Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 23, Number 1/2 (June 2017)

Review Article: Confessing Church Biographies

Review of Michael Heymel, Martin Niemöller: Vom Marineoffizier zum Friedenskämpfer (Darmstadt: Lambert Schneider, 2017), 321 pages, ISBN: 9783650401960.

Christiane Tietz, Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. Victoria Barnett (Minneapolis: Augsburg fortress, 2016), 141 pages, ISBN: 9781506408446

By Matthew Hockenos, Skidmore College

These two biographies by Christiane Tietz and Michael Heymel offer introductions to the life and thought of the two most celebrated leaders of the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) and Martin Niemöller (1892-1984). Trained as theologians, Tietz and Heymel add to our knowlege of Bonhoeffer and Niemöller’s intellectual development and theological orientation, although neither significantly alters our current understanding of their place in the history of the church struggle or (in the case of Niemöller) postwar German history. Tietz does a better job of avoiding hagiography but both authors give short shrift to anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in their subject’s life and thought.

Whereas a new biography of Martin Niemöller is long overdue, one might ask: do we need another on Bonhoeffer? Continue reading →