Letters and Papers From Prison (31 page)

How does the Italian landscape impress you? Is there any Italian school of landscape painters, anything comparable to Thoma, or even to Claude Lorrain, Ruysdael, or Turner? Or is nature there so completely absorbed into art that it cannot be looked at for its own sake? All the good pictures that I can think of just now are of city life; I can’t remember any that are purely of landscape.

13 February

I often notice here, both in myself and in others, the difference between the need to be communicative, the wish for conversation, and the desire for confession. The need to be communicative may perhaps on occasion be quite attractive in women, but I find it most repugnant in men. There is quite indiscriminate gossip, in front of all comers, about one’s own affairs, no matter whether they interest or concern other people or not – simply, in fact, because one just has to gossip. It’s an almost physical urge, but if you manage to suppress it for a few hours, you’re glad afterwards that
you didn’t let yourself go. It sometimes makes me ashamed here to see how people lower themselves in their need to gossip, how they talk incessantly about their own affairs to others who are hardly worth wasting their breath on and who hardly even listen; and the strange thing is that these people do not even feel that they have to speak the truth, but simply want to talk about themselves, whether they tell the truth or not. The wish for a good conversation, a meeting of minds, is quite another matter; but there are very few people here who can carry on a conversation that goes beyond their own personal concerns. Again, the desire for confession is something quite different. I think it’s infrequent here, because people are not primarily concerned here, either subjectively or objectively, about ‘sin’. You may perhaps have noticed that in the prayers that I sent you the request for forgiveness of sins doesn’t occupy the central place; I should consider it a complete mistake, both from a pastoral and from a practical point of view, to proceed on ‘methodist’ lines here. We must talk about that some day.

14 February

If it’s any help to Renate now, please take some of my money and don’t worry about it! It looks as if something will be decided about me in a week’s time. I hope it will. If it turns out that they send me in Martin’s
¹⁴⁹
direction (though I don’t think that is likely), please make your mind easy about it. I’m really not at all worried about what happens to me personally. So please don’t you worry either. Good-bye, this letter must go; in thoughts, style and writing it is still considerably impaired by a head dosed with aspirin, etc. But I needn’t offer excuses to you for that sort of thing. You saw me in a much weaker condition during my illness in autumn 41. So, all good wishes and loyal greetings

from your Dietrich

I’m already racking my brains about a godfather’s present. Would Renate like the fur sleeping bag? She could then creep into it with the little one. At Maria’s there are a great many furs, so we don’t need it. Have you made any contacts with the divisional pastor?
What are the chances of being used by him or anywhere as a military chaplain? Will you try? It could be supported by Dohrmann
¹⁵⁰
here. Write about it some time!…

From Eberhard Bethge

[Rignano] 15 February 1944

Dear Dietrich,

…I’ve just been seeing the eternal city again. I used what time I had, not for the Forum or the Pantheon but for St Peter’s. I managed to get in with a guided party. Otherwise there were barriers up. This time Michelangelo’s Pietà made a great impression on me. Probably because one already knew that it stands in a niche and is really quite small. It’s certainly the work of a very young Michelangelo. I now feel that I would like to see the church again and again. Occasionally, when it’s very clear, one can see the cupola towering above everything from the hill where we get supplies, etc.
¹⁵¹
The tour ended with an audience with the Pope, and so I saw him too. There were about forty officers and four hundred men. He spoke a few words with each of them. He looked older than I expected from the pictures. How easy it is for the Catholics now, as they can largely dispense with words and preach with their dress and their gestures! One notices how sensitive people are about false statements and how they react against them. I wasn’t able to make any more visits
¹⁵²
…we’re moving our base southwards
¹⁵³
to the neighbourhood of the Papal summer residence…This letter must go and I must be on guard. For the first time today. The traffic is now too heavy here. While I’m on watch I talk to Renate and to you.

