In Memory of Helmut Gollwitzer on the 22nd Anniversary of his Death

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Helmut Gollwitzer—student and friend of Karl Barth, prisoner of war, pastor, activist, and public theologian—died on this day 22 years ago. It was a shockingly ordinary death that came at the end of what was anything but an ordinary life.

As regular readers here at DET know, I am currently working on a book on Gollwitzer. Indeed, I have been working on it for some time. My hope is to introduce Gollwitzer and his work to a North American context that has much to learn from his life and thought. I am currently in the drafting stage, and so Gollwitzer’s legacy has been laying even more heavily than usual on my mind. As such, I wanted to take this moment to commemorate him.

By Stiftung Haus der Geschichte (2001_03_0275.4240) [CC BY-SA 2.0],
via Wikimedia Commons

If you don’t know much about Gollwitzer, I recommend to you his two volumes of sermons that have been translated into English: The Dying and Living Lord, The Way of Life.

But if you don’t want to wait for those books to ship to you, there are a number of things that I have written about Gollwitzer that you can access online. See the links below.


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