Letters and papers from prison 9781506402758, 9780800697037

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DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS, VOLUME 8

Letters and Papers from Prison

This series is a translation of DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WERKE Edited by Eberhard Bethgey, Ernst Feil, Christian Gremmels, Wolfgang Huber, Hans Pfeifer, Albrecht Schonherry, Heinz Eduard ‘Todtt, Ilse Todt

This volume has been made possible through the generous support of the Lilly Endowment, Inc.; ‘Thrivent Financial Foundation for Lutherans; the Bowen IT. and Janice Arthur McCoy Charitable Foundation; the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia; the Gocthe-Institut; the gilts of numerous members and friends of the International Bonhoeffer Society; and is dedicated by a gift from Nancy J. Farrell to the ministry of future pastors and scholars.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS

General Editors Victoria J. Barnett Barbara Wojhoski

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS, VOLUME 8

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Letters and Papers from Prison Translated from the German Edition idited by CHRISTIAN GREMMELS, EBERHARD BETHGE, AND RENATE BETHGE, WITH ILSE TODT

English Edition idited by JOLULN W. DE GRUCILY

Translated by ISABEL Brest, Lisa E. DALILLL, REINHARD KRAUSS, AND NANCY LUKENS

“After Ten Years” Translated by BARBARAT AND MARTIN RUMSCHEIDT

Supplementary Material Translated by DOUGLAS W. STOTT

FORTRESS PRESS MINNEAPOLIS

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS, Volume 8 Originally published in German as Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, edited by Eberhard Bethge etal., by Chr. Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus in 1998; Band 8, Widerstand und Ergebung, edited by Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Tédt. First English-language edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume § published by Fortress Press in 2010.

Widersland und Evgebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft first published in German by Chris-

tian Kaiser Verlag in L951, expanded edition 1970. Original English-language edition published as Prisoner for God: Lellers and Papers from Prison, edited by Eberhard Bethge; translated by Reginald H. Fuller by SCM Press, London, 1953, and the Macmillan Company, New York, 1954; revised and expanded editions as Leilers and Papers from Prison, copyright ©1967, 1971. Touchstone edition from Simon and Schuster, 1997. Copyright: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8: Letters and Papers from Prison copyright © 2009 Augsburg

Fortress. New Dietrich Bohoeffer Works English-language translation of material first published as Letters and Papers from Prison copyright © 1953, 1967, 1971 SCM Press, London. All rights reserved.

All other material original to Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works edition of this work: copyright © 2010 Augsburg Fortress, All rights reserved.

Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress. org/copyrights/ or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. The translation of this work was supported by a grant

from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded O by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. | GOETHE-INSTITUT

Jacket design; Cheryl Watson Cover photo: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1939, outside the house in Sigurdhof. © Chr. Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus, Gittersloh, Germany. Book design: HK Scriptorium, Inc. Typesetting: Ann Delgehausen, Trio Bookworks Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906-1945. [Widerstand und Ergebung. English] Letters and papers from prison / edited by Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Todt; English edition edited by John W. de Gruchy; translated by Isabel Best... let al.]. — Ist English edition. p.cm, — (Dietrich Bonhoeffer works) Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-0-8006-9703-7 (alk. paper) 1. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906-1945—Correspondence. 2. Prisoners of war— Germany—Correspondence. 3. Theologians—Germany—Correspondence. I, Gremmels, Christian, 1941-1. Bethge, Eberhard, 1909-2000 II. Bethge, Renate. IV. Todt, Ilse, 1930-—V. De Gruchy, John W. VI. Title. BX4827.B57A4 2010

230'.044092—dc22 2009052808

ISBN 978- 0-8006-9703-7

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements for American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.481984,

14 iS li 10 | 2 a 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

CONTENTS

General Editor’s Foreword to Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works XV

Abbreviations XX111 John W. de Gruchy l

Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition

Letters and Papers from Prison Prologue

An Account at the Turn of the Year 1942-1943: After Ten Years a

Part 1 The Interrogation Period: April—July 1943

April 11, 1943 55

1. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

2. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, April 14, 1943 56 3. From the Senior Reich War Military Prosecutor

to Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, April 20, 1943 58 4. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, April 23, 1943 58 5. From Hans von Dohnanyi, Berlin-Moabit, April 23, 1943 59

