During the harsh winter of 1939-40 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Bethge, and eight candidates for ministry in the Confessing Church lived and studied together during the tenth and final session of Bonhoeffer’s seminary work. This was one of Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church’s shining moments. There was no prestige to be gained, no careers to be [...]
The Mysterious Mary Bosanquet
We know very little about Mary Bosanquet, who wrote the first Bonhoeffer biography. Her lively book, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, published in 1968, is filled, however, with a rich vein of primary source material. We do know that Bosanquet, writing in the mid-1960s, had earlier become friends with Sabine Leibholz, Bonhoeffer’s twin sister, [...]
Topics:
Women in Bonhoeffer’s Life
Aufbrücke zu neuen Ufern
Contemporary Church History Quarterly, Volume 21, Number 3 (September 2015) Review of Heike Springhart, Aufbrücke zu neuen Ufern: Der Beitrag von Religion und Kirche für Demokratisierung und Reeducation im Westen Deutschlands nach 1945(Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt, 2008), 360 pages. ISBN: 9783374026128. By Victoria J. Barnett, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum The immediate aftermath of World War [...]
Maria von Wedemeyer: Hiding in Plain Sight
While researching Dietrich Bonhoeffer and women, I was tantalized by a line from Maria’s sister Ruth-Alice von Bismarck in Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer: 1943-45: “In 1974 … She [Maria] also gave an interview about her relationship with Bonhoeffer for a television documentary.” (354)An interview? Why had [...]
Topics:
Women in Bonhoeffer’s Life
Alice Bond 
A Death Row Inmate Finds Common Ground With Theologians
A lot of convicted felons find God while in prison. Some of their stories rise to the level of literature — Oscar Wilde, Malcolm X. Others are less sincere; parole boards around the country are treated to a lot of conversion stories. Few are anything like Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, who is scheduled on Monday [...]
Topics:
Political Life and Theology