Letters and Papers From Prison (26 page)

Thirdly: times of separation are not a total loss or unprofitable for our companionship, or at any rate they need not be so. In spite of all the difficulties that they bring, they can be the means of strengthening fellowship quite remarkably.

Fourthly: I’ve learnt here especially that the
facts
can always be mastered, and that difficulties are magnified out of all proportion simply by fear and anxiety. From the moment we wake until we fall asleep we must commend other people wholly and unreservedly to God and leave them in his hands, and transform our anxiety for them into prayers on their behalf:

With sorrow and with grief…
God
will not
be distracted.

Christmas Day

I very much hope to be there when your child is born. You, Eberhard, were recently talking about names. To be honest, I must say that this question has already been going through my head. If it’s a boy, I think that ‘Eberhard’ would be best; I like it very much when names are handed on. You still seem to be thinking of ‘Dietrich’. The name is good, the model less so; it makes some degree of sense, in that it’s very improbable that you would have got to know each other had I not been there. I must also confess with a degree of shame that it would please me very much…

Once more all my beautiful presents are arranged on the edge of my tipped-up bed, and in front of me are the pictures that I enjoy so much. I’m still relishing, almost uninterruptedly, the memory of your visit…It really was a
necessitas.
The mind’s hunger for discussion is much more tormenting than the body’s hunger for food, and there is no one but you with whom I can talk about some things and in one way. A few pregnant remarks
are enough to touch on a wide range of questions and clear them up. This ability to keep on the same wavelength, to play to each other, took years to cultivate, not always without friction, and we must never lose it. It’s an incredible gain, and extraordinarily helpful. What a great deal we touched on in that hour and a half, and how much we learnt from each other! Thank you very much for arranging the meeting successfully. It cost you and Renate a morning. But I think that nevertheless you were glad to do it. It
was
a
necessitas,
and now I can think of you again quite differently. By the way, your visit prompted me to a little work that perhaps I shall send you soon, and it has given me new courage and pleasure for the great work…

The people here did their best to give me a happy Christmas, but I was glad to be alone again; I was surprised at that, and I sometimes wonder how I shall adapt myself to company again after this. You know how I used occasionally to retire to my own room after some great celebration. I’m afraid I must have grown even worse, for in spite of all my privations I’ve come to love solitude. I very much like to talk with two or three people, but I detest anything like a large assembly, and above all any chatter or gossip. Maria won’t have an easy time with me in that respect.

Second Day of Christmas

Today, Eberhard, you’re going away. When you wake up in the morning, may God strengthen your heart and keep sadness from rising in it; may he show each of you, each day, tasks that are worth the doing (today’s reading is Luke 2.17!!
¹⁰⁸
); may he smooth out all your ways and bring you together again happily; and may he also grant me the day when I see you both again. God bless you and all of us. From my heart.

Your Dietrich

…If you need money,
please
just take it. As much as you want - Eberhard, try to put together what the people whom you meet really believe. Presumably it can be put together in a few sentences, and it is very important for me to know…

You know, Eberhard, that despite all the disquietude that people
give me, I know well enough how you feel about your work there. But why should we say much when we know ourselves so well? One knows that it’s enough. Klaus’s remark that he still hadn’t had this experience is in any case not just an
ad hoc
comment; he sometimes said it before (but only in theory)…We are both thinking rather differently here. By the way, thank you very much for visiting Weymarn,
¹⁰⁹
too. It will have given rise to great joy. It was really very nice of you.

To his parents

[Tegel] 25 December 1943

Dear parents,

Christmas is over. It brought me a few quiet, peaceful hours, and it revived a good many past memories. My gratitude for the preservation of yourselves and all the family in the heavy air raids, and my confidence that I shall see you again in the not too distant future, were greater than all my troubles. I lit the candles that you and Maria sent me, read the Christmas story and a few carols which I hummed over to myself; and in doing so, I thought of you all and hoped that, after all the alarms of the last few weeks, you might be able to enjoy an hour or two of peace. Your Christmas parcel was a great delight, especially great-grandfather’s goblet from 1845, which is now standing on my table with evergreen in it. But the things to eat were also very fine, and will last for a while. I got interesting books and Christmas sweetmeats from the family; do thank them all very much. Maria, who was here on the 22nd, gave me the wrist-watch that her father was wearing when he was killed. That pleased me very much. She had also left a parcel for me, which was handed over early yesterday, packed in a most attractive way, with gingerbread, and greetings from her mother and grandmother. I felt rather sad that I wasn’t able to give her anything; but I only want to do that when I’m free again and can give it to her myself; I told her this, and she also thought it was better that way. I’m quite sure that she will take these days of Christmas, in which she misses her father and
brother and knows that I am in prison, as calmly and as bravely as she has endured everything else so far - even if it seems to be going beyond her strength. She has learnt very early to recognize a stronger and more gracious hand in what men inflict on us.

Now I shall not even be with you on your birthday, mother, either. If only one could give you some pleasure with something! Surely everyone will try. I can only say that in these hard times we need you more than ever, and that I cannot imagine the last months of my imprisonment at all without you. The way in which the two of you have borne this blow will be an important memory for your grandchildren all their lives, and more than that. With each letter and each visit that I get from you, I’m newly thankful to you for it and will always remain so. If only you didn’t make too many demands on yourself so often, and looked after your strength more carefully. That would be a real birthday wish from me to you, but I’m afraid that it will remain unfulfilled. Yet it would be such a great relief to us all.