6. ‘Lo Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, April 25, 1943 61

April 28, 1943 64

7. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

ADLM 20; Lao 65

8. From Rudiger Schleicher, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

9. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, May 4, 1943 65

10. ‘To Hans von Dohnanyi, Tegel, May 5, 1943 69 V

Vi Contents 11. Notes I, Tegel, May 1943 70 12. Notes II, Tegel, May 1943 73 13. From Karl Bonhoeffer to the Senior Reich Military Court

Prosecutor, Berlin-Charlottenburg, May 9, 1943 15

May 9, 1943 75

14. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 15. From the Senior Reich Military Court Prosecutor

to Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin, May 10, 1943 77

16. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, May 15, 1943 rif

17. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, May 15, 1943 78

18. Wedding Sermon from the Prison Cell, May 1943 82 19, From Susanne Dre®, Berlin-Dahlem, May 15, 1943 88

May 16, 1943 88 May 25, 1943 9] May 25, 1943 92

20. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 21. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

22. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

23. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, May 30, 1943 93

June 2,.1943 94

24. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

25. ‘To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, June 4, 1943 96

June 8, 1943 100

26, From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

June 10, 1943 101 June 15, 1943 107

27. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

28. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, June 12, 1943 103

29. ‘lo Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, June 14, 1943 104 30. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

31. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, June 24, 1943 109

June 27, 1943 12 July 11, 1943 115 July 14, 1943 117

32. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

33. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, July 3, 1943 113 34, From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

35. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, July 11, 1943 116 36. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

37. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, July 24, 1943 118

Contents vu

July 28, 1943 12)

38. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

39. ‘To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, ‘Tegel, July 30, 1943 122

Part 2 Awaiting the Trial: August 1943—April 1944 40. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 3, 1943 127 41. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 7, 1943 130 42. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, August 8, 1943 132 43. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

August 11, 1943 133

44, To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 17, 1943 134 45. From Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, Sakrow, August 22, 1943 137

46. ‘To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 24, 1943 139

August 30, 1943 140 August 30, 1943 142 August 31, 1943 143

47. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Friedrichsbrunn, 48. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 49, From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

50. Lo Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, ‘Tegel, August 31, 1943 144

September 3, 1943 146 September 3, 1943 147 September 4, 1943 148 September 5, 1943 149 September 7, 1943 15] 56. From Renate Bethge, Sakrow, September 8, 1943 152 September 13, 1943 154 September 16, 1943 156 September 20, 1943 157 60. Last Will and Testament, Tegel, September 20, 1943 159 51. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

52. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, 53. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow,

54. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, ‘Tegel,

55. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow,

57. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel:

58. From the Senior Reich Military Prosecutor, Torgau,

59. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

61. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, ‘Tegel, September 25, 1943 160

Vill Contents 62. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow,

September 28, 1943 162

October 3, 1943 163

63. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

64. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 4, 1943 165 65. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 13, 1943 166 66. From Karl Bonhoeffer to the President of the Reich War Court,

Berlin-Charlottenburg, October 17, 1943 168 67. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 22, 1943 169

October 23, 1943 170

68. From Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

69. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 31, 1943 172

November 5, 1943 174

70. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

71. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, November 9, 1943 175 72. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, November 17, 1943 177 73. Yo Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, November 18 and 20-23, 1943 178

November 21, 1943 19] 75. Last Will and ‘Testament, ‘Tegel, November 23, 1943 193 74, From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig,

November 1943 194 November 1943 197

76. Prayers for Prisoners: Morning Prayer, Tegel, 77. Prayers for Prisoners: Evening Prayer, Tegel,

78, Prayers for Prisoners: Prayer in Particular Need,

Tegel, November 1943 198 79. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, November 26-30, 1943 199

November 28, 1943 205 November 30, 1943 208 83. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Sakrow, December 5, 1943 211

80. Report on Experiences during Alarms, ‘Tegel,

81. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, November 28, 1943 206 82. From Eberhard Bethge, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

84. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, December 5, 1943 212 85. From Susanne Dreb, Friedrichsbrunn, December 14, 1943 216 86. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, December 15 and 16, 1943 218 87. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, December 17, 1943 224 88. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel,

