they would like, but it is quite the process. and it all goes on, of course, behind the scenes so the consumer, the realizer doesn't see it. >> and we've been talking with lissa warren. we are at bookexpo america where all the publishers come annually in new york city to display their wares for the fall season. you're watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> charles marsh recalls a life of german theologian, pastor and nazi dissident dietrich bonhoeffer up next on booktv. he recounts bonhoeffer's formal and education his constant denunciation of the nazi regime. he was executed at a concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 39. this is about an hour, ten minutes. ..

smut 20th book talk on a book tour that began april 22nd in harlem and i am thrilled to be in los angeles on this warm, balmy night that takes me back to some botox i did in the deep south some time ago. i am for oil to be here, exceedingly grateful to the folks on the last book store.

independent bookstores in america are making a come back, and to small town in the deep south, and thanks for being here. we will talk for a few minutes and read a passage or two from strange glory -- "strange glory" and then we will have 20 minutes for questions and answers and we will see what happens. i began this book, biography called "strange glory: a life of dietrich bonhoeffer in the spring of 2007, during a semester when i had a sabbatical at the university of berlin. dietrich bonhoeffer, visiting professor for the spring semester.

that sounds like a very prestigious title, but i should tell you the fellowship came without any salary, without any travel stipend, i don't think i had access to the printer but i had a cozy office, if you know berlin is right across the river spray from the berlin home. soon enough, i made my trip to -- first trip to the beautiful city library of berlin. the gorgeous, capacious building designed by one of these brilliant german architects, i was given access to the dietrich bonhoeffer papers. i will sound like a book geek end like your on million college professor for a minute but i want to tell you that access to these 25 boxes of papers that were just sold to the university

library by the family of one of bonhoeffer's best friends proved in my experience deeply transforming give. 25 years ago this spring, i submitted a lumbering 505 page dissertation at the university of virginia on dietrich bonhoeffer's philosophical theology. i will tell you that what i began to see when i opened these boxes and every morning in that gorgeous light fills almost transcendent space that is the deadly attack were pieces of paper, images, notes, and trees from journals and diaries that offered in my mind an intriguing, dramatically different image than this

brilliant philosophical theologian and martyr of the christian church that many people know dietrich bonhoeffer to be. let me tell you about some of the things i found in this archive. gorgeous landscape photographs, that he had taken, and austere photographs of islamic life, in morocco. and the bank account bonhoeffer shared with his best friend and soulmates, this may sound a little obscure to you, but i didn't know how tall bonhoeffer was until i found a little registration paper for and audi convertible, that an eminent

psychiatrist in berlin gave him in 1936, a pretty tall fellow. i found a correspondence, brief correspondence from 1934 with mahatma gandhi. a very interesting correspondence. bonhoeffer as you know and if you don't i will tell you now that a german pastor and theologian who in 1933 when hitler ascended to power and was appointed chancellor of germany and the nuremberg laws were passed, bonhoeffer was really a kind of voice crying in the wilderness, one of the first is not the only member of the christian community at that time who spoke with clarity about the emergence of what he would later call the great masquerade of

evil that was appearing in this time and this place. within weeks of the passage of the nuremberg laws, anti-semitic policies, bonhoeffer was going on record saying a response to the rise of nazism people of faith were not simply obligated to bandage victims under the wheel but to smash the wheel itself, this is dietrich bonhoeffer, this extraordinary person of faith and in this correspondence with mahatma gandhi one year after the passage of the nuremberg laws, bonhoeffer is beginning to conclude that there is something deeply broken and flawed about the protestant tradition not only in germany but the protestant tradition as it exists in modern christendom. he was looking for pockets of

spiritual energy and community clustering and contemplative practices outside the west. and it was a regret that bonhoeffer had all of his life to make it to india. he went and formed a radical community of peacemaking in northeast germany in this area. what else did i find in that stash. i also found an inventory of his wardrobe. it turns out that this great person of conscience, this activist, brilliant speaker and philosopher, inventory, kept a

