Letters and Papers from Prison
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Translated by Isabel Best, Lisa E. Dahill, Reinhard Krauss, Nancy Lukens, Barbara Rumscheidt, and Martin Rumscheidt
Introduction by John W. de Gruchy
Supplemental Material by Victoria J. Barnett
Fortress Press
Minneapolis
LETTERS AND PAPERS FROM PRISON
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works—Reader’s Edition
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Cover image: Portrait of Bonhoeffer by Paul Huet
Cover design: Laurie Ingram
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-0274-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-0275-8
Editor’s Introduction to the Reader’s Edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship
Prologue: An Account at the Turn of the year 1942–1943
Part 1: The Interrogation Period: April–July 1943
Part 2: Awaiting the Trial: August 1943–April 1944
Part 3: Holding Out for the Coup Attempt: April–July
Part 4: After the Failure: July 1944–February 1945
Epilogue: The Survivor Looks Back: Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer to His Children, Leipzig, June 1945
The Reader’s Guide to Letters and Papers from Prison in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works: A Guide to Related Texts and Resources
Editor’s Introduction to the Reader’s Edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison
John W. de Gruchy
When first published in 1951 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison was a slender volume of two hundred pages with an uncertain future. Its editor, Eberhard Bethge, a German Lutheran pastor and close friend of Bonhoeffer’s, had yet to become well known as his biographer and interpreter. Now, as volume 8 of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Letters and Papers from Prison is considerably larger, thoroughly revised, freshly translated, and includes a great deal of previously unpublished material.
Letters and Papers from Prison has become a twentieth-century Christian classic that has attracted the interest of a wide circle of readers in many countries. It is also an essential text for anyone interested in understanding Bonhoeffer and the relevance of his legacy today. More specifically, Letters and Papers from Prison documents the final two years of Bonhoeffer’s extraordinary life. It is a poignant story of friendship and love, faith and hope, as the tide of history turned against Germany and Bonhoeffer’s own life drew to a dramatic, lonely, and tragic close.
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About Letters and Papers from Prison (Reader’s Edition)Despite Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s earlier theological achievements and writings, it was his correspondence and notes from prison that electrified the postwar world six years after his death in 1945. The materials gathered and selected by his friend Eberhard Bethge in Letters and Papers from Prison not only brought Bonhoeffer to a wide and appreciative readership, especially in North America, they also introduced to a broad readership his novel and exciting ideas of religionless Christianity, his open and honest theological appraisal of Christian doctrines, and his sturdy, if sorely tried, faith in face of uncertainty and doubt. This splendid volume, in some ways the capstone of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works series, presents the full array of Bonhoeffer’s 1943–1945 prison letters and theological writings. Using the acclaimed English translation and adapted to a more accessible format, this new edition features supplemental material from Victoria J. Barnett and an insightful introduction by John W. de Gruchy to clarify the theological meaning and social importance of Bonhoeffer’s prison writings. |
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