church's freedom to preach the gospel not around the jewish question but then gradually bonifa recognizes that the real question is not the freedom of the church to preach the gospel the real issue is the freedom of the church to actually stand by the victims as the nazis began to remilitarize germany religious leaders from around the world gathered in the seacoast town of fano denmark dietrich bonhoeffer was 28 yet already emerging as one of the leaders in the world ecumenical movement that called for closer collaboration among the faiths bonhoeffer was asked to speak on the church and the people of the world he traveled there with a group of his students including inga zabritsky and otto duchess foreign there is no way to peace along the way of safety for peace has to be dead it is the great venture it can never be safe peace is the opposite of security to demand guarantees is the mistrust and this mistrust in turn brings forth war battles are won not with weapons but with god and bonhoeffer's final reading foreign is my in 1935 the renegade confessing church needed seminaries for the training of new ministers bonhoeffer postponed his planned trip to india and instead accepted the position as director of the seminary near germany's northern coast in a town called finkenvalder i think i'm right in saying that i would only achieve true inner clarity and sincerity by really starting to take the sermon on the mount seriously this is the only source of strength that can blow all this nuns and sky high the restoration of the church will surely come from a new kind of monasticism which will have nothing in common with the old but the life of appearance to the sermon on the mount in imitation of christ i believe the time has come to rally people together for this what bonhoeffer set out to create was a community centered on study mutual service and prayer eberhard baitka who had become bonhoeffer's closest friend was part of that first finkenwalder class you couldn't make a difference between him and the students because he was so young too and looked very strong sporty but he greeted me then and went with me alone first away from the group and asked who i was and where i came from and what i had done and what i had experienced and asked me about my family a way which a professor would never do it was a rather surprising beginning so that was the heart erector and a few days later he asked us not to say hello hector but to say to him brother bonifa porter bernie morgan is now i was very interested in singing and i was teaching them honesty excellent peace in the house of the boniface there was done a lot of music but always in the time of bach and afterbach so hannah schutz and gumbel time and all these that was totally new to him and so it started that we together tried to study in them that in a way was this the beginning of our friendship bonhoeffer used not only classical and traditional sacred music but the spirituals he discovered in harlem were now an important part of life at finkenbaum coming home one person who helped support the seminary was a local aristocrat ruth von kleist our whole family was pious and conservative and so we didn't like the nazi regime our grandmother very soon took us five grandchildren to think wider and so we said in the very primitive chapel everybody was caught by the way dietrich was preaching we hadn't heard this way because he was caught by what he said more than i had ever seen another person grandmother was interested in theology and soon after the service they began to talk and soon a friendship started between her and him and ivar pete and all those people of the seminary during his time at finkenwalder bonhoeffer wrote the book discipleship in it he explored the theme of grace as cheap grace and costly grace cheap grace is grace without the cross grace without the living incarnate jesus christ costly greatness is the gospel it costs people their lives it costs the life of god's son and nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to god for nearly two years the seminary remained open but in september 1937 the is foreign on november 9 1938 a series of coordinated anti-jewish riots broke out across germany and austria it was kristallnacht the knight of broken glass thousands of jewish-owned shops were looted and nearly 300 synagogues were desecrated or destroyed bonhoeffer wrote only he who cries out for the jews may sing gregorian chants but on christal not the confessing church was silent bonhoeffer took refuge at the home of his parents in berlin members of the bonhoeffer family were now deeply involved in the resistance including dietrich's brother klaus and his brothers-in-law rudika schleicher and hans von danani vandanani was a lawyer working in the abv germany's military counterintelligence office so from the beginning he had access to information about nazi atrocities the ob fair secretly became a center for resistance activities and the plots to kill hitler hitler knew that he had enemies particular enemies he knew in the first place that every head of state has enemies every head of government has enemies and must expect some of them to try to kill him so he knew that and he tried to prepare for it he allowed security details to exist and to protect him to follow him in armoured cars and all of that but he also believed that unpredictability was a great uh protection against assassination attacks if no one knew where he was going to be in the next two hours or in the next two days then they couldn't plan an assassination they became political activists because that's what this was the only way of fighting the system many people in those days most likely didn't realize what hitler already did in those days this absolutely stupid and and fanatic racism and uh as a man who knows so much about this and my father knew about all these things you see you had to go against it you know i would be ashamed he wouldn't if he wouldn't have done it by the