Letters and Papers From Prison (19 page)

Ursel’s visit this morning was a great delight. I’m most grateful to her for it. It’s always so comforting to find you so calm and cheerful despite all the unpleasantness you have to put up with as a result of my imprisonment. You, mother, wrote recently that you were proud that your children behaved ‘respectably’ in such a grim situation. In fact we’ve all learnt it from the two of you, especially when you were so completely calm during serious illnesses in the family and didn’t give anything away. So it has probably become a legacy. Ursel told me a great deal about everyone; it was really time that we met again after these long months, during which so much has happened that affects us both. Now I
very much
hope that Eberhard’s request for a visit will be granted before he goes on active service. Even if that should not be the case, we both know that we are bound together in our thoughts day by day. I’m very pleased for Renate that he has got this leave,
⁴⁸
and hope that Hans-Walter will soon get his long-deserved leave also.

There’s nothing much new to report about myself. It’s nearly evening now, and it’s quiet in the building, so I can pursue my thoughts undisturbed. During the day I keep on finding out again the different degrees of noise with which people do their work; I suppose that’s how nature has endowed them. A fortissimo just outside my cell is hardly the right background for serious study. I’ve very much enjoyed re-reading Goethe’s
Reinecke Fuchs
this last week. You might enjoy it again too.

What are the prospects for some jewellery for Maria? I would so like to get something for her if I were free again. But I expect that it will be very difficult. Once again, many thanks to Ursel for the flask with the splendid cocoa and to Tine
⁴⁹
for the milk which she sacrificed for it. And very many thanks for the biscuits. From week to week I hope for an end to this trial of patience. I also feel that it is gradually becoming too great a burden for Maria to bear. But it can’t be much longer.

I hope you have a very good first Sunday in Advent with the
children. I shall be thinking of you very much; I hope the Schleichers have a couple of good musical evenings in the old style. It’s good that Renate now plays the piano part better than I do. Good-bye, and above all keep well! Much love to all the family. With all my love.

Your grateful Dietrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel]
⁵⁰
18 November 1943

Dear Eberhard,

As you are in the neighbourhood, I simply must take the opportunity of writing to you. I expect you know that I haven’t even been allowed to have the pastor to see me here; but even if he had come – I’m really very glad that I have
only
the Bible –1 wouldn’t have been able to speak to him in that way which is only possible with you.

You can’t imagine how much I worried during the first weeks of my imprisonment in case your wedding plans had been shattered. I prayed a great deal for you and Renate, and thanked God for every day on which I had good news of you. Your wedding day
really
was a day of joy for me, like few others. Later in September it was a great torment not to be able to support you.
⁵¹
But the certainty that so far you have been guided with such unbelievable friendship made me quite confident that God intends things to be very well with you.

And now, after these long months without worship, penitence and eucharist and without the
consolatio fratrum
– once again be my pastor as you have so often been in the past, and listen to me. There is so infinitely much to report, that I would like to tell both of you, but today it can only be the essentials, so this letter is for you alone…So let me tell you a little that you ought to know about me. For the first twelve days, during which I was segregated and treated as a felon - up to now the cells on each side of me have been occupied almost solely by handcuffed men awaiting death – Paul Gerhardt was an unexpectedly helpful standby, and so were the Psalms and Revelation. During this time I have been preserved
from any serious spiritual trial. You are the only person who knows how often
accidie, tristitia,
with all its menacing consequences, has lain in wait for me; and I feared at the time that you must be worrying about me on that account. But I told myself from the beginning that I was not going to oblige either man or devil in any such way - they can do what they like about it for themselves; and I hope I shall always be able to stand firm on this.

At first I wondered a good deal whether it was really for the cause of Christ that I was causing you all such grief; but I soon put that out of my head as a temptation, as I became certain that the duty had been laid on me to hold out in this boundary situation with all its problems; I became quite content to do this, and have remained so ever since (I Peter 2.20; 3.14).
⁵²

I’ve reproached myself for not having finished my
Ethics
(parts of it have probably been confiscated), and it was some consolation to me that I had told you the essentials, and that even if you had forgotten it, it would probably emerge again indirectly somehow. Besides, my ideas were still incomplete.

