Biographies
4 authors · 5 books
From a monk who wrote The Imitation of Christ to the Reformer of Wittenberg, an orphan-house founder who lived by prayer and a pastor who resisted Hitler. Germany's writers have shaped Christian devotion for five centuries.
Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471) was a German-born Dutch monk who spent roughly seventy years in a single monastery outside Zwolle, copying manuscripts, keeping his community's chronicle, and teaching its novices. Formed at Deventer among the Brethren of the Common Life, he wrote for those young men four small booklets of counsel that became The Imitation of Christ — after the Bible, the most widely read Christian book ever written.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) was the German monk whose recovery of justification by faith alone sparked the Protestant Reformation. Driven into a monastery by terror in a thunderstorm and then into peace by a verse in Romans, he posted his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, defied pope and emperor at the Diet of Worms, translated the New Testament into German at the Wartburg, and gave the church its hymns and catechisms. His last written words were, “We are beggars. This is true.”
George Müller (1805–1898) was a Prussian-born evangelist who, after a dissolute youth that included theft and a spell in prison, was converted at a prayer meeting in Halle in 1825 and gave his life to living by faith. Settling in Bristol, he founded the Ashley Down orphanages, where he housed and fed more than ten thousand orphans over his lifetime without ever once asking a human being for money — relying on prayer alone and keeping meticulous records of the answers.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who opposed Hitler from the first days of the regime, led the Confessing Church's illegal seminary at Finkenwalde, and wrote The Cost of Discipleship with its contrast of cheap and costly grace. Drawn into the resistance conspiracy against Hitler, he was arrested in 1943 and hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945, six days before its liberation.
Martin Luther was a German monk and professor whose teaching of justification by faith alone began the Protestant Reformation in 1517.
George Müller was born in Prussia, in present-day Germany, in 1805, and moved to England, where he cared for thousands of orphans in Bristol without ever asking anyone for money.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who opposed Hitler and was executed in 1945. His books on discipleship and Christian community are still widely read.