great meticulous record of his address, where he liked to buy his leather shoes and spurs and a haberdasher and all kinds of esoterica of his wardrobe. not so surprising was a meticulous inventory of his library. bonhoeffer at the age of 12 or 13 in a letter to father christmas had asked for the complete writings of emanual kant so it was not surprising he kept meticulous record of his wardrobe. in any case, these surprising details began to nudge me not so gently into biography. so i want to read a short passage from the first chapter. when he was a young child -- can

you hear okay? his family rented a sprawling villa near the university, dietrich bonhoeffer and his twin sister lay awake at night trying to imagine eternity. the rich will eventually became a game, with each child concentrating on the words to clear the mind of distraction. on funeral days, horse-drawn hearses approached the cemetery that way to the north. wins would watch from their bedroom window, he eternity. sabina found the word very long and gruesome. dietrich found it majestic. and awesome word, he called it. sometimes he would picture

himself on his deathbed surrounded by family and friends reclining on the threshold of have been. sometimes rehearsed them aloud so he dared not reveal them to anyone. he hoped to welcome death as expected. he did not want to be taken by surprise. sometimes when he went to bed convinced that death would come that very night he would grow light headed, the walls of his bed room would be about as if he were the axis of the carrousel. he imagined himself rushing from sister to brother, father to mother pleading for help. the prospect of that happening now, vanishing tonight into the vast miss the rim felt so real he had to bite his tongue to

assure himself he was still among the living. that he could still feel more pain. when the twins got separate bedrooms, and metaphysical games, dietrich would from lightly on the wall with his fingers and knock announcing that it was time once again to ponder e eternity. a further cap signals a new reflection on the solemn theme, and so it went back and forth until one of them discerned the final silence. usually dietrich. what the game concluded, he lay awake, from a pair of candlelit crosses mother had placed atop the corner table.

when at night, 14 angels around my stead he would hear her saying. he liked the idea very much, one angel dressed in a little white cloak standing by his bed, and others watching over children everywhere. in the decades since bonhoeffer was executed on the direct orders of hitler on the morning of april 19, 1945, for the crime of high treason he has become one of the most influential religious speakers of the modern period. his life and legacy influence activists and human rights proponents. you hear bonhoeffer's life and his thought echoed in the songs and the writings of desmond

tutu, bono, jimmy carter, angela merkel and many others, and one of the things i love about bonhoeffer as a religious figure in the modern era. and bring together so many kinds of people in admiration of an indisputably authentic witness, liberals and conservatives, protestants and catholics, jews and christians and muslims, believers and and believers alike, find a places and aspects of the bonhoeffer's story to connect with and that is exciting to me and it gives his life and thought great currency and great significance. some of you know him by his

popular writings. is popular works like life to get there, these books have sold in the millions in english and these books make biblical religions work of accessible to the leader and nonbeliever all like. he was an extraordinary person. his story is an extraordinary story. he was born as a kind of golden child into a prodigiously humanist family in breslau and later moved to berlin and the question of how this particular german, this erudite, privileged german was able to see the nazi specter with such clarity as early as 1933 is one of the driving plot lines of my book in addition to the simple and i

hope artful explication of character. let me just say before i set up this next reading which will be the only other reading before i turn to questions and answers, let me just give you one of my takes on how he was able to see clearly. late in his life when he was in prison in a gestapo prison in berlin, bonhoeffer writing to his best friend said there have only been two times in my life when i see that i went through deep and profound transformations. one was under the strong impression of my father, this 3 minutes psychologist, head of the center for nervous disorders at the university of berlin and the other was in my first trip abroad. it was then he said, i love this

phrase, that i began to make returning from the phrase theological to the real pin these years 1927-1933, bonhoeffer is a student and a young professor. he was first adopted by the age of 21 and second doctorate by the age of 24. he is primed for a life of academic fame and fortune within the very demanding structure of german academia and he was an extraordinarily breathless person and if you look at his notebooks and journals in those years you will see that he is feeling a sense of almost claustrophobia by the kind of insular, closed in cultures that said to him germany and berlin in the late 20s and always looking for an opportunity to leave. from 1927 to 1933 he leaves office. he travels to rome and travels

to north africa, travels to paris, to barcelona, to morocco, to london, he comes to the united states, goes to cuba, goes to mexico, takes a road trip across country in 1931 with a frenchman. in different cultures in 1931, he undergoes a six month immersion in the african-american church in harlem and says that the end of that year, i finally heard the voice of jesus preaching and speaking in the church of the outcasts of america referring to the african-american church in america. it is 1939. bonhoeffer is under constant surveillance by the gestapo.

