Nachfolge, discipleship, was not a common topic among theologians or pastors within Germany in the 1930s.291 What I was not aware of until 2010 was the following, which is reported by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, the son of a Confessing Church pastor, in his biography of Bonhoeffer: “At all Nazi public events there were speeches about ‘Führer and followers.’ During the war these were made into a song with the refrain, ‘Führer, befiehl, wir folgen dir’ [‘Leader, command, we’ll follow you’].” Schlingensiepen comments: “When Bonhoeffer called his lecture course [and, later, his book] Nachfolge
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