December 18, 19, and 22, 1943 226

89. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel,

December 24-26, 1943 237

Contents 1X 90. Christmas Letter, Tegel, December 1943 242 91. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Sakrow,

December 25, 1943 243 December 25, 1943 245 December 28, 1943 246 94, From Eberhard Bethge, Lissa, January 2, 1944 247 92. ‘To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel,

93. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow,

January 8, 1944 249 January 9, 1944 250

95. From Eberhard Bethge, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 96. From Eberhard Bethge, en route to Munich,

97. From Renate Bethge, Sakrow, January 10, 1944 ZF 98. ‘To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, ‘Tegel, January 14, 1944 258

99. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, January 15, 1944 260 100. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Sakrow, January 16, 1944 261

101. ‘lo Eberhard Bethge, ‘Tegel, January 18, 1944 262 102. ‘To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, January 23, 1944 264

January 25, 1944 212 January 27, 1944 ri fa

103, From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

104. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

105. From Renate Bethge, Sakrow, January 28, 1944 274 106. ‘lo Eberhard Bethge, ‘Tegel, January 29 and 30, 1944 rT a

107. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, February 1, 1944 279 108. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 1 and 2, 1944 283

February 4, 1944 287

109. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig,

110. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 4 and 5, 1944 288

111. To Renate Bethge, Tegel, February 5, 1944 292 112. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 12-14, 1944 Zo 113. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano,

February 15 and 17, 1944 ZT

114. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, February 20, 1944 301 115. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 21, 23, and 25, 1944 302

116. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, February 22, 1944 307

117. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 1, 1944 31] 118. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, March 2, 1944 313 119. ‘To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, March 2, 1944 315 120. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

March 3 and 4, 1944 317

x Contents 121. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 9 and 10, 1944 318

122. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 19, 1944 324 123. To Karl Bonhoeffer, Tegel, March 23, 1944 327 124. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 24, 25, and 27, 1944 328

March 26, 1944 333

125. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

126. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Patzig, March 27, 1944 335 127. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, end of March, 1944 336

128. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 2, 1944 DoT

April 7, 1944 340

129. From Rudiger Schleicher, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

130. To Ruth von Wedemeyer, Tegel, April 10, 1944 34]

131. Report on Prison Life after One Year in ‘Tegel, April 1944 343

Part 3 Holding Out for the Coup Attempt: April—July 1944 132. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 11, 1944 O01 133. From Ursula Schleicher, Klein-Krossin, April 18, 1944 354

134. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, April 21, 1944 200

135. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 22, 1944 357 136. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, April 26, 1944 359

137. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 30, 1944 361 138. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, May 5 and 8, 1944 367

139. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 5, 1944 a | 140. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 6 and 7, 1944 374 141. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 9, 1944 377

142. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 16, 1944 379 143. ‘To Ursula Schleicher, ‘Tegel, May 1944 381 144, To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 18, 1944 382 145. Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of Dietrich Wilhelm

Rudiger Bethge, Tegel, end of May 1944 383

146. To Eberhard and Renate Bethge, ‘legel, May 19, 1944 390

147. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 20, 1944 393 148. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 21 and 22, 1944 395 149. ‘To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, ‘Tegel, May 24, 1944 400

150. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 26, 1944 402 151. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 27, 1944 403 152. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 29 and 30, 1944 A() 4.

153. ‘To Hans-Walter Schleicher, ‘Tegel, June 2, 1944 408

154. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 2, 1944 409 155. From Eberhard Bethge, Sakrow, June 3, 1944 41]

Contents X1 156. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 5, 1944 415 157. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 5, 1944 416

158. “The Past,” Tegel, June 1944 418

159. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 6, 1944 422 160. From Eberhard Bethge, Sakrow, June 6 and 7, 1944 422

161. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 8 and 9, 1944 424

June 8-10, 1944 432

162. From Eberhard Bethge, en route and in Munich,

163. From Eberhard Bethge, Munich, June 16, 1944 4355

164. Notes I, Tegel, end of June 1944 436 165. Notes II, Tegel, end of June 1944 438

166. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 21, 1944 439 167. “Fortune and Calamity,” Tegel, June 1944 44]

168. From Eberhard Bethge, Montevettolini, June 26, 1944 443

169. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 27, 1944 446 170. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 30 and July 1, 1944 448

