Letters and Papers From Prison (23 page)

Meanwhile evening has come. The NCO who has just brought me from the sick-bay to my quarters said to me as he left, with an embarrassed smile but quite seriously, ‘Pray for us, Pastor, that we may have no alert tonight.’

For some time I’ve been taking my daily walk with a man who has been a District Orator, Regional Leader, Government Director, former member of the governing body of the German-Christian Church in Brunswick, and is at present a Party Leader in Warsaw. He has completely gone to pieces here, and clings to me just like a child, consulting me about every little thing, telling me whenever
he has cried, etc. After being very cool with him for several weeks, I’m now able to ease things for him a little; his gratitude is quite touching, and he tells me again and again how glad he is to have met a man like me here. Well, the strangest situations do come about; if only I could tell you properly about them!

I’ve been thinking again over what I wrote to you recently about our own fear. I think that here, under the guise of honesty, something is being passed off as ‘natural’ that is at bottom a symptom of sin; it is really quite analogous to talking openly about sexual matters. After all, ‘truthfulness’ does not mean uncovering everything that exists. God himself made clothes for men; and that means that
in statu corruptionis
many things in human life ought to remain covered, and that evil, even though it cannot be eradicated, ought at least to be concealed. Exposure is cynical, and although the cynic prides himself on his exceptional honesty, or claims to want truth at all costs, he misses the crucial fact that since the fall there must be reticence and secrecy. In my opinion the greatness of Stifter lies in his refusal to force his way into man’s inner life, in his respect for reticence, and in his willingness to observe people more or less cautiously from the outside but not from the inside. Inquisitiveness is alien to him. I remember once being impressed when Frau von Kleist-Kieckow told me with genuine horror about a film that showed the growth of a plant speeded up; she said that she and her husband could not stand it, as they felt it to be an impermissible prying into the mystery of life. Stifter takes a similar line. But is not this somewhat akin to the so-called English ‘hypocrisy’, which we contrast with German ‘honesty’? I believe we Germans have never properly grasped the meaning of ‘concealment’, i.e. what is in the end the
status corruptionis
of the world. Kant says quite rightly in his
Anthropologie
that anyone who misunderstands or questions the significance of outward appearance in the world is a traitor to humanity.

By the way, was it you who got hold of the
Witiko
that was brought to me on Friday? Who else could it have been? Although it is painstaking rather than brilliant, I found parts of it very interesting. Thank you very much.

‘Speaking the truth’ (on which I have written an essay)
⁸⁷
means, in my opinion, saying how something really is – that is, showing respect for secrecy, intimacy, and concealment. ‘Betrayal’, for example, is not truth, any more than are flippancy, cynicism, etc. What is secret may be revealed only in confession, i.e. in the presence of God. More about that later, too.

There are two ways of dealing psychically with adversities. One way, the easier, is to try to ignore them; that is about as far as I have got. The other and more difficult way is to face them deliberately and overcome them; I’m not equal to that yet, but one must learn to do it, for the first way is a slight, though, I believe, a permissible, piece of self-deception.

Now good-bye. You’re constantly in my thoughts.

Your Dietrich

From Susanne Dress

Friedrichsbrunn, 14 December 1943

Dear Dietrich,

Now I’m staying up here in the snow and the heavy frost with very little heating, and my thoughts are constantly in Berlin. I did hope so much to be at home with the children for Christmas and then arrange a visit to see you. Even more, I had hoped that you might have been back with the parents again for Christmas. But perhaps we ought to learn to hope for other things this Advent. What is the dark time round Christmas going to bring now? I was very glad to be in Berlin for those mad days, helping the parents during the day and being able to be with Walter during the attacks in the evening. Here one just hears the planes rumbling overhead and has no chance of getting any news all day. As the roads are so bad, I shall now probably have to stay here until the beginning of January. Shared life with the Leipzig brigade continues to go well. It’s not so shared any more, as I’m living up here in the boys’ room with my two…We have three beds, three chairs, two tables, one washstand, one wardrobe, one clothes stand and a stove in the room; you can cook on it if you can get enough heat underneath. At the only free place where one
might be able to stand upright, Fräulein Erna, who was here, has dangled the Advent garland from the ceiling at head height. As it’s already beginning to shed, one gets one’s head covered with fir needles several times a day. They only get a nuisance when they slip down the back of your neck. You can imagine how cosy and pleasant it was when Walter was here! But he was so happy to be able to be with the children again that he didn’t object at all…Christmas preparations are completely out this year…We wish you with all our hearts a happy Christmas and a better New Year.