is various experiments and hopes of encountering hitler through church resistance had failed. he has learned he was going to receive his draft papers and made known he is not going to serve in hitler's army. there was no conscientious objector status. if you refuse you were put in a concentration camp and likely executed. some friends back in new york currently put together a teaching position for him, at union theological seminary in new york. they are worried about his fate and they want to find a place for him to come and lives in relative security during the years of war. and bonhoeffer in summer of 1939 comes to new york and the passage i about to read is about that dark night of the soul, is 12 minutes long, 13 minutes long and then we have some time for q&a to give you a sense of what

is coming. on the warm morning in june of 1939 bonhoeffer left germany on his second journey to america. on flying over the channel and the globe of pink sunset he wrote to eva hart on june 4th, it is 10:00 but still very bright. you will be tired and gone to bed now but i am well. after a week-long layover in new england he went on a 5 day ocean voyage to new york. pleased with the spacious cabin and appointments of the ship he read and mapped in a lounge chair on the hard wood deck. was content to be alone. the weather is wonderful and the

ocean is quiet, he told eva hart. i will spend a lot of time thinking of you and all the others. today is sunday. no worship service here, he wrote from the deck of the luxury liner on the second day. the change in time zones have already prevented taking part remotely in worship as it was happening, the growing distance had already caused the clear new day to john in the mid-atlantic but i am full be with you today more than any other. italy the doubts about my own past were overcome. he found new york much changed since his last visit nearly a decade before. the new empire state building had transformed the skyline though it stood mostly tenant less. robert moses's titanic public works program was evident with a

new bridges and roadways. in april world fair had opened in queens with great fanfare in the bronx, lou gehrig was playing in his last season for the yankees. he would retire midsummer having set the record for consecutive games played. the movie the wizard of oz premiered on august 17th at lowe's capitol theater almost without judy garland's iconic over the rainbow which produces feared might slow down the story. john steinbeck's the grapes of wrath published by viking press won national book award and the pulitzer prize. less conspicuously, an unabridged edition of mine kampf appeared for the first time in english. bonhoeffer could not summon the sense of optimism and adventure

and wonders that had accompanied hid last sojourn in new york. the hard lessons of the previous years had brought him closer to realism and harlem which he had once loved was no longer on his mind. at the world fair his heart sank to see the temple of religion where under an enormous tent christians and jews were preaching in turn as if in a circus act. he arrived at union theological seminary in the middle of summer vacation on the first day of a heat wave. the brick and limestone fortress sprawling between broadway and claremont on the city's upper west side was a world away from the rustic estate where not too long ago it had flourish even further from the modest parish house's of the collective past

years. bonhoeffer and packed his bags in the room for visiting scholars, the profit's chamber it was called. but what kind of a profit was he? at least he was a profit with plenty of space and with the temperature soaring into the high 90s it was impossible to shut the windows without one giving in to the interior courtyard and the other, the st. louis persisted until late at night, even then abating only little. the carelessness was enervating and so was the lack of society. he was advised to come to new york as soon as possible which bonhoeffer took to heart but when he arrived in new york on the morning of june 12th his american hosts, decent and thoughtful people, were nowhere to be found. neighbor whistle and scotland preparing for the deferred

lectures. the convivial lehmann, paul and mary and had decanted to indiana where paul held summer classes at elmer's college. confessed he was unsure exactly when he and his wife would be back in town. paul tillich's supported his appointment was sequestered in his mean retreat. he passed the time by smoking cigarettes, reading and taking walks. he visited the metropolitan museum where he lingered over el greco's view of toledo and christ giving his blessing. he tried to catch up on the latest american theology and thumbed through recent issues of the christian century. every few days he rang his brother for a quick chat, in his final months of a sabbatical at the university of chicago. he made entries in his brown leather journal, a going away

