Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Execution a Christian Martyrdom?

In her latest blog, Professor of New Testament literature at Notre Dame, Candida Moss, whose latest book challenges the authenticity of martyr/persecution narratives that come out of the ancient world and reproduce in contemporary Christian culture, draws attention to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the problem of his own hagiography.

Bonhoeffer died at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. Moss’s short entry begins with a quote from Keith Clements:

"A grim but telling footnote points out that the oft-quoted, pious 'reminiscence' of the camp doctor who 'witnessed' Bonhoeffer's execution at Flossenbürg, implying a quick and easy death following a final prayer, is now known to be untrue.  Bonhoeffer's death, like that of the seven other conspirators executed that morning in April 1945, was one of barbarically slow, repeated strangulations."

Keith Clements, reviewing Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: martyr, thinker, man of resistance, by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen (trans. Isabel Best, London:  T & T Clark, 2010), in Theology 114, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 123 (122-123).  The footnote to which Clements refers is apparently no. 8 on p. 406 (from p. 378):  "The report by the SS doctor H. Fischer-Hüllstrung, in Zimmerman (ed.), I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is apparently a lie (DB-ER 927f.).  The doctor could not have seen Bonhoeffer kneeling in his cell, neither could Bonhoeffer have said a prayer before his execution and then climbed the steps to the gallows.  There were no steps.  Fischer-Hüllstrung had the job of reviving political prisoners after they had been hanged until they were almost dead, in order to prolong the agony of their dying.  According to a Danish prisoner, L. F. Mogenson, the executions of Admiral Canaris and his group were drawn out from 6 a.m. until almost noon.  Cf. Mogenson, 'Ein Zeuge aus dem KZ Flossenbürg (A Testimony from Flossenbürg Concentration Camp)', in R. Mayer and P. Zimmerling (eds.), Dietrich Bonhoeffer — Mensch hinter Mauern.  Theologie und Spiritualität in den Gefängnisjahren (Man Behind Walls:  Theology and Spirituality in His Years in Prison), 1993, p. 107".

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Many involved in Bonhoeffer scholarship have continued to reject this story, not the least of all because of the inferences listed above, but because those who later sought out the mysterious so-called doctor H. Fischer-Hüllstrung had difficulty tracking him down except for the only known confession that found its way into Wolf-Dieter Zimmerman’s book, I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Catholic Bonhoeffer scholar Ernst Feil in his monograph Die Theologie Dietrich Bonhoeffers: Hermeneutik Christologie, Weltverstandnis, notes that until 1993, the presiding view was that the doctor’s testimony was correct, and the testimony of L. F. Mogenson helped to problematize the earlier testimony. The words that Bonhoeffer apparently uttered at the scaffold (though this was by no means the type meant for public consumption) are also difficult to place because at times they are reported, for example by Schlingensiepen to have been uttered prior to his execution in which he asked Payne Best to relay them to Bishop Bell of Chichester upon his death. However, with the words being said on the scaffold, Bonhoeffer’s execution can be deployed as a moment of good vs. evil, of Christianity vs. the world system. Of course, any martyrdom seems to rely on the motives of the executioners, and there is simply no evidence that Bonhoeffer was being killed because he was a Christian, whereas a better argument might be made for the executions of Franz Jägerstätter or Alfred Delp as martyrdoms, because both were excoriated for their associations with the Jesuits. These are important distinctions worth considering.

 Nevertheless, this story of Bonhoeffer’s final moments continues to perpetuate itself to the martyrdom cult who looks high and low to find worthy Christian heroes. Veggie Tales writer Eric Metaxas, whose New York Times bestselling biography on Bonhoeffer, which has been a hit among lay evangelicals and which relies entirely on secondhand accounts of the incident and almost entirely upon Bethge’s earlier work, considers this final speech a piece of authentic history. And unfortunately this trend continues, as I recently encountered in J. Aaron Simmon’s book God and the Other, published in 2011.

With regard to ancient and historical martyrdoms in general, Moss's most interesting point came in response to feedback on her post. One might expect that the feature of torture found in so many martyrdom accounts lends itself to the martyrdom narrative as an inextricable and salient feature. The story of Bonhoeffer, however, most likely incorrect, is that while the story retains the tag "martyrdom" in the popular imagination, the feature of torture is sanitized and Bonhoeffer's death is portrayed as quick and efficient. With the torture and perhaps even the recanting of one's faith, one has trouble making this fit comfortably.

For Dr. Moss’s original entry:

http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2011/03/cost-of-discipleship.html