Your Eberhard

To his parents

[Tegel] 20 February 1944

Dear parents,

Forgive me for not having written regularly lately. I had hoped to be able to give you some definite news about my case, so I put off writing from day to day. I was first assured quite definitely that the matter would be settled by July 1943; and then, as you will remember, it was to be September at the very latest. But now it’s dragging on from month to month with nothing whatever happening. I’m quite sure that if they only got down to business, the whole thing would be cleared up quite simply; and really, when one thinks of all the tasks waiting to be done outside, one is apt to feel, however hard one tries to be patient and understanding, that it is better to write no letters, but to say nothing for a time, first because disordered thoughts and feelings would only give rise to wrong words, and secondly because whatever one writes is likely to be quite out of date by the time it reaches its destination. Again and again it’s something of an inward struggle to keep soberly to the facts, to banish illusions and fancies from my head, and to content myself with things as they are; for when one does not understand the external factors, one supposes that there must be some unseen internal factor at work. Besides, our generation cannot now lay claim to such a life as was possible in yours - a life that can find its full scope in professional and personal activities, and achieve balance and fulfilment. That’s perhaps the greatest sacrifice that we younger people, with the example of your life still before our eyes, are called on and compelled to make, and it makes us particularly aware of the fragmentary and incomplete nature of our own. But this very fragmentariness may, in fact, point towards a fulfilment beyond the limits of human achievement; I have to keep that in mind, particularly in view of the death of so many of the best of my former pupils. Even if the pressure of outward events may split our lives into fragments, like bombs falling on houses, we must do our best to keep in view how the whole was planned and thought out; and we shall still be able to see what material was used, or was to be used, here for building.

Maria was here today on the way to her new work. It was very fine. But really everything is very hard for her. Now that Karl-Friedrich’s Leipzig Institute is completely done for, will he accept the call to Berlin? I would very much like to see him here again. It’s getting very depressing that things are not going better with Hans.
¹⁵⁴
It must be grim for him not to feel in full possession of his intellectual powers. I really am very sorry. Do things seem to be well with Renate? What news does she have of her husband? Perhaps she will write to me about him some time, if she’s up again…I got a very nice birthday letter from Ursel, for which I’m most grateful. Do go to Pätzig some time. It really would be good, and Maria’s mother is so looking forward to it.

Love to all and much love to you.

Your grateful Dietrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 21 February 1944

Dear Eberhard,

It was an indescribable joy to hear from you! And also from Maria today, that you wrote to her on my birthday. That really was a good token of friendship. Many thanks for both. Recently I’ve had to think, in connection with Job ch. 1, that Satan had received permission from the Lord to separate me from my friends at this time – and that he was not going to succeed!

I heard very briefly today about the audience in the Vatican and am now immeasurably curious to hear more of it. I’m very glad that you’ve had this impression, though I don’t expect that it corresponds completely to the old ceremonial which I experienced in 1924. Nevertheless, in contrast to the rest of your experience at present, it will have been particularly stimulating and important. I assume that some pig-headed Lutherans will put it down as a blot in your biography, and for that very reason I’m glad that you’ve done it…Otherwise there are only fragments, that I must put together into a mosaic.

About myself, I’m sorry to have to tell you that I’m not likely
to be out of here before Easter. As long as Hans is ill, no changes can be taken in hand. I can’t completely rid myself of the feeling that something has been too contrived and imagined and that the simplest things haven’t happened yet. I’m fully convinced of the best will of all concerned, but one all too easily takes a conversation, a fancy, a hope for an action. I keep noting with amazement that in fact nothing has happened for six months, although a great deal of time and even sleep has been spent in considerations and discussions; the only thing that would have happened of itself, namely the clarification before Christmas, has been prevented. I wonder whether my excessive scrupulousness, about which you often used to shake your head in amusement (I’m thinking of our travels), is not a negative side of bourgeois existence – simply part of our lack of faith, a part that remains hidden in times of security, but comes out in times of insecurity in the form of ‘dread’ (I don’t mean ‘cowardice’, which is something different: ‘dread’ can show itself in recklessness as well as in cowardice), dread of straightforward, simple actions, dread of having to make necessary decisions. I’ve often wondered here where we are to draw the line between necessary resistance to ‘fate’, and equally necessary submission. Don Quixote is the symbol of resistance carried to the point of absurdity, even lunacy; and similarly Michael Kohlhaas, insisting on his rights, puts himself in the wrong…in both cases resistance at last defeats its own object, and evaporates in theoretical fantasy. Sancho Panza is the type of complacent and artful accommodation to things as they are. I think we must rise to the great demands that are made on us personally, and yet at the same time fulfil the commonplace and necessary tasks of daily life. We must confront fate – to me the neuter gender of the word ‘fate’
(Schicksal)
is significant – as resolutely as we submit to it at the right time. One can speak of ‘guidance’ only on the other side of that twofold process, with God meeting us no longer as ‘Thou’, but also ‘disguised’ in the ‘It’; so in the last resort my question is how we are to find the ‘Thou’ in this ‘It’ (i.e. fate), or, in other words, how does ‘fate’ really become ‘guidance’? It’s therefore impossible to define the boundary between resistance and submission on abstract principles; but both of them must exist, and
both must be practised. Faith demands this elasticity of behaviour. Only so can we stand our ground in each situation as it arises, and turn it to gain.

