Letters and Papers From Prison (21 page)

Every Christian in his place
should be brave and free,
with the world face to face.
Though death strikes, his spirit should
persevere, without fear
calm and good.
For death cannot destroy,
but from grief brings relief
and opens gates to joy.
Closed the door of bitter pain,
bright the way where we may
all heaven gain.

Paul Gerhardt

Front Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer

[Leipzig] Sunday, 21 November 1943

Dear Dietrich,

I’ve just applied for permission to come to visit you. As you know, I’ve often toyed with the idea earlier, but I didn’t know whether in so doing I might mess up another visit that you perhaps wanted more. However, people have reassured me on that point, and as in your letter of 22 October, which was forwarded on to me a couple of days ago, you also write explicitly that it would please you, I’ve done so. I hope it works for next time…

I’ve been using the day to think through a couple of works that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. I have the feeling that time is pressing on, but that I am not getting very far forward. It’s not just the empty stomach that sometimes starts rumbling and makes one get up from the desk before time. It simply is not very easy at the moment to concentrate on pure science. On the other hand, one should do so, as long as one still has windows intact, which is still the case at home. In the Institute my lecture room is now very draughty indeed and no longer usable. But we can still publish our works with hardly any restrictions. I really hope that your time in prison will soon be finished. We just cannot understand what it means to have to be alone so long.

So all the best, and perhaps we shall see each other soon.

Your Karl-Friedrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] Friday, 26 November 1943

Dear Eberhard,

So it really came off! Only for a moment, but that doesn’t matter so much; even a few hours would be far too little, and when we are isolated here we can take in so much that even a few minutes gives us something to think about for a long time afterwards. It will be with me for a long time now – the memory of having the four people
⁷⁵
who are nearest and dearest to me with me for a
brief moment. When I got back to my cell afterwards, I paced up and down for a whole hour, while my dinner stood there and got cold, so that at last I couldn’t help laughing at myself when I found myself repeating over and over again, ‘That was really great!’ I always hesitate to use the word ‘indescribable’ about anything, because if you take enough trouble to make a thing clear, I think there is very little that is really ‘indescribable’ – but at the moment that is just what this morning seems to be. Karl’s
⁷⁶
cigar is on the table in front of me, and that is something really indescribable – was he nice? and understanding? and V.
⁷⁷
too? How grand it was that you saw them. And the good old favourite ‘Wolf cigar from Hamburg, which I used to be so fond of in better times. Just by me, standing on a box, is Maria’s Advent garland, and on the shelf there are (among other things) your gigantic eggs, waiting for breakfasts still to come. (It’s no use my saying that you oughtn’t to have deprived yourselves of them; but that’s what I think, though I am glad of them all the same.)…

Now you’ve been able to convince yourself that I’m my old self in every respect and that all is well. I believe that a moment was enough to make clear to both of us that everything that has happened in the last seven and a half months has left both of us essentially unchanged; I never doubted it for a moment, and you certainly didn’t either. That’s the advantage of having spent almost every day and having experienced almost every event and discussed every thought together for eight years. One needs only a second to know about each other, and now one doesn’t really need even that second any more. I can remember that my first visit to a prison (I went to see Fritz O.,
⁷⁸
and you were with me) took it out of me terribly, although Fritz was very cheerful and nice. I hope you didn’t feel like that when you were here today. You see, it would be wrong to suppose that prison life is uninterrupted torture. It certainly is not, and visits like yours relieve it for days on end, even though they do, of course, awaken feelings that have fortunately lain dormant for a while. But that doesn’t matter either. I realize again in thankfulness how well off I was, and feel new hope and energy. Thank you
very
much, you yourself and all the others. When and where will I be able to visit you? Make
sure that you spend a long time in Lissa! We really must see each other as quickly as possible after my release. It’s truly horrible that they refuse a soldier who wants to visit his closest friend. Damned bureaucrats! But one learns from everything – and for later on!

27 November

Meanwhile we’ve had the expected large-scale attack on Borsig.
⁷⁹
It really is a strange feeling, to see the ‘Christmas trees’, the flares that the leading aircraft drops, coming down right over our heads. The shouting and screaming of the prisoners in their cells was terrible. We had no dead, only injured, and we had finished bandaging them by one o’clock. After that, I was able to drop off at once into a sound sleep. People here talk quite openly about how frightened they were. I don’t quite know what to make of it, for fright is surely something to be ashamed of. I have a feeling that it shouldn’t be talked about except in the confessional, otherwise it might easily involve a certain amount of exhibitionism; and
a fortiori
there is no need to play the hero. On the other hand, naïve frankness can be quite disarming. But even so, there’s a cynical, I might almost say ungodly, frankness, the kind that breaks out in heavy drinking and fornication, and gives the impression of chaos. I wonder whether fright is not one of the
pudenda,
which ought to be concealed. I must think about it further; you’ve no doubt formed your own ideas on the subject.

