Letters and Papers From Prison (44 page)

All clear. I’m glad for your sake. - I have on my desk two wonderful sprigs of lilac which a kind man brought me. The photographs that you brought I have put in front of me, and I’m looking at the baby who is being baptized today. I’ve also lit the large candle and am enjoying it very much. Many thanks. Who does he look like? I think Renate and you! The forehead is quite clearly yours, the rest Renate’s. I think he’s lovely, and if he is to take after me at all physically, I only hope he will have my freedom from toothache and headache, and my leg muscles and sensitive
palate (though the latter is not an unmixed blessing). For other things he can do better elsewhere … He has also inherited the best thing about me, my name. I’ve always been satisfied with it, and as a boy I was actually proud of it. Believe me, I shall always be a good godfather to him and do all I possibly can to help him. I don’t think he could choose a better one!…

I’m still completely under the influence of your story. If only we could experience all this together! I would much prefer to be with you there than all alone here in ‘security’! When I think how many dangers you’ve been through in your life … and how until recently you’ve had tangible proofs of your preservation, and how good things have kept happening to you unexpectedly … I’m quite at ease and believe that you are well taken care of in the plans of God. At times now you may only see death in your thoughts about the war, but if you do so, you underestimate the number of ways in which God operates. The hour of a man’s death is determined, and it will find him no matter where he may turn. We must be ready for it. But

He knows ten thousand ways
To save us from death’s power.
He gives us food and meat,
A boon in famine’s hour.

That’s something we mustn’t forget. - Another alert.

It’s the 22nd. A good thing that you’re out there. I’ve learnt a good deal about yesterday and am very glad about it. Maria liked your sermon very much; I found even the brief outline that I was given very revealing. And what splendid hymns! You were also thinking of me when you sang Schütz…Hike both hymns very much. You gave my notes very much their due in doing that; it wasn’t really my intention. But I’m glad if you were pleased. It must have been remarkable for father to read this text. I would very much like to hear more about it.

I’m very glad that Perels and mother are taking up the Dohrmann business immediately. Can’t Klaus do anything? If it’s necessary at all, legalization would have to be direct for service as
an army chaplain. One can’t very well demand more. The whole question now looks rather different from five years ago.
²⁸
Nevertheless there are, of course, conditions which one could not accept. In that case it would be God’s sign not to go further along this way. For God alone protects; otherwise there is nothing. I’m sending you a letter to give to Niebuhr, in case of need. Also in case of need, we must arrange a rendezvous. Later on I expect we shall be able to keep in touch through N. and Uncle George.
²⁹
Good-bye for today. Can I do anything for you? How attractive the pictures of the little one are. God protect us all! From my heart.

Your faithful Dietrich

How did the surprise visit come off?

Dear Eberhard,

Here is the letter which you can always use as identification. Isn’t it true that you were with me when I was visiting there?
³⁰
(I hope it is clear that the letter is addressed to Prof, von Dietze-Freiburg.
³¹
) I think it right that you should be well and safely introduced. He’s a very likable, lively and interesting man, a good friend of Paul Tillich, and his chief interest is ethics. Well, I won’t bother you with more today. It’s one o’clock at night and I’m waiting in the sick-bay for the alert that has been announced.
Quousque tandem?

Good-bye for today.

22 May

Your Dietrich

To Renate and Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 24 May [1944]

Dear Eberhard and Renate,

I don’t know any better way of expressing my wishes for your Whitsun than by using a word which my lips frame only rarely -my wish is that you celebrate a blessed Whitsun, a Whitsun with God and with prayer, a Whitsun on which you feel the touch of the Holy Spirit, a Whitsun which will be a
rocher de bronce
in your
memories for the coming weeks and months. You need days whose memory is not painful because of something that was lacking, but a source of strength because of something that endures. I’ve been trying to write you a few words on the readings
³²
- in fact, I was at it today while the alert was on, and so they are rather inadequate, and not as well thought out as I could wish. But perhaps you will read them together in the morning and find them some small substitute for the service that you might perhaps miss. Eberhard, is the recollection of Whit Sunday morning at Finkenwalde also so splendid and important for you?

