Letters and Papers From Prison (52 page)

38.
The NCO who had supervised the visit.

39.
The illegal correspondence between Bonhoeffer and Bethge.

40.
Wondering whether to marry immediately if he was released.

41.
Friedrich Justus Perels.

42.
News of his twin sister and her husband from Oxford, obtained via Zürich through Erwin Sutz.

43.
Rignano on the Via Flaminia.

44.
Parts of the letter have been lost.

45.
As a result of weather conditions, this letter was damaged in its hiding place and has become largely illegible.

46.
A telephone call from the prison made possible a very extended, illegal visit at short notice.

47.
The poem ‘The Past’.

48.
See p. 289.

49.
The day of the allied landing in Normandy.

50.
Rignano.

51.
Klaus Bonhoeffer avoided, especially now, so soon before the attempted overthrow, anything in spoken words or writing that might draw attention to himself; so he did not keep in touch with his brother in Tegel.

52.
Sabine and Gerhard Leibholz in Oxford.

53.
Military office for
Abwehr
units in Italy.

54.
News of the firing of the first V-I rockets against Southern England.

55.
These are key-words and quotations which Bonhoeffer jotted down while reading W. F. Otto’s book
The Gods of Greece.

56.
An ironic reference to the first V-I rocket attacks on England and the hopes of a decisive turning point in the war which official propaganda expected as a result.

57.
‘Night Voices in Tegel’, see pp. 349fl.

58.
German text printed in
Gesammelte Schriften
IV, pp. 597-612.

59.
‘The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night.’

60.
Former students from the time when Bonhoeffer was a lecturer in Berlin, 1931-33, and then candidates at Finkenwalde.

61.
General Paul von Hase, City Commandant of Berlin, executed on 8 August 1944.

62.
At the vicarage in Dahlem on the day when Martin Niemöller was arrested.

63.
See W. Dilthey,
Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation
in his
Gesammelte Schriften
II,
⁷
1964.

64.
An allusion to the imminent
Putsch.

65.
Berlin papers from the Weimar period.

66.
Albrecht Schönherr.

67.
‘Who am I?’ and ‘Christians and Pagans’.

68.
‘Night Voices in Tegel’.

69.
Recollection of the prohibition against preaching during the visit to Eastern Prussia in 1940 (see DB, pp. 602ff.), is meant to be a reference to Hitler’s headquarters, Wolfsschanze, in East Prussia and the coming attempt.

70.
A further accommodation address for correspondence.

71.
This translation, by Keith R. Crim, was originally printed in: Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
I Loved this People,
SPCK and John Knox Press 1964, pp. 51-9. © M. E. Bratcher 1965. It has been reprinted here, with alterations to conform to the present text of
Letters and Papers from Prison,
by permission.

72.
Canossa.

73.
W. Staemmler, at that time president of the Old Prussian Council of Brethren, was put on trial for political statements.

74.
Near Canossa.

75.
Codeword for listening to foreign broadcasts, e.g. the BBC.

76.
In June 1944 Hans von Dohnanyi got diphtheria with peripheral paralysis.

77.
Meaning good progress in preparing the
Putsch.

78.
A reference to the possible penetration of the Soviet front into Further Pomerania (Klein-Krössin).

79.
‘If only I knew the way back, the long way into the land of childhood.’

80.
‘Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’

81.
‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’

82.
‘This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” ‘

83.
See note 70.

IV

After the Failure

July 1944 to February 1945

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 21 july [1944]
¹

Dear Eberhard,

All I want to do today is to send you a short greeting. I expect you are often with us here in your thoughts and are always glad of any sign of life, even if the theological discussion stops for a moment. These theological thoughts are, in fact, always occupying my mind; but there are times when I am just content to live the life of faith without worrying about its problems. At those times I simply take pleasure in the days’ readings
²
- in particular those of yesterday and today; and I’m always glad to go back to Paul Gerhardt’s beautiful hymns.

During the last year or so I’ve come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a
homo religiosus,
but simply a man, as Jesus was a man - in contrast, shall we say, to John the Baptist. I don’t mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection. I think Luther lived a this-worldly life in this sense.

I remember a conversation that I had in America thirteen years ago with a young French pastor.
³
We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like it. I suppose I wrote
The Cost of Discipleship
as the end of that path. Today I can see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by what I wrote.

I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man
or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-world-liness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world - watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is
metanoia;
and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian (cf. Jer. 45!). How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?

I think you see what I mean, even though I put it so briefly. I’m glad to have been able to learn this, and I know I’ve been able to do so only along the road that I’ve travelled. So I’m grateful for the past and present, and content with them.

You may be surprised at such a personal letter; but if for once I want to say this kind of thing, to whom should I say it? Perhaps the time will come one day when I can talk to Maria like this; I very much hope so. But I can’t expect it of her yet.

May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.

I was delighted to hear from you, and am glad you’re not finding it too hot. There must be a good many letters from me on the way. Didn’t we go more or less along that way in 1936?

Good-bye. Keep well, and don’t lose hope that we shall all meet again soon. I always think of you in faithfulness and gratitude.

Your Dietrich

STATIONS ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

Discipline

If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things
to govern your soul and your senses, for fear that your passions
and longing may lead you away from the path you should follow.
Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection,
obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them;
only through discipline may a man learn to be free.

Action

Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you,
valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting -
freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action,
trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow;
freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.

Suffering

A change has come indeed. Your hands, so strong and active,
are bound; in helplessness now you see your action
is ended; you sigh in relief, your cause committing
to stronger hands; so now you may rest contented.
Only for one blissful moment could you draw near to touch freedom;
then, that it might be perfected in glory, you gave it to God.

Death

Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal;
death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish
the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded,
so that at last we may see that which here remains hidden.
Freedom, how long we have sought thee in discipline, action, and suffering;
dying, we now may behold thee revealed in the Lord.

[Accompanying note]

Dear Eberhard,

I wrote these lines in a few hours this evening. They are quite unpolished, but they may perhaps please you and be something of a birthday present for you. Your Dietrich

I can see this morning that I shall again have to revise them completely. Still, I’m sending them to you as they are, in the rough. I’m certainly no poet!

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 25 July 1944

Dear Eberhard,

I like to write to you as often as I can now, because I think you’re always glad to hear from me. There’s nothing special to report about myself nor about the family, as far as I know … I expect that aunt Elisabeth will soon be visiting my parents.
⁴

During the last few nights it’s been our turn again round here. When the bombs come shrieking down, I always think how trivial it all is compared with what you’re going through out there. It often makes me downright angry to see how some people behave in such situations, and how little they think of what is happening to other people. The danger here never lasts more than a few minutes. I wonder how things are with Jochen Kanitz
⁵
now? He was on the central front.

I’ve now finished
Memoirs from the House of the Dead.
It contains a great deal that is wise and good. I’m still thinking about the assertion, which in his case is certainly not a mere conventional dictum, that man cannot live without hope, and that men who have really lost all hope often become wild and wicked. It may be an open question whether in this case hope = illusion. The importance of illusion to one’s life should certainly not be underestimated; but for a Christian there must be hope based on a firm foundation. And if even illusion has so much power in people’s
lives that it can keep life moving, how great a power there is in a hope that is based on certainty, and how invincible a life with such a hope is. ‘Christ our hope’ - this Pauline formula is the strength of our lives.

They’ve just come to take me off to my exercise, but I will just finish this letter, to make sure that it goes today. I think of you every day with true gratitude. God bless you and Renate and your boy and all of us. Your Dietrich