Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of death and religious discrimination. 

The Introduction to Life Together is written by the translator: John W. Doberstein. Doberstein begins with Bonhoeffer’s death. He writes that on April 9, 1945, “in the concentration camp at Flossenburg, shortly before it was liberated by the allied forces, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by special order of Heinrich Himmler” (7). Doberstein goes on to say that Bonhoeffer lived for Christ, paying the ultimate price he could while on Earth: his death.

Bonhoeffer was one of seven children; he was born in Breslau but grew up in Berlin. His father was “the first to occupy a chair of psychiatry in Germany” (8). He also taught Bonhoeffer about realism, which was a large part of Bonhoeffer’s belief system, as reflected in his writing. He wrote of this in his last letter from prison, explaining that his father taught him that realism is “turning away from the phraseological to the real” (8). Bonhoeffer wrote that it was at his father’s side that he realized that his faith must go beyond the intellectual realm and be realized in his actions.

Bonhoeffer was also greatly influenced by the teachings of Martin Luther, best known for catalyzing the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Doberstein describes the young Bonhoeffer as an inquisitive and bright theological student with a keen “insight into Luther’s forthright realism” (9). Throughout Life Together, Martin Luther’s influence on Bonhoeffer is evident, as he is the most quoted figure in the book, aside from the various authors of the Bible.

Doberstein examines the early years of Bonhoeffer’s career, which took place in many countries. He cites Bonhoeffer as having traveled to Barcelona in 1928, back to Berlin in 1929, and then to New York in 1930. By the mid-1930s, Bonhoeffer was “preparing to visit Gandhi in India through the meditation of C.F. Andrews to pursue an interest in pacifism” (10). However, he changed his mind when he received a call from a friend to take charge of “an ‘illegal’ clandestine seminary for the training of young pastors in Pomerania” (10). Bonhoeffer’s encounters with people from many different countries ultimately influenced his doctrine.

Bonhoeffer was but a few years into his career as a pastor when Hitler came to power. In 1933, he broadcast a lecture over the radio in Berlin “in which he flayed the German public for hankering after a ‘leader’ who would inevitably become a ‘misleader’ so long as he did not clearly refuse to become the idol of the led” (10). The broadcast was cut off before he could finish, and Bonhoeffer became a targeted enemy of the Nazis. In 1935, he moved to emergency-built housing that he shared with 25 vicars. It was there, in this underground seminary, that Bonhoeffer wrote both Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship.

One moment in Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Nazi regime would prove especially pivotal: his decision to return to Germany in 1939. He had returned to the United States for a brief time, and when he told his colleagues there that he must return to Germany, they begged him to stay and teach in America instead. Once again, Bonhoeffer refused to remain overseas and instead boarded the ship that would take him back to Germany, where, just a few years later, he would be hanged for his part in the resistance against Hitler. 

Doberstein writes that Bonhoeffer initially considered himself a pacifist but eventually concluded that if he saw what was right and chose not to do it, he would be committing a sin. He therefore joined a group that was working to overthrow Hitler and was eventually arrested alongside his sister and brother-in-law in 1943. While Bonhoeffer was imprisoned, the guards let him minister to some of the other prisoners and preserved his letters and other pieces of writing; his last “weeks were spent with men and women of many nationalities, Russians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, and Germans” (15). When the time came for him to be hanged in 1945, Bonhoeffer went peacefully, telling an English officer in the prison that even though this was the end of his life on Earth, it was only the beginning of his eternal life.