summer of 1939 carl bart had been expelled from germany martin kneemuller was in a concentration camp and hundreds of clergy were in prison bonhoeffer's friends arranged for him to return to new york and again take a teaching position at union information the killing of the jews well that was well known in the bonifa family and it was so clear that you couldn't just be silent that summer bonhoeffer sailed again for new york this time with grave misgivings the ethical question that people normally ask is what does it mean to do good bonifa never asks that question he says that's the wrong point to start what we've got to ask is and this may sound somewhat anachronistic in our secular age what is the will of god in other words what is required of us at this moment in our lives that we are called to do there's no shaft of light that comes from heaven and says to you okay my son or my daughter you are right you have to hold on to it by the skin of your teeth and and hope that there is going to be vindication on the other side an island is a fact i have made a mistake in coming to america i will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of christian life in germany after the war if i do not share the trials of this time with my people christians in germany will face a terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of the nation and thereby destroying our civilization i know which of these alternatives i must choose but i cannot make that choice in security tricks in september 1939 german troops invaded poland and world war ii began hans von danani was now a leading member of the conspiracy that was planning the assassination of hitler and the creation of a new government for germany he asked his brother-in-law dietrich bonhoeffer to join him my father and dietrich became so close friends and he actually needed dietrich also for certain missions most likely they had very interesting discussions about this because it was a problem and it is a problem especially for somebody who's coming from the very religious side it's a tremendous problem to be part of a complete you know to ask that principal question a christian shall not kill which is true but there are times you are responsible for human beings around you and you have to try to think about all means to stop that man who is killing disability was more as an emissary between the core resistors and the allied forces to get terms of surrender he was also the moral backbone of the german resistance they looked to him for moral guidance to help them overcome some of the scruples that they had because for in most instances they had to violate their military oath they had to lie they had to be duplicitous they had to plan murder they had to kill the head of state and bonhoeffer certainly provided a moral inspiration to them as a member of the ob fair bonhoeffer was given papers to travel outside germany supposedly to gather intelligence for the nazis instead he used the opportunity to meet with his many church contacts and pass on information about the conspiracy bonhoeffer was now a double agent in the plot to kill hitler are living now and not tomorrow and not yesterday but now in your name are people killed and killed and killed and that man you have to stop by all means even then by taking over the guild of killing in the early years of the war the german march seemed unstoppable in may france surrendered the vindication hitler sought for the defeat of germany in world war one had been accomplished and blick often eiffeltone links from fewer professor spear hitler returned home to one of the largest celebrations in the history of berlin shortly after bonhoeffer traveled east to the home of his finkenwalder patron ruth von kleist there he renewed a friendship begun earlier with her granddaughter maria von wiedemeyer bonhoeffer had been advising his seminarians that these were no times to be thinking of getting engaged and getting married and then the next thing we know he is in fact very interested in maria von veda meyer why is that she was a very beautiful woman she was very vivacious very lively i'm sure that bonhoeffer saw in her young as she was a person who would be a good match for him i think both maria and eva and some sense lonely people when she met dietrich again after she had met him just as a child very soon afterwards her father was killed in the war and sometime after was her very very beloved brother and so dietrich started to be for her father and brother this was a help he could console her as bonhoeffer traveled in his dual role as pastor and conspirator he began writing the book he hoped would be his greatest achievement ethics the will of god is not a system of rules established from the outset it is something new and different in each different situation in life and for this reason a man must forever re-examine what the will of god may be the will of god may lie deeply concealed beneath a great number of possibilities one of the things he ends up with is this sense of ethical behavior not as being grounded in a set of principles but in the willingness to open oneself to god and do god's command it's an act of faith i think this is what keeps him going at this point this is how he is operating but even as he is operating this way he's thinking about this all the time well you know if if i'm doing this if i'm living in this way what does that really mean some members of the conspiracy also took part in a plan that eventually helped some 14 jews escape germany vandanani bonhoeffer and others arranged for jews to be enlisted in the ob fair and given papers to travel outside the country pretending to gather information for the nazis the escapees would report back initially but then vanish across europe in 1942 bonhoeffer traveled to sweden to meet again with his friend bishop bell of england bonhoeffer entrusted him with the details about the conspiracy including the names of its key members bonhoeffer asked bell a member of