present from eva hart. never won to inventory his material life, bonhoeffer was left with few other options amid the shock of separation. later, in prison, on hot summer days in his stifling sell, he would tell his parents not to worry about him seeing as how he had survived italy, africa, spain, mexico, and perhaps worst of all, new york city, july of 1939. as a sensitive child he had always been content with small pleasures, whether accompanying his mother as they saying beethoven's songs, collecting wild flowers in the glade near his home, or reading stories aloud with his twin sabena after school in the garden. in new york he drank coffee, he

ate moderately, he smoked moderately, and sat at his desk with a floor fan taking the little relief it offered. he was able to make contact with a few acquaintances who didn't live according to the academic schedule. paul griswold, macy, of macy's department store fortune, a steady protestant churchman, matt bonhoeffer on his first night in town for drinks at the park side hotel. and other money to manhattan itinerary, henry smith showed him around a federal council of churches, entire city blocks filled with ecumenical offices, hosting the party at a midtown restaurant. the seminary president invited bonhoeffer to come by train to his country house in the berkshire's. bonhoeffer told his parents the connecticut countryside reminded

him a little of the area where they had a summer home. he breathed a little easier for a time on the porch of the lakeside home, and the fresh and but darius landscape rolling to the horizon. fireflies in the eastern part mountain of germany, preferring evening in the berkshires thousands of fireflies along with flying glowworms flashed against the fading daylight like shooting stars. quite a fantastic sight he wrote in his diary. aiming to lift bonhoeffer's clearly flagging spirits the coffins are their friends, held dinner parties in their homes or to the to concerts' and plays, but would fail to relieve him of

his apprehension. the best efforts of these energetic men and their fine families could not overcome his acute sense of dislocation. everything now felt freighted with mellon collie. a journal entry reads since yesterday evening my thoughts cannot get away from germany. in the morning a car drive that was in itself beautiful to a woman acquaintance in the countryside, in the mountains, became almost unbearable to me. one set for another not at all stupidly but about matters that were so utterly trivial to me about whether a proper musical education is possible in new york, and i could only think how much i missed you. in the evenings the cinema, my

thoughts were captured for a while but this inactivity, this pursuit of triviality is unbearable. i would have liked to take the next ship back. the situation at home, it was now clear, had depleted his lifelong love of idol pleasures to a remarkable degree. dietrich had become a consuming least serious. amid the outings and pleasantries and cocktail hours with new york somerset, he found no time for bible study and prayer, from meditation to disciplines. all i need is germany, the brethren. i do not understand why i am here. he proposed to his friend that they mark their first sundays of part with the promise that some

day, some day we will worship together in e eternity. bonhoeffer had already reached the conclusion that year in america would be too long despite coffin's hopes that he would stay at least that long. back in manhattan he sought relief from the weight bearing down on him with the assurances of scripture. in the bible's cold sober comfort there were no quick remedies to be found but he wasn't seeking quick remedies. he read lamentations, the psalms, the hebrew profits. they spoke to the virtue of patience. it is good that one should wait patiently and quietly for the lord. as he had done, he followed the daily readings, the devotional book of the moravian brethren his governess had given him as a child's. how excellent were the daily

readings, he said. despite the divide of an ocean, reading them in sync with eberhart sustained the spiritual bond, one to overcome any earthly distance. we are almost there. in profit's chamber, he wrote in fits and starts. over the years he had rarely labored over assignments, sermons, books or letters. writing usually involved this move transcription of well-organized thoughts, now the subject seemed more complicated than the mysteries of the incarnation crucified in risen christ. he was trying to understand himself. is it cowardice and weakness to runaway from the here and now? i can hardly tear my thoughts

away from germany. i am not quite clear about my motives. a sign of uncertainty, in her dishonesty or a sign that god leads us over and beyond our powers of discernment or is it both? i don't know. introspection, a new pursued for him had reduced him to probings the most elementary matters. i wouldn't have thought it possible that at my age after so many years abroad i had become so dreadfully homesick. eberhart seemed not to share his urgency to correspond and he scolded his friend in his own voluminous epistolary outpourings, acknowledged with gratitude the abundance of letters coming from new york while bonhoeffer complete he hardly received a thing. i wait for mail.