With love.

Your Suse

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 15 December 1943

Dear Eberhard,

When I read your letter yesterday, I felt as though a spring, without which my intellectual life was beginning to dry up, had begun once again to produce the first drops of water for a long, long time. Of course, that may sound to you an exaggeration; for first, in the meantime another spring has opened up for you, and moreover, you have many possibilities of replenishment. In my isolation things are quite different. I am forced to live from the past; the future which announces itself in the person of Maria still consists so very much of hints that it lies more on the horizon of hope than in the realm of possession and tangible experience. In any case, your letter set my thoughts going again, after they had grown rusty and tired during recent weeks. I had become so used to talking everything over with you that the sudden and prolonged interruption meant a profound change and a great deprivation. Now we’re at least in touch again…. Many thanks for writing to me, and do go on writing from time to time. R
⁸⁸
and Co. have smashed so much china already that we mustn’t let them destroy our most important personal relationships too.

First of all a couple of external things; the wedding sermon got by mistake into the will of mine that father has, and was put away with that. Please get it from him. It’s nothing special, but it
was written at the time of your wedding and I would be pleased if you could read it sometime.

How is it that you’ve got to Forli and not to Warsaw? (Do I need to refresh your knowledge of the history of art by recalling the pictures of angels by Melozzo da Forli in the Vatican Museum?) In many respects that is better, but prepare yourself for very cold days, not much coal, bad stoves, stone floors, hills, and spring not before March or April. You will need particularly warm socks. You have the addresses of Marianne
⁸⁹
and George,
⁹⁰
haven’t you? Do you know to whom you’re coming? Are you still in any way connected with your earlier military position
⁹¹
or not any more? Learn Italian properly. More and more interpreters are needed in the many Italian prisoner-of-war camps. You ought to be able to do it in eight weeks. As it’s chiefly a matter of a good ear, you will find it very easy. Did you get my
second
letter?

I expect that a smoked goose or something similar is coming in from Kl. Krössin or Kieckow for Christmas. I’ve one big request for you; take half and give the other half to my parents. I certainly don’t want to have it here; it doesn’t fit, and there is no fun at all in eating it all alone. You could send me one slice, but certainly no more. It’s really very much nicer to think that you’re having a good lunch together, you and Renate. I know that sounds fabulously altruistic, but it’s really basically egoistic (and that sounds even more altruistic! what can we do about that? especially as people among us give the others not altruistic but only egoistic joys!) So please do what I suggest and don’t offend me! Besides, you know from old that I don’t make all that much of it. Hans should also have a slice; he’s a fantastic admirer of smoked goose! Anyway, they are the external things.

