Tom Dunkel - White Knights in the Black Orchestra: The Extraordinary Story of the Germans Who Resisted Hitler

T HE HEAD PASTOR of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City declared war on the Great Depression one Sunday morning in December 1930. More than a quarter of the people in this predominantly black Harlem neighborhood were unemployed, and it sickened him to see such despair. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. was six-foot-three and still cut an imposing figure at age sixty-five and still delivered stem-winder sermons. This one took a half hour to roll off his tongue, enthralling an overflow crowd that spilled from the sanctuary into a basement community room.

The axe is laid at the root of the tree, Powell thundered, paraphrasing the gospel of Luke, and this unemployed mass of black men, led by a hungry God, will come to the Negro churches looking for fruit! And finding none, will say Cut it down and cast it into the fire!

Abyssinian was about to open a soup kitchen and launch its own relief fund for those struggling without jobs. The reverend announced he himself would donate four months salary in order to set a righteous example. His flock responded with unexpected gusto. Unbidden, many of them got up and walked to the front of the church, digging deep into their pockets and filling the collection plates. One woman handed over her pocketbook containing a weeks pay. All told, the deacons counted $1,500 in cash and pledges. With characteristic immodesty, Powell pronounced it the most impressive climax to a sermon I had ever witnessed.

That also was unlike anything Dietrich Bonhoeffer had ever seen. And hed come a long way to be part of it.

Bonhoeffer was a German theologian on a fast track, having earned his bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees by the time he was twenty-one. He then briefly worked as an assistant pastor at a Lutheran church in Barcelona. Now twenty-four years old and fresh from finishing a postdoctoral degree in systematic theology at the University of Berlin, he wasnt old enough yet to be ordained in Germany. While biding his time, he accepted a two-semester fellowship at New Yorks Union Theological Seminary, a cradle of progressive Christian scholarship. In September Bonhoeffer had sailed west to America on a ship named Columbus.

U NION T HEOLOGICAL S EMINARY abutted the campus of Columbia University, two miles and several income-tax brackets from Abyssinian Baptist Church. Rather than attend nearby Riverside Churcha soaring, neo-Gothic replica of Frances Chartres Cathedral paid for in part by money-bags parishioner John D. RockefellerBonhoeffer chose to hike over to West 138th Street. To Abyssinian Baptist. Franklin Fisher, a black Union Theological seminarian from Alabama, suggested he come take a look.

Powell didnt find religion until his late twenties. As a boy Bonhoeffer already knew he wanted to be a minister. At fifteen he was studying Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French. His siblings teased him about his career choice, saying organized religion was dull and antiquated. Dietrich replied, In that case I shall reform it. He wasnt joking.

He and his twin sister Sabine were the sixth and seventh youngest in a line of eight children raised by affluent, well-connected parents who made a point of not frequenting church. Karl Bonhoeffer was chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Charit Hospital, the largest teaching hospital in Berlin, a traditionalist who wanted nothing to do with Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic bunkum. Paula Bonhoeffer, a college graduate, homeschooled all her children for their first few formative

The Bonhoeffers lived in a stately single-family home in Grunewald, a leafy Berlin enclave popular with movie stars and business executives. They also had a getaway retreat in the Harz Mountains. Their children had rules to obey (study hard, let adults do most of the talking at the dinner table, no dead-fish handshakes allowed) and were thoroughly marinated in art, music, and culture, plus fussed over by cooks, nannies, and housekeepers. In high school Dietrich confided to Sabine, I should like to lead an unsheltered life once, which might explain why years later he bypassed upscale Riverside Church in favor of gritty Abyssinian Baptist.

With his German accent, corn-silk hair, Old World refinements, and natural reserve (a friend dryly noted that Dietrich was not the type to put all his wares in the shop window), Bonhoeffer seemed destined to feel hopelessly out of place in Harlem. Not so. He embraced it body and soul, devouring books by W. E. B. Du Bois and poems by Langston Hughes. A classically trained pianist whod been playing Mozart sonatas since childhood, Bonhoeffer cut loose musically, hanging out in smoky jazz joints and occasionally at classier venues like the Cotton Club or Top Hat. He fancied Negro spirituals too. Paul Robesons gospel baritone boomed from the record player in his dormitory. Go down Moses! Way down in Egypt land. Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go!