In addition I hope that you have fine weather, much joy in little Dietrich, many peaceful hours and good music! With the alerts like this, I don’t really dare to ask you to pay yet another visit. I will understand
very
well if you remain in Sakrow. You mustn’t feel that if you do you are neglecting me in any way. It was so very splendid the other day, and the possibility of writing is also a very great help.

I’m now reading with great interest Weizsäcker’s book about the ‘world-view of physics’, and I hope to learn a great deal from it for my own work. If only one had the chance to exchange ideas! In earlier days we always used to read and discuss such things together. The most recent news from Italy has again moved me very much. Whatever will happen in the next couple of weeks? One cannot think too much of the last verse which you sang at the baptism.
³³

Now good-bye, have a good festival and do not forget

your faithful Dietrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel 26 May 1944]

Dear Eberhard,

It’s a week today since you were here. I wonder how you’re spending your time. I often think that - objectively - it’s very good for the two of you that I’m not there, so that you can be together without a third party. How are things now with Dohrmann?

I would dearly like to know. If you can come again, it would be best in the afternoon after 4; then I can see that we are more undisturbed. I would then let you know the appropriate day. In that case an early application is unnecessary. It would be wonderful if it came off. As Maria hasn’t been now for at least six weeks, perhaps it will really work.

I don’t expect that in any circumstances you will find things as you left them.
³⁴
How grateful Renate will be that you are spared the unrest of these days and weeks. I think that it’s a pity that you didn’t draw more landscapes down there. The one page is quite vividly before my eyes … and all this is an untrained gift of yours! With me, on the other hand, training is almost everything. Without training I would be a quite tedious don! If the two things come together in your son, we are really in for it…

On the duties of godparents: in the old books the godparents often played a special part in a child’s life. Growing children often want sympathy, kindness, and advice from grown-up people other than their parents; and the godparents are the people chosen by the parents to help in this way. The godparent has the right to give good advice, whereas the parents give orders. I didn’t have any godparents of this kind … but I can imagine that I would very much have liked to have had one and could have used one very well. Did you? But this is the direction in which I see one of my future duties as a godparent… I would give boys chiefly male and girls chiefly female godparents. I’m asking father to see to some Pervitin - or Isophan - for me and for you. I’m writing to him myself. I very much hope to hear from you soon. All the very, very best.

Love to you and Renate and the little one,

your Dietrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 27 May 1944

Dear Eberhard,

Many thanks for your greeting. But don’t you see that too short a letter is like someone for whose visit one has waited for a long
time opening the door slightly just for a moment, looking round into the room with a smile and then vanishing again? I think that you ought to write again so that I don’t feel out of place with my letters and questions; at any rate, it would make things much easier for me. Do you understand?

If you can still visit me, Thursday I June after 4 or Sunday 3 June after 1.30 would be possible. I’ll leave you to work it out. But some things can in fact be said more easily by letters than by word of mouth, so please don’t set everything on the uncertain possibility of a visit…

The mention of Velletri
³⁵
was strangely moving, and, I’m sure, most of all to you. Have you got the thing about the
cantus firmus
and my questions and the Whitsun meditations?