And now I’m taking up with great pleasure your ‘fireside chat’ (appropriately enough the electricity has failed again, and I’m using candles). So I imagine the two of us sitting together as we used to in the old days after supper (and after our regular evening’s work
⁹²
) in my room upstairs, smoking, occasionally strumming chords on the clavichord, and discussing the day’s events. I should have no end of questions to ask you, about your training, about your journey to Karolus
⁹³
…And then at last I should have to
start telling you that, in spite of everything that I’ve written so far, things here are revolting, that my grim experiences often pursue me into the night and that I can shake them off only by reciting one hymn after another, and that I’m apt to wake up with a sigh rather than with a hymn of praise to God. It’s possible to get used to physical hardships, and to live for months out of the body, so to speak – almost too much so – but one doesn’t get used to the psychological strain; on the contrary, I have the feeling that everything that I see and hear is putting years on me, and I’m often finding the world nauseating and burdensome. You’re probably surprised now at my talking like this after all my letters; you wrote very kindly that I was making ‘something of an effort’ to reassure you about my situation. I often wonder who I really am - the man who goes on squirming under these ghastly experiences in wretchedness that cries to heaven, or the man who scourges himself and pretends to others (and even to himself) that he is placid, cheerful, composed, and in control of himself, and allows people to admire him for it (i.e. for playing the part – or is it not playing a part?). What does one’s attitude mean, anyway? In short, I know less than ever about myself, and I’m no longer attaching any importance to it. I’ve had more than enough psychology, and I’m less and less inclined to analyse the state of my soul. That is why I value Stifter and Gotthelf so much. There is something more at stake than self-knowledge.

Then I should discuss with you whether you think that this trial, which has associated me with the
Abwehr
(I hardly think that has remained a secret), may prevent me from taking up my ministry again later on. At present you’re the only person with whom I can discuss this question, and perhaps we shall be able to talk it over together if you’re allowed to see me. Please think it over, and give me your candid opinion.

Finally, I couldn’t talk about anything else with you but Maria. We’ve now been engaged almost a year, and so far we haven’t spent even an hour alone together. Isn’t that mad!…We have to talk and write about things which in the end aren’t the most important for the two of us; every month we sit upright for an hour, side by side, as on a school bench, and then we’re torn apart again
…Isn’t that an impossible situation? And she bears up with such great self-control. It’s only occasionally that something else comes through, as on the last visit, when I told her that even Christmas wasn’t certain yet. She sighed and said, Oh, it’s
too
long for me.’ I know full well that she won’t leave me in the lurch; it isn’t ‘too long’ for her to hold out, but for her heart, and that’s much more important. The only thing that I keep saying to myself is that it has all come about without our doing and so will probably make sense one day. As long as I don’t do her wrong by asking too much of her…

I sometimes feel as if my life were more or less over, and as if all I had to do now were to finish my
Ethics.
But, you know, when I feel like this, there comes over me a longing (unlike any other that I experience) to have a child and not to vanish without a trace – an Old Testament rather than a New Testament wish, I suppose…Yes, I would tell you all this and much more, and would know that (provided that you weren’t reading a newspaper or sleeping or even thinking of Renate!) you would listen to me like no one else and would give me good counsel. It may be that all my problems will blow away the moment I’m released – I hope so! Perhaps you can write me a few more words about my questions and my thoughts.

If only we could meet in freedom before you leave. But if they really intend to keep me here over Christmas, I shall keep it in my own way as a Christmas at the front, so you can have an easy mind about it. Great battles are easier to fight and less wearing than the daily guerrilla war. And I do hope you will somehow or other manage to wangle a few days’ leave in February; I shall certainly be out of here by then for, to judge by the nonsense that they’re bringing against me, they’re bound to let me out after the trial.

I’m again working at my essay on ‘What is “speaking the truth”?’ I’m trying to draw a sharp contrast between trust, loyalty, and secrecy on the one hand, and the ‘cynical’ conception of truth, for which all these obligations do not exist, on the other. ‘Falsehood’ is the destruction of, and hostility to, reality as it is in God; anyone who tells the truth cynically is lying. By the way,
it’s remarkable how little I miss going to church. I wonder why.

Your biblical comparison with ‘eating the letter’ is very good. If you should get to Rome, do visit Schönhöffer
⁹⁴
in the
Propaganda Fide. -
Have you found the tone among the troops very bad, or do they show you some respect? Here in the sick-bay the men are certainly very direct, but not filthy. Some of the younger prisoners seem to have suffered so much from the long solitary confinement and the long dark evenings that they have quite gone to pieces. That’s another idiotic thing, locking these people in for months on end with nothing to do; it’s absolutely demoralizing in every possible way.