Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906-9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and German Resistance leader during World War II.
Biography[]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau, Silesia, German Empire (present-day Wroclaw, Poland) on 4 February 1906, and he studied in the United States before becoming a theology lecturer at the University of Berlin and an ordained Lutheran pastor in 1931. He was a key founding member of the Confessional Church, and he wrote influential works on Christianity's role in the secular world, including the classic The Cost of Discipleship. He also became a member of the peaceful and religious German Resistance movement under Nazi Germany, criticizing the Nazi Party's euthanasia program and the Holocaust. Bonhoeffer was imprisoned by the Gestapo in April 1943, and he was later transferred to the Flossenburg concentration camp. Bonhoeffer was wrongly accused of having a role in the 20 July plot of 1944, and he was executed by hanging at Flossenburg on 9 April 1945 at the age of 39.