I also felt it to be an omission not to have carried out my long-cherished wish to attend the Lord’s Supper once again with you. I wanted to tell you once again how grateful I am that you…bore with such patience and tolerance all the things with which I have sometimes made life hard for you. I ask you for forgiveness, and yet I know that we have shared spiritually, although not physically, in the gift of confession, absolution, and communion, and that we may be quite happy and easy in our minds about it. But I did just want to tell you this.

As soon as it was possible, apart from my daily work on the Bible (I’ve read through the Old Testament two and a half times and learnt a great deal), I began to do some non-theological work. An essay on ‘The feeling of time’
⁵³
originated mainly in the need to bring before me my own past in a situation that could so easily seem ‘empty’ and ‘wasted’. Our past is always kept before us by thankfulness and penitence. But more of that later.

Then I started on a bold enterprise that I’ve had in mind for a long time: I began to write the story of a contemporary middle-class family.
⁵⁴
The background for this consisted of all our in
numerable conversations on the subject, and my own personal experiences; in short, it was to present afresh middle-class life as we know it in our own families, and especially in the light of Christianity. It tells of two families on terms of friendship living in a small town. Their children grow up, and as they gradually enter into the responsibilities of official positions, they try to work together for the good of the community as mayor, teacher, pastor, doctor, engineer. You would recognize many familiar features, and you come into it too. But I haven’t yet got much further than the beginning, mainly because the repeated false forecasts of my release have made it difficult for me to concentrate. But the work is giving me great pleasure. Only I wish I could talk it over with you every day; indeed, I miss that more than you think. I may often have originated our ideas, but the clarification of them was completely on your side. I only learnt in conversation with you whether an idea was any good or not. I long to read to you some of what I’ve written. Your comments on details are so much better than mine. Perhaps that seems to be mad presumption?!

Incidentally, I’ve written an essay on ‘What is “speaking the truth”?’
⁵⁵
, and at the moment I’m trying to write some prayers for prisoners;
⁵⁶
it’s surprising that there are none, and perhaps these may be distributed at Christmas.

And now for my reading. Yes, Eberhard, I’m very sorry that we did not get to know Stifter together; it would have helped us very much in our talks, but we shall have to put it off till later. But I’ve a great deal to tell you about that. Later? When and how will it come about? To be on the safe side, I’ve made my will and given it to my lawyer. In it, I’ve left almost everything I have to you. But first Maria must be allowed to look for something that she would like in remembrance. If this should happen, please be very good to Maria, and if possible, write to her in my stead from time to time, just a few kind words, as you can do so well, and tell her gently that I asked you to. But perhaps – or certainly – you are now going into greater danger. I shall be thinking of you every day and asking God to protect you and bring you back. Please take with you anything of mine that you need; I’m only too pleased to know it’s with you. And please provide yourself with
as much of the food that has come for me as you need. That’s a thought that would comfort me very much.

There is so much that I would very, very much like to hear of you. Sometimes I’ve thought that it is really very good for the two of you that I’m not there. At the beginning it’s not at all easy to resolve the conflict between marriage and friendship; you’re spared this problem, and later it won’t exist. But that’s only a private and passing thought; you mustn’t laugh at it.

I wonder whether, if I’m not condemned, but released and called up, it might be arranged for me to get to your neighbourhood. That would be fine! Anyway, if I should be condemned (one never knows), don’t worry about me. It really doesn’t worry me at all, except that in that case I shall probably be kept here for a few more months longer ‘on probation’, and that’s really not pleasant. But there is a great deal that isn’t pleasant! The thing for which I should be condemned is so unexceptionable that I should only be proud of it. But I hope that, if God preserves us, we shall at least be able to celebrate Easter happily together. And then,
sub conditione Jacobea,
I shall baptize your child!

