Letters and Papers From Prison (39 page)

162.
According to notes in the book of readings, 8-10 February.

163.
His cousin. H. Chr. von Hase, at the time divisional pastor, and Maria Czeppan, née Horn, for a long time nanny in the Bonhoeffer house.

164.
Censorship by the Reich War Court, which had been transferred to Torgau.

165.
Alerts were expected less on full moon nights because of strengthened defence by night-fighters.

166.
Dr Josef Müller’s trial was taken separately and ended with an acquittal, but not a release, which Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not know at this time. See DB, p. 713.

167.
Bonhoeffer noted the first daylight raid on Berlin in his book of readings on 6 March 1944.

168.
Meaning, not doing or saying anything that might be politically dangerous, above all in connection with the illegal correspondence; probably something of the sort had been discovered in Tegel.

169.
The defence lawyer, Dr Wergin.

170.
‘I was in prison and you visited me.’

171.
In the ‘house of brethren’ at the Finkenwalde seminary.

172.
‘For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction’, 17 March 1944.

173.
A slip of the pen; it should be March.

174.
Probably refers to the warning of 9 March, see p. 232, n. 168 above.

175.
‘Give me somewhere to stand, and I will move the earth’ (Archimedes).

176.
I.e. National Socialist.

177.
Dr Josef Müller, after his supposed release following his acquittal.

178.
This is a reference to the weekly paper created by Goebbels, named
Das Reich,
which was especially directed at the intellectuals.

179.
The Via Flaminia.

180.
A slip of the pen; it should be 44.

181.
Ruth von Wedemeyer, née von Kleist-Retzow, his fiancée’s mother.

182.
‘Into thy hand I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God’ (Ps. 31.6). ‘My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better’ (Phil. 1.23).

183.
Both killed on the Eastern front in 1942.

184.
The City Commandant of Berlin, who was also responsible for the military prisons, Paul von Hase, a cousin of his mother, had asked after him.

185.
The prohibition was constantly evaded, partly by bribery and partly thanks to the friendliness of individual guards.

III

Holding Out until the Overthrow
April to July 1944

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] II April 1944

Dear Eberhard,

I really intended to write to you at Easter, but I had so many well-meaning visitors that I had less peace and quiet than I should have liked. I didn’t even manage to get a letter to Maria finished. I’ve got so used to the silence of solitude by now that after a short time I long for it again. I can’t imagine myself spending the day as I used to, or even as you have to spend it now. You know that even earlier I couldn’t take family festivals very well; I hope that this tendency hasn’t grown too much now. I would certainly like to have a good talk with someone, but aimless gossip gets on my nerves terribly. The same is true of the usual music on the wireless; I just don’t feel that it’s music at all, but a quite empty racket. There’s surely a danger in all this. Nevertheless, I expect that you often feel the same way. Feelings of quality just cannot be killed, but grow stronger from year to year.

How did you spend Easter? Were you in Rome? How did you get over your homesickness? I should imagine that that is more difficult in your position than in mine, for it cannot be done merely through diversion and distraction. You need to get right down to fundamentals, to come to terms with life, and for that you need plenty of time to yourself. I find these first warm days of spring rather trying, and I expect you do too. When nature is rediscovering herself, and the actual communities in which we live remain in unresolved tension, we feel the discord particularly keenly. Or it may be really nothing but homesickness, which it’s good for us to feel keenly. At any rate, I must say that I myself have lived for many, many years quite absorbed in aims and tasks and hopes without any personal longings; and perhaps that has made me old before my time. It has made everything too ‘matter-of-fact’. Almost everyone has aims and tasks, and everything is objectified, reified to such a tremendous extent - how many people today allow themselves any strong personal feeling and real yearning, or take the trouble to spend their strength freely in working out and carrying out that yearning, and letting it bear fruit? Those sentimental radio hits, with their artificial naïveté
and empty crudities, are the pitiful remains and the maximum that people will tolerate by way of mental effort; it’s a ghastly desolation and impoverishment. By contrast, we can be very glad when something affects us deeply, and regard the accompanying pains as an enrichment. High tensions produce big sparks (isn’t that a physical fact? If it isn’t, then translate it into the right kind of language). I’ve long had a special affection for the season between Easter and Ascension Day. Here’s another great tension. How can people stand earthly tensions if they know nothing of the tension between heaven and earth? Have you by chance a copy of
Das Neue Lied
with you? I well remember learning the Ascension hymns with you, among them the one that I’m fondest of today: ‘On this day we remember… ‘Just about now, by the way, we are beginning the tenth year of our friendship; that’s a fairly large slice of one’s life, and in the past year we’ve shared things together almost as closely as in the previous years of our
vita communis.

23 April is Maria’s birthday. She will have to celebrate it alone again, and I have the impression that the two of us – I mean you and I – will only get back home at the same time.
¹
I’ve been told that I had better not, for the time being, expect any change in my present position - and that is after they’ve been giving me fresh promises every fortnight. I don’t think that is either right or clever, and I have my own ideas about it; I should very much like to tell them to you, but as I can’t have my own way, I must just make the best of it, and go on hoping for Whitsuntide.

I heard someone say yesterday that the last years had been completely wasted as far as he was concerned. I’m very glad that I have never yet had that feeling, even for a moment. Nor have I ever regretted my decision in the summer of 1939,
²
for I’m firmly convinced - however strange it may seem - that my life has followed a straight and unbroken course, at any rate in its outward conduct. It has been an uninterrupted enrichment of experience, for which I can only be thankful. If I were to end my life here in these conditions, that would have a meaning that I think I could understand; on the other hand, everything might be a thorough preparation for a new start and a new task when peace comes.

