Looking back. Looking ahead. 2020-2025

INSTITUTIONS | SPEECHES   209 sign him to oblivion – even if it took many years after the war for his significance to be recognised in church and society. How deeply Bonhoeffer continues to inspire people is evident from the remarkable resonance his words still find across the world. As one historian has noted, he may well be “the most widely read German theologian of the 20th century”. 2 From the core of his Christian convictions, Bonhoeffer repeat- edly challenged the growing tendency to confine religion and morality to the private sphere – something we still see today. The stark contradiction between private virtue and the mur- derous public energy that erupted during the “Third Reich” – and that so many Christians accepted without resistance or even actively supported in some cases – reveals a staggering moral failure. It is a failure that is and must remain inscribed in Germany’s cultural memory. It is striking how clearly Dietrich Bonhoeffer had already recognised this problem back in the early 1940s. In his Ethics, he writes:“Seeking refuge from public confrontation, a person retreats into private virtuousness. He does not steal, he does not murder, he does not commit adultery; he does good as he is able. But in renouncing the public realm, he knows precisely how to remain within the permitted boundaries that shield him from conflict. And so he must close his eyes and ears to the injustice around him. Only through self-deception can he keep his private innocence pure from the stain of responsible action in the world. In everything he does, what he leaves undone will give him no peace”. 3 This passage illuminates why, for Bonhoeffer, theology and ethics must always be public – and why they must also engage in politics. A deliberate withdrawal from the public sphere inevitably involves self-deception. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says:“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind [2]”. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it:“You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. This twofold commandment of love shows that Christians would only be deceiving them- selves if they were to tolerate injustice by remaining silent in public. Anyone who takes seriously the inseparability of love for God and love for one’s neighbour cannot remain silent when humanity is trampled underfoot. A genuinely devout person must continually ask where people suffering injustice – whether in private or in public – need support. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”. This famous saying of Jesus in Matthew 25 shakes us, again and again, out of a sheltered inward piety and into the active testing of faith – in both our private and public lives. Bonhoeffer himself had acted in this spirit long before. In April 1933, just days after the first boycott of Jewish businesses, he gave a lecture to pastors in Berlin. There, he called upon the Church to stand up for the civil rights of Jews. He outlined three ways in which the Church must assume responsibility towards the state: 4 “First, […] by asking the state whether its actions are legitimately those of the state – that is, by holding the state accountable. Second, by serving the victims of state action. The Church bears an unconditional obligation towards the victims of any social order – even if they do not belong to the Christian community… The third possibility is not only to bandage the victims beneath the wheel, but to jam the spokes of the wheel itself”. 5 We must continuously discuss what these words mean for us today. But Bonhoeffer himself left clear clues as to how he wanted them to be understood. In a letter to his brother, Karl Friedrich, dated 14 January 1935, he wrote:“Some things are simply worth defending without compromise. And it seems to me that peace and social justice – or, really, Christ – is one such thing”. In view of such words, and considering Bonhoeffer’s commit- ment to humanity, it is hard to bear the way his theology is   being misused by the far right – particularly in the United States, but also in right-wing populist circles here. His theo­ logy stands in stark contradiction to the denigration of entire groups of people on the basis of their origin or religion, which is repeatedly voiced in such circles. I firmly believe it would be in the spirit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to say at this act of remembrance:We may come from differ- ent religious and cultural backgrounds.We may hold different political opinions. But we are all united in one thing – human dignity truly applies to all. No one has to earn it. No conditions need to be met. It belongs to each and every person. And human dignity needs committed advocates. The place where we are gathered today reminds us of the fragility of our