Would differences between theological and juristic existence emerge here? I’m thinking, for instance, of the extreme contrast between Klaus and Rüdiger
within
a ‘legalistic’, juristic approach…on the other hand our more flexible, livelier ‘theological’ approach, which has this character because in the end it is more in accord with reality.

23 February

If you have the chance of going to Rome during Holy Week, I advise you to attend the afternoon service at St Peter’s on Maundy Thursday (from about 2 to 6). That is really the Good Friday service, as the Roman Catholic Church anticipates its feasts from noon on the previous day. As far as I remember (though I’m not quite certain), there is also a big service on the Wednesday. On Maundy Thursday the twelve candles on the altar are put out as a symbol of the disciples’ flight, till in the vast space there is only one candle left burning in the middle – for Christ. After that comes the cleansing of the altar. At about 7 a.m. on the Saturday there is the blessing of the font (as far as I can remember, that is connected with the ordination of young priests). Then at 12 noon the Easter Alleluia is sung, the organ plays again, the bells peal, and the pictures are unveiled. This is the real celebration of Easter. Somewhere in Rome I also saw a Greek Orthodox service, which at the time – more than twenty years ago! - impressed me very much. The service on Easter Eve in the Lateran (it starts in the Baptistery) is also very famous. If you happen to be on Monte Pincio towards sunset and are near the Church of Trinità del Monte, do see whether the nuns are singing just then; I heard them once, and was very impressed; I believe it’s even mentioned in Baedeker.

I wonder how far you are directly involved in the fighting where you are. I suppose it’s mainly a question of air raids, as it is here. The intensification of the war in the air in about the last ten days, and especially the heavy attacks in daylight, make one wonder whether the English are probing our air power as a prelude
to invasion and as a means of pinning down our land forces inside Germany.

The longer we are uprooted from our professional activities and our private lives, the more we feel how fragmentary our lives are, compared with those of our parents. The portraits of the great savants in Harnack’s
History of the Academy
make me acutely aware of that, and almost sadden me a little. Where is there an intellectual
magnum opus
today? Where are the collecting, assimilating, and sorting of material necessary for producing such a work? Where is there today the combination of fine
abandon
and large-scale planning that goes with such a life? I doubt whether anything of the kind still exists, even among technicians and scientists, the only people who are still free to work in their own way. The end of the eighteenth century saw the end of the polymath’, and in the nineteenth century intensive education replaced extensive, so that towards the end of it the ‘specialist’ evolved; and by now everyone is just a technician, even in the arts – in music the standard is high, in painting and poetry extremely moderate. This means that our cultural life remains a torso. The important thing today is that we should be able to discern from the fragment of our life how the whole was arranged and planned, and what material it consists of. For really, there are some fragments that are only worth throwing into the dustbin (even a decent ‘hell’ is too good for them), and others whose importance lasts for centuries, because their completion can only be a matter for God, and so they are fragments that must be fragments - I’m thinking, e.g., of the
Art of Fugue.
If our life is but the remotest reflection of such a fragment, if we accumulate, at least for a short time, a wealth of themes and weld them into a harmony in which the great counterpoint is maintained from start to finish, so that at last, when it breaks off abruptly, we can sing no more than the chorale, ‘I come before thy throne’,
¹⁵⁵
we will not bemoan the fragmentariness of our life, but rather rejoice in it. I can never get away from Jeremiah 45. Do you still remember that Saturday evening in Finkenwalde when I expounded it? Here, too, is a necessary fragment of life – ‘but I will give you your life as a prize of war’.