Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

Another Christian (and I use the word advisedly) gentleman is memorialised just round the corner from Brick Lane - Dietrich Bonhoeffer was pastor at St. Paul's German Evangelical Reformed Church from 1933-1935. The dates are as always significant. He left Germany in late 1933 after opposing the Deutsche Christen who wished to appoint the Fuhrer as head of the German Church and assisted in setting up the rival Confessing Church. St. Paul's Church was bombed in 1941 and the site is now part of London Metropolitan University. Trying to find an exact date I found the rather scary http://bombsight.org/ which maps the sites of bombs falling on London during the Blitz and gives and impression of what the population of London underwent at this time. Dietrich Bonhoeffer however had returned to Germany despite being aware of the Nazi party and the possible, even probable consequences for him of returning. The Confessing Church which also had as a member Pastor Niemoller , he of the poem - First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. highlighted the gap between Chrtistian behaviour and the tendency of the church to be bound up with the state - particularly the Nazi state. Cue the oft quoted belt buckle of the SS - "Gott mit uns" - God is with us which they wore while committing their atrocities. One thing that I think the US have got spot on is the requirement to separate church and state - the House of Lords - particularly those members of the Lords Spiritual have to my mind a way too much influence on this end of the pond. In 1935 Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, heading a seminary in Findenwande, in modern Poland. After the Gestapo closed the seminary in 1937 Bonhoeffer travelled, creating a seminary on the run. The Confessing Church opposed the persecution of Jews and the Nazi euthanasia programme - a silent Holocaust which prefigured the Nazis final solution to the "Jewish Question". The Church assisted the concealment of Jews - promoting non-violent resistance to the vile regime and Bonhoeffer became involved in the organised anti-Nazi resistance through the Abwehr, German military intelligence which had a significant anti-Nazi element. As he was required to enlist he left for the US in 1939 but, haunted by regret returned to Germany before the war started thinking that he could only assist from within. He joined the Abwehr, aiding the resistance by acting as a courier. He travelled to Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland as the resistance attempted to engage in dialogue with the Allied powers. He was arrested and imprisoned in Tegel prison by the Gestapo on 5th April 1943 where he continued to his religious work. In September 1944 after the Stauffenberg plot against Hitler's life the Abwehr's anti-Nazi activities became known to the authorities and Bonhoeffer was transferred to the SS Reich Main Security Office in Prinz Albrecht Strasse, a road that we visited a couple of years back when we visited Berlin. In February 1945 he was transferred to Buchenwald and later to Flossenburg concentration camp where on 8th April 1945 two weeks before the Americans liberated the camps he was condemned to death. He was hanged the day afterwards although accounts of his death are now questioned as the witnesses, all Nazis, sought to minimise their culpability. His legacy however can be noted in religious opposition to unjust government - particularly that of the Civil Rights movement in the US.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet

Nearly 2 years, how did that happen; actually I know exactly how that happened. Last years study of 2 small courses taking over the summer is how it happened. This year however I get a summer, hard to believe looking out the window on the longest day but yes it is the summer. Time to chillax with my housies, take a breath before starting it all over again in October. And so a visit to the big smoke was embarked upon, M elected to indulge in retail therapy in Westfield while I tubed it to Liverpool Street to meet up with Wayne who was up for a wander around an area of London that he didn't really know. We settled on Whitechapel - an area that I know fairly well. M and I had done one of the excellent London Walks - http://www.walks.com/ a year or two ago focusing on the few remaining relics of Jack the Ripper's London and I'd taken mum on another one focusing on the East End and its Jewish heritage - a heritage that has left its mark on the area. Given this I decided to print off a DIY walk that I found on the web - probably a mistake but hey...a focus for our meanderings. Looking at the gentrification of the area now it is a world away rom the warren of tiny alleys that contained a million or so Londoners in the nineteenth century - many of them immigrants - particularly those fleeing pogroms in the East. But it is there - they may have a new coat of paint but the soot-stained high terraces are still there - lurking. And in this squalor there was found a philanthropism that seems entirely lacking for modern political life - a fact brought home by those outnumbered by the police there to shepherd them gathered to protest against the latest round of austerity cuts handed down by the rich and brainless. This was slightly to my discomfiture aligned along a religious axis. I point you towards Sir Fowell Buxton commemorated at Truman's Brewery on Brick Lane, home of some of the best curry houses in the capital - a legacy of later immigrants - those from Bangladesh. Sir Fowell Buxton's mother was a Quaker a religious sect that I have a great deal of time for having met a few on various demos in the past and who seem rather more focused on improving the situation down here rather than saying to those who have not "never mind, you'll get your reward in heaven". He was however not involved in the temperance movement - being a director of what was then Truman, Hanbury and Company who were the largest brewer in the world in the mid-19th century. He financially supported the local weavers who had been effected by mechanization and cont4ributed to Elizabeth Fry's campaign for penal reform. He was elected to Parliament in 1818 and continued to work for penal reform, fighting to abolish the death penalty - although this wasn't achieved in his lifetime the number of capital punishment offences were decreased to 8 from over 200. He was also a founding member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824, an event also commemorated in plaqular form. His do-gooding (and when was it that "do-gooder" became a slur to be levelled at someone?) however did not stop there. In 1823 he founded the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery, taking over the stewardship of the issue from William Wilberforce who retired from public life in 1825. Buxton introduced a bill to Parliament calling for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire calling it - "repugnant to the principles of the British constitution and of the Christian religion". Further to this he lobbied for treaties to be made with African leaders to outlaw the trade feeling that slavery should be replaced with legitimate trade - a precursor of the modern call for fair-trade. For his efforts he was made a Baronet in 1840. He died in 1845 disappointed though having failed to effect this change in policy.