It was in the summer of 1988—that glorious season of my spiritual nativity—that I first heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For this I am indebted to my dear friend Ed Tuttle, who himself attended the Great Physician at my happy renaissance, not least by giving me a copy of The Cost of Discipleship and sharing with me the fascinating story of the man who because of his Christian faith stood up to the Nazis and ultimately gave his life. As the son and grandson of Germans who had suffered through the period I was profoundly moved and thrilled and proud to hear it and immediately began telling the story to others. Among them was another dear friend, Gilbert von der Schulenberg Ahrens, who like me had lost a grandfather in the war, and who told me that his own grandfather and uncle were among those noble Germans who gave their lives in the plot to assassinate Hitler. I am indebted to Gil for over the years helping keep alive my hope of telling Bonhoeffer’s story to a wider audience and to Mickey Maudlin, my editor at HarperOne, for making this possible by first suggesting I might write biographies by inviting me to write one about William Wilberforce.
I am especially indebted to my great friend, Joel Tucciarone who, Isaac Milner-like, spied me in a slough of despond and pluckily plucked me therefrom, squiring me to a Brooklyn diner to meet his friend Arthur Samuelson, who presciently thought that Thomas Nelson might be the right publisher and who there in the booth dialed David Moberg, who contacted my editor Joel Miller, and to all three of whom I am also greatly indebted. To logariazmo, se parakalo!
I am also deeply indebted to Martin Doblmeier, director of the spectacular Bonhoeffer documentary film, for generously making available to me interview footage that did not make it into the final cut of the film, as well as for helping me to make contact with two of those interviewees, Ruth-Alice von Bismarck, the elder sister of Bonhoeffer’s fiancee, and Renate Bethge, the widow of Eberhard Bethge and the niece of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I am in turn grateful to each of these delightful saints of God for welcoming my wife and me into their homes in Hamburg and Villiprot respectively on consecutive afternoons in the early spring of 2008, and for treating us to German hospitality by regaling us with kaffee und kuchen and thrilling us with stories from their living memories of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Thirties and Forties. To have broken bread with those who broke bread with the subject of this book was an unmerited honor I will treasure all my life.
Lastly, I am indebted to all the writers and publishers of previous books on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, upon whose shoulders I and this book gratefully stand. To the editors and publishers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works at Augsburg Fortress I and all students of Bonhoeffer are particularly indebted, as well as to Ruth-Alice von Bismarck, who edited Love Letters from Cell 92, the book of her sister’s correspondence with Bonhoeffer. Finally and most profoundly, I am indebted to Eberhard Bethge, whose entire life and whose monumental biography form the great foundation upon which every syllable thenceforth written or spoken about his best friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer gratefully rest.
Lobet den Herren!
Eric Metaxas
New York City
February 2010