Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Picture: bundesarchiv bild

An Enduring Legacy

Wednesday April 9 2025

Today (April 9) is the 80th anniversary of the death of theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed for his part in a plot to overthrow Hitler. The Rev Andrew McLuskey explores the parallels between Bonhoeffer and another German opponent of the Nazis, Adam von Trott

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Adam von Trott are icons of the anti-Nazi opposition which existed in Germany during the ‘Hitler’ years (1933-45). These two personalities stand out – not least because of their relevance to our own day. They were however far from identical. Bonhoeffer came from a middle-class background whereas von Trott’s roots were distinctly aristocratic. The former was a professional theologian and the latter a diplomat.

Yet despite these differences, they had much in common. Both were well-travelled and highly educated. Both were deeply attached to their native land while steering clear of the ultra-nationalism that characterised so many of their fellow countrymen. Above all they both heartily detested Hitler and his gang.

Bonhoeffer combined his church and theological activities with being an undercover agent for the Abwehr (German intelligence). This gave him scope for considerable travel abroad, when he was able to meet with folk such as Willem Visser ‘t Hooft (the Dutch theologian who was later the first secretary general of the World Council of Churches) and George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, who was prominent in the search for a negotiated end to the hostilities.

Von Trott was virtually a full-time plotter, taking advantage of a fairly independent desk job in the Germany Foreign Office where he could and did devise ingenious schemes to undermine Hitler, while superficially seeming to support the regime. Inevitably this pro-Nazi façade wrongly led some at the time and since to think he was not totally on the side of the angels.

Ultimately, Adam von Trott and Dietrich Bonhoeffer got caught up in the unsuccessful July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. Both paid the price and were executed.

Particularly striking for church people is the way in which during their last days, the thinking of both Bonhoeffer and von Trott (for much of his life an agnostic) became strangely congruent – though by this time, imprisoned in different places, they were certainly not in touch. Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s biographer, records that just before his execution, von Trott talked about the spiritual and religious situation in his country (a sort of ‘Sundays-only affair’ as he saw it), asking ‘Can our childlike Xian faith grow and adapt to the whole weight and intensity of our problems today?’

Bethge observes that what von Trott termed ‘childlike Christian faith’ mirrored the phenomenon that Bonhoeffer disparagingly referred to as ‘religion’. Its ‘growth’ relates to Bonhoeffer’s search for the totality of belief linked to mature responsibility in our contemporary engagement with the world. ‘Adapt’ is similar to what Bonhoeffer described as ‘interpretation’.

So, as they approached their deaths, it seems that both these fine, thoughtful men were spiritually ‘on the same page’, reflecting on how and whether an authentic, all-embracing faith could be evolved in a time of crisis. Some of us are probably still doing something similar.

Here I think we come to the nub of why it is important to remember both of these men. There were other good and brave Germans who opposed Hitler, and we should remember them too – the White Rose group of students in Munich, von Stauffenberg (the key plotter in July 1944). But our two personalities have bequeathed us more than just an indication that not all Germans supported the Nazis. Their thinking about the future of Europe and indeed of the Church still has much to teach us.

The reputations of both men have grown steadily in the post-war period – Bonhoeffer’s in relation to the ‘Honest to God’ and ‘New Theology’ debates; Adam von Trott’s through featuring in Robert Harris’s novel Munich and via foundations in Germany and at Mansfield (College, Oxford). They bequeathed us all an enduring legacy of religious and political thought, which we ignore at our peril.

The Rev Andrew McLuskey is the son of a Church of Scotland minister (the Very Rev J Fraser McLuskey) and himself a minister in the United Reformed Church. In retirement he is active as a researcher in Church History and the Philosophy of Religion. For many years he has been fascinated by the life and times of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and his ministerial training was at Mansfield College, Oxford, where Adam von Trott studied in 1929.

This article was first published in the Mansfield College Magazine.