Letters and Papers From Prison (4 page)

In recent years we have become increasingly familiar with the thought of death. We surprise ourselves by the calmness with which we hear of the death of one of our contemporaries. We cannot hate it as we used to, for we have discovered some good in it, and have almost come to terms with it. Fundamentally we feel that we really belong to death already, and that every new day is a miracle. It would probably not be true to say that we welcome death (although we all know that weariness which we ought to avoid like the plague); we are too inquisitive for that - or, to put it more seriously, we should like to see something more of the meaning of our life’s broken fragments. Nor do we try to romanticize death, for life is too great and too precious. Still less do we suppose that danger is the meaning of life - we are not desperate enough for that, and we know too much about the good things that life has to offer, though on the other hand we are only too familiar with life’s anxieties and with all the other destructive effects of prolonged personal insecurity. We still love life, but I do not think that death can take us by surprise now. After what we have been through during the war, we hardly dare admit that we should like death to come to us, not accidentally and suddenly through some trivial cause, but in the fullness of life and with everything at stake. It is we ourselves, and not outward circumstances, who make death what it can be, a death freely and voluntarily accepted.

Are we still of any use?

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians,
but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

The view from below
²

There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled - in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. The important thing is that neither bitterness nor envy should have gnawed at the heart during this time, that we should have come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perception of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, freer, less corruptible. We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune. This perspective from below must not become the partisan possession of those who are eternally dissatisfied; rather, we must do justice to life in all its dimensions from a higher satisfaction, whose foundation is beyond any talk of ‘from below’ or ‘from above’. This is the way in which we may affirm it.

NOTES

1.
Given to Hans von Dohnanyi, Hans Oster and Eberhard Bethge at Christmas, 1942. One copy was kept under the roof-beams of Bonhoeffer’s parents’ house in Charlottenburg, Marienburger Allee 43.

2.
This final paragraph was probably written at the end of 1942 (or in autumn 1943?), and is unfinished. It may well have been planned as part of’After Ten Years’. The German text does not appear in the new German edition of
Letters and Papers,
but in
Gesammelte Schriften
II, p. 441
(Miscellaneous Papers
of Bonhoeffer, published in 4vols, 1958-61). It appears here at the suggestion of Eberhard Bethge and by kind permission of Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich.

I

Time of Interrogation

April to July 1943

From his father

Berlin-Charlottenburg 9,
Marienburger-Allee 43
II April 1943

Dear Dietrich,

I wanted to send you a greeting from us and to tell you that we’re always thinking of you. We know you, and so we are confident that everything will turn out well - and, we hope, soon. Amidst all our present disquiet, the cantata ‘Praise the Lord’ which you produced for my seventy-fifth birthday
¹
with the two younger generations of the family remains a splendid memory and one that we want to keep alive. I hope that we shall be able to talk with you soon. Loving greetings from mother, Renate and fiancé
²
and

your old Father

After receiving permission we sent you on Wednesday 7th a parcel with bread and other food, a blanket and a woollen vest, etc.

To his parents

[Tegel] 14 April 1943

Dear parents,

I do want you to be quite sure that I’m all right. I’m sorry that I was not allowed to write to you sooner, but I was all right during the first ten days too.
³
Strangely enough, the discomforts that one generally associates with prison life, the physical hardships, hardly bother me at all. One can even have enough to eat in the mornings with dry bread (I get a variety of extras too). The hard prison bed does not worry me a bit, and one can get plenty of sleep between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. I have been particularly surprised that I have hardly felt any need at all for cigarettes since I came here; but I think that in all this the psychic factor has played the larger part. A violent mental upheaval such as is produced by a sudden arrest brings with it the need to take one’s mental bearings and come to terms with an entirely new situation - all this means that
physical things take a back seat and lose their importance, and it is something that I find to be a real enrichment of my experience. I am not so unused to being alone as other people are, and it is certainly a good spiritual Turkish bath. The only thing that bothers me or would bother me is the thought that you are being tormented by anxiety about me, and are not sleeping or eating properly. Forgive me for causing you so much worry, but I think a hostile fate is more to blame than I am. To set off against: that, it is good to read Paul Gerhardt’s hymns and learn them by heart, as I am doing now. Besides that, I have my Bible and some reading matter from the library here, and enough writing paper now.

You can imagine that I’m most particularly anxious about my fiancée
⁴
at the moment. It’s a great deal for her to bear, especially when she has only recently lost her father and brother in the East, As the daughter of an officer, she will perhaps find my imprisonment especially hard to take. If only I could have a few words with her! Now you will have to do it. Perhaps she will come to you in Berlin. That would be fine.