171. Notes, Tegel, July 1944 452

172. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 8 and 9, 1944 454

173. “Who Am I?” Tegel, summer 1944 459

174. “Christians and [leathens,” ‘legel, summer 1944 460

175. “Night Voices,” ‘Tegel, summer 1944 462 176. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza, July 8, 1944 470

177. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 16 and 18, 1944 473

Part 4 After the Failure: July 1944—February 1945

178. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 21, 1944 485 179. ‘lo Eberhard Bethge, ‘Tegel, July 25, 1944 487 180. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 27, 1944 489

181. Notes I, Tegel, July-August 1944 490 182. Notes II, Tegel, July-August 1944 49]

183. ‘Lo Eberhard Bethge, ‘Tegel, July 28, 1944 491 184. Miscellaneous Notes, Tegel, summer 1944 494 185. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge,

Sakrow, July 30, 1944 496 186. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 3, 1944 498

187. Outline for a Book, Tegel, August 1944 499

188. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 10, 1944 504 189. ‘To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 11, 1944 506 190. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 14, 1944 509 191. “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” Tegel, August 1944 512

Xl Contents 192. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 21, 1944 514 193. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 23, 1944 516 194. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza, August 24, 1944 aig 195. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza,

August 26 and 29, 1944 DZ

196. “The Friend,” Tegel, August 27 and 28, 1944 526 197. “The Death of Moses,” Tegel, September 1944 531 198. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza,

September 21 and 30, 1944 54]

199. “Jonah,” Tegel, October 1944 547

200. “By Powers of Good,” Berlin, December 1944 548 201. To Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin, December 28, 1944 55] 202. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin, January 17, 1945 552

February 2, 1945 554 February 7, 1945 555

203. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 204. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg,

205. Maria von Wedemeyer to Ruth von Wedemeyer,

Flossenburg, February 19, 1945 556

206. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, February 28, 1945 Dot Epilogue The Survivor Looks Back: Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer

to Llis Children, Leipzig, June 1945 561 Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition 565 Christian Gremmels Appendices

1. Chronology 1942-1945 597 2. Bonhoeffer Family Tree 609 3. Texts Published in DBWE 8, and in Letters and Papers

from Prison and Gesammelte Schriften 61]

1943-1945 614

4. Unpublished Material from Bonhoeffer’s Literary Estate,

Contents Xl Bibliography

1. Archival Sources and Private Collections 615 2. Literature Mentioned by Bonhoeffer

and THis Correspondents 616

3. Literature and Printed Music Consulted by the Editors 625

Index of Scriptural References 663

Index of Names 669

Index of Subjects 719 Editors and Translators 747

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GENERAL EDITOR'S FOREWORD TO DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS

The German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become one of the most influential Christian thinkers of all ume. Barely twenty-seven years of age when the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, Bonhoclfer emerged immediately as a radical Protestant voice against the ideological cooptation of his church. He was one of the earliest critics of the Nazi regime and an outspoken opponent of the pro-Nazi “German Christians.” From 1933 to 1935, he served as pastor of two German-speaking congregations in England, leading them to join the Confessing Church—the faction within the German Protestant Church that opposed the nazification of the Christian faith. He returned to Germany to become director of a small Confessing Church seminary and, after the Gestapo closed it, continued to work illegally to educate Confessing clergy. Throughout the 1930s he attended ecumenical meetings, effectively becoming the voice of the Confessing Church throughout the European and American ecumenical world. In 1939, his ecumenical friends urged him to accept a position in New York. Rejecting the security of a life in exile, Bonhoeffer chose instead to join the

ranks of the German conspiracy to overthrow the regime, like his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rudiger Schleicher. He was arrested and imprisoned in April 1943 and executed in the Flossenburg concentration camp in April 1945.

