Friends,
I saw and enjoyed BONHOEFFER at the
Theatre Project in the fall of 2005 or 2006. During the Q & A, I asked the
actor Peter Krummeck a question about Phil Berrigan. However, the
London-born actor did not know the name Phil Berrigan.
Kagiso,
Max
Screening of ‘Bonhoeffer’:
Persecution of clergy spotlighted in the struggles for justice
By Bill Hughes
· March 27, 2017 ·
·
·
Bonhoeffer, a film of a one-man
play, was screened Saturday in the sanctuary at Bolton Hill’s Memorial
Episcopal Church, in Baltimore, MD.
The film starred the
late actor Peter Krummeck, who also produced the play. He was born in London in
1947, and emigrated to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1969. He died there in 2013.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu was one of the patrons of Krummeck’s Cape Town-based
African Community Theatre Service.
Bonhoeffer, the play, originally
debuted in Washington, D.C. in the early 2000s. It also was performed in
Canada, South Africa and at Baltimore’s Theater Project. It was televised in
Canada.
Backstory
on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45). He was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian
and author, who opposed the Nazi regime. He was active in the resistance
movement and in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler, the German dictator. Bonhoeffer
was arrested in April, 1943, and jailed at Tegel prison. He was subsequently
hanged by the Nazis — at Flossenburg — just weeks before WWII ended.
The program
was hosted by The Rev. Grey Maggiano of Memorial Episcopal. After the
presentation of the film, John Kiess, professor of the Theology Department at
Loyola College, The Rev. Dr. C. Anthony Hunt of United Methodist Church, Senior
Pastor, and Judith
Krummeck of classical radio station WBJC, participated in a panel
discussion.
They
each shared their views on Bonhoeffer. A spirited Q&A from the audience
followed.
In
her remarks, Krummeck, a sister of Peter Krummeck, talked about the background
of her brother’s work, especially in the area of the role of theater, and the
church, too, in “promoting social justice and reconciliation.” She has been the
popular “evening drive time host” for WBJC, since 1998. Krummeck is a native of
South Africa. She is also an actress, educator and author. Her latest book,
Beyond the Baobab, is a collection of essays about her immigrant experience.
Judith
Krummeck
I
must add that I thought Peter Krummeck’s portrayal of Bonhoeffer in the
45-minute edited film version of the play was simply riveting. He captured the
essence of the doomed, but courageous cleric.
There
were two co-sponsors for the event: the Memorial Episcopal Church and “The
Samaritan Community.”
Bonhoeffer’s
martyrdom was also depicted in a well-received documentary on his life and
death. It was produced, in 2003, by writer/director Martin Dobimeier.
A
lively discussion of the importance of Bonhoeffer to our contemporary era came
up. Rev. Hunt mentioned Martin Luther King Jr. and Bishop Oscar Romero as just
two of the modern day spiritual leaders/martyrs, who were guided in their
struggle for Justice by their abiding Christian faith. He added there were also
many more “unsung heroes” for the cause of Civil Rights in America. Dr. King
was murdered in 1968.
Bishop
Romero of El Salvador was a champion of the poor in his beleaguered country.
Siding with the poor, however, was considered a “subversive act” by the
blood-stained Oligarchy running the regime. He was killed in San Salvador by
the death squads in 1980, while serving Mass.
Professor
Kiess, who is an expert of the writings of the Jewish intellectual and
historian Hannah Arendt, raised some relevant comments about the moral duties
of an individual, when facing “evil.” Arendt penned, in 1963, the controversial
book, Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Kiess’s
book, published in 2016, is titled: Hannah Arendt and Theology.
It
needs repeating that the widespread resistance by many heroic Christian clergy
to the Nazi regime, during the blood-stained days of the German Reich, isn’t
well known. The records, however, of the Dachau concentration camp, located in
the South of Germany, near Munich, tell, in a compelling fashion, some of their
story.
According
to a finely-detailed book, And Who Will Kill You, by Bedrich Hoffmann,
Pallottinum, (1994), the author revealed that “2,670 members of the clergy” passed
through the Dachau hell hole during WWII. Of that number, “621 died” there for
reasons that aren’t disclosed. Roman Catholic priests, 598 to be exact, made up
the majority of the 621 clerics who perished at Dachau from 1934-45.
Finally,
I think one of the consensus from tonight’s viewing of “Bonhoeffer,” was that
the play, and the important moral issues that it raised, is just as relevant
today as it has ever been.
######
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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