Letters and Papers From Prison (30 page)

I hope you won’t think I’ve joined the ranks of the toughs; there is little enough occasion for that here, in any case. But there is a kind of weakness that Christianity does not hold with, but which people insist on claiming as Christian, and then sling mud at it. So we must take care that the contours do not get blurred.

Yesterday Susi brought me the big volume on Magdeburg Cathedral. I’m quite thrilled by the sculptures, especially some of the wise virgins. The bliss on these very earthly, almost peasantlike faces is really delightful and moving. Of course, you will know them well.

Good-bye for today, Eberhard. I’m always thinking of you faithfully.

Your Dietrich

From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer

[Leipzig] 4 February 1944

Dear Dietrich,

Who would have thought that you would still be sitting in prison on your birthday! Your patience is really being put to a hard test.
I hope that at least you will be getting a visit from the parents or some of the family today? I don’t imagine that Maria is in Berlin. She called me from Altenburg last Saturday, here in Leipzig. Unfortunately I’d just gone away to see Grete and the children in Friedrichsbrunn. It would have been very nice there had one not been dominated by worry for all of you in Berlin. With every attack on Berlin swarms of planes fly over the Harz so that the whole sky roars with this wild hunt. One then feels uncomfortable about every hour in which one has forgotten the suffering of all those many thousands, and has the feeling that one ought to go off straightaway to try to help. But the hard thing about the present time is that there is hardly anything one can do to help. For the few hours of freedom from work are enough, of course, to think of other people, but not to give them any real help.

I went from Friedrichsbrunn to Göttingen. I hadn’t been there for ten years. People from there have been inviting me over for several years, and now at last the mobility of the bombed-out grass widower has meant that it came off at last. I gave a lecture in the Faculty of Physics on the mechanism of rhythmic reactions, and managed to interest the biologists, as I had hoped. I stayed in the Herzberger Landstrasse, diagonally opposite Sabine’s old house.
¹⁴²
I thought of her a good deal while I was there; ten years ago I stayed with her. She too will be with us and especially with you in all her thoughts and worries. From the scientific side, I enjoyed myself more there than I’ve done for a long time. It wasn’t just the friendliness with which people received me everywhere. I saw a whole series of people again whose whole life is pure science, and I got to know some new ones. It really seemed as though I was ‘transported into a better world’.

I’m fighting here for a labour force to put on an emergency roof to save the rest of the Institute. I run from office to office to get water and light for home, write my fingers sore to replace the burnt library books and chemical equipment and negotiate with Osram over accepting an advisory capacity. All the work that I’m really interested in gets left on one side.

Tomorrow I expect a call from Maria. Last Saturday she said that she would ring, and I’m eager to see whether she has any
news. If nothing gets in the way I want to go to Berlin early the day after tomorrow.

All the best. Here’s to a speedy release!

Your Karl-Friedrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 4 February [1944]

Dear Eberhard,

Today on my birthday morning, nothing is more natural for me than to write to you, remembering that for eight years in succession we celebrated the day together. Work is being laid aside for a few hours - it may take no harm from that - and I’m expecting a visit from Maria or my parents, although it’s not yet quite certain whether it will come off. Eight years ago we were sitting at the fireside together.
¹⁴³
You had given me as a present the D major violin concerto, and we listened to it together; then I had to tell you a little about Harnack and past times; for some reason or other you enjoyed that very much, and afterwards we decided definitely to go to Sweden. A year later you gave me the September Bible
¹⁴⁴
with a lovely inscription and your name at the top. There followed Schlönwitz and Sigurdshof, and we had the company of a good many people who are no longer among us. The singing at the door, the prayer at the service that you undertook that day, the Claudius hymn,
¹⁴⁵
for which I’m indebted to Gerhard - all those things are delightful recollections that are proof against the horrible atmosphere of this place. I hope confidently that we shall be together again for your next birthday, and perhaps - who knows? - even for Easter. Then we shall get back to what is really our life’s work; we shall have ample work that we shall enjoy, and what we have experienced in the meantime will not have been in vain. We shall probably always be grateful to each other for having been able to go through this present time as we’re now doing. I know you’re thinking of me today, and if your thoughts include not only the past, but also the hope of a future lived with a
common purpose, even though in changed circumstances, then indeed I’m very happy.