In a eulogy published shortly after Bonhoeffer’s death, his former professor and friend Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that Bonhoeffer’s story “is worth recording. It belongs to the modern acts of the apostles. .. . Not only his martyr’s death, but also his actions and precepts contain within them the hope ofa revitalised Protestant faith in Germany. It will be a faith XV

XVI General Editor's Foreword religiously more profound than that of many of its critics; but it will have learned to overcome the one fateful error of German Protestantism, the complete dichotomy between faith and political life.”! In the ensuing decades, Niebuhr’s prescient insight that Bonhoeffer’s life and work offered lasting insights for modern Christian experience and

witness has been more than fulfilled. Bonhoeffer wrote hundreds of letters, sermons, and biblical reflections in addition to his published theological works. After 1945, Bonhoeffer’s former student and close friend Eberhard Bethge worked with publishers to reissue and translate the books that Bonhoeffer had published in his lifetime. In translation these works— Discipleship, Ethics, and Letters and Papers from Prison—became classics, find-

ing a wide readership among Christians throughout the world. Yet there was a growing sense that these works should not stand alone, a realization of the significance of the biographical and historical context of his thought. Bonhoeffer’s papers also included lecture notes that had been made by his students, documents from the German Church Struggle and ecumenical meetings, circular letters that were sent to his seminarians, sermons, extensive correspondence with theologians and religious leaders in Europe and the United States, and prison writings. Bethge published several early compilations of some of these documents (Gesammelte Schriften

and Miindige Welt) and incorporated additional material into his magisterial biography of Bonhoeffer, which first appeared in English in 1970 and then, in a revised and unabridged edition, in 2000. Bethge and leading Bonhoeffer scholars in Germany decided to publish new, annotated editions of Bonhoeffer’s complete theological works, together with most of the documents from the literary estate, including historical documents and correspondence to Bonhoeffer. The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke series was published by Chr. Kaiser Verlag, now part of Gutersloher Verlagshaus. The first German volume, a new edition of Bonhoeffer’s dissertation Sanctorum Communio, appeared in 1986; the final volume, Bonhoeffer’s complete prison writings, appeared in April 1998. Volume 17, an

index for the entire series, appeared in 1999; this volume also includes documents discovered after their respective volumes had been published. Whenever possible these documents have been included in the appropriate volumes of the English edition; documents that continue to be discovered are published in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Jahrbuch, a series published by Gutersloher Verlagshaus.

(1945): 6-7. |

[1.] Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Death of a Martyr,” Christianity and Crisis 5, no. I1

General Editor’s Foreword XV Discussion about an English translation of the entire series began as soon as the first German volumes appeared. In 1990 the International Bonhoeffer Society, English Language Section, in agreement with the German Bonhoeffer Society and Fortress Press, undertook the English translation of the German Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke. The project began with an initial grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with Robin Lovin serving as project director, assisted by Mark Brocker. An editorial board was formed for the Dretrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, staffed by Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. as general editor and Clifford J. Green of Hartford Seminary as executive director. Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., at that time director of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Center at the Lutheran Theological Seminary

in Philadelphia, served as general editor from 1993 to 2004, overseeing publication of the first seven volumes as well as volume 9. Victoria J. Barnett, director of church relations at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, joined the project as associate general editor in 2002 and became general editor in 2004, joined by Barbara Wojhoski, a professional editor who prepared the manuscripts of the final volumes for publication. The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition (DBWE), is the definitive English translation of Bonhoeffer’s theological and other writings. It includes a great deal of material that appears for the first time in English, as well as documents discovered only after the publication of the original German volumes. The DBWE is a significant contribution to twentieth-century theological literature, church history, and the history of the Nazi era. Particularly in their portrayal of the daily implications of the Protestant Church Struggle in Nazi Germany and the response of Christians outside Germany, these volumes offer a detailed and unique glimpse of Bonhoeffer’s historical context and its great challenges for the churches and for all people of conscience.

The translators of the DBWE volumes have attempted throughout to render an accurate and readable translation of Bonhoeffer’s writings for contemporary audiences, while remaining true to Bonhoeffer’s thought and style. Particular attention has been paid to the translation of important theological, historical, and philosophical terms. Bonhoeffer’s language and

style often reflect the period in which he lived, particularly with regard to gendered language, and this is evidenced in the historical and church documents. Nonetheless, in the translations of the early volumes of his theological writings (DBWE volumes |-7), the decision was made to use genderinclusive language, insofar as this was deemed possible without distorting Bonhoeffer’s meaning or unjustifiably dissociating him from his own time.

Each volume includes an introduction written by the DBWE volume editor(s), footnotes provided by Bonhoeffer, editorial notes added by the

XV11 General Editor’s Foreword German and English editors, and the original afterword written by the editor(s) of the German edition. Additions or revisions of the German editors’ notes are enclosed in square brackets and initialed by the editor of the respective volume. When any previously translated material is quoted

in an editorial note in altered form—indicated by the notation [trans. altered|—such changes should be assumed to be the responsibility of the translator(s). When available, existing English translations of books and articles in German and other languages are cited in the notes. Bonhoeffer’s own footnotes, which are indicated in the body of the text by plain superscripted numbers, are reproduced in precisely the same numerical sequence as they appear in the German critical edition, complete with his idiosyncrasies of documentation. In these, as in the accompanying editorial notes, the edition of a work that was consulted by Bonhoeffer himself can be determined by consulting the bibliography at the end of each volume.

Each voluine also contains a list of abbreviations frequently used in the editorial notes, as well as a bibliography of archival sources, sources used by Bonhoeffer, literature consulted by the editors, and other works relevant to that respective volume. Each volume also includes a chronology of impor-

tant dates relevant to that volume, an index of scriptural references, an index of persons with pertinent biographical information, and an index of subjects. Bibliographies at the end of each volume provide the complete information for cach written source that Bonhoeffer or the various editors have mentioned in the current volume. Bonhoeffer’s literary estate—the notes, sermons, correspondence, and other writings, as well as the personal library of materials that belonged to him and survived the war—was cataloged by Dietrich Meyer and Eberhard Bethge, and this catalog has been published as the Nachlaf Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Most of the documents cited in the Nachlaf are collected in the Berlin Staatsbibhothek, although some documents remain in other archives. All documents listed in the Nachlap, however, have been copied on microfiches that are now at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and in the Bonhoeffer collection at Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York. References to any of these documents are indicated in the DBWE by the abbreviation NZ, followed by the corresponding catalog number. Books in the bibliography from Bonhoeffer’s own library are indicated by the abbreviation NZ-Bvdl. Volumes 1-7 of the English edition, which contain only Bonhoeffer’s

own writings, retain his original organization of the material, either as chapters or as sections or unnumbered manuscripts. Volumes 8-16 contain collected writings from a particular period of Bonhoeffer’s life, including correspondence from others and historical documents. With the exception

General Editor's Foreword XIX of volume 8, these final volumes are divided into three sections, with the documents in each section arranged chronologically: (1) Letters, Journals, Documents; (2) Essays, Seminar Papers, Papers, Lectures, Compositions; (3) Sermons, Meditations, Catechetical Writings, Exegetical Writings. Documents are numbered consecutively within the respective sections. In editorial notes these items are labeled by the DBWE volume number, followed by

the section number, document number, and finally the page number; for example, DBWE9 (1/109), p. 179, ed. note 1, would refer to the English edition, volume 9, section I, document 109, page 179, editorial note 1. The DBWE also reproduces Bonhoeffer’s original paragraphing (exceptions are noted by a { symbol to indicate any paragraph break added by the editors of the English edition or by conventions explained in the introduc-

tions written by the editor[s] of specific volumes). The pagination of the DBW German critical edition is indicated in the outer margins of the pages of the translated text. When it is important to give readers a word or phrase in its original language, a translated passage is followed by the original, set within square brackets. All biblical citations come from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise noted. When versification of the Bible used by Bonhoeffer differs from the NRSV, the verse number in the latter is noted in the text in square brackets. The publication of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, would not have been possible without the generous support of numerous individu-

als and institutions. The verso of the half-title page of each volume provides a list of supporters of that particular volume. ‘The series as a whole is indebted to many individual members and friends of the International Bonhoeffer Society, and to family foundations, congregations, synods, seminarics, and universities. Special thanks are due to the following foundations anc donors for major grants: the National Endowment for the [lumanities; the Lilly Endowment, Inc.; the Thrivent Financial for Lutherans Foundation; the Aid Association for Lutherans; the Stiftung Bonhoeffer Lehrstuhl]; the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Charitable Foundation; and Dr. John Young and Mrs. Cleo Young. The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and its former auxiliary provided space and ongoing support. Particular thanks go to our publisher, Fortress Press, and its ever-helpful and skilled staff, particularly its editorial director, Michael West, and his predecessor, Marshall Johnson. The existence of this series in English and other languages is testimony to the international community of those who have found Dietrich Bonhoef-

