mayflower's radio guy

connect the dots

by David Rucker

In 1948 a young man in Germany abandoned law study, favoring music theory, composition and conducting for his analytical mind. After furthering his work under his grandfather at Florida State University he labored as a coach and accompanist for opera singers and dancers, thus assisting the autocratic conductor Sir Georg Solti. You may recall Solti as the podium commander who elevated the Chicago Symphony to world class heights nobody could have imagined before.

But let’s get back to the first character in this remarkable member of the most remarkable generation. Christoph von Dohnanyi did for the Cleveland Orchestra what Solti did for Chicago.  Both conductors were and remain benchmarks in performances of great compositions, and von Dohnanyi is still at it back in his home country.

His uncle on his mother’s side was no doubt a tremendous influence and enabler of his achievements, perhaps because of his own discoveries, writings, and teachings, but probably much more so because of his activism and martyrdom.

HIS name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. There remains an active society in his name to this day —people doing their utmost to help us remember the awful consequences of arrogant fascism, racism, and designs of world conquest.

It has often been said Bonhoeffer was born with theology flowing in his veins. His lectures and books caused a rapidly growing Nazi regime to ban him from public speaking, and today he would be the first to confess his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Due in large part to his active collection and study of African-American musical spirituality in the United States, he knew God’s ear for diverse cultural contributions.

So he helped move endangered Jews out of harm’s way. The Nazi’s and their fair-weather friends were getting into deep trouble by the middle of 1943, nonetheless, they arrested Dr. Bonhoeffer and moved him from one prison to the next until they hanged him in Flossenberg a scant three weeks before that city was liberated.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer repainted the set of the great drama we call Christianity, and his amazing work, along with that of others, will fade to gray if we don’t remember, pick up the torch, and carry it unashamed, high, and proud.

Dr. Bonhoeffer said it better. "Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace."