Letters and Papers From Prison (57 page)

Your Maria

From his parents

[Charlottenburg] 28 February 1945
³⁶

Dear Dietrich,

We’ve heard nothing of you since your departure from Berlin, and I expect that you’ve heard nothing from us. Nothing has happened to us during the many recent raids apart from the breakage of a couple of panes of glass. So you needn’t worry. All the rest of the family are still in good health. Maria is at present taking her sister, who has fled from the East, to relations, so mother is doing my appointments as well as the house. It’s a lot for her on top of all the other things that a large family involves. We’re worried about your health. We would like to send your washing and the other things that we could otherwise send, but so far we haven’t found any way of doing it. I hope that Christel will bring some news from the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse today. If it’s possible, do send us some message soon. Old people like ourselves ought to have permission to write more frequently. Affectionately,

your Father

My dear Dietrich,

My thoughts are with you day and night. I’m worried how things may be going with you. I hope that you can do some work and some reading, and don’t get too depressed. God help you and us through this difficult time.

Your old Mother

We are staying in Berlin, come what may.

NOTES

1.
The day after the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life.

2.
20 July: ‘Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God’ (Ps.20.7); ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Rom.8.31). 21 July: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want’ (Ps.23.1); ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me’ (John 10.14).

3.
Jean Lasserre.

4.
This means that his mother’s sister will be giving up her home in Breslau because of the approach of the eastern front.

5.
A student from Bonhoeffer’s time as a lecturer, and a member of the Finkenwalde seminary.

6.
Lost.

7.
‘Night Voices in Tegel’, ‘Sorrow and Joy’, ‘Stations on the Road to Freedom’.

8.
‘Oh, that I might hear the word soon resounding on the earth, that freedom might be everywhere that Christians dwell. Oh, that God would say to us the end of war, the abandonment of weapons, the end of all unhappiness. Oh, that this evil time might soon give way to good days, that we might not completely waste away in great sorrow. But God’s help is near and his grace is there for all who fear him’ (Paul Gerhardt).

9.
Meant ironically.

10.
To obtain an army chaplaincy for Eberhard Bethge.

11.
The meaning is that ten days after the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July there had still been no change in the position of Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Thus hopes had been raised that early imprisonment might prove to be their salvation, as no connection with the attempt of 20 July could be proved.

12.
A sketch by Eberhard Bethge of his dead father, for Dietrich Bethge.

13.
Italian officers, who were held prisoner in Tegel after the overthrow of Badoglio; see DB, pp.735ff., 765f. and plate 35.

14.
‘Therefore Saul took his own sword, and fell upon it.’ Bonhoeffer had heard the rumour of the suicide of General Oster, but it had not yet been confirmed.

15.
An indication of what to say if Bethge were interrogated and the subject of the August 1940 conversation about work for the
Abwehr
came up; see DB, p.601.

16.
Num. 11.23: ‘Is the Lord’s hand shortened?’; II Cor. 1.20: ‘For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God.’

17.
Ecumenical conference in September 1933, see DB, pp241ff.

18.
The rumour of General Oster’s suicide.

19.
End of October.

20.
If the extracts fell into the hands of the Gestapo, at interrogations it was to be claimed by both sides that they came from the time of the journeys of inspection or the stay at Ettal.

21.
On the previous day, 22 August, Gestapo commissar Sonderegger had transferred Hans von Dohnanyi from the isolation hospital at Potsdam to Sachsenhausen concentration camp; thus regular contact with his wife had been broken off.

22.
Again a direction for possible new interrogations in which Bethge might be involved because he too had once been granted exemption by the
Abwehr.
‘Mission work’ refers to connections with India which Bethge had through his appointment with the Gossner mission.

23.
‘It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.’

24.
‘Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.’

25.
Agreement for possible remarks about connections with the
Abwehr
in August 1940.

26.
‘Stations on the Road to Freedom’.

27.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was urging a continuation of the illegal correspondence, but on the ground of new discoveries by the Reich Security Head Office, Christine von Dohnanyi intimated that the situation should not be further endangered by the continuation of the correspondence.

28.
Largely news of former members of Finkenwalde and friends of the Confessing Church.

29.
News of the arrest of Hanns Lilje, Eugen Gerstenmaier and – probably - Wilhelm Bachmann.

30.
‘Do not try to treat him as an equal, nor trust his abundance of words; for he will test you through much talk, and while he smiles he will be examining you.’

31.
‘The Death of Moses’; a German version is printed in
Gesammelte Schriften
IV, pp. 613-20.

32.
On 22 September the discovery of documents by the Gestapo (see DB, pp.730f.) made the situation worse for the family. At the beginning of October Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave up a plan of escape; this poem was written soon afterwards, about the 5th. On 8 October he was transferred to the Gestapo bunker in Prinze-Albrecht-Strasse and subjected to a new series of interrogations by the Reich Security Head Office. Klaus Bonhoeffer, Rüdiger Schleicher and Eberhard Bethge were imprisoned in the Reich Security Head Office prison in Lehrter Strasse 3 the same month.

33.
During the series of interrogations by the Reich Security Head Office, which were partly open ones, this ‘People’s Sacrifice’, a bit of Goebbels’ propaganda, made this last letter possible; see DB, p. 803.

34.
A new attempt to reach his son by letter after it proved impossible to deliver the previous letter of 2 February, hence the repetitions; this letter, too, could not be delivered. On 7 February, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was transferred to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.

35.
A reference to the Soviet troops which had overrun Pätzig some weeks before.

36.
A copy of the letter, which presumably never reached its destination.

EPILOGUE

Memories of a Survivor

Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer to his children, June 1945

… I want to tell you all about it. Why? Because my thoughts are there now, there in the ruins from which no news comes to us, where I visited uncle Klaus, condemned to death, in prison three months ago.

The Berlin prisons! What did I know of them a few years ago, and with what different eyes ‘I’ve looked upon them since! The Charlottenburg Interrogation Prison in which aunt Christel was held for some time; the Tegel Interrogation Prison in which uncle Dietrich sat for eighteen months; the Moabit Military Prison with uncle Hans; the SS Prison in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse where uncle Dietrich was held for six months in a bunker behind bars, and the prison in the Lehrter Strasse where uncle Klaus was tortured and uncle Rüdiger went through agony, where they lived for two months after being sentenced to death.

I waited in front of the harsh iron doors of all these prisons while I was in Berlin in the last years and had ‘official business’ there. I’ve accompanied aunt Ursel and aunt Christel, aunt Emmi and Maria there. They often went daily to bring things or take them away. They often went in vain; they often had to suffer the taunts of supercilious commissars; but sometimes they also found a friendly porter who showed some humanity and passed on a greeting, accepted something outside the prescribed time or gave the prisoners something to eat against the rules.

Yes, taking food! In the last years it wasn’t very easy, and aunt Ursel in particular could hardly do enough. She starved herself until she was a skeleton. There were tragedies, as when uncle Rüdiger sent the food back and said that he had enough. Who
believed him? Aunt Ursel sent it in again and it came out again. Uncle Klaus was different. He always devoured everything that he was sent. Uncle Dietrich didn’t have things too bad as long as he was in Tegel. He got on well with the prison staff there and the commandant of the prison was human. Uncle Hans didn’t have things too bad at first, either. The commandant of his prison was almost a friend to him. But then he became ill, and went into the Charité Surgical Clinic under Sauerbruch, where I saw him for the last time. When he had been returned to prison he caught scarlet fever and diphtheria, and spent almost six months in bed, with severe post-diphtheria paralysis, lastly in the concentration camp at Oranienburg and in the State Hospital in Berlin. And now! The last time I was in Berlin was at the end of March; I had to go back shortly before grandfather’s seventy-seventh birthday. Uncle Klaus and uncle Rüdiger were still alive; uncle Hans gave news through the doctor which was not completely hopeless; there was no trace of uncle Dietrich, who had been taken away by the SS at the beginning of February. I think it was on 8 April, shortly before my departure to you at Friedrichsbrunn, that I telephoned to the grandparents for the last time from Leipzig. At that time everything was still unchanged. That is more than two months ago. What may have happened since the capture of Berlin by the Russians? A man came from there who said that they had executed 4000 political prisoners beforehand. What may have happened during the attack and afterwards? Is everyone still alive? Have the grandparents been able to survive these bitter days? Both were already at the end of their tether. Grandmother often had attacks of weakness and loss of memory in the last years as a consequence of over-exertion, excitement and under-nourishment. They had no able-bodied help in the house. Uncle Dietrich spoke to someone at length on 5 April, in the neighbourhood of Passau. [On this day the prison transport containing Bonhoeffer was making an intermediary stop at Regensburg prison.] From there he is said to have gone to the concentration camp at Flossenbiirg. Why isn’t he here yet?…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in the concentration camp at Flossenbiirg on
ρ
April. With the capitulation, all communications in Germany were broken off for months. Maria von Wedemeyer received the news in June, in West Germany. His parents in Berlin only heard it at the end of July.

Hans von Dohnanyi was killed on 9 April in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. His wife only heard more from trials of members of the Reich Security Head Office.

Klaus Bonhoeffer and R
ü
diger Schleicher were taken out of the prison at Lehrter Strasse 3 with others, on 23 April, and shot. At the end of May, the investigations of Eberhard Bethge, who was released from the same prison, confirmed this to the family. Only a farewell letter from Klaus Bonhoeffer has been preserved
(Auf dem Wege zur Freiheit,
Poems and letters from prison, 1946).

His parents died in the Marienburger Allee, his father in December 1948 and his mother in February 1951.

APPENDIX

The Other Letters from Prison

by Maria von Wedetneyer-Weller

It would be presumptuous to think that I could add anything to the picture of the theologian and man Dietrich Bonhoeffer that has been drawn so aptly and diligently by Eberhard Bethge in his recently published biography,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
¹
I write only because of my knowledge that our engagement was a source of strength to Dietrich. He was able to convert painful longing into gratitude for the fact that there was something to anticipate; he was able to convert self-reproach for the suffering he may have caused others into a joy that those relationships existed at all. Yes, he even had the ability to convert his annoyance at the limitations of our relationship, and the misunderstandings that resulted from them, into a hopeful and eager expectation and challenge. He was able to transform the fumblings and erratic emotions of a young girl into the assured certainty that this was an addition and a source of strength to his own life. These lines can be nothing more than the recollections of a girl, then nineteen years old, who very undeservedly had gained his love.

Early life together

My first encounter with Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in the home of my grandmother, Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. I was twelve years old and had asked to be included in the confirmation classes which Bonhoeffer conducted for my older brother and two cousins. The interview was held in the presence of my grandmother. I flunked. Whatever the reason may have been, I remember that it caused Dietrich considerable amusement and my grandmother none at all. Sunday church services were attended regularly by my grandmother at Finkenwalde, Dietrich’s seminary. This involved lengthy commuting and was not always appreciated by her six grandchildren. We were, however, participants in many conversations with Dietrich that left us with little detailed information, but with an admiration and healthy respect for him. I remember one occasion when he told us about an exceptionally good sermon of one of his students, but voiced the criticism that the sermon was not recited from memory. He claimed that he had learned his first ten sermons by heart. At this point I quietly left the room for fear he might be tempted to prove his statement!