Hello Dear Friends,
Today’s podcast is a bit long and only the first of a two-parter. So without further ado, please join me in listening to or reading, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.”
With Thanks For You!
D. Paul
Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.
The reviews are in and it’s a mixed bag for Angel Studios’ newest release, Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. I wish it were otherwise, but you can add my voice to the many pundits, armchair critics, and legitimate reviewers who have found the movie … well, let’s be generous and say lacking, with multiple omissions and missteps in both content and marketing.
In way of full transparency, Angel Studios and their team of reviewers (known as the “Angel Guild”) recently rejected a “Torch” of mine, an extended teaser that TGA Productions (tgaproductions.org) submitted to them for a possible co-production of Mr. Unknown, a film I’ve been working on for the past five years with Dr. Sam Mayhugh, CEO of TGA. Many subscribers to The Church’s One Foundation know about this project: it’s a gritty but uplifting story of an abused child who finds healing as an adult and is restored to a life of wholeness.
Also, having written and performed Bonhoeffer 1945, a “two-hander” play, as the Brits say, on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I can’t claim to be unbiased. But recusing myself from the conversation seems harsh, and perhaps my immersion as a writer/actor for years into Bonhoeffer’s life lends itself to a particular understanding of his extraordinary life. And an extraordinary life it was—a life whose complicated and nuanced story needs little embellishment to make it into an extraordinary movie.
In terms of marketing, I must ask: who chose the misleading subtitle, Pastor. Spy. Assassin? He was a pastor, for sure, with assignments from Berlin to London to Barcelona. And yes—a spy he was—but reluctantly so, making the scenes with the Abwher (the German military-intelligence service for the Wehrmacht) and with Bishop Bell of England eagerly overplayed. And then he is labelled an assassin?—A person who murders an important person for political or religious reasons (New Oxford American Dictionary)—absolutely not! It’s no wonder the Bonhoeffer family, the International Bonhoeffer Society, other scholars, and devotees of Bonhoeffer are disturbed at such a mischaracterization. Adding insult to injury, the promotional poster shows Bonhoeffer walking down the street carrying a pistol in front of what appears to be a blood-drenched Adolf Hitler. But then the film’s talented screenwriter and director, Todd Komarnicki, tells us in media outlets that he was making a “thriller.” For dramatic purposes, Bonhoeffer, an ardent admirer of Gandhi and internationally noted pacifist by 1934, is portrayed as a zealous, if not a happy warrior. I doubt if Bonhoeffer ever used a gun, unless cajoled into a weekend of fox hunting on the country estate of Ruth von Wedemeyer (née von Kleist-Retzow), mother of Maria von Wedemeyer.
Bonhoeffer first met Maria when teaching a confirmation class to her older brother and cousins at Ruth von Wedemeyer’s city home in Pätzig. Seven years later, they met again when Bonhoeffer took a writing retreat at Ruth’s country home in Pomerania. Over time, a close relationship developed and they were engaged on January 13, 1943. Maria was 18, Dietrich 36. In less than three months, on April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo on “suspicion of treason” and incarcerated at Tegel Prison, Berlin. Maria visited him frequently, “at least once a month,” and they corresponded faithfully until he was transferred to the Gestapo Prison at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. There all communications ceased. Maria’s absence from the “Bonhoeffer” movie is a glaring omission. Ironically, in a public interview, writer/director Komarnicki tells us how grateful he is for his own wife and children and is moved to tears when sharing his empathy for a Bonhoeffer who never experienced the joy of a family life. All this is touching and true, but Bonhoeffer had found a measure of that joy with his engagement to Maria, and she, more than anyone in his immediate family, I believe, gave Dietrich a guarded hopefulness for a bright future post the ravages of war. Yet, we know none of this from the movie—their loving commitment one to the other and the loss of that hope and ensuing pain of shattered dreams.
After the war, Maria moved to the US, graduated with a Masters Degree from Bryn Mawr College, married twice and divorced, had an illustrious carer in computer science, and died from cancer at the age of fifty-three, but not before donating her Bonhoeffer letters and manuscripts to the Houghton Library of Harvard University. Fortunately, the letters were eventually published and can be read in “Love Letters From Cell 92.” Someday, these letters may well serve as a fresh lens through which the definitive Bonhoeffer movie will be made. Simply put, Dietrich was the great love of Maria’s life, as she was for him. I can only imagine the many reasons given in pre-production meetings for her absence—their age discrepancies, too much valuable screen time taken up, etc. But the question remains: how could Maria von Wedemeyer not be in the movie? Perhaps less attention should have been given to Bonhoeffer’s mother, Paula (played beautifully by Nadine Heidenreich), and Dietrich’s brother, Walter (their opening hide-and-seek game goes on forever), with an overall de-emphasis in the movie on Dietrich’s heroics and a greater emphasis on his reserved humanity—a faceted humanity that asks all the right questions—with Bonhoeffer providing us and the filmmakers the perfect, interior roadmap, as expressed in his poem, Who Am I?, written while in prison.
