The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2020 81 How am I connected, and in some ways obligated, to others, even to those with whom I have robust disagreements? skilled in the arts of friendship, music, scholarship, teaching and community- building. Each of these skills he first learned at home, in a loving, large and relatively happy family that treasured humanism and conviviality, and honored obligations to others. Their lives were engulfed not once but twice by war, and by the many civic and political troubles that shook Germany during the first half of the 20th century. Like so many of that generation, his life was swallowed up and eventually ended by the specter of National Socialism. Bonhoeffer realized early on that Nazi ideology posed a profound danger to Ger- many. He disagreed robustly and publicly with many of his fellow Christians who enthusiastically embraced the party and its ideology. In a radio address in early February 1933, Bonhoeffer even warned against a Führer (leader) who becomes a Verführer (misleader), never naming Hitler but describing the social dynamics of his rule with unmistakable clarity. Bonhoeffer spoke, wrote and organized against Nazi influence in the German church. In 1939, friends in the United States offered him a teaching position at a seminary in New York—an honorable plan of escape fromGermany and its wartime demands. Initially, Bonhoeffer accepted, but after only a few weeks in the United States, he returned to Germany to embrace his responsibilities to his coun- try and its struggle for a hopeful future. After several years in German military intelligence ( Abwehr ), where he worked as a double-agent helping to smuggle Jews out of Germany and build links with the outside world for the German resistance, Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo at his family home in April 1943, on a minor and unrelated charge. When the Valkyrie plot by Ger- man generals and a group of civilian allies to overthrow Hitler failed in July 1944, Bonhoeffer’s small role in that larger operation was also eventually unearthed. After two years of imprison- ment, he was put to death on Hit- ler’s orders on April 9, 1945, in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, just weeks before Allied forces arrived to liberate it. One of Bonhoeffer’s central lessons in life was his practice of asking questions, to himself and his family and friends. These are not German questions but human ones—true for all people, everywhere. They are particularly challenging to individuals engaged in the nomadic For- eign Service life: To whom and to where do I belong? How have those people and places influenced me? What do I owe my fellow citizens? How am I connected, and in some ways obligated, to others, even to those with whom I have robust disagreements? These questions about civic participa- tion and belonging matter even when our citizenship is practiced far beyond our nation’s shores. At the Bonhoeffer-Haus, I was always struck by howmy German counterparts spoke openly about the guilt and shame of their history, and how important it is to grapple with history in order to better prepare for the future. Learning about the man in the context of his home, I was reminded that the small, seemingly insignificant decisions we make day by day do, in fact, make up and influence history. Like Bonhoeffer, we who belong to particular people and places are impli- cated in history, too, whether our names ever grace a history textbook or our house is ever memorialized for visitors. That most elemental truth about our American civic life still bears repeating, especially for those who will come after us. I have since surrendered my key to Bonhoeffer-Haus, and our family has settled into our next posting, as those of us living this privileged Foreign Service life continue to do. We now live, work, learn and try to serve among new people and new places. Here, in our new home outside Brus- sels, I have not stopped looking for the stories that this new place offers, espe- cially as a way to inform and care for our own American stories. n Dietrich Bonhoeffer with students in the spring of 1932. GERMANFEDERALARCHIVES/WIKIMEDIACOMMONS Bonhoeffer-Haus in Berlin, Germany, 2008. AXELMAURUSZAT/WIKIMEDIACOMMONS