it can hardly be in. . i will probably not stay. he did not seek out his old classmates, although he thought by the west side ymca on 57th street to which he had been introduced to the social seminary of charles weber, he did not worship at baptist church. bonhoeffer did ask about race relations mentioning a new and conversation with two students from southern states about the problems of blacks and was saddened to learn that apart from the wagoner bill and anti and lynching measure debated in both houses was filibustered into oblivion. baptisms recently concluded with the prayer that this child will

grow up to be like adolf hitler. the theology departments now existed for the sole purpose of building a religious foundation for the new nazi ss -- ethos. bonhoeffer i did this is not christian. they argued in germany there is no longer any life except with the fuhrer. the german christians had waged a seven year campaign to make the churches save for the reich, winning all the parishioners and all the church people to the nazi cause. what a pity for him that hitler

no longer cared about the church. by 1939 most high-ranking members of the regime, beginning with the fuhrer himself, were of the mind that christianity was no different from judaism in its enfeebling affects on the folk. the religion of jesus, a jew after all, was at last a malignant, according influence. bonhoeffer had long argued christianity and judaism were inseparable. in the end the nazis would agree, although with a grotesquely different purpose. the anti-semitic journal ran up cartoon of a jewish man raising the head of a christian cleric over his head. there is no question of his race. he has an engine or attenuated nose and his throat was naked

except for a crest with the star of david. he also has cloven hoofs and the tail. the church, the caption reads, under good protection. bonhoeffer would continue to ride from new york in revelatory bursts, i no longer know why i am here. i cannot believe it is god's will that i should stay on here. noon visiting scholar of the doors of the profits chamber at the start of the fall semester he would be taken aback by the mass which no one had yet by the to cleaness which no one had yee to clean up after the prior

tenant. an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, why did she flying the floor, a german word or two otherwise the handwriting was illegible. had he been able to decipher bonhoeffer's pinched cursive he might have learned the reason for the previous occupant's abrupt departure. christians in germany, bonhoeffer road, will face the terrible alternative of willing the defeat of the nation so civilization could survive or willing the destruction of the nation and saving civilization. i know which of these alternative design must choose but i cannot make that choice in security. i have come to the conclusion

that i made a mistake in coming to america within one year he would join the conspiracy in a plot to assassinate hitler and within six years he would be executed by the gestapo in the concentration camp in flossenburg prison. thanks very much. [applause] >> thank you if so much for sitting through that on this warm l a july day. we have some time for q&a. if you want to talk. c-span and i are asking that anyone who would like to ask a question or offer a comment, stepped in front of this microphone to my left, to your right, so it can be broadcast

worldwide, televised. c-span booktv. >> i want to ask about hitler. was he an atheist? >> great question. he was baptized in the catholic church, he had an exceedingly cynical relationship to the catholic church and christianity in general. early in his leadership of the reich he worked very hard to bring the protestant and catholic church into line with

nazi policies, the anti-jewish, anti-semitic policies that were written in the nuremberg laws, but by the end of the 30s as i mentioned in the last meeting his cynicism was a part of his relationship, to manipulate or exploit the church to his benefit and in his mind the christian tradition became just another distraction, just another problem with the attempt to create a new kind of spiritual, ethnic, national, psychic, emotional, historical people. is german, arian raise that for

him was to be altogether, altogether different than any of the historical with legends, judaism and christianity. in some respects he became mildly sympathetic to the neo pagan movements that were emerging in germany in the late 30s. around 1933 when hitler came to power there was one group of dissidents formed in a church called the confessing church and tried unsuccessfully to wage opposition to hitler. most of the protestant churches, all the theology departments by 1935-1936, crosses were gone, swastikas were put in place, it

was monstrous. there were folks in the german church who were so desperate to accommodate it where that they began drawing on a german folk and pagan religions to create what they thought would be a pure aryan religion. ultimately had no interest in that either. use the church quite shrewdly, only to reject it as inexplicably and a part of all that he was trying to eradicates. >> given your long history of studying bonhoeffer and your intimate knowledge of him, was there anything in those 25 boxes in the archives in berlin that reveals anything new to you