fer to be a profoundly important companion in their own journey. That community would not exist without the wisdom, generosity, and dedication of Eberhard Bethge (1909-2000) and his wife, Renate. Bethge was himself

xx General Editor's Foreword a pastor in the Confessing Church. After 1945, he was convinced that the future ofa living church in Germany depended on its addressing its failures under Nazism and in a new understanding of Bonhoeffer’s lasting question, Who is Christ for us today? The editors of this English edition are particularly grateful to the original

editorial board of the German edition—composed of Eberhard Bethgef, Ernst Feil, Christian Gremmels, Wolfgang Huber, Hans Pfeifer, Albrecht Schonherr}, Heinz Eduard Todt}, and [se Todt. As haison between the German and English editorial boards, Hans Pfeifer has given steadfast and congenial support to his colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. ‘The editors of the individual German volumes have been generous with their time and expertise. As work on the DBWE has proceeded, a new generation of Bonhoeffer scholars in Germany has assisted us as well: Christine Kasch, Andreas Pangritz, Holger Roggelin, Christiane Tietz, and Ralf Wustenberg. We remain grateful to those whose original translations of Bonhoeffer’s words introduced most of us to his work. It is only fitting, however, that this English edition be dedicated, finally, to the remarkable group of scholars who over the years have devoted their time, their insights, and their generous spirit to the translation, editing, and publication of these volumes. That dedication should begin with a special acknowledgment of the capable editorial leadership of Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., who brought eight volumes to publication, and to Clifford J. Green, whose steady hand has guided the project throughout its existence and ensured the financial foundation for its completion. The translators who have brought Bonhoeffer’s words to new life in these volumes are Victoria Barnett, Douglas Bax, Claudia and Scott BergmannMoore, Isabel Best, Daniel W. Bloesch, James H. Burtnessy}, Lisa E. Dahil, Peter Frick, Barbara Green, David THliggins, Nick Humphrey, Reinhard Krauss, Peter Krey, Nancy Lukens, Mary Nebelsick, Marion Pauck, Martin Rumscheidt, Anne Schmidt-Lange, Douglas W. Stott, and Charles West. The following individuals serve on the editorial board of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition: MH. Gaylon Barker, Victoria Barnett, Mark Brocker, Keith Clements, Peter Frick, Clifford J. Green, John W. de Gruchy, Barry Harvey, Reinhard Krauss, Michael Lukens, Larry Rasmussen, and Barbara Wojhoski. James H. Burtnesst, Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., Barbara Green, James Patrick Kelley, Geffrey B. Kelly, Robin W. Lovin, Nancy Lukens, Paul Matheny, Mary Nebelsick, F. Burton Nelsony, and H. Martin Rumscheidt all previously served on the board, and many of them continue to serve the project through its advisory committee. In September 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his parents from prison: “In normal life one is often not at all aware that we always receive infinitely

General Editor’s Foreword ]—And in the morning, let me add, we sang “Die gildne Sonne” and “Nun danket alle Gott” l'®! in front of little Renate’s room. So, now you have been able to relive the day during which your thoughts must certainly have constantly sought and also found us. | thought you would enjoy this even though | have been a little detailed. In the meantime, you have also received additional packages from us. | never quite know whether | am sending the right things. Please tell us always what you

[10.] Gerhard Ebeling, who, as a medical orderly stationed in Berlin, was “to a limited extent” able “to continue to serve” his congregations in Berlin-Hermsdorf and BerlinFrohnau (letter of July 1, 1996, from Ebeling to the German editor). [11.] Hans Bethge. [12.] Christoph Bethge. [13.] Renate Schleicher in an unpublished letter of May 13, 1943, to Bonhoeffer (NZL, A 76,20): “On the evening of the wedding, we will leave right away for Dresden. There we will hear a performance of Carmen on Sunday and do sightseeing in the city. Afterward we will spend some time in the Sudeten [Riesengebirge] mountains.” [14.] Jorg Schleicher, brother of Rudiger Schleicher. [15.] In lin Neues Lied (see 2/73, ed. note 68), no. 319, 1: “Hort, Ihr Herrn, und laBbt Euch sagen: / unsre Uhr hat zehn geschlagen” [Listen, gentlemen, and let me tell you: / our clock has struck the hour of ten]. [16.] “Die gildne Sonne” (“Evening and Morning,” Lutheran Book of Worship, no. 465); “Nun danket alle Gott” (“Now thank we all our God,” Lutheran Book of Worship, no. 533).

