Today (9 April) the Church celebrates the life, ministry and martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 into an academic family. Ordained in the Lutheran Church, his theology was influenced by Karl Barth and he became a lecturer: in Spain, the USA and, in 1931, back in Berlin.

Opposed to the philosophy of Nazism, he was one of the leaders of the Confessing Church, a movement which broke away from the Nazi-dominated Lutherans in 1934.

Banned from teaching, and harassed by Hitler’s regime, he bravely returned to Germany at the outbreak of war in 1939, His defiant opposition to the Nazis led to his arrest in 1943.

His experiences led him to propose a more radical theology in his later works, which have been influential among post-war theologians.

He was executed by the Nazi police in Flossenburg concentration camp on this day in 1945.