about the kind of and depth of relationships that bonhoeffer had? >> the relationship with a bernhard. this is an interesting question. i will say this. you mentioned eberhart, bonhoeffer's dearest friend. bonhoeffer met eberhart in summer of 1934 when bonhoeffer was about to launch a seminary, a kind of underground, to be a little dramatic, seminary, that was wanting to create a generation of non nazi, anti nazi past years. it was initially on the baltic sea in a beautiful seaport town, within a few months had moved to another part of the baltic sea

board. he met this young son of a country parson, and there was a deep friendship formed. within a matter of months, bonhoeffer asked him to become his confessor and assistant, in the course of initially professor, a teacher, complicated confessor, confessor confess the relationship. the two forged a six or seven year partnership that was a kind of at least from my estimation of bonhoeffer's hopes are kind of spiritual marriage. it is a complicated kind of

spiritual marriage. it is a complicated relationship because we had two facts that have to be considered and i think this relationship between bonhoeffer and eberhart is one of the most beautiful parts of the book. on the one hand was the fact that bonhoeffer fell in love with eberhart. and aspired for something like a spiritual marriage. they would share a bank account, give presents as a couple, initially is this was surprising to the bonhoeffer family, a very liberal open-minded berlin family and they came to love and embrace him as one of the members of the family. they traveled together and shared a room.

their relationship was -- this is very important to acknowledge -- centered around their intimate devotion to jesus. and a around their shared practices of prayer, of worship, of devotional life and on the other hand, bonhoeffer's commitment to celibacy. so we know that as he writes in a letter to eberhart in prison, that he died a celibate. given those bullpens this relationship to me -- in the book i tried to capture this as vividly and beautifully and heartbreakingly as the story plays out, it is not one that lends itself to the kind of

identity, identification that we have in our particular public debate about sexual orientation. i am happy for readers to have that conversation. i was trying to capture that relationship in its exquisite idiosyncrasy and beauty. let me add, eberhard never reciprocated the intensity of bonhoeffer's affections. the narrative i craft here is not simply -- the conclusion of their partnership is not simply based on the fact they shared a bank account and traveled together. it is hundreds of pages of letters of gorgeous love letters

that bonhoeffer wrote over the years and he was aspiring for something like a spiritual marriage. some kind of partnership that would be consecrated by the sacrament and would remain chaste. it was also home ironically -- homoerotic refashioned from bonhoeffer's perspective and overwhelming to a bernhard who could not reciprocates. the intensity of bonhoeffer's affections and controlling reach of his affection and so one of the chapters which takes place in a monastery, one of the most beautiful chapters in the book takes place in a monastery south of munich in 1940. bonhoeffer is living here for a pair of time, he is joined a

counterintelligence agency working as a double agents as part of a conspiracy to destroy hitler. it is a ferociously cold and snowy winter and eberhart is back in berlin and bonhoeffer is once again suffering this acute loneliness that he felt in these times without eberhard's company and his writing takes on a kind of urgency, desperation and in the course of the letter and exchanges and the actual exchange between eberhard and bonhoeffer that takes later that year, bonhoeffer begins to

realize he is losing eberhard to a woman who was his niece and within a year of that engagement, bonhoeffer himself is engaged. shortly after he is engaged to a woman who is 17 years younger is and he is, 16 or 70 years younger the he is, shortly after bonhoeffer is engaged he is in prison, he writes to eberhard and says now we are both engaged, we can resume our relationship began as it once was. we can leave our wives in berlin and travel to rome and we can travel to the mediterranean, show you these places, we can go to india and in one singular the fantastic letter, he says we can go to,. all these people are moving to

palestine, the jewish people in germany moving to palestine. we can go to palestine where there is sun and fun during weather now we are both engaged. >> thank you so much for your book and coming got to the post apocalyptic city to talk about it. you mention being in prison and reading that but i wonder if i can ask you to be a bit reflexive beyond the work of a biographer, geopolitically in a contemporary moment from what you see in his prison letter, he specifically, this theology of prison in different contexts, but i wonder if he saw things like mass incarceration in the united states from the 80s on, what might he have to say about

