Letters and Papers From Prison (6 page)

I’m reading, learning and working a great deal - and systematically - and have a quiet time in the morning and the evening to think of all the many people, at home and in the field, whom one: would and should commend each day to God. I need not say that now you and Christel have a special place among them. No, you must not and need not worry about us at all; another has now taken this worry from you. What we cannot do, we must now simply let go of and limit ourselves to what we can and should do, that is., be manly and strong in trust in God in the midst of our suffering. I expect you know that song by Hugo Wolf:

Über Nacht,
ü
ber Nacht kommt Freud und Leid
und eh’ du’s gedacht, verlassen dich beid’,
und gehen dem Herren zu sagen,
wie du sie getragen.

Keep well and in good spirits. I think with gratitude of the many good hours with you at home, making music, walking, enjoying the garden, playing and talking. The children are in good hands with their grandparents and they are old enough to know what sort of behaviour they owe themselves and you.

God bless you. I think of you faithfully each day.

Your Dietrich

Notes

I
²⁶

Separation from people

8 May 1943

from work
from the past
from the future
from marriage
from God

Different mental attitudes towards the past …
forgetting, …
caesuras. Experiences

Fulfilled or unfulfilled according to
history

self-deception, idealizing of the past and of the present. Realism instead of illusion

Overcoming memories!

selfpity

Amusement
- passing the time

for the one who has overcome, humour

Smoke in the emptiness of time

Memory for what is possible, although incorrect

—

The significance of illusion

—

Experience of the past - preservation, thanks, regret Consciousness of time not just the
results

present
and therefore past?
Possessions

Novalis

Gen. 3, Eccles. 3

Rev. 10 Matt. 6
Saying of the month and
Ps. 31.16

In expectations (youth) slowly - uphill, but then falls away quickly

old woman lets time glide by          What is freedom?

peacefully, similarly in great danger Formal love

…composure                                 On freedom

                 in prison

Waiting - but e.g. quite composed for
death
Time of
day
- peasant, but not ‘the’ time
Experience of time
as experience of
separation
- engaged couple

from God

Past                                Why all over in 100 years and not:

until recently was everything good?                    No
possession
which

outlasts time, no
task

—

Flight before the experience of time in dreams, terror on awakening
here in the dream past = future, timeless
Teeth of time - the gnawing of time
healing time - scarring [illegible]
Emptiness of time despite all that fills it. ‘Filled’ time very different

Love

II
²⁷

Saying of the month
²⁸
- time as help - as torment, as enemy.

Boredom as an expression of despair.

Ps.31.16
²⁹

Time

Beneficence of time: forgetting, healing

Separation - from past and future

‘he is not strong who is not firm in need’

Waiting
Boredom
Fortune
Work

Prov.31. ‘laughs at the day to come’
³⁰
Work Matt. 6 take no thought…
What still determines the present, is uppermost
in the memory, is short for…whereas
an event lying equally far away can be infinitely far

Continuity with past and future interrupted

—

Dissatisfaction
Tension
Impatience
Longing
Boredom
sick - profoundly alone Indifference
Urge to do something, change, novelty
Being blunted, tiredness, sleep - on the other hand [illegible]
Order
Fantasy, distortion of past and future
Suicide, not because of consciousness of guilt but because basically
I am already dead, draw a line,

Summing up

Is the memory better for joyful impressions? Why is that? A past grief stands under the sign of its being
overcome,
only griefs that have not been overcome (unforgiven sin) are always fresh and tormenting to the memory.

Overcoming in
prayer

From his father to the Judge Advocate of the War Court

[Charlottenburg] 9 May 1943

To the Judge Advocate of the War Court

In the preliminary enquiry against my son Dietrich Bonhoeffer I asked for permission to visit on 17 April 1943. My request was refused by the Judge Advocate of the War Court on 20 April (StPL RKA III 114/43). I repeat this request for my wife and myself since my son has now been under investigation for five weeks. I would point out that for more than thirty years I have been a member of the Senate concerned with sanitary measures within the army. I believe that I can claim to be trustworthy enough to keep within the bounds of the regulations that are in force during a visit to my son. I can say the same of my wife.

Karl Bonhoeffer

From 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

Witzlebenstrasse 4-10
10 May 1943
Telephone: 30 06 81

To
Professor Dr Bonhoeffer

For the present you and your wife cannot yet be granted permission to visit as the investigations do not make this seem expedient.

Drafted:
Signature
Army Inspector of Justice

By order
signed Dr Roeder

From his mother

Charlottenburg, 9 May 1943

My dear Dietrich,

…On Saturday it’s the wedding, and we intend to celebrate it happily in accordance with your express wishes. You are right; if a heart is rightly disposed, sorrow and joy must have a place in it. The evening before, Bärbel will bring the garland of roses and little Christine will be the
M
ä
rkerin
and bring salt and bread. All the young people will sing them that beautiful old folk-song of Simon Dachs’, ‘Aennchen of Tharau’. Dorothee will bring the garland of myrtle. I expect that there will be some chamber music, too.

We’re only getting together after the supper. The wedding, I mean the betrothal, is at 2.30, followed by a simple meal at the Schleichers. For this, Ursel has cleared out Christine’s room, decorated it with some pictures from your room and laid the table. It’s amazing how many things have a place side by side in heart and senses…

God bless you.

Your Mother

From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer

[Leipzig] 15 May 1943

Dear Dietrich,

Your letters from prison are always a great joy to us. We longingly wait until the ten days are up and you can write to us again; or rather, we quietly hope that the next letter will be overtaken by your own reappearance. For it is gradually getting time for you to be let out.