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing
My throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible, woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine,
Whoever I am, Thou Knowest, O God, I am thine.
Like the Apostle Paul “who did not understand what he did, for what he wanted to do he didn’t do, but did what he hated to do” (Romans 7:15 NIV; author’s paraphrase), Bonhoeffer wrestled with his complex and contradictory nature—am I “this or the other”—while the earnest actor playing Bonhoeffer in the film, Jonas Dassler, is left portraying a one-dimensional saint, with little room for nuance or subtlety. The fully-human Bonhoeffer, who confessed to becoming “the evil we deplore,” is nowhere to be found, paradoxically diminishing rather than enhancing Bonhoeffer’s true courage and heroism.
In way of full disclosure and in defense of the young Mr. Dassler, I too was guilty of “overplaying” Bonhoeffer’s personae, the New York Times accurately observing (and I paraphrase) that “there is more of D. Paul Thomas in his portrayal of Bonhoeffer than there is of Bonhoeffer in Bonhoeffer.” Six months later, after several subtle adjustments, the London Times made Bonhoeffer 1945 a “Best Pick” of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe—thanks be to God, for sure—and to a more fully-human Bonhoeffer, with less of me and more of him, in all of his complexity and contradictions.
Some others who are absent from the movie or given scant attention:
Klaus Bonhoeffer, another older brother of Dietrich’s, a jurist and lawyer for Lufthansa Airlines, who, far more than Dietrich, worked closely with the Abwehr in espionage, involving himself in the July 20 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler, subsequently arrested, tortured, and killed by a gunshot to the neck on April 23, 1945.
Though we’re introduced to Hans von Dohnányi in the film (Dietrich’s brother-in-law, married to his sister, Christine), his role is substantially diminished. Like Klaus, he too was a lawyer actively involved in the resistance movement of the Abwher, supposedly delivering a bomb to the Smolensk airport that was smuggled onto Hitler’s plane. The bomb, unfortunately, failed to detonate. But more than the other failed attempts on Hitler’s life, this was probably the one assassination plot that engaged Dietrich’s attention and full support. Soon after that attempt, Hans was arrested on April 5, 1943, severely tortured, and condemned to death on April 6, 1945, by an SS drumhead court, and executed a few days later. Tangentially, Dietrich was not only an uncle but also godfather to Han’s son, Christoph von Dohnanyi, the brilliant Musical Director of the Cleveland Orchestra for twenty years. Having had the joy of a brief conversation about my play with Christoph, I know how much he would have appreciated the underscoring of Bach and Heinrich Schütz in the movie, two of Dietrich’s favorite composers.
Also conspicuously missing is Gerhard Leibholz, married to Sabine Bonhoeffer, Dietrich’s twin sister, whom we meet in the film sans her husband. Leibholz was a Jew, and though he was baptized and had received a Christian education, Dietrich denied Gerhard’s request to conduct his father’s funeral who had not converted to Christianity, a decision Bonhoeffer grew to regret over the course of time. Bonhoeffer evolved, recognizing his and the Church’s complicity in the anti-semitism of the era, and his mature, prophetic voice—“Only he who shouts for the Jew can sing the Gregorian chant”—continues to call the Church to accountability.
Minor perhaps, but two other perplexing choices: the film seemingly changes the location of where Bonhoeffer was hanged, moving it from the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp to a nondescript, abandoned school yard. Having freely spent time in Flossenbürg thirty-five years ago meditating in Bonhoeffer’s ad hoc cell, I can’t imagine the production company not obtaining the actual location site for its closing shot; and why they kept Bonhoeffer fully dressed as he approached the gallows is inexplicable. He was stippled of his clothes, a final humiliation before he was hanged, a humiliation that could have been shot tastefully, enhancing the ending immeasurably.
Now here is the twist, dear readers and listeners: I encourage you to see the film! WHAT! Yes, and in the upcoming podcast of April 2nd, I’ll give you the many, good reasons that Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin is a movie worth your seeing. Till then, even as Bonhoeffer did under the most severe circumstances imaginable…
Keep the Faith My Brothers & Sisters!
Amen
PS: A correction: Ruth von Wedemeyer is the mother, not the maternal grandmother of Maria.
Nicholas Hormann as the Judge Advocate and D. Paul Thomas as Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Los Angeles premiere of “Bonhoeffer 1945.”
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