that? >> interesting question. i am reluctant to speculate on where bonhoeffer's political sensibilities would fall down in a north american context particularly if u.s. context. in many respects, his theology and ethics came to look very similar by 1942 to roman catholic social teachings particularly around matters of the sacred character of created life and issues of bioethics. bonhoeffer was actually writing two chapters on the integrity of

bodily life and natural life that were in a profound sense the response to the eugenics and euthanasia laws that were currently under way in germany and which his own father, carl bonhoeffer, had in some indirect fashion as a consultant, in one particular instance, made a recommendation that could have been taken and bonhoeffer indeed construed as such, as a support of the eugenics policy in the particular case of a disabled person. this outraged the sun and these writings written in a benedictine monastery were deeply attuned to the integrity

and sacred character of creative life. as far as prison writings go, his last -- the prison writings are fascinating. if you want to buy a book by bonhoeffer after tonight, i think the letters and papers in prison are great way to go. the poems, very ordinary, interesting, matter-of-fact details, really powerful, mind blowing passages about a world come of age, the nonreligious interpretation, he is having all these really very radical new ideas in some measures that are consistent with what he was talking about throughout his life but nonetheless there is a new pulse in his thought and this last little step she was making was called an outline for a book so he is trying to -- he

is a pastor and theologian, he is writing in a gestapo prison, in a nazi prison and looking at the ruins of luther's protestant -- sold its soul to hitler. bonhoeffer is trying to imagine, is there any point to christianity after the holocaust. is there -- a question he asked that haunts me to this day is are we still of any use, referring not only to people of faith but people of noble aristocratic humanistic aspirations. are we still of any use in this culture of barbarism and mash stupidity and propaganda deception and he has an outline

for a book. it is something like this. the church will have to sell its buildings and give away all its money and become a purely secular kind of movement. ministers should no longer be employed full time and. the christian faith must become a quiet and kind of secret discipline. we must now profess our faith through prayer and pricings in -- righteous action alone. fascinating. is the mic on over here? >> it is obvious you are really passionate about this. is there a particular instance that got you on to is this man's

life, and when you have learned personally, is there anything learning from this man? >> that is a really interesting question. what did i learn from writing this book? i signed up with a little book called bonhoeffer in america. if i had known then that it was going to evolve into a cradle to grave account and all my children would grow up and go to college, i may have bowed out gracefully at the time. my wonderful editor told me a few weeks ago in washington, i suspected this all along, it was a trick to get me to sign up for it little book because they knew i would have to write the longer a county eventually. i certainly learned how to borrow every day from the people

who love me and give me support. my wonderful wife had to entertain my mantra. i will never finish this book, for eight years. finally if i ever finish this book i am never write another book. i came to bonhoeffer in a saturated postmodern culture of the 1980s when i was doing my graduate work. i had grown up in the faith. i had heard bonhoeffer's name mentioned in sermons in my childhood. i read a little passages from various writings. i had even taught some letters and papers from prison and faith in doubt in the modern world in the 80s so it was called by students doubt in the modern world. did you ever take this?

and in the summertime, i was living in two world. in the summers i would travel to atlanta. ..

>> as i was reading for comprehense exams. he illuminated in his own story and his writings, for me, a way to bring those two worlds -- the life of the mind, the intre elect, and the life of service, compassion and engagement in the world -- a little closer together. so bonhoeffer helped illuminate for me, i suppose, this turning from the physical to the real. thank you. and how are we doing on time? okay. one more question? two more. okay. two more. yeah, please. >> hi. >> hey. >> a i few words about maria. of course, there is a lengthy book of love letters to maria as well. and so my question is, um,

dietrich had formally requested that maria become one flesh with him for life. and it's clear from his letters that he knew that she took him very literally in that request, and she answered in the affirmative to that request. from some of your other comments this evening and from some of the ways the book has been written, i'm asking you do you, in what sense do you feel that dietrich may have been not acting in complete good faith in asking -- that dietrich may not have been acting in complete good faith in asking maria to become one flesh with him for life? >> yeah. yeah, it's a really interesting

question, and another heartbreaking story. their engagement began his first month in prison, and relationship -- >> he didn't know that when he, he had no idea that he was going to get arrested when he -- >> yeah. the engagement had been put on hold by the request of maria's mother because of her age, and the two honored that. it was, if you've read the letters, you'll know that the tone of the letters has the kind of effect of a, of a tutor and a student. maria, you may know, had actually been in bonhoeffer's confirmation class when she was 12 or 13 years old and had failed his confirmation class.