The fact that the horrors of war are now coming home to us with such force will no doubt, if we survive, provide us with the necessary basis for making it possible to reconstruct the life of the nations, both spiritually and materially, on Christian principles. So we must try to keep these experiences in our minds, use them in our work, make them bear fruit, and not just shake them off. Never have we been so plainly conscious of the wrath of God, and that is a sign of his grace: ‘O that today you would hearken to his voice! Harden not your hearts.’ The tasks that confront us are immense, but we must prepare ourselves for them now and be ready when they come…

28 November, Advent I

It began with a peaceful night. When I was in bed yesterday evening I looked up for the first time ‘our’ Advent hymns in the
Neues Lied.
I can hardly hum any of them to myself without being reminded of Finkenwalde, Schlönwitz, and Sigurdshof. Early this morning I held my Sunday service, hung up the Advent garland on a nail, and fastened Lippi’s picture of the Nativity in the middle of it. At breakfast I greatly enjoyed the second of your ostrich eggs. Soon after that, I was taken to the sick-bay for an interview which lasted till noon. The last air raid brought some most unpleasant experiences-a land-mine 25 metres away; a sick-bay with no lights or windows, prisoners screaming for help, with no one but ourselves taking any notice of them; but we too could do very little to help in the darkness, and one has to be cautious about opening the cell doors of those with the heaviest sentences, for you never know whether they will hit you on the head with a chair leg and try to get away. In short, it was not very nice. As a result, I wrote a report of what had taken place, pointing out the need of medical attention during air raids. I hope it will be some use. I’m glad to be able to help in any way with reasonable suggestions.

By the way, I forgot to tell you that I smoked the fabulously fragrant ‘Wolf’ cigar yesterday afternoon during a pleasant conversation in the sick-bay. Thank you very much for it. Since the raids started, the cigarette situation has unfortunately become calamitous.

While the injured people were being bandaged, they asked for a cigarette, and the medical orderlies and I had already used up a lot beforehand; so I’m all the more grateful for what you brought me the day before yesterday. Nearly every window in the place has been blown out, and the men are sitting in their cells freezing. Although I had forgotten to open my windows when I left the cell, I found at night to my great surprise that they were undamaged. I’m very glad about that, although I’m terribly sorry for the others.

How good it is that you can be at home to celebrate Advent.
Just now you will be singing the first hymns together. It makes me think of Altdorfer’s ‘Nativity’ and the verse

The crib now glistens bright and clear,
The night brings in a new light here;
The darkness, conquered, fades away,
For faith within the light must stay.

and also the Advent melody

though not in four-four time, but in a flowing expectant rhythm to suit the text. After this I’m going to read another of W. H. Riehl’s entertaining stories. You would enjoy them, too, and they would do very well for reading aloud to the family. You must try to get hold of them some time.

Unfortunately I’m not on the same wavelength as Maria yet in the literary sphere. She writes me such good, natural letters, but she reads…Rilke, Bergengruen, Binding, Wiechert; I regard the last three as being below our level and the first as being decidedly unhealthy. And in fact they don’t really suit her at all…We ought to be able to talk to each other about such things, and I don’t know whether they are altogether unimportant. I would very much like my wife to be as much of the same mind as possible in such questions. But I think it’s only a matter of time. I don’t like it when husbands and wives have different opinions. They must stand together like an impregnable bulwark. Don’t you think so? Or is that another aspect of my ‘tyrannical’ nature that you know so well? If so, you must tell me. The difference in our ages probably also makes itself felt in these literary matters. Unfortunately the generation of Maria and Renate has grown up with a very bad kind of contemporary literature and finds it much harder than we did to take up earlier writing. The more we have come up against the really good things, the more insipid the weak lemonade of more recent productions has become to us, sometimes almost to the point of making us ill. Can you think of a book from
the belles-lettres of, say, the last fifteen years which you think has lasting value? I can’t. It is partly just talk, partly striking attitudes, partly plaintive sentimentality - no insight, no ideas, no clarity, no substance and almost always bad, unfree writing. At this point I am quite determinedly a
laudator temporis acti.
Are you?

29 November

Today is quite different from all the previous Mondays. Usually on Monday mornings the shouting and swearing in the corridors is at its fiercest, but after the experiences of last week even the loudest shouters and bullies have become quite subdued – a most obvious change.

Now there’s something I must tell you personally: the heavy air raids, especially the last one, when the windows of the sick-bay were blown out by the land mine, and bottles and medical supplies fell down from the cupboards and shelves, and I lay on the floor in the darkness with little hope of coming through the attack safely, led me back quite simply to prayer and the Bible. More about that later when I see you. In more than one respect my time of imprisonment is being a very wholesome though drastic cure. But the details must wait till I can tell you personally.

A box of canned food and the travelling fur have just been handed to me. I asked to be taken down straight away and hoped that I would still catch a glimpse of you; there they said that ‘a young man’ – (sorry about that! no one would certainly say that about me any more! or might it perhaps have been Klaus D?)
⁸⁰
had left it two hours before and had gone away again immediately. Many, many thanks. It is certainly good to have a reserve ration here that one can keep against all eventualities, and the fur, too, is very welcome in the windowless house, which also makes my cell chilly. It’s really wonderful how you always think of everything straightaway and also translate it into action. I think that our family is really something quite special in this respect, don’t you? And how good it is that now you are included in it! When one is in a difficult situation, one can be quite sure that everything conceivable will be done to bring help and relief. You, too, can get to
know that if you are anywhere outside. I believe that this helping one another is a heritage in which all the members of the family share.