The New Year, too, will bring a great deal of anxiety and disturbance, though I think we may on this New Year’s Eve sing with greater confidence than ever that verse from the old New Year’s hymn:

Shut fast the door of woe,
In every place let flow
The streams of joy and peace,
That bloodshed now may cease.
¹¹⁰

I know no greater prayer or wish than that for your birthday.

Thank you for everything that you have done for me in the past year. With all my heart.

Your Dietrich

From Eberhard Bethge

Lissa,
¹¹¹
2 January 1944

Dear Dietrich,

I must try to send you another greeting and tell you how much my visit to you and your letters have inspired me. You cannot
believe how often I have read them myself, read parts of them aloud to Renate and told some of the contents to the family. I do not know how things have gone with you, but I have to report about myself, at any rate, that I left you on the 23rd almost with a light heart and feeling of freedom. Now that this had happened, parting seemed much easier, and so many, many things had been intimated at such a terrific pace. Afterwards, of course, I saw that it would have been much better had I had your letters earlier and consequently had studied the problem more thoroughly. But I hope you noticed how happy I was to talk to you at last, to hear from you directly and to read your letters. You write that, after marriage, our friendship is to be counted among the stable things of life. But that is not the case, at least as far as the recognition and consideration of others is concerned. Marriage is recognized outwardly - regardless of whether the relationship between the couple is stable or not –; each person, in this case the whole family, must take it into account and finds it the right thing that much should and must be undertaken for it. Friendship – no matter how exclusive and how all-embracing it may be – has no
necessitas,
as father put it over the question of visiting. Your letters of course go to Maria, and almost as automatically to Karl-Friedrich, but it takes an extra struggle to make the point that I have to have them too. You can understand from all that how your letters and the visit had almost a liberating effect on me. In the army, you also say, no one pays any attention to the fact that someone has a very good friend. Friendship is completely determined by its content and only in this way does it have its existence…

Anyway, thank you very much for everything that you said to me, for the many interesting indications of your work and the thoughts about which you write. They are very much with me now. The Old Testament, the importance of appearances, a good conscience about the good things of this earth; perhaps I shall soon find a quiet time to write more about this and send it to you. I’ve now another unexpected respite until the 6th because of hold-ups to military transport…By the way, I had a word with Lokies straightaway, on the 23rd.
¹¹²
He didn’t think that there would be any problem if all cover were broken. So far no one has been able
to concern themselves
seriously
with the case either among the leadership or elsewhere, because they know nothing. He didn’t think that there was any marked general feeling against you; the theological confidence that you enjoy was too great and undisturbed for that…
¹¹³

From Eberhard Bethge

[Charlottenburg] Saturday, 8 January 1944.

Dear Dietrich,

You will have heard today that I’m here again on the way through; I’m going on early tomorrow – once again the demands of a farewell. It’s remarkable how little one gets used to it. So, quickly, another greeting – unfortunately a very incomplete fragment. We were so pleased to have your Christmas letter and thank you very much for your words to the two of us…You can’t believe the tranquillity and assurance that emanates from the letters that you send to me. You have the peace there to write good long letters, and you make use of it. Otherwise no one here in Berlin has time and leisure for one another, and everyday needs make people egotistic and nervous. That’s why your lines do me so much good…Many thanks. I wanted to say at least that much to you before I go…Your Eberhard

From Eberhard Bethge

In the train to Munich.
9 January 1944

Dear Dietrich,

Almost a year ago we were sitting together in the train on this same stretch of line and travelling together to Munich for the last time. It was another very good journey. You were reading Tayllerand, we ate in the dining car, I expect that I was writing to Renate again. We heard
Palestrina
and marvelled,
¹¹⁴
we drank coffee with Ninne
¹¹⁵
(I’ll be going to see her in the morning) and
managed to get hold of some very good books. We worked out money and coupons together; as always, you were very generous. We had many good hopes.
¹¹⁶
In the meantime you’ve been through a great deal that we didn’t suspect then. With this journey I’m bringing a completely new nine months’ experience to an end. Now I want to chat about something with you before it gets dark - there are no lights on Wehrmacht trains. You’ve often written to me from Munich trains, by the way, more contemplatively than usual, but not at such length as your recent letters.

It has been nine months without you…During this time you’ve become much more aware of some things which have escaped me as a result of Renate’s existence: a critical feeling for empty phrases, hasty and false conclusions, self-satisfaction, pietistic style, Pharisaic bourgeoisie in the church. Although you don’t really say much explicitly, your ever-present ear for such things compels one to examine everything all over again…It seems to me that you have made many things about yourself clearer and more comprehensible, the difference in our backgrounds – yours and mine; what it meant for you to become a theologian and to be one in
this
family…

I admire your tone…I haven’t yet been through such serious situations as you have. I’m not sure how well I would come to grips with the situation if I saw what is really at stake. Education and death Socratic? The educated man as the one who has no illusions and does not deceive himself in activity or does not put up with it, but who knows how to overcome in Christian faith? It’s getting dark, I can’t see any more. That’s all for now.

Your Eberhard

Now I can go on writing. As soldiers we aren’t worth lights, but this leave train has nevertheless got light in some remarkable way, so I will make good use of it. We’re now skirting the Thüringian forest. Who knows when I shall get there again? If only we could correspond with each other regularly and quickly…

The proletarian strata ‘without desires’, who make themselves substitute satisfactions and allow the tension to go slack are the bestequipped warriors of today; the length of the war develops these
things in a terrifying way. One really does get contemptuous in a hut of twelve people like that. How quickly men, when they make themselves ‘at home’, are so shamelessly at home and thus make such manageable, obedient soldiers.