I knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This English edition of Begegnungen mit Dietrich Bonhoeffer varies somewhat from the German edition. The foreword by the German editor, Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann, has been replaced by this explanatory preface, by the foreword by Dr. Visser't Hooft, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, and by a brief outline of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life. There is a slight abbreviation of Dr. Hammelsbeck's text, and the contributions by Ernst Wolf and Mrs. Bell have been replaced by two other pieces. These are the new essay by Professor Paul Lehmann of New York, which casts additional light upon Bonhoeffer's American visits, and the article by the late George Bell, then Bishop of Chichester. This recounts his meeting with Bonhoeffer in Sweden during the war. It is an important political statement, as well as the story of the last meeting between two friends. It first appeared in Bonhoeffer's Gesammelte Schriften, volume 1, in 1958, and is reproduced here by kind permission of the publisher, Kaiser Verlag of Munich. The intention behind these changes and additions is to make the story of Bonhoeffer's life more clearly available to many readers in the English-speaking world who wish to know more about this remarkable man. In a volume of this kind the contributions, from family, and friends, and former students, are bound to vary greatly in style and in the impression they make. No attempt has been made to make them uniform, or to remove contradictions or slight repetitions. The m