Once again many thanks for your greeting and all good wishes,

ever your Dietrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 29 May 1944

Dear Eberhard,

I hope that, in spite of the alerts, you are enjoying to the full the peace and beauty of these warm, summer-like Whitsuntide days. One gradually learns to acquire an inner detachment from life’s menaces-although ‘acquire detachment’ seems too negative, formal, artificial, and stoical; and it’s perhaps more accurate to say that we assimilate these menaces into our life as a whole. I notice repeatedly here how few people there are who can harbour conflicting emotions at the same time. When bombers come, they are all fear; when there is something nice to eat, they are all greed; when they are disappointed, they are all despair; when they are successful, they can think of nothing else. They miss the fullness of life and the wholeness of an independent existence; everything objective and subjective is dissolved for them into fragments. By contrast, Christianity puts us into many different dimensions of life at the same time; we make room in ourselves, to some extent, for God and the whole world. We rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep
with those who weep; we are anxious (- I was again interrupted just then by the alert, and am now sitting out of doors enjoying the sun -) about our life, but at the same time we must think about things much more important to us than life itself. When the alert goes, for instance: as soon as we turn our minds from worrying about our own safety to the task of helping other people to keep calm, the situation is completely changed; life isn’t pushed back into a single dimension, but is kept multi-dimensional and poly-phonous. What a deliverance it is to be able to
think,
and thereby remain multi-dimensional. I’ve almost made it a rule here, simply to tell people who are trembling under an air raid that it would be much worse for a small town. We have to get people out of their one-track minds; that is a kind of ‘preparation’ for faith, or something that makes faith possible, although really it’s only faith itself that can make possible a multi-dimensional life, and so enable us to keep this Whitsuntide, too, in spite of the alarms.

At first I was a bit disconcerted, and perhaps even saddened, not to have a letter from anyone this Whitsuntide. Then I told myself that it was perhaps a good sign, as it meant that no one was worrying about me. It’s a strange human characteristic that we like other people to be anxious about us - at least just a trifle anxious.

Weizsäcker’s book
The World-View of Physics
is still keeping me very busy. It has again brought home to me quite clearly how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved. That is true of the relationship between God and scientific knowledge, but it is also true of the wider human problems of death, suffering, and guilt. It is now possible to find, even for these questions, human answers that take no account whatever of God. In point of fact, people deal with these questions without God (it has always been so), and it is simply not true to say that only Christianity has the answers to them. As to the idea of ‘solving’ problems, it may be that the Christian
answers are just as unconvincing - or convincing - as any others. Here again, God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized at the centre of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigour, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin. The ground for this lies in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the centre of life, and he certainly didn’t ‘come’ to answer our unsolved problems. From the centre of life certain questions, and their answers, are seen to be wholly irrelevant (I’m thinking of the judgment pronounced on Job’s friends). In Christ there are no ‘Christian problems’. - Enough of this; I’ve just been disturbed again.

30 May evening

I’m sitting alone upstairs. Everything is quiet in the building; a few birds are still singing outside, and I can even hear the cuckoo in the; distance. I find these long, warm evenings, which I’m now living-through here for the second time, rather trying. I long to be outside, and if I were not so ‘reasonable’, I might do something foolish, I wonder whether we have become too reasonable. When you’ve deliberately suppressed every desire for so long, it may have one of two bad results: either it burns you up inside, or it all gets so bottled up that one day there is a terrific explosion. It is, of course, conceivable that one may become completely selfless, and I know better than anyone else that that hasn’t happened to me. Perhaps; you will say that one oughtn’t to suppress one’s desires, and I expect: you would be right. But look, this evening for example I couldn’t dare to give really full rein to my imagination and picture myself and Maria at your house, sitting in the garden by the water and talking together into the night etc. etc. That is simply self-torture, and gives one physical pain. So I take refuge in thinking, in writing letters, in delighting in your good fortune, and curb my desires as a measure of self-protection. However paradoxical it may sound, it would be more selfless if I didn’t need to be so afraid of my desires, and could give them free rein - but that is very difficult. - Just now I happened to hear Solveig’s Song on the wireless in the sick-bay. It quite got hold of me. To wait loyally a whole lifetime - that is
to triumph over the hostility of space, i.e. separation, and over time, i.e. the past. Don’t you think that such loyalty is the only way to happiness, and that disloyalty leads to unhappiness? - Well, I shall go to bed now, in case we have another disturbed night. Good-bye.