Bonhoeffer’s loves

Charles Marsh has written a moving, melancholy portrait of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor executed in a concentration camp two months before World War II ended in Europe.

With both empathy and a critical eye, Marsh traces Bonhoeffer’s mercurial existence. He was a brilliant theologian who never found a regular university appointment. He was in love with a man who returned his ardor only in part. He was always restless, geographically, ecclesiastically, and theologically. He was an exuberant traveler who found beauty and meaning in both Catholic Rome and black Harlem. He rejected the regnant liberalism of early 20th-century German Protestantism, found both inspiration and a sparring partner in Karl Barth, and eventually looked to a “religionless” Christianity beyond the church.

Bonhoeffer spent most of his formative years in Berlin and in a country home in the Harz Mountains in central Germany. The son of a teacher and a professor of neurology and psychology, he lived for many years a privileged, even spoiled existence. Bonhoeffer was the ideal companion for a visit to an art gallery, an evening at the opera, a night of fine dining and drink, or a vacation almost anywhere. His aristocratic vanities sometimes drove others to distraction.