Victoria J. Barnett

Although baptized as a child and serving faithfully as a pastor and theologian in the German Evangelische Kirche, Paul Leo was persecuted, removed from his church position, and imprisoned by the Nazi regime due to his Jewish ancestry. Leo was a descendent of Moses Mendelssohn, the famous Jewish philosopher, and Fanny Hensel nee Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the composer and pianist. The book carefully documents how the Nazis took severe measures against Leo, a Christian minister, because of his Jewish lineage. This eventuated in his incarceration in Buchenwald concentration camp before he was able to flee Germany as an exile to the United States. His escape from Germany was mediated through a refugee camp in the Netherlands and emigration to the US through the sponsorship of his colleague and friend Otto Piper, on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary. The story of Paul Leo in America includes his teaching at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, pastorates in southern Texas, and professorship at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. This book highlights the teaching and scholarly publications by Leo and his marriage to the accomplished artist Eva (Dittrich) Leo.

Although baptized as a child and serving faithfully as a pastor and theologian in the German Evangelische Kirche, Paul Leo was persecuted, removed from his church position, and imprisoned by the Nazi regime due to his Jewish ancestry. Leo was a descendent of Moses Mendelssohn, the famous Jewish philosopher, and Fanny Hensel nee Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the composer and pianist. The book carefully documents how the Nazis took severe measures against Leo, a Christian minister, because of his Jewish lineage. This eventuated in his incarceration in Buchenwald concentration camp before he was able to flee Germany as an exile to the United States. His escape from Germany was mediated through a refugee camp in the Netherlands and emigration to the US through the sponsorship of his colleague and friend Otto Piper, on the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary. The story of Paul Leo in America includes his teaching at Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, pastorates in southern Texas, and professorship at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa. This book highlights the teaching and scholarly publications by Leo and his marriage to the accomplished artist Eva (Dittrich) Leo.

Victoria J. Barnett served from 2004-2014 as one of the general editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, the English translation series of Bonhoeffer's complete works published by Fortress Press. Since 2004 she has directed the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Victoria J. Barnett served from 2004-2014 as one of the general editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, the English translation series of Bonhoeffer's complete works published by Fortress Press. Since 2004 she has directed the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the most influential Christian martyrs in history, bequeathed to humanity a legacy of theological creativity and spirituality that continues to intrigue people from a variety of backgrounds. Life Together gathers Bonhoeffer's 1938 reflections on the character of Christian community, based on the common life that he and his seminarians experienced at the Finkenwalde Seminary and in the "Brother's House" there. The stimulus for the writing of Life Together was the closing of the preacher's seminary at Finkenwalde by the Nazis. While Bonhoeffer wrote with his own seminary community in mind, he intended Life Together to have a more universal impact, and spoke of a mission and responsibility of the church as a whole. Using the acclaimed DBWE translation, adapted to a more accessible format, this new edition features supplemental material from Victoria J. Barnett and an insightful introduction by Geffrey B. Kelly to clarify the theological meaning and social importance of Bonhoeffer's work.

Ethics is the culmination of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological and personal odyssey and one of the most important works of Christian ethics of the last century. Using the acclaimed DBWE translation, adapted to a more accessible format, this new edition features an insightful introduction by Clifford Green and supplemental material from Victoria J. Barnett. Written in the midst of the conspiracy to overthrow the Hitler regime, it is nonetheless chiefly concerned with ethics for the postwar time of reconstruction and peace. Though caught up in the vortex of momentous forces in the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer systematically envisioned a radically Christocentric, incarnational ethic for a postwar world, purposefully recasting Christians' relation to history, politics, and public life. Focused on Christ, the God who became human, and the vision of a world reconciled with God, Ethics shuns abstraction, seeks the will of God in concrete historical reality, and calls the church to be a transforming community in the world with a new responsibility to public life. This edition allows all readers to appreciate the cogency and relevance of Bonhoeffer's vision.

"Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace." And with that sharp warning to his own church, which was engaged in bitter conflict with the official Nazified state church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer began his book Discipleship (formerly entitled The Cost of Discipleship). Originally published in 1937, it soon became a classic exposition of what it means to follow Christ in a modern world beset by a dangerous and criminal government. At its center stands an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount: what Jesus demanded of his followers - and how the life of discipleship is to be continued in all ages of the post- resurrection church. "Every call of Jesus is a call to death," Bonhoeffer wrote. His own life ended in martyrdom on April 9, 1945. Using the acclaimed DBWE translation, adapted to a more accessible format, this new edition features supplemental material from Victoria J. Barnett and an insightful introduction by Geffrey B. Kelly to clarify the theological meaning and social context of this attempt to resist the Nazi ideology.

The completion of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, the definitive English translation of the Critical Edition, represents a milestone in theological scholarship. This wonderful series is a translation from the German editions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke. The product of over twenty years of dedicated labor, the comprehensive and thoroughly-annotated sixteen-volume series will be the essential resource that generations of scholars will rely upon to understand the life and work of this seminal thinker in the wider frame of twentieth-century thought and history. Now, the editorial team has offered an essential companion to the entire series in the form of an index volume.

Volume 11 in the sixteen-volume Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition, Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931-1932, provides a comprehensive translation of Bonhoeffers important writings from 1931 to 1932, with extensive commentary about their historical context and theological significance. This volume covers the significant period of Bonhoeffer's entry into the international ecumenical world and the final months before the beginning of the National Socialist dictatorship. It begins with Bonhoeffer's return to Berlin in June 1931 after his year of study in the United States. In the crucial period that followed, Bonhoeffer continued his preparations for the ministry, began teaching at Berlin University, and became active at international ecumenical meetings. His letters and lectures, however, also document the economic and political turbulence on the European and world stage, and Bonhoeffer directly addresses the growing threat of the Nazi movement and what it portends not only for Germany, but for the world. Several of the documents in this volume, particularly the student notes of his university lecture on "The Nature of the Church" and his lectures on Christian ethics, give important insights into his theology at this point. His ecumenical lectures and reports are significant documents for understanding the ecumenical debates of this period.

With extensive commentary about their historical context and theological significance, this volume of writings covers a crucial time and an understudied period of Bonhoeffer's life. It begins during the final period of his illegal work in training Confessing Church seminarians and concludes as he begins his activities in the German resistance. Bridging these two periods is his brief journey to the United States in summer 1939, when he pondered and ultimately rejected a move to the safety of exile. Bonhoeffer's writings from this transitional period, particularly his New York diary, offer a rare and more deeply personal picture of Bonhoeffer in a time of great inner turmoil.