27th January, 2006
JOE MONTAGUE

He’s known as the man who dared to stand up to Hitler. Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the first to clearly raise his voice in resistance to Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazis. Executed just a few days prior to the end of World War II, he left a behind a legacy of writings that continue to influence Christian theology today.

Captured in a 2003 documentary by filmmaker Martin Doblmeier - titled Bonhoeffer, the German’s story has resonated with audiences around the world.

AN INSPIRING LIFE: Filmmaker Martin Doblmeier says Bonhoeffer's life provides an example to everyone trying to understand the will of God in tough situations. “As I have gone back to tell the story now that I am a middle-aged man who has struggled to find his own spirituality, what I saw this time in Bonhoeffer is a man who didn't follow a straight line. He had to make decisions every step of the way. Some of which he regretted. He was constantly analysing what he was doing and what the consequences of those actions were. He was praying that he would make the right move. "

In 2004, the film was shown on Australia’s ABC and it’s still being aired in churches around the country. Early next month, it will be shown on the US television station PBS, coinciding with the 100 year anniversary of his birth.

Using vintage footage and live interviews from surviving relatives and friends, the film chronicled the life of the Lutheran pastor who long before the advent of the Second World War spoke out against Hitler's Third Reich.

The film’s director and producer Martin Doblmeier says Bonhoeffer’s life provides an example for everyone that “even when situations get very tense, very extreme, and everyone around you seems to be following a different path than you, there is still a call to understand what the will of God is”.

“I think for me Bonhoeffer does that,” he says. “When I started reading Bonhoeffer back in high school I saw a man who was courageous. He was willing to offer himself as a martyr for God.

“As I have gone back to tell the story now that I am a middle-aged man who has struggled to find his own spirituality, what I saw this time in Bonhoeffer is a man who didn't follow a straight line. He had to make decisions every step of the way. Some of which he regretted. He was constantly analysing what he was doing and what the consequences of those actions were. He was praying that he would make the right move.

“I think that is the example for all of us to try and understand the will of God. It means a constant alertness to what God is calling you to do. (It requires) openness to the signs of how God is speaking to you. It means awareness of scripture and prayer. All of these components come together to decipher what really is a complicated question."

During the making of the film, Doblmeier and crew travelled to Germany in 1998 to interview Bonhoeffer's closest friend, Eberhard Bethege, and Ruth Alice Von Bismarck, the sister of Bonhoeffer's fiancée, Maria Von Wedermeyer. The film also features interviews with Bonhoeffer's nieces Renate Bethge and Marianne Liebholz.

"These were the oldest people who were still living and knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” says Doblmeier. “With very little money to start, I just committed to go ahead and do the film. We used the first grant money to go over and shoot the interview with Eberhard Bethge. Most people who know Bonhoeffer know of him as a result of the effort and the work of Eberhard Bethge."

"We realised from the beginning that I probably would be the last person to sit down and do a full in-depth interview with many of these people who were associated with the Bonhoeffer story. I spent the better part of eight hours interviewing Eberhard Bethge. People walked away feeling they had said everything they wanted to say. There was closure for them."

It was through these interviews that a keener sense of what Bonhoeffer stood for began to emerge.

"In looking back at how the church responded at that time, for me, there is a keen awareness of how the church failed in its mission to really be prophetic at a time that it needed to be heard,” says Doblmeier.

“I think that the church today sees how it failed in the 1930's because they were so anxious to be considered part of mainstream culture. It was a different situation than it is in America (today). At that time in Germany the church and state were all mixed together. In our country in the United States there is a much different role for the church where the church and state are separate. The church is more prophetic."

Doblmeier doesn't try and defend the church in Germany leading up to and during the Second World War but he does set the scene.

"Coming out of World War I, the church didn't feel it was relative the way it needed to be. It had lost some of its fabric in the place of the German culture. They saw this man who in the beginning (seemed to be) trying to be a moral leader. He (Hitler) was ending pornography in Germany, trying to get the economic recovery going. He was trying to offer a moral voice for the German people. The German churches liked that.

“Even when he began to speak out against the Jews they somehow ignored that. I think they realise now in retrospect that was their big failure. They didn't stand up for the Jews at a time when the Jews needed to be supported. I think in Germany today you have a much different church. It is much more critical of the state.”

Doblmeier says whenever the film has been presented in churches, it has stirred up lively discussions. He said within the same congregations it is not unusual to have people standing up with opposing views concerning what the church's role should be in time of war or in situations where tyrants exist.

Bonhoeffer is just one in a long line of autobiographical films that Doblmeier has produced. Other subjects have included Thomas Jefferson, Cardinal Suenens, Jean Vanier and his chronicle concerning the Taize community in the Burgundy region of France.

As we spoke, production was concluding for a made for television documentary concerning the life of Albert Schweitzer.

"Most of the films that we do are on faith and spirituality, faith as it is lived out in the world. I think when you see lives of people who are trying to understand what the will of God is and what it means for them in their moment and time I think it brings people a sense of comfort to see other people struggling to understand the will of God," says Doblmeier.

The filmmaker says he is now starting a major project for the US broadcaster PBS on the subject of forgiveness - with what he describes as having a “gritty, wrenching, type of storyline”. The thrust of the film, which is expected to air in late 2006, will centre on how difficult the act of forgiveness is.

"We are also doing an hour long production for Public Television about the Washington Cathedral,” adds Doblmeier. “It is a wonderful metaphor for the role of faith in America." This show is also tentatively set to air late in the year.

Alongside this, production is underway for a Dutch broadcaster centring about the life of former Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper who was instrumental in ordering the role between religion and society in Dutch culture. Kuyper also founded the Free University in Amsterdam as well as Calvin College in the United States.

"I think all of us have an innate fascination with people whose lives are left incomplete,” says Doblmeier. “People who show to us these extraordinary glimmers of light, wisdom and revelation and whose lives are cut short. Bonhoeffer dies at 39. He stops writing at the beginning of his 38th year. This is a very young man. He carries into his writings the youth, the hope and the optimism about what the world can be. We read into it the possibility of what he could have been had he outlived the war."

Doblmeier says that for people like Ruth Alice Von Bismarck - sister to Bonhoeffer's girlfriend Maria Von Wedermeyer - reliving some of the memories was tough.

But he adds: “I think revisiting it was difficult but I think people welcomed the opportunity to be part of his legacy."

~ www.journeyfilms.com

~ www.bonhoeffer.com