Now it won’t be long before you have good news from Renate. It can’t be easy to have to celebrate such a uniquely happy day among strangers who cannot help one to enjoy the occasion to the full and make it part of one’s ordinary life, and to whom the climax of any happy occasion is probably
Schnapps.
I wish very much that you could meet someone who has more in common with you (as I told you, the only one here who seemed promising in that direction was killed in a raid), but I think that we, who have become more exacting than most people with regard to friendship, have more difficulty in finding what we miss and are looking for. In this respect, too, it isn’t a simple matter to find a ‘substitute’.

- When I was in the middle of this letter, I was called downstairs, where the first thing with which Maria greeted me was the happy news: ‘Renate has a little boy, and his name is Dietrich!’ Everything went well; it took an hour and a half, and mother acted as midwife, with Christel’s help! What a surprise, and what a delight! I’m happier than I can tell you. And how happy you, of all people, will be. And everything went so quickly and smoothly! So now you have a son, and all your thoughts will turn towards the future, full of hope. What possibilities there may be in him!…Rüdiger’s disposition and sensitive conscience, father’s humanity - really a great many good forces have gathered together there, and it won’t be long before they gradually develop. And so now he is really to be called Dietrich; I don’t know what to say to that; I hope I can promise you to be a good godfather and ‘great-’uncle(!), and I should be insincere if I didn’t say that I’m immensely pleased and proud that you’ve named your first-born after me. The fact that his birthday comes one day before mine means, no doubt, that he will keep his independence
vis-a-vis
his namesake-uncle, and will always be a little ahead of him. I’m particularly pleased that the two days are so close to each other, and when he hears later on where his uncle was when he was told his name, perhaps that may leave some impression on him too. Thank you both very much for deciding to do this, and I think the others will be pleased about it too.

5 February

Yesterday, when so many people were showing such kindly concern for me, I completely forgot my own birthday, as my delight over little Dietrich’s birthday put it right out of my head. Even the heartening little nosegay of flowers that some of my fellow inmates here picked for me remained in my thoughts by your little boy’s bed. The day couldn’t possibly have brought me any greater joy. It wasn’t till I was going to sleep that I realized that you’ve pushed our family on by one generation - 3 February has created great-grandparents, grandparents, great-uncles and great-aunts, and young uncles and aunts! That’s a fine achievement of yours; you’ve promoted me to the third generation!…

Renate sent me for my birthday yesterday some more lovely home-made ‘S’les. Maria brought a wonderful parcel, and my parents gave me the ‘Herzliebschränkchen’
¹⁴⁶
that Goethe once gave to Minna Herzlieb. Klaus gave me Dilthey’s
German Poetry and Music;
I’ll tell you about it later. Are you asking mother and Christel to be godparents? I’m afraid I must stop, as I want to send the letter off. My head and my heart are so overflowing with good and happy thoughts that I simply can’t put them all on paper. But you know how I think about you and try to share your joy with you and keep in close touch with you…Now I hope I shall soon follow your example. Good-bye, keep well; God keep and bless you both, and the little boy. Faithfully, your Dietrich

I’m writing to Renate as well, straightaway. You can then exchange letters.

Klaus also sent me a copy of a Moravian hymn book dating from 1778; or has there perhaps been a mistake and does it come from you? It looks your sort of present; but Klaus is also very good at giving presents. I didn’t really expect anything other and better than good thoughts and wishes, and for those I thank you, even if it can only be a brief thought in the turmoil of service. I hope I shall hear from you soon…I’m writing to you as often as possible. Of course, there may be pauses, but I hope not. All is well with me.

To Renate Bethge

Tegel, 5 February 1944

Dear Renate,

How can I tell you how pleased I am for you and Eberhard?…I shall never forget the moment yesterday when Maria told me first of all that you had got a boy and that he is to be called Dietrich. After that I could really celebrate a birthday, not mine, but little Dietrich’s…I think that it’s particularly nice that you don’t have to be in a hospital somewhere, but can be in Sakrow. If only the planes will spare us over the next few days; I do believe they will. One sees once again how so much that worries us beforehand can afterwards, quite unexpectedly, have a happy and simple solution. Worries just don’t matter. Tell yourself that every day as you think of Eberhard. Things really are in a better hand than ours.