The seventy-fifth birthday celebrations were a fortnight ago today. It was a splendid day. I can still hear the chorale that we sang in the morning and evening, with all the voices and instruments: ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation…Shelters thee under his wings, yea, and gently sustaineth.’ That is true, and it is what we must always rely on.

Spring is really coming now. You will have plenty to do in the garden; I hope that Renate’s wedding preparations are going well. Here in the prison yard there is a thrush which sings beautifully in the morning, and now in the evening too. One is grateful for little things, and that is surely a gain. Good-bye for now.

I’m thinking of you and the rest of the family and my friends with gratitude and love,

your Dietrich

When you have the chance, could you leave here for me slippers, bootlaces (black, long), shoe polish, writing paper and envelopes, ink, smoker’s card, shaving cream, sewing things and a suit I can change into? Many thanks for everything.

Front the Judge Advocate of the War Court to his father

The Judge Advocate of the War Court Berlin-Charlottenburg 5, StPL. (RKA)III 114/43

20 April 1943
Witzlebenstrasse 4-10
Telephone: 30 06 81

To
Professor Dr Bonhoeffer

In the action against your son Dietrich
Bonhoeffer,
you are informed, in reply to your letter of 17 April 1943, that the application for permission to visit is refused.

Stamp of the War Court 18
F.d.R.
Signature
Army Inspector of Justice

By order
signed Dr Roeder

From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer
⁵

Leipzig, 23 April 1943

Dear Dietrich,

One doesn’t always think of the most obvious things first. I’ve only just learnt in Berlin that it is possible to write to you and in this way at least to give you an indication in your isolation that people are thinking about you. One has a great many heartfelt questions, but this note cannot be more than the need to tell you all kinds of inconsequential matters. Of course we all very much hope that by now you will soon have the time of testing behind you and will soon be released again. I’ve often been in Berlin during the last two weeks. You need not worry about the parents; of course they are very shaken, but full of confidence and trust that the matter will soon come out all right; a substantial part of our conversations has been concerned with what you are to do when you come out. But you will have to talk about the question, too…

I’m brooding on a manuscript which I really wanted to get ready for publication in the Easter holidays, but my thoughts often go astray and end up with you. Keep your spirits up. All the best.

Ever your Karl-Friedrich

From Hans von Dohnanyi
⁶

Sacrow bei Potsdam
⁷
Good Friday [23 April] 1943

My dear Dietrich,

I don’t know whether I shall be allowed to send you this greeting, but I want to try. The bells outside are ringing for worship, and memories flood back of the marvellous, profound hours that we spent together in the garrison church, and those many joyful, happy, untroubled Easters with children, parents, brothers and sisters. You will feel the same, and one needs a great deal of strength to master these memories. You cannot know how much it oppresses me that I am the cause of this suffering that you, Christel, the children, our parents now undergo; that because of me, my dear wife and you have been deprived of freedom.
Socios
habuisse
malorum
may be a comfort, but
habere
is an infinitely heavy burden.
⁸
And that mistrustful question ‘Why?’ keeps forming itself on my lips. If I knew that all of you, and you in particular, were not thinking of me reproachfully, a weight would be lifted from my spirit. What wouldn’t I give to know that the two of you were free again; I would take everything upon myself if you could be spared this testing. It was marvellous that I could see you;
⁹
I have also been allowed to speak to Christel, but what can one say in the presence of other people? How immeasurably difficult, impossible it is to open one’s heart…You know me well. We are, I feel, more than ‘just’ relatives by marriage, and you know what my wife is to me. I simply
cannot
be without her, when she has shared everything with me hitherto. That I am not allowed now to endure what has been laid upon us with her - who can fathom what that means? It certainly does not further the
case;
I am completely taken aback.

I’m reading the Bible a good deal now; it is the only book that does not keep making my thoughts stray. This morning Matthew 26-28, Luke 22-24, Psalms 68 and 70. I have never before been so struck by the remarkable divergences between the two evangelists; how much I would like to talk them over with you.

I hear from Ursel
¹⁰
that the children are in Friedrichsbrunn.
¹¹
Our idea of a perfect holiday is
there.

I want you to know that I’m grateful to you for everything that you have been and are to my wife, my children and myself. So good-bye.

Your Hans

To his parents

[Tegel] Easter Day, 25 April 1943

Dear parents,

At last the tenth day has come round, and I’m allowed to write to you again; I’m so glad to let you know that even here I’m having a happy Easter. Good Friday and Easter free us to think about other things far beyond our own personal fate, about the ultimate meaning of all life, suffering, and events; and we lay hold of a great hope. Since yesterday it has been marvellously quiet in the house. I heard many people wishing each other a happy Easter, and one does not begrudge it anyone who is on duty here - it’s a hard job. In the stillness now I can also hear your Easter greetings, if you’re together with the family today and thinking of me.