Klaus Hans Martin Bonhoeffer

Burial: https://billiongraves.com/grave/Klaus-Bonhoeffer/18234027?referrer=...

https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/de/biografie/7527

Klaus Bonhoeffer (5 January 1901 – 23 April 1945) was a German jurist and resistance fighter against the Nazi régime who was executed after the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler.

Klaus Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau, Germany, now Wrocław, Poland, to Karl Bonhoeffer, a professor of psychiatry and neurology, and his wife Paula (née von Hase), as their third son. His younger brother was the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945). As a child, he went to the Grunewald-Gymnasium in Berlin with Hans von Dohnanyi.

He studied law at Heidelberg and received a doctorate for his thesis, "Workers' Committees as an Organ of the Workers' Coöperative" (Die Betriebsräte als Organ der Betriebsgenossenschaft). He also had further training in Berlin, at the University of Geneva, and in Amsterdam. On 3 September 1930, he wed Emmi Delbrück, who was Hans Delbrück's daughter, and Justus and Max Delbrück's sister.

He worked as a lawyer and from 1935 as a legal adviser for Deutsche Luft Hansa, serving from 1937 to 1944 as chief syndic. This job took him on many business trips, even during the war.

In the years 1940-1944, he systematically forged contacts with various resistance groups working against the Nazi régime. Through his brother Dietrich, he had contacts with the church resistance, and through his brothers-in-law, Justus Delbrück, Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher, he had many contacts in the military resistance to Hitler, especially in the circle about Wilhelm Canaris in the Abwehr of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Through his wife's cousin Ernst von Harnack, he was connected to the social-democratic resistance. Klaus Bonhoeffer also led his colleague Otto John, among others, into the resistance. He used his travel opportunities to further the cause against the Nazis.

He was dedicated to the plan to assassinate Hitler on 20 July 1944 and overthrow the government.

According to the detention book kept at the Lehrter Straße prison in Berlin, where the Gestapo had a special section for political prisoners, Bonhoeffer was arrested on 1 October 1944 and sentenced to death by the German "People's Court" (Volksgerichtshof) on 2 February 1945. On the night of 22–23 April, as Soviet troops were already reaching Berlin's eastern outskirts, he along with Rüdiger Schleicher and other prisoners was taken by a special squad from the RSHA to the exhibition grounds near the Lehrter Straße prison and killed with a gunshot wound to the neck.

The only eyewitness to these murders was Herbert Kosney, who managed to move his head at the last moment so that the shot meant for his neck missed.

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Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand

(http://www.gdw-berlin.de/bio/ausgabe_mit.php?id=94)

Klaus Bonhoeffer

(15.01.1901 - 22./23.04.1945)

Klaus Bonhoeffer

Klaus Bonhoeffer wird schon bald nach dem Abschluss seines Jura-Studiums 1935 Chefsyndikus der Deutschen Lufthansa. Er ist verheiratet mit Emilie Delbrück, mit der er eine Tochter und zwei Söhne hat. In enger Verbindung mit seinen Schwägern Hans von Dohnanyi, Justus Delbrück und Rüdiger Schleicher nutzt er früh seine Reisemöglichkeiten, um vielfältige Kontakte zu Widerstandskreisen im diplomatischen und kirchlichen Umfeld des In- und Auslands zu knüpfen. Er ist in die Attentatspläne der Verschwörergruppe um Ludwig Beck und Carl Goerdeler eingeweiht. Klaus Bonhoeffer wird am 1. Oktober 1944 verhaftet und am 2. Februar 1945 vom Volksgerichtshof zum Tode verurteilt. In der Nacht vom 22. auf den 23. April 1945 wird er zusammen mit anderen Gefangenen aus dem Berliner Zellengefängnis Lehrter Straße auf einem nahegelegenen Ruinengelände von einem Sonderkommando des RSHA hinterrücks erschossen.

Literatur

   * Eberhard Bethge: Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Theologe, Christ, Zeitgenosse. München 5. Auflage 1983

   * Otto John: Falsch und zu spät. Der 20. Juli 1944. München, Berlin 1984

   * Romedio G. Graf von Thun-Hohenstein: Der Verschwörer. General Oster und die Militäropposition. Berlin 1982, München 1984 (dtv-TB)