[laughter] and eventually was passed by someone else. and they had very different temperaments, very different taste. he found quite bizarre some of the rather provincial practices of the rural aristocracy that her family, her family maintained. and it's impossible to say what would have come of that engagement had he survived the war. i just don't know. and this'll be the final question. you guys are wonderful. >> hi, my name's -- [inaudible] one question. what did you think of adolf hitler? what did you think of him? >> what did -- >> you think of adolf hitler? >> what did i think of him?

>> right. >> what did i think of him? well, i -- well, bonhoeffer, i'll say this, bonhoeffer thought of him the antichrist, called him the antichrist without a hint of irony. [laughter] and bonhoeffer, as you may know, after this road trip across the united states in 1931 which is a fabulous movie waiting to be made with greg helvey or anybody, anybody in here, bonhoeffer and this french pacifist in this beat-up oldsmobile drive from new york to chicago in may of 1931 with two other -- there's a swiss student, and there's an american. they drop everyone off. they drive to new orleans and out through laredo, texas oh, another thing i found this those files was a postcard from waco, texas, from bonhoeffer.

4,000 miles driving in six weeks, 1200 miles on mexican train as, and they're coming back to new york. when they get to new orleans, instead of retracing their route or as we saw route back to new york from chicago, they make a decision to turn the car due east and to drive right into the heart of the jim crow south in 1931. and so i, with a geographer, i reconstructed with old maps and so forth in the trip from new orleans, they would have gone -- this may not mean anything to you -- through slidell, pick a -- picayune, pattiesburg, birmingham, tuscaloosa. they drove within 20 miles of scottsboro, alabama, the same

month in the spring of 1931 that seven young men were being tried in a lynch mob environment for allegations of rape and a crime. in the scottsboro boys' case. they drove up through new york. and it would make a wonderful story. bonhoeffer became -- during that road trip, he became if not then, very deeply inclined towards pacifism. this frenchman was a pacifist. out in mexico city they were going to a global seminar, conference on christianity and pacifism. bonhoeffer had not been a fashion fist. he had, he was -- pacifist. he was a good german protestant marshal war theology just all throughout his system.

but by 1932, 1933, he was a committed pacifist. this is one of his reasons for having an interest in gandhi. he, bonhoeffer made speeches in ecumenical conferences on christ and peace that amounted to saying that if you want to know who jesus is, you read the sermon on the mount, and you do exactly what the sermon on the mount teaches. that the sermon on the mount is not metaphorically true, it's not annal gory, it's not a key --al gory, it's not a key, it's a literal mix of the gospel of christ -- application of the gospel of christ for the social and political order to. but by 1939 his principled pacifism had given way to the realization that an ethic of responsibility that was very similar -- he didn't describe it

this way in his writings, but very similar to the whole notion of christian realism -- made it, obligated him to do anything necessary to kill the antichrist, the madman, hitler. and this might be a sin in bold proposition, but there was no doubt about it that bonhoeffer blessed, conferred blessings and was deeply a part of the conspiracy to kill hitler. hitler was the antichrist. this was bonhoeffer's estimation. sounds fine to me too. [laughter] thank you so very much. [applause]

>> the professor's going to be here signing books for a little while, you can line up right down here. thank you again so much for coming out, we really appreciate you. [inaudible conversations] >> this weekend on booktv, we bring you the 2014 roosevelt reading festival. over three and a half hours of author talks about the 32nd president. for a detailed schedule, visit booktv.org: on "after words," daniel halper profiles hillary and bill clinton and discusses how they're positioning themselves for a return to the white house. and then booktv visits casper, wyoming, to take in the city's literary sites and talk to several of its authors. and you'll also see books about the middle class, silicon valley, espionage and american manufacturing. all this and much more. 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors on c-span2. booktv, television for