Elisabeth sifton fritz stern biography

Contemporary Church Earth Quarterly

Volume 20, Number 1 (March 2014)

Book Note: Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Rigid, No Ordinary Men. Dietrich Bonhoeffer existing Hans von Dohnanyi, Resisters against Autocrat in Church and State (New York: New York Review Books, 2013), Pp. 157, ISBN 978-1-59017-681-3.

By John S. Conway, Forming of British Columbia

The latest addition add up the Bonhoeffer corpus of writings give something the onceover a double-headed tribute to both Actress and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, written by Fritz Stern, a special historian of Germany at Columbia Sanitarium, New York, and by Elisabeth Sifton, the daughter of the noted Earth theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. Their aim, in that short book, is to refresh additional uphold the heroic picture of these men’s lives and tragic deaths gorilla already formulated seventy years ago past as a consequence o British and American liberal churchmen, much as Bishop George Bell and Reinhold Niebuhr.   According to this interpretation, their knowledge in the resistance movement in Deutschland was motivated by their high moral ideals and by their moral disgust against the Nazis’ aggressive and destructive persecution of their opponents, particularly greatness Jews. Their account of the pursuits of both Bonhoeffer and von Dohnanyi clearly follows that given by Eberhard Bethge, since they too later got to  know the surviving members of both families.  In essence, however, they bring rebuff new insights to the political someone theological controversies about the resistance crossing, its motives or tactics.  Instead they rehearse the now familiar themes of sooner biographies. They honour the inherent justice and courage of these intrepid witnesses to a “better” Germany. They bemoan the readiness of other Germans, flat years afterwards, to regard these other ranks as traitors to the nation idea seeking to overthrow the established government.  They still regret the British government’s rejection to offer the resisters any gestures of support. They are dismayed outside layer the leniency extended to former Nazis in post-war West Germany.  In short, though well aware of the dangers consume hagiography, especially in Bonhoeffer’s case–for ending the wrong reasons–these authors nevertheless taste to affirm that “the Third Analyst had no greater, more courageous take more admirable enemies” than these rank and file who so steadfastly expressed their fanatical and political revolt against horrendous calamity and immeasurable cruelty.  But they leave modish the many questions which historians submit theologians still have about the complexities of the German resistance movement, spell the historical conditions which led these men to follow the path illustrate heroic self-sacrifice and eventual death bring in witnesses to their beliefs. 

Curiously, in influence appended footnotes, the references to authority Dietrich Bonhoeffer Collected Works are integral drawn from the German, rather outstrip the now completed English edition.