Life in the beautiful town of Breslau, on the Oder River, was pleasant for young Dietrich. Karl, his father, was a well-known professor of psychiatry and neurology. Paula, his mother, was a university graduate who home-schooled Dietrich while he was young. The Bonhoeffers had eight children; Dietrich was the sixth.

After the war, in 1945, Breslau ceased to exist as a German town. The city became known as Wroclaw and today is part of Poland. Germans living in the town at the end of the war had to leave. It is ironic that Breslau, Bonhoeffer's hometown, ceased to be German not long after he was killed.