I’m very pleased that you’ve called your boy Dietrich. Not many people in my position will have a similar experience. In the midst of all our hardships we keep experiencing an overwhelming kindness and friendship. Hasn’t that always kept happening to Eberhard? The texts for 3 February, which you will also be reading, are fine.
¹⁴⁷
If one day your son
sees
more of righteousness and the power of God on earth than we do, one will be able to call him happy. And if the text enjoins us to bow for a while in
blind
trust under the powerful hand of God, we should do that in the hope that the coming generation will be able to feel God’s gracious hand as well as his power.

I must stop so that the letter can get off. God bless you, Eberhard and your child.

With love,

Your Dietrich

I’ve told Eberhard that you would also send him this letter.

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 12 February 1944

Dear Eberhard,

I’ve been in bed for a few days with slight influenza, but I’m up again; that’s a good thing, because in about a week’s time I shall need to have all my wits about me.
¹⁴⁸
Till then I shall go on reading and writing as much as I can; who knows when I shall have another chance? I had a great surprise early this morning. As I skimmed through the newspaper the name Dietrich caught my eye, and - I still didn’t make the connection - right next to the name Bethge. However, it wasn’t long before I took it in. Let people say what they like - there is something about the printed word; you will have felt the same thing; the objective factuality of it is once again underlined, and now the world can share in the happy event. My parents were here yesterday and told me once again about 3 February and how well everything went; even father said that the little boy looked particularly nice. What a good thing that no severe attacks took place in the first ten days; I hope that we shall be spared them for some time to come…

Are you having a taste of spring yet? Here the winter is just beginning. In my imagination I live a good deal in nature, in the glades near Friedrichsbrunn, or on the slopes from which one can look beyond Treseburg to the Brocken. I lie on my back in the grass, watch the clouds sailing in the breeze across the blue sky, and listen to the rustling of the woods. It’s remarkable how greatly these memories of childhood affect one’s whole outlook; it would seem to me impossible and unnatural for us to have lived either up in the mountains or by the sea. It is the hills of central Germany, the Harz, the Thuringian forest, the Weserberge, that to me represent nature, that belong to me and have fashioned me. Of course, there are also a conventional Harz and a hikers’ Wesergebirge, just as there are a fashionable and a Nietzschian Engadine, a romantic Rhineland, a Berliners’ Baltic, and the idealized poverty and melancholy of a fisherman’s cottage. So perhaps ‘my’ central hills are ‘bourgeois’ in the sense of what is natural, not too high, modest and self-sufficient(?), unphilo-sophical, satisfied with concrete realities, and above all ‘not-given
to-self-advertisement’. It would be very tempting to pursue this sociological treatment of nature some day. By the way, in reading Stifter I can see the difference between simpleness and simplicity. Stifter displays, not simpleness, but (as the ‘bourgeois’ does) simplicity. ‘Simpleness’ is, even in theology, more of an aesthetic idea (was Winckelmann right when he spoke of the ‘noble simpleness’ of classical art? That certainly does not apply to the Laocoon; I think ‘still greatness’ is very good), whereas ‘simplicity’ is an ethical one. One can acquire ‘simplicity’, but ‘simpleness’ is innate. Education and culture may bring ‘simplicity’ - indeed, it ought to be one of their essential aims – but simpleness is a gift. The two things seem to me to be related in much the same way as ‘purity’ and ‘moderation’. One can be ‘pure’ only in relation to one’s origin or goal, i.e. in relation to baptism or to forgiveness at the Lord’s Supper; like ‘simpleness’ it involves the idea of totality. If we have lost our purity – and we have all lost it - it can be given back to us in faith; but in ourselves, as living and developing persons, we can no longer be ‘pure’, but only ‘moderate’, and that is a possible and a necessary aim of education and culture.