Name Emmi Bonhoeffer Role Klaus Bonhoeffer's wife | Parents Hans Delbruck | |
Died March 12, 1991, Dusseldorf, Germany Spouse Klaus Bonhoeffer (m. 1930) Books Auschwitz trials; letters from an eyewitness Similar People Klaus Bonhoeffer, Hans Delbruck, Max Delbruck, Karl Thiersch | ||
Emmi Bonhoeffer (née Emilie Delbrück) was the wife of anti-Hitler activist Klaus Bonhoeffer. She was born on May 13, 1905, in Berlin. She died on March 12, 1991, in Düsseldorf. She married Bonhoeffer on September 3, 1930.
Klaus was chief counsel of the Lufthansa Airline Company and was the leading civilian member of the military resistance to the Hitler regime. While occupied with raising their children, Emmi supported her husband's decision to oppose Nazism, assisting him on countless occasions both morally and practically. Her husband was arrested in October, 1944 in connection with the plot to kill Hitler. He was sentenced to death in February, 1945, and killed by the SS as the war was ending on April 23, 1945.
Emmi barely escaped her own death when her house was destroyed in the last days of the war. She moved with her children to Schleswig-Holstein to start a new life in June, 1945. She was active in projects aiding war refugees, as well as anti-Nazi educational work and various humanitarian efforts.
Emmi participated in Thames Televisions acclaimed historical documentary, The World At War, in Episodes 1 and 16. Here, Emmi describes her and her husband Klaus experience of Kristallnacht in 1938.
Emmi Bonhoeffer was also the author of Auschwitz Trials: Letters from an eyewitness.