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Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Harder, Cameron

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister. By Martin Doblmeier. Documentary film. Produced by Journey Films, 2003. 90 minutes. $24.95 (DVD); $19.95 (VHS). www.journeyfilms.com.

This descriptive documentary uses the dramatic details of Bonhoeffer s personal life to draw a nuanced picture of the struggle between the Nazi state and the German church. Bonhoeffer himself appears somewhat sporadically, especially at the beginning. His early life, his deep disappointment with the Confessing Church, his illness and subsequent courtship of nursemaid Maria, life in prison and the harrowing trip from Tegel prison to Flossenburg-these appear only in broad strokes or not at all. The passion and personal drama of Bonhoeffer's life are muted. In this regard the 2001 made-for-TV drama Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace does a better job. A video introduction to Bonhoeffer's life would best include both films.

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That said, the film does a fine job of placing Bonhoeffer in context. It sets Earth's critique of Germany's World War I "tribal god" against excellent footage of Hitler resurrecting that god for World War II. Doblmeier documents Hitler's appeal to a people living in the shame and poverty of postWorld War I reparations with widespread loss of faith in God. He draws on archival footage of Hitler's passionate vision for Germany's spiritual renewal: "The German people are no longer people of disgrace, without faith. No, God, the German people have become strong again in their spirit, strong in their will. Lord, we do not let you go. Now bless our struggle, our liberty and with that our German people and our fatherland." Doblmeier shows how Hitler hooks into German grief over the loss of the monarchy (a loss that the churches especially deplored) by presenting himself as the beloved "leader" who would remove democracy and its rule by mob. And he shows how Hitler effectively casts the Jews as the planners and architects of war.

Reducing attention to Bonhoeffer allows other characters to emerge as independent actors rather than Bonhoeffer satellites. Earth's role in the Barmen Confession is contrasted to the concordat with the Nazis signed by the (future) Pope Pius XII on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. Niemuller's role as protest leader, Hans von Dohnanyi and Klaus Bonhoeffer's organization of the resistance receive their own attention.

The documentary includes an interesting group of interviewees, including Maria's sister, Ruth Alice von Bismarck. Ruth Alice offers the touching description of Maria leaving Bonhoeffer after their first meeting in prison and then running back to embrace him before the guards can intervene. Sometimes the insights of one interviewee are contrasted quietly, the difference almost unnoticed, against the views of another. One professor's statement that Luther's anti-Semitism fed the holocaust is placed without comment against another's insistence that Luther opposed the Jews on faith grounds only, but that it was the Nazis who added the racial component.

Doblmeier is not hesitant to point out the ambiguities in Bonhoeffer's life-his refusal to conduct the funeral of his twin sister's Jewish father-in-law, his flight to New York to avoid Nazi censure, his admonition to his Finkenwalde students not to marry followed by his courtship of Maria, his very rare direct references to Nazi injustice in his writing and teaching, and so on. However, it slides over the question of his switch from pacifism to assassination conspirator. It does not deal well with the question of how doing evil to one to stop evil to many can witness to the reign of a God that is truly and completely good. The question is simply referred to Bonhoeffer's "situational" ethics-the need to discover the will of God in the concrete now.

All in all, the film makes its best contribution as an insightful introduction to Bonhoeffer s context, rather than to his life and theology.

CAMERON HARDER

Lutheran Theological Seminary

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Harder, Cameron

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