Shortly before he was hanged by the Nazis in 1945 at age 39, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reportedly told a fellow prisoner: “This is the end — for me the beginning of life.”
It was – more than he knew.
Even as the German theologian — a Lutheran — was anticipating eternal life in heaven, his death marked the beginning of his ever-growing reputation as a martyr and hero to the cause of anti-Nazi resistance.
Churches worldwide commemorate him in statues and stained glass. Readers have explored him in books about and by him, particularly his blunt calls to sacrificial discipleship. “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” he famously
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