Our Interlocutors
»The Cloud of Witnesses«
We would like to thank our interviewees in Switzerland, South Africa, the USA and Germany. Without them this film would not have been possible.
In the order of their appearance in the film:
Dr. John de Gruchy
The South African was 21 years old when he first heard about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church from Eberhard Bethge while studying in Chicago in 1960. He immediately recognized parallels to the situation in his native South Africa. John de Gruchy is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town and Associate Professor at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Rev. Dr. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen
As a young pastor, he met Eberhard Bethge and they became close friends. In 1971, he invited people to a first Bonhoeffer conference in Düsseldorf, where he proposed the founding of the International Bonhoeffer Society. His biography of Bonhoeffer, which was translated into several languages, was published in 2005.
Rev. Dr. Jutta Koslowski
She researches and publishes on the biographical and family background of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his family. In 2022, she was Dietrich Bonhoeffer Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Koslowski is a pastor in the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau and a lecturer at the Ludwigsburg University of Education.
Dr. Christine Schliesser
The theologian was on the board of the German-speaking section of the International Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society for many years. Dr. Christine Schliesser is Director of Studies at the Ecumenical Centre for Faith and Society at the University of Fribourg and a private lecturer in Systematic Theology and Ethics at the University of Zurich. She is also a Research Fellow at the Chair of Historical Trauma and Transformation at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Rev. Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman
She was the first female “Assistant Minister” at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. A position she held for over ten years. Today, Dr. Turman teaches theology and African-American religion at Yale University Divinity School in New Haven, CT, USA.
Dr. David Levering Lewis
Professor emeritus of New York University and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for his biographies of W.E.B. DuBois. Lewis also won the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize. He is the author of more than 14 books, including the definitive biography of the Harlem Renaissance, When Harlem Was in Vogue.
Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III
(July 19,1949- October 28, 2022)
Began as youth pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, in 1972, and he was appointed Sr pastor there in 1989. In total, Rev. Dr. Butts served in ministry to Abyssinian for 50 years, with more than 30 years as the senior pastor. Rev. Dr. Butts was the longest serving pastor of that historical Church in Harlem.
Dr. Samuel K. Roberts
Dr. Roberts writes, teaches, and lectures widely on African-American urban history, especially medicine, public health, and science and technology.
He is the grandson of Albert Franklin Fisher.
Cecilia and Charles Small
Cecilia and Charles Small grew up in Harlem in the 1930s. They have been deacons at the Abyssinian Baptist Church for many years.
Dr. Nico Koopman
The South African professor of theology is concerned with the effects of Christian faith on moral and public life. He became acquainted with Bonhoeffer's life and works through Allan Boesak. Dr. Koopman teaches systematic theology and ethics at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak
Born and raised in South Africa, he was denied full access to theological training during his country’s apartheid regime. He completed a Ph.D. in the Netherlands under the guidance of the Bonhoeffer scholar Gerard Rothuizen. Dr. Boesak later played a central role in dismantling the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
The Team Behind the Documentary
This film was the joint idea of the American theology professor Reggie L. Williams and the German filmmaker Hellmut Schlingensiepen. They conducted most of the interviews for this film together and met again and again to discuss the content concept of the film.
Rev. Dr. Reggie L. Williams
The professor of theology teaches Christian ethics at McCormick Seminary in Chicago, USA. He has long researched Bonhoeffer's experiences in the USA and published his extremly valuable book on the subject “Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus” in 2014. A revised version was published in 2022.
Hellmut Schlingensiepen
In 2005, the filmmaker and his colleague Christian Coers published a short film portrait of Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled “Wer glaubt, der flieht nicht...” (“Those who believe do not flee...”). Since then, the German resistance against National Socialism has been a central theme of his work. When work on the film had to be put on hold during the pandemic, Schlingensiepen wrote a book about the Harlem Renaissance, which will be published in 2025.
Hellmut Schlingensiepen
and Reggie L. Williams
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