Christiane Tietz studied Mathematics and Protestant Theology in Frankfurt/Main and Tübingen. She worked as assistant of Eberhard Jüngel and did her PhD with him on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Her PostDoc thesis was on a Christian concept of self-acceptance. She was awarded a Heisenberg Stipend by the German Research Foundation from 2006 until 2008. From 2008 until 2013 she worked as Full Professor for Systematic Theology and Social Ethics at the University of Mainz/Germany. Since 2013 she has been Full Professor for Systematic Theology at the Institute of Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich/Switzerland. She has been a visiting lecturer or research scholar in Cambridge, Chicago, Heidelberg, Jerusalem, New York, and Princeton. She is a member of the editorial board of numerous journals and book series.

Victoria J. Barnett (Translator) was Director of the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, from 2004 to 2019. She also served as General Editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition from 2004 to 2014. She is the author of For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest under Hitler (Oxford University Press, 1992) and Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (Greenwood Press, 1999). She is the translator of several works, including Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses were Silent and Christiane Tietz, Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and is the author of numerous articles and book chapters.

• List of Illustrations


• List of Abbreviations


• 1: "I Belong to Basel": Ancestors and Childhood, 1886-1904


• 2: "This Obscure Desire toward a Better Understanding": Studies, 1904-9


• 3: "Stumbling up the Steps to Calvin's Pulpit": Geneva, 1909-11


• 4: "The Red Pastor": Safenwil, 1911-21


• 5: "A Book for Those Who Were Also Concerned": The First Epistle to the Romans, 1919


• 6: "To Always Work Somewhat Faster": Göttingen, 1921-5


• 7: "Not a Stone Left Standing": The Second Epistle to the Romans, 1922


• 8: "The Need for Thinking Further": Münster, 1925-30


• 9: A Troubled "Ménage à Trois": Charlotte von Kirschbaum


• 10: "A Swissman in the Middle of Germany": Bonn, 1930-5


• 11: "We Who Can Still Speak": Basel, 1935-45


• 12: "In Political Respects a Dubious Will-o'-the-Wisp": Basel, 1945-62


• 13: "The White Whale": Church Dogmatics


• 14: "All Things Considered, a Little Tired": The Final Years, Basel, 1962-8


• Epilogue


• Chronology


• Bibliography


• Index