“The more we have known of the really good things, the more insipid the thin lemonade of later literature becomes, sometimes almost to the point of making us sick. Do you know a work of literature written in the last, say, fifteen years that you think has any lasting quality? I don't. It is partly idle chatter, partly propaganda, partly self-pitying sentimentality, but there is no insight, no ideas, no clarity, no substance and almost always the language is bad and constrained. On this subject I am quite consciously a laudator temporis acti.”

German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, neo-orthodox theologian and anti-Nazi dissident, active in the 20th century. He was a founding member of the Confessing Church, and his writings made him widely known beyond theology. He is especially remembered for work on Christianity in the secular world, and for The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937 and often described as a modern classic. He also stood firmly against the Nazi dictatorship, speaking out against the euthanasia program and the persecution of Jews. Arrested by the Gestapo in April 1943, he was held at Tegel Prison for a year and a half before being moved to Flossenbürg concentration camp.