Manfred K. Bahmann

Manfred Kurt Bahmann was born in 1930 in Dresden, Germany. His father was a German railroad official and an active member of the Nazi Party. Manfred's ambition as an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth was to enter the German navy. But in February 1945 he was forced to flee the burning streets of Dresden with his mother and young sister; overnight he became a homeless refugee who had lost everything. This traumatic event and the revelations of the Holocaust led him first to a nihilistic world view and then gradually to a deep faith in the existential presence of a living God. He studied theology at the universities of Goettingen, Heidelberg and Bonn under world-famous German theologians, and earned M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees in the United States. During five years as a professor for church history in Argentina, he witnessed first-hand the birth of Latin American Liberation Theology at the CELAM conference of Roman Catholic bishops in Medellin, Colombia in 1968. He has served in the United States, Germany, and Argentina as a professor, parish pastor, military chaplain, and campus pastor. He is a popular lecturer on many theological subjects. A Lutheran, he worships regularly with a Reform Jewish congregation on Friday nights. He and his musician wife Marianne live in Pennsylvania in the United States.