Letters and Papers From Prison (8 page)

From Susanne Dress

[Dahlem] 15 May 1943

Dear Dietrich,

Every week, when I leave the things outside for you at Tegel, I am always pleased to hear that you are well and almost have the feeling that I have visited you. Simply being near to you matters a great deal, even though one is continually aware with gratitude how little outward separation has to do with inward togetherness. Today we’ve been celebrating Renate’s wedding; the twenty years since Ursel and Rüdiger were married has passed very quickly. Tine
³⁵
is now as old as I was then. So the bridesmaids were very young. Michael and Cornelie bore the train, Andreas and Walter
³⁶
scattered flowers. The three brothers and sisters of Eberhard were all there, and Hans-Walter had leave…

We have window-panes and shutters again; now the painter has to come. The last alert was very peaceful here, and went very quickly. By the time I had the children down below, the worst shooting was over…

With much love from

your Suse

From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer

Leipzig, 30 May 1943

Dear Dietrich,

A week ago today I was in Berlin, on my way through to Hamburg, where I had work to do. I managed things particularly well, as this was the very day on which your fiancée and her mother had planned to visit the parents; so I got to know her earlier than I had expected. It must be very remarkable for you that she is now
being introduced to the family without your being there. These are rather crazy times. As you can imagine, we all liked her very much. She had a great deal to say about what she was doing in Hanover. Apparently she is one of those people who look round for the hardest and most strenuous service and take no consideration for themselves at all. Her self-assurance and modesty in this made a great impression on me. I was very cross with her for saving her week’s ration of butter for you and for not keeping the few coffee beans which she had been given by a patient for her nights of duty. I think that I acted as you would have done. Her mother also seems to be a special woman. I accompanied her a little way into town and we talked a bit about the two families on the way. At any rate, now that I know the circle into which you are to move, I can once again give you special congratulations. By the way, as far as I can see, no one outside the family knows yet.

But how are you? Are you getting used to it? One cannot imagine it all if one has not experienced it - and once you are outside, you will probably soon forget again what it was like. Did you freeze over the last few weeks? It was quite cold in the rooms, if one could not move about. I hope that this really is the last letter that I shall have to write to you in prison. So far we have not said anything about it to the children. I think that they feel it rather comic that I now have biscuits baked and sweets made for my journeys to Berlin.

Much love from Grete
³⁷
and myself.

Your Karl-Friedrich

To his parents

[Tegel] Ascension Day, 4 June 1943

Dear parents,

I had just written you a long letter when the post brought the letters from Maria and her mother and with them a quite indescribable joy into my cell. Now I must begin the letter all over again and ask you above all to write to both of them and thank
them straight away. You can imagine how frustrated I feel not to be able to do that myself.
³⁸
Maria writes so happily about her day with you. How hard it must be despite all the love you have shown her; it is a wonder how she bears up under it all - and for me an incomparable example and a piece of good fortune. The feeling that I cannot do anything to help her would often be unbearable did I not know that I can really have a quiet mind about her. For her sake much more than for mine, I do hope that this hard time does not last too long. But I’m certain and therefore grateful that one day these very months will be supremely important for our marriage. I can hardly say how moved I was by the letter from Maria’s mother. Since the first day of my imprisonment I have been tormented that I have had to add one more trouble to all the grief of the past year; now she has made this very affliction that has come upon us the occasion for shortening the time of waiting and thus making me happy. I am really very shamed by this great confidence, this graciousness and generosity. I’m so grateful, and will never forget her for what she has done. This is the fundamental attitude that I have always detected in all the households of this family, and it moved me a great deal long before I suspected anything of my future good fortune. Now I know from your and Karl-Friedrich’s letters that you, too, are fond of Maria; but that could hardly be otherwise. She will be a very good daughter-in-law to you, and will surely soon feel as at home in our family as I have for years in her own. I’m very pleased that Karl-Friedrich accompanied Maria’s mother into town and so got to know her a bit; and it was very nice of him to tell Maria off for me about stinting herself on her rations - she really needs them herself with all her hard work.