parliament to inform the british government in the hopes the allies would offer support i raised the general question myself in the house of lords i was told the cleansing of germany was a german duty to be performed for its own sake and that no promises in advance could be expected from the allies the silence of the british government was a bitter blow the response was a deep disappointment to the members of the resistance several of their plots to kill hitler had failed and there now seemed to be little hope for support from the outside at christmas 1942 bonhoeffer wrote an essay to his fellow conspirators entitled after 10 years a reflection on a decade under hitler we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below from the perspective of the outcast suspects that are treated short from the perspective of those who suffer mayor waiting and looking on is not christian behavior christians are called to compassion and action his christmas letter to several of his co-conspirators is a remarkable document because there he's really trying to bring it all together what the resistance has meant for them what it has done to them as human beings what it holds for them in terms of hopes or options for the future our purpose as responsible people is not to come out of this looking good it's what kind of world we pass on to future generations by 1943 the allies had already begun to turn the tide of the war many former members of the fink involvement class were now soldiers fighting on the eastern front in berlin the gestapo had become suspicious of certain obvere agents bonhoeffer and vandanani's telephones were tapped despite the danger bonhoeffer proposed to maria von wiedemeyer we have grown together in a different way than we have thought and wished but these are unusual times and will remain sore while longer and everything depends on our being one in the essential things and on our remaining with each other your tea tree there's a very haunting photograph of the bonhoeffer family taken in march 1943 at carl bonhoeffer's 75th birthday where you have the entire family assembled and if you look at the faces of the conspirators these are the faces of people that are really struggling to remain true to their principles and to do what they think is right not knowing whether it's going to succeed and not even knowing if it succeeded if if history will judge them right or not at that same gathering the vandanani group awaited word that a bomb they had planted on a plane had succeeded in killing hitler but the bomb failed to detonate on april 5th 1943 gestapo agents arrived at abvare headquarters and arrested hans vandanani papers in his desk led to dietrich bonhoeffer at about three or four o'clock in the afternoon this father came from the number 43 to the 42 and said it is there two gentlemen who wanted to speak to you you must come over and so did you went over of course always in total discipline being prepared that something like that one day will happen and now it happened i didn't know then but from that moment she wrote every day a letter to him in her diary on the 5th of april when dietrich was taken in prison in this diary words dear dietrich has something bad happened i feel it's something very bad but he didn't know bonhoeffer was taken to tegel prison in berlin the blanket he was given was so dirty that for days he refused to use it yet he wrote to his parents that he was well and expected to be released shortly i want you to be quite sure that i am alright strangely enough the discomforts that one generally associates with the prison life the physical hardship hardly bothered me at all you can imagine that i am most particularly anxious about my vlc at this moment it is a great deal for her to bear here in the prison yard there is a thrush that sings beautifully in the morning when i saw him first time i didn't know how to behave as a how shall i now what i make what a kind of or face should i make when he comes in but when he came in he was just as he always was friendly smiling and making that first seat again each other very easy over time bonhoeffer befriended several of the prison guards their assistance enabled bonhoeffer to exchange correspondence and books with family and friends the family devised a coding system within the books as a way to confirm each other's stories for the interrogations they actually communicated by i think every second page or maybe every page but i think most likely every second page they put under one letter a little dot with a pencil you know and you would have to really look at it and so the the books were allowed to be sent in and to be uh to to get from back from the prison so there was one letter an e a little dot under the e then maybe a page later or two pages later i don't know exactly how it was the pattern and another one letter so you had a whole book for a few sentences you see and this was of course pretty clever and they had time to know exactly how they would communicate because they knew they were in danger the interrogations must have been terrible they were tortured klaus bonhoeffer before he died wrote to his wife and said i can go through anything i'm not afraid of death i just don't want to be interrogated again i think that the ugliness and depravity and brutality of the nazis and the knowledge that bonhoeffer and other members of his family had about what was really going on would have done many people in would have simply immobilized them and one of the most remarkable things for me is how he doesn't become paralyzed how he continues to try again and again and again not just to do the right thing but to think about what this really means in the long term in the universal sense for his church one of the things that bonifa was trying to do in prison was to write a book we have the outline of that book it's there in the papers from prison but we don't have much of the material what we do have is correspondence between him and eberhard