Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh (Knopf, $35)
Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45)? Theologian, Protestant martyr, German Lutheran pastor, musician, poet, fiction writer, anti-Nazi spy, key founding member of the Confessing Church that led Christian opposition to the Nazi government, and according to author Charles Marsh, probably a homosexual. All of this is detailed in the comprehensive, meticulously researched, and at times tedious new interpretation of his extraordinary life, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer .
The pampered son of a rich German family (his father was the dean of the German psychiatric establishment), Bonhoeffer announced at 13 that he wanted to become a theologian. When his atheist brothers said that the church was not only irrelevant but also an obstacle to promoting equality and human rights, Dietrich replied, "In that case, I shall reform it."
One of the virtues of Marsh's book is that he does not engage in the hagiography of previous biographers; he's willing to present a very human portrait. Bonhoeffer was brilliant, an incisive writer and thinker, multi-talented in several disciplines, but also a dandy, preoccupied with clothes, lazy in terms of physical work, emotionally needy, snobbish at times, and self-occupied, with a temper. For almost his entire life, he lived off his parent's money. They bankrolled his extended travelling and received packages of his dirty laundry to be cleaned. He wrote at least three spiritual classics still revered today – The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together, and Letters and Papers from Prison – in a 16-volume canon, astonishing considering he only lived to be 39.
He is probably the closest Protestants have come to a bona fide saint, though flawed. He led a life of privilege during a time of economic turmoil in Germany after WWI, yet expressed solidarity with the poor and oppressed. A staunch opponent of the Nazis from the very beginning (he went on radio two days after Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933 to denounce him), he also defended the Jews when it was an unpopular and dangerous stance. He preached radical discipleship inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, which he believed could only be lived out in community. He was a sharp critic of liberal German Protestantism, whose nationalism and tendency to see God as a projection of human need and longing, he felt, left it helpless to combat Nazism. He founded an underground seminary, Finkenwalde, for dissident pastors in training. Much of his theological writings centered around the question of whether Christianity could still be vital for people who had found better ways to spend their Sunday mornings, still a relevant question today.
He coined the phrase "religionless Christianity," meaning not a faith devoid of God, but a God unshackled by human philosophical constructs, leading to a renewal of Christianity centered on action. It wasn't until after his yearlong professorship at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1930 that he reevaluated his theological training as being too abstract, having been influenced by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and his social ethics, as well as the preaching of the black spiritual tradition. Marsh felt his finest work came during his two years in prison, an incredible output unshackled to convention, with the freedom to indulge in "trial combinations" and "lightning flashes" of spiritual insight. Despite being a pacifist, he was also at the fringes of a German military intelligence plot to murder Hitler, which ultimately led to his execution by hanging in a concentration camp in April 1945, two weeks before it was liberated by the Allies.
Yet this book is the center of a storm of controversy as Marsh contends Bonhoeffer was gay, though celibate. In Finkenwalde's first class in 1935 was a seminarian named Eberhard Bethge, who became inseparable with Bonhoeffer, as "they knew each other down to the most minute detail of their behavior, opinions, interests, abilities, and innate characteristics." They shared a bank account, signed Christmas cards together, slept in the same bedroom in Bonhoeffer's parent's home, fussed over Christmas gifts they gave as a couple, took elaborate vacations together, wrote intimate letters to each other daily, often in emotional language. Bonhoeffer regularly sent Bethge presents, and in his will left all his belongings and writings to Bethge. Critics of Marsh disapprove of the "scandalous overtones" to what they claim is a same-sex friendship that was intense due to the extreme times in which they lived, and intimate but not sexual, arguing this was the language of the period.
There is no smoking gun per se, with most of the evidence circumstantial, but the situation is complicated by the fact that after WWII, Bethge became a scholar who wrote the definitive biography of Bonhoeffer. Having custody of all his papers, he could have destroyed any direct proof. Just prior to Bonhoeffer's imprisonment, Bethge became engaged to Bonhoeffer's niece, whom he married after the war. Coincidentally, after Bethge's engagement, Bonhoeffer, who never had a girlfriend, announced his engagement to 17-year-old Maria von Wedemeyer. Marsh tries to strike the middle ground by asserting that Bonhoeffer died a celibate. He observes Bethge did not reciprocate the same intensity of affectionate feelings for Dietrich, who never acknowledged publically "a sexual desire for Bethge, nor would Bethge have welcomed its expression." After their respective engagements, Bonhoeffer wrote, "Now we can resume our partnership, and we can travel together in those places where we found so much joy, and we can leave our wives back in Germany, or some place." Bethge had everything to gain from not tainting the legend. Marsh says Bethge was probably not gay, but he could very well have been bisexual. We'll probably never know.
But because Bonhoeffer is such a central figure in German resistance to Hitler, as well as one of the 20th century's most innovative theologians, historically it is important that we know the truth about his life. In line with his own thinking, Bonhoeffer himself would be on the side of transparency.