Thank you very much for your letters. They are always too short for
me,
but of course I understand! It is as though the prison gates were opened for a moment, and I could share a little of your life outside. Joy is a thing that we want very badly in this solemn building, where one never hears a laugh - it seems to get even the warders down - and we exhaust all our reserves of it from within and without.

Today is Ascension Day, and that means that it is a day of great
joy for all who can believe that Christ rules the world and our lives. My thoughts go out to all of you, to the church and its services, from which I have now been separated for so long, and also to the many unknown people in this building who are bearing their fate in silence. I repeatedly find that these and other thoughts keep me from taking my own little hardships too seriously; that would be very wrong and ungrateful.

I’ve just written a little more about ‘The feeling of time’; I’m very much enjoying it, and when we write from personal experience, we can write more fluently and freely. Thank you very much, father, for Kant’s
Anthropologie,
which I’ve read through; I didn’t know it. There was a great deal that was interesting in it, but it has a very rationalist rococo psychology, which simply ignores many essential phenomena. Can you send me something good about forms and functions of memory? It’s a thing that interests me very much in this connection. Kant’s exposition of ‘smoking’ as a means of entertaining oneself is very nice.

I’m very glad that you are now reading Gotthelf; I’m sure you would like his
Wanderungen
- just as much. I think Susi has them. For serious reading I have been very glad to read here Ulhorn’s great
History of Christian Philanthropy,
Holl’s
Church History
reminds me of his seminars.

I read some of Stifter almost every day. The intimate life of his characters - of course it is old-fashioned of him to describe only likable people - is very pleasant in this atmosphere here, and makes one think of the things that really matter in life. Prison life in general brings one back, both outwardly and inwardly, to the simplest things of life; that explains why I could not get on at all with Rilke. But I wonder whether one’s understanding is not affected by the restrictive nature of life here?

Now it’s Friday, and in the meantime your
wonderful
spring parcel has just come with the first produce of the garden. Once again, very many thanks to you and everyone who shared in it for this and for everything that has come beforehand. How long will you continue to be put to all this trouble and worry for me - who knows?

I would very much like Hoskyns,
The Riddle of the New Testamerit,
when it’s convenient (over my bed), and some cotton wool; it’s sometimes quite noisy at night.

These days I keep hoping for a letter from you. Always write everything that you know about Maria. It’s good that Karl-Friedrich and the Schleichers were there recently; the Schleichers also know the older Bismarck sister,
³⁹
and perhaps you still remember her brother Max, my confirmation candidate from Stettin, who was killed? Always send greetings to Maria’s grandmother!

Hardly an hour passes when my thoughts do not stray from my books to all of you. To see each other again in freedom is an unimaginably splendid thought. Until then we must go on being patient and confident. I’m so sorry that you aren’t travelling and can’t get a holiday. Is everything all right with you? All is well with me; I’m better again, have enough to eat, sleep fairly well and time keeps passing more quickly. Love to all the family, the children and friends. With love and many thanks,                                                     your Dietrich

From his parents

Charlottenburg, 8 June 1943

Dear Dietrich…

I get down to science less often than I would like; in the evening I sometimes read Gotthelf’s
Berner Geist
to mother. Recently I’ve had an invitation to have a sound film made of myself for the ‘Film Archive of Personalities’ which has recently been instituted in the Ministry of Propaganda, to ‘preserve a picture of me for later times’. I think that it will be enough if my picture is preserved in the family. Warmest greetings,

Father

Dear Dietrich,

I wanted to add a greeting too, so that you also have it at Whitsun. The festivals will be particularly hard to feel in your situation, I expect. I will write at length when your letter comes. We think of you so much and I write to you daily in my thoughts, but one must not overburden the censor. May you have a blessed Whitsun. With all my heart.

