Dietrich Bonhoeffer

German Lutheran pastor and theologian who, while still in his twenties, had already taught in New York, befriended Black Christians in Harlem, and seen Nazism rising at home. He returned to Germany rather than wait the war out in safety, helped found the Confessing Church against the Nazi-aligned state church, ran an underground seminary at Finkenwalde, and finally joined the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Arrested in 1943, he kept writing from prison — letters, prayers, fragments that became Letters and Papers from Prison. The Cost of Discipleship contains his now-famous distinction between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." He was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945, two weeks before American troops liberated it. He was 39.