betker his friend about the book that he was writing bonhoeffer wrote to baker the church is the church only when it exists for others it must share in the secular problems of ordinary life and it must tell men of every calling what it means to live in christ it goes back to the whole question of the other you see religion had become a very individualistic thing as a result of the enlightenment uh and a very uh a thing between you and god okay and something that you kept separate from politics that's what it was and that's not what christianity is about dietrich was already three months in present when for the first time maria was allowed to see him but the judge wanted to be present and they only told him one minute before when he came in and maria came from the other side and they were taught to sit down on a little sofa and not to touch and to talk loudly so that the others could understand what they talked and so after half an hour i can't imagine what they talk but perhaps not so important things then each of them had to go out dietrich at the one door at maria at the other door and when they arrived at the doors maria turned on her heels and ran to him before anybody could stop her and put her arms around his neck one of my predecessors he has scribed the cell door in 100 years it will be over i am reading the bible straight through from cover to cover and i have just got as far as job which i am particularly fond of i read the psalms every day as i have four years i know them and love them more than any other book as the war continued into 1944 bonhoeffer became more and more resigned to his situation again he began working on his book ethics one of the things he says in ethics is that the old kind of ethics doesn't work anymore that the rules have changed so radically under nazism that the only thing someone can do really is throw themselves on the mercy of god and do what they think is right and follow it through and that's what you see him doing on july 20th 1944 the resistance launched its final attempt to assassinate adolf hitler colonel klaus von stauffenberg carried a bomb contained in a briefcase into a meeting with hitler and his generals in east prussia monstaffenburg armed the device in a room next to the meeting i was able to activate only half the explosives in the case when stauffenberg walked into the room he asked an aide to place him near hitler so that he could follow everything that was being said because his hearing was somewhat impaired through having been wounded in north africa and he was placed about two persons away from hitler it seems that after he had left someone shoved the briefcase further under the table under the great map table which was very had a very heavy table top and that may have protected hitler somewhat the bomb destroyed the bunker killing many of the officers but hitler was only wounded after the explosion and after hitler had survived the explosion uh hitler was of course at first furious and elated then furious again but he was very much elated and he said it's a miracle it's a miracle i've survived i'm invulnerable hitler vowed to kill all the members of the conspiracy the fate of vandanani and bonhoeffer was effectively sealed who am i i have been told that i suffer the days of misfortune with serenity smiles and pride there's someone accustomed to victory am i really what others say about me why am i only what i know of myself be deviled by anxiety awaiting great events that might never occur fearfully powerless and worried for friends far away weary and empty in prayer thinking doing weak and ready to take leave of it all who am i they mock me these lonely questions of mine whoever i am you know me oh god you know i am yes by april 1945 berlin was in total ruin despite the fact the war was lost the order was given to kill the remaining members of the resistance group including bonhoeffer bonhoeffer was moved south to flossenburg concentration camp upon arriving he was brought before a court martial witnesses say he did not offer a defense for himself he was found guilty and condemned to death on the morning of april 9 1945 dietrich bonhoeffer was marched naked to the gallows and hanged he said this is the end for me the beginning of life on the same day his brother-in-law hans van dini was executed shortly after his brother klaus and brother-in-law rudiker schleicher were also killed with dietrich we always had still hope that he might come back but then i think it was in june my grandparents switched on the news from the bbc and then they suddenly heard they had a service in memory of dietrich borneva and that was the way how we how we came to know that he was dead i do never forget the expression of her face when she said what dietrich is dead this is perhaps the most important letter to me which he wrote on the 21st of july the day after the plot had failed 44. i discovered later that i'm still discovering right up to this moment that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith by this worldliness i mean living unreservedly in life's duties problems successes and failures in so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of god taking seriously not our own sufferings but those of god in the world that i think is faith foreign you

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Keywords: Christian Videos, Christian Films, Christian Movies, Religious Movies, Films, Movies, Entertainment, Feature Films, Martin Doblmeier, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Adele Schmidt, Bonhoeffer full movie, Bonhoeffer movie, Bonhoeffer feature film, Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer 2003 Full Movie, Bonhoeffer trailer, Bonhoeffer official trailer, Documentary, Biography, History, Religion, Pacifism, theology, Nazi Resistance, liberation theology, First Run Features, Journey Films, German, English

Id: _9vqxljH6Ok

Length: 92min 7sec (5527 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020