Against the wind

Leading church activist and theologian Dorothee Soelle here recalls a lifetime of learning and activism in church, academy, and politics. Born in 1929 in Cologne, Germany, she was a young girl during the war years and the Holocaust. She studied classical philology and philosophy, then theology and literature. Her 1972 dissertation at the University of Cologne explored connections of literature and theology since the Enlightenment. Among the most widely read theologians of our time, she has pioneered in political, feminist, and liberation theologies.