A letter has just come from Rüdiger. I see from it that you too
are not exactly leading a base-camp existence. I would very much like to know more about your day-to-day life. Is the billeting really tolerable? But you’re to some degree used to that from boarding-school. With great delight I’ve seen the pictures of the seventy-fifth birthday party again, with you among the grandchildren; my parents brought them along recently … I’m very pleased that they were so happy at Pätzig. Maria’s mother seems to have looked after them quite touchingly, and even father spoke very warmly about the stay … Now I’m going to close for today; I must do another graphological analysis; that is the way in which I now spend the hours in which I cannot work properly. This letter is somewhat disjointed, as it was written with constant interruptions. Nevertheless, I expect that you will find it better than nothing. I often think of you each day and commend you to God. With all my heart,

Your Dietrich

From Ursula Schleicher

[Klein-Krössin] 18 April 1944

Dear Dietrich,

A week ago … I came to aunt Ruth’s with Dorothee to get some rest … We’re very spoilt here; Dorothee is delighted at last to have enough to eat. She has to keep working … She’s hoping to leave school in the autumn; I’m less sure, as she will only be sixteen in May. Christine is now to begin confirmation classes … We shall probably send her to Potsdam for instruction. Hans-Walter is not yet on active service, but will be trained for another three to six months as a long-range wireless operator. He is near Leipzig, so we shall certainly be able to visit him there sometime. He was very disappointed to be refused permission to visit when Klaus Dohnanyi is a nephew and was allowed to see you;
he
was expecting to go on active service. The letter that you wrote him
³
when he was called up has often been a help to him; he would very much have liked to speak to you, and perhaps that will happen one day. All is well with little Dietrich; he’s growing and is soon to have a photograph taken. You will also be getting a
copy. The pictures that we’ve taken have been rather bad, but Eberhard thinks that he can detect a hundred similarities, although one can see more cot than baby.

I hope that I will soon be granted permission to visit, so that we shall be able to see each other again at last. Rüdiger has already applied twice for me.

Meanwhile, good-bye. All the very, very best from the bottom of my heart.

Your Ursula

Love from everyone here.

From Eberhard Bethge

Rignano] 21 April 1944

Dear Dietrich,

As we were not able to see each other at Easter, but will have to put off our hope to the next festival, you’ve sent me greetings again and I’m gladly advised by you of the new dates for the important work. I spent Easter very quietly here with letters from Renate and beautiful flowers; I did some walking and read some Burckhardt
(Culture of the Renaissance).
Do you know Cardano’s
⁴
autobiography from that period? That must be a rather special instance of objective self-consideration; he’s a doctor. Does your father have it? The spring is already very beautiful, above all in valleys with streams running through; I hardly ever get into other areas now. But we like even the bad weather, as then there is general quietness in the air.

I must now also think of what will happen with Klaus’ and Christoph’s confirmation. How difficult these things have become. It’s Maria’s birthday the day after tomorrow; I’ve written to her. I wonder whether she will be able to come to see you? Instead of festivals like that we had promotions yesterday, and then celebrated 20 April by drinking the Führer’s good health in a glass of wine. The conversation was very turgid … It’s a pity that now there is hardly any possibility of Renate visiting you….

I’ve never had anything to do with graphology and have always
been suspicious of it, perhaps from anxiety at not being able to consider it with sufficient detachment … The report of that death
⁵
was new to me. I’m very sorry. I too had sent greetings a while ago. Will I probably get them back again?

I’m struck by the way in which the Catholics among the comrades here see religion as consisting entirely in laws and commands. This is very deeply rooted in them, in spite of all the overlay. That’s where they get the standards by which they judge. By the way, Whit Sunday plays a great part in their consciousness; some sent greetings and garlands of roses home or to godparents. I hope all goes well with you. Don’t lose courage about the final date.

Faithfully, your Eberhard

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 22 April 1944

Dear Eberhard,

I’ve just heard through my parents again about how things are going with you; I would always like to know much more, but it’s a great comfort even to know that you are well. Father was very pleased with your letter, and so was Maria with the one of 5 April. Many thanks, it was a
very
good, friendly thought on your part.

When you say that my time here will be very important for my practical work, and that you’re very much looking forward to what I shall have to tell you later, and to what I’ve written, you mustn’t indulge in any illusions about me. I’ve certainly learnt a great deal, but I don’t think I have changed very much. There are people who change, and others who can hardly change at all. I don’t think I’ve ever changed very much, except perhaps at the time of my first impressions abroad and under the first conscious influence of father’s personality. It was then that I turned from phraseology to reality. I don’t think, in fact, that you yourself have changed much. Self-development is, of course, a different matter. Neither of us has really had a break in our lives. Of course, we
have deliberately broken with a good deal, but that again is something quite different. Even our present experiences probably don’t represent a break in the passive sense. I sometimes used to long for something of the kind, but today I think differently about it. Continuity with one’s own past is a great gift, too. Paul wrote II Tim. 1.3a as well as I Tim. 1.13.
⁶
I’m often surprised how little (in contrast to nearly all the others here) I grub among my past mistakes and think how different one thing or another would be today if I had acted differently in the past; it doesn’t worry me at all. Everything seems to have taken its natural course, and to be determined necessarily and straightforwardly by a higher providence. Do you feel the same?