I’ve learnt from your letters that you are secretly engaged. You cannot imagine how much that delighted me. I’m in principle sorry for any unmarried man, ridiculous though this confession may seem. But your case, in my view, was a very special one. You are not one of those who are by nature destined to be a bachelor, and precisely in the difficulties which your calling brings with it today, you need a good, wise and competent wife. Ursel has since
told me many nice things about your young fiancée, and the parents, who probably knew of it beforehand, are also very pleased about her. So I hope that I too will soon have an opportunity to get to know her. Thinking of your fiancée, though, your present situation must be particularly irksome, and I’m really amazed at the equanimity with which you accept it as misfortune without any reproaches.

Today it’s the wedding at the Schleichers, and at your wish it has become a real feast. Hans-Walter, whom we had here in the house recently for a couple of hours on his way through, tanned and looking well fed, is coming on leave. I’m very pleased about that for Ursel’s sake. All is well with us. Keep as well as you can and make sure that you come out soon, so that you aren’t cheated of the whole of this wonderful spring.

Many greetings from us all.

Your Karl-Friedrich

To his parents

[Tegel] 15 May 1943

Dear parents,

By the time you get this letter, all the final preparations and the wedding itself will be over, as will my own bit of longing to be there myself…I’m looking back today in gratitude for the happy times that we have had, and am happy about them all. I’m anxious to hear what the text of the sermon was; the best I can think of is Romans 15.7;
³¹
I’ve often used it myself. What splendid summer weather they’re having; I expect this morning’s hymn was Paul Gerhardt’s ‘The golden sun’. After a lengthy interval, I received your letter of the 9th very quickly, on 11 May. Many thanks for it. Anyone for whom the parental home has become so much a part of himself as it has for me feels specially grateful for any message from home. If only we could see each other or talk together for a short time, what a great relief it would be.

Of course, people outside find it difficult to imagine what prison life is like. The situation in itself - that is each single moment - is perhaps not so very different here from anywhere else; I read,
meditate, write, pace up and down my cell - without rubbing myself sore against the walls like a polar bear. The great thing is to stick to what one still has and can do - there is still plenty left - and not to be dominated by the thought of what one cannot do, and by feelings of resentment and discontent. I’m sure I never realized as clearly as I do here what the Bible and Luther mean by ‘temptation’. Quite suddenly, and for no apparent physical or psychological reason, the peace and composure that were supporting one are jarred, and the heart becomes, in Jeremiah’s expressive phrase, ‘deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?’ It feels like an invasion from outside, as if by evil powers trying to rob one of what is most vital. But no doubt these experiences are good and necessary, as they teach one to understand human life better.

I’m now trying my hand at a little study on ‘The feeling of time’, a thing that is specially relevant to anyone who is being held for examination. One of my predecessors here has scribbled over the cell door, ‘In 100 years it will all be over.’ That was his way of trying to counter the feeling that life spent here is a blank; but there is a great deal that might be said about that, and I should like to talk it over with father. ‘My time is in your hands’ (Ps. 31) is the Bible’s answer. But in the Bible there is also the question that threatens to dominate everything here: ‘How long, O Lord?’ (Ps.13).

Things continue to go well with me, and I must be grateful for the past six weeks. I’m particularly pleased that Maria’s mother has been with you. Is there any news yet of Konstantin in Tunisia?
³²
That’s going through my head a great deal as I think of Maria and the family. If only it isn’t too long before I see Maria again and we can get married! We need a cease-fire really soon; there are all sorts of other earthly wishes that one has.

The parcel of laundry has just been brought again. You’ve no idea what a joy and strength even this indirect link is. Many thanks, and please thank Susi very specially for all the help that she is giving you now. I’m also very pleased that you have got the asthma sweets again; they are most acceptable. I’ve already made myself a mirror here. I would be grateful for some ink, stain
remover, laxative, two pairs of short underpants, a cellular shirt: and the repaired shoes, collar studs. Once the sun has burnt itself into the thick walls it certainly becomes very hot, but so far it is; still very pleasant. I hope that father has not given up smoking; altogether by now in my favour! Also, many thanks for the: Jeremias Gotthelf. In a fortnight I would very much like his
Uli der Knecht.
Renate has it. By the way, you really ought to read his
Berner Geist,
and if not the whole of it, at least the first part; it is; something out of the ordinary, and it will certainly interest you. I remember how old Schöne
³³
always had a special word of praise: for Gotthelf, and I should like to suggest to the Diederich Press that they bring out a Gotthelf day-book. Stifter’s background, too, is mainly Christian; his woodland scenes often make me long to be back again in the quiet glades of Friedrichsbrunn. He is not so forceful as Gotthelf, but he is wonderfully clear and simple, and that gives me a great deal of pleasure. If only we could talk to each other about these things. For all my sympathy with the contemplative life, I am not a born Trappist. Nevertheless, a period of enforced silence may be a good thing, and the Roman Catholics say that the most effective expositions of scripture come from the purely contemplative orders. I am reading the Bible straight through from cover to cover, and have just got as far as Job, which I am particularly fond of. I read the Psalms every day, as I have done for years; I know them and love them more than any other book. I cannot now read Psalms 3, 47, 70, and others without hearing them in the settings by Heinrich Schütz. It was Renate
³⁴
who introduced me to his music, and I count it one of the greatest enrichments of my life.