Your Mother

From his mother

Charlottenburg, 10 June 1943

My dear boy,

…Another parcel is going off to you tomorrow; we fill it with all our love. Each one thinks about what he can contribute, even the little ones. So today there are the few sweets. They all ask after you so much: when
are
you coming back? We’re so grateful that you’re healthy. After Whitsun we’re going to try again to see you at the Judge Advocate’s, as we did last time. Perhaps it will be possible. We aren’t really vexed in any way, but it really is taking Dr Röder too long. Anyway, I hope that it will be allowed. I wanted to send you Reuter’s
Ut mine Stromtid,
but couldn’t find it, so I’m now sending the
Festungstid…

I long to hug you.

Your Mother

From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer

[Leipzig] 12 June 1943

Dear Dietrich,

…What is one to tell you? Perhaps that despite everything we have plans for the summer and I have booked Grete and the children into Templeburg again for three weeks…Perhaps I shall go walking for a couple of days, if that is still possible with the billeting and does not use up too many calories. One cannot run up a great appetite…

A small volume of Gerhard Ritter,
Weltwirkung der Reformation
(1942), has just come to hand; I’ve read it with great interest and have also read parts of it to Grete in the evenings. Next time I am in Berlin, I will try to find out whether you already know it, and then put it in the parcel; also perhaps a collection of articles on modern physics, or rather natural philosophy, which has just appeared. I must read the latter rather better, though, to be able to judge whether you will get anything out of it. Christoph recently ended a letter to Hans with the phrase, ‘Here’s to a speedy reunion’. To the same intent we both send best greetings and our love.

Your Karl-Friedrich

To his parents

[Tegel] Whit Sunday, 14 June 1943

Dear parents,

Well, Whitsuntide is here, and we are still separated; but it is in a special way a feast of fellowship. When the bells rang this morning, I longed to go to church, but instead I did as John did on the island of Patmos, and had such a splendid service of my own, that I did not feel lonely at all, for you were all with me, every one of you, and so were the congregations in whose company I have kept Whitsuntide. Every hour or so since yesterday evening I’ve been repeating to my own comfort Paul Gerhardt’s Whitsun hymn with the lovely lines ‘Thou art a Spirit of joy’ and ‘Grant us joyfulness and strength’, and besides that, the words ‘If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small’ (Prov.24), and ‘God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control’ (II Tim. 1). I have also been considering again the strange story of the gift of tongues. That the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel, as a result of which people can no longer understand each other, because everyone speaks a different language, should at last be brought to an end and overcome by the language of God, which everyone understands and through which alone people can understand each other again, and that the church should be the place where that happens - these are great momentous thoughts. Leibniz grappled all his life with the idea of a universal script consisting, not of words, but of self-evident signs representing every possible idea. It was an expression of his wish to heal the world, which was then so torn to pieces, a philosophical reflection on the Pentecost story.

Once again all is silent here; one hears nothing but the tramp of the prisoners pacing up and down in their cells. How many comfortless and un-Whitsun-like thoughts there must be in their minds! If I were prison chaplain here, I should spend the whole time from morning till night on days like this, going through the cells; a good deal would happen.

Once again, many thanks for the letters from you, Karl-Friedrich and Ursel. You’re all waiting, just as I am, and I must admit that in some part or other of my subconscious mind I had
been hoping to be out of here by Whitsuntide, although I’m always deliberately telling myself not to envisage any particular date. It will be ten weeks tomorrow; as mere laymen we did not imagine that ‘temporary’ confinement would amount to this. But after all, it is a mistake to be as unsuspecting in legal matters as I am; it brings home to one what a different atmosphere the lawyer must live in from the theologian; but that is instructive too, and everything has its proper place. All we can do is to wait as patiently as may be, without getting bitter, and to trust that everyone is doing his best to clear things up as quickly as possible. Fritz Reuter puts it very well: ‘No one’s life flows on such an even course that it does not sometimes come up against a dam and whirl round and round, or that people never throw stones into the clear water. Something happens to everyone, and he must take care that the water stays clear, and that heaven and earth are reflected in it’ - when you’ve said that, you’ve really said everything.