Dietrich Bonhoeffer - “While all the powers of good aid and attend us ...”

The protestant theologian wrote his most well-known verses in late 1944 in a cell in the Berlin Gestapo headquarters. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had grown up in the Grunewald district of Berlin. Sheltered, supported, highly gifted, he was heading for a splendid career. Then, however, Hitler came to power. Bonhoeffer was a resolute Nazi opponent and a leader in the “Confessing Church”. He was banned from teaching, speaking in public, and publishing his texts. He was made privy to the plans of the resistance group around his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi to overthrow the government. The assassination attempts failed. The Gestapo arrested him in April 1943, transferred him to SS detention in Buchenwald in February 1945, and two months later to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. There a summary court martial sentenced him to death.