And now, Eberhard, good-bye. I don’t expect a long letter from you. You’ve little time now. But let’s promise to remain faithful in interceding for each other. I shall ask that you may have strength, health, patience, and protection from conflicts and temptations. You can ask for the same things for me. And if it should be decided that we are not to meet again, let us remember each other to the end in thankfulness and forgiveness, and may God grant us that one day we may stand before his throne praying for each other and joining in praise and thankfulness.

God protect you and Renate and all of us. Faithfully,

your grateful Dietrich

…By the way, I’ve heard that Warsaw is frightfully dear.
⁵⁷
Take as much as you can with you; if you need money, feel free to draw 1000 marks of mine. I can’t use it. Do you always get my letters to my parents to read? See that they send them to you. I’m finding here (I expect you are, too) that the most difficult thing is getting up in the morning (Jer. 31.26!).
⁵⁸
I’m now praying quite
simply for freedom. There is such a thing as a false composure which is quite unchristian. As Christians, we needn’t be at all ashamed of some impatience, longing, opposition to what is unnatural, and our full share of desire for freedom, earthly happiness, and opportunity for effective work. I think we entirely agree about that.

Well, in spite of everything, or rather because of everything, that we are now going through, each in his own way, we shall still be the same as before, shan’t we? I hope you don’t think I am here turning out to be a ‘man of the inner line’;
⁵⁹
I was never in less danger of that, and I think the same applies to you. What a happy day it will be when we tell each other our experiences. But I sometimes get very angry at not being free yet!

My wedding plans: if I am free and still have at least a couple of months before I’m called up, I want to get married. If I have only two or three weeks free before the call-up, then I want to wait until the end of the war. What an engagement we’ve had! Maria is astounding! You don’t think that’s too much to ask? If only we had seen each other at least a couple of times in January! I don’t know why Maria has to put up with so much hardship, young as she is. I hope that it isn’t too much for her, but I’m so glad to have her now. Or do you think that it would have been better and more unselfish if I had asked her after my arrest simply to wait for my release without letters and visits? I would have regarded that as unnatural, and I think that you would have done, too. Please think of her, too, when you think of me.

I was very affected by G. Seydel’s
⁶⁰
death. Always the best! I’ve borne up
well
physically with all your help…

That’s all. We’ve had some incomparably good years together, and I hope that some more are before us!!

Dietrich

20 November

Your letter of 9 November has just come with so much news about which I was most delighted; but it also brought the sad news of the deaths of B. Riemer and R. August.
⁶¹
Now you’ve lost the last of the real friends of your youth. You will be looking
more and more towards the present and the future. Thank God that you have Renate; and you yourself know well enough that behind her there is a family all of whose members count you one of themselves and will always stand by you…

It’s also hard to think that I shall not be able to talk to you immediately I’m released. But if this really must be, we must at least write long letters for a while. We shall not forget our different experiences in a hurry! If I should still be kept in this hole over Christmas, don’t worry about it. I’m not really anxious about it. One can keep Christmas as a Christian even in prison - more easily than family occasions, anyhow. Thank you especially for applying for permission to visit me; I don’t expect, either, that there have been any complications this time. I certainly shouldn’t have ventured to ask you to do anything about it; but as you yourself have made the move, it’s much better. I really do hope it comes off. But, you know, even if it is refused, I shall be glad that you tried, and it will only make me rather more angry with certain people for the time being – and there is no harm in that (indeed, I sometimes think I am not yet angry enough about the whole business!). So in that case we will swallow even that bitter pill, for after all, we have both of us been getting used to that kind of thing lately. I’m glad I saw you just as I was arrested, and I shall not forget it. I know now that my weak attempts at looking after you are in much better hands with Renate and the best mother-in-law imaginable of all imaginable mothers-in-law (freely adapted from Leibniz)…