1/20 and 1/21 9] would like in your letters, which are unfortunately so very rare. We intend to inquire whether you might be allowed to write more often. Papa is, after all, seventy-five years old and is sometimes worried about your health. And since your letters are being read, this cannot harm the investigation. Now may the good Lord continue to keep you and never forsake you! This being my comfort, Your Mother Papa will write in a few days; he is very busy.

21. From Karl Bonhoeffer! |! Berlin-Charlottenburg 9 May 25, 1943

Dear Dietrich,

It has definitely been very reassuring for us to be able to speak with you the other day,!?] to see with our own eyes that you are physically quite well and that you are bearing the awful trial that has been imposed upon you with internal composure and the confidence that comes from a clear conscience. Since then, we had the pleasure of a visit from your fiancée and her mother on Sunday. Mama will write to you in more detail. Of course, | had already met your fiancée before. She is a likable, clever girl whom we again enjoyed very much. 84 The mother, by the look of her eyes and her facial expression, often reminds me of her grandfather, our old Silesian provincial governor,?] who was such an extraordinarily likable figure. She has apparently also inherited from him the gift of storytelling. Mother has a lot of work at the moment since Lottel*! had to go off to see her mother, who had a femoral neck fracture. She is now in the hospital, as her physician has written to me, so | hope that Lotte is now able to come back. All of us in the immediate family are healthy. Both of Emmi’s little ones!! are in Friedrichsbrunn. Suse is also thinking about sending her children|®! there. But we just had three air-raid-free nights, which helps us forget our worries. | am afraid, however, that the few seemingly useless air-raid warnings were due to surveillance flights, and that something very unpleasant is still coming.

[1.] NL, A 76,27; handwritten. [2.] The first permitted visit [Sprecherlaubnis] of Bonhoefter’s parents to Tegel military prison on May 23, 1943. [3.| Robert Graf von Zedlitz-Trutzschler. [4.] Lotte Pisker. [5.] Cornelie and Walter Bonhoeffer. [6.] Susanne DreB’s sons Michael and Andreas.

92 Letters and Papers from Prison | hope that we will be able to see each other again soon, either in prison or here with us after your release, which, after seven weeks now, should certainly also be within the realm of possibility. Mama is going to write as well. Affectionately, Your Father

22. From Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Berlin-Charlottenburg 9 May 25, 1943

My dear Boy,

| would like to tell you today about Maria’s visit.!?] She traveled on Saturday night and came to visit us with her mother at eleven o'clock, bringing us gorgeous red roses from their garden. She has lost still more weight but looks healthy and well despite her training,?! which is truly rather tough (although she won’t admit it).

85 We then sat in the garden with a glass of Tokay. After an hour we were joined by Karl Friedrich and Rudiger and Ursel. Then we went inside to look at the pictures, especially the portraits, but Maria also wanted to see pictures of the whole family and very quickly memorized the names of our eighteen grandchildren. Still before lunch, | went upstairs with her to your room.|4] Of course, | had tidied it up a little, although not too much so that she will know what to expect later on. But she found it fabulously neat. Mothers are apparently more critical than filancées, and that’s how it should be. Maria took her time to look at all the small items and mementos from your travels and found it so cozy up in your room that she didn’t want to come back down for lunch. To mark the occasion | had made a special effort for lunch. | am telling you this, hoping it won't make your mouth water—a green spring-pea soup, veal cutlets (we saved up during the week) with green beans (the last can!), tomatoes, and iced strawberries, which | was just able to get. Isn’t that nice!

Then we had coffee in the garden, and at three o'clock they had to leave. Karl-Friedrich took them to the railway station.>! Maria once again brought

[1.] NZ, A 76,28; handwritten. [2.] Cf. Love Letters from Cell 92, 24-25.

[3.] As a Red Cross nursing student in Hanover; see 1/6, ed. note 5. [4.] See the letter of May 24, 1943, from Maria von Wedemeyer to Bonhoeffer, Love Letters from Cell 92, 26: “Oh, I fell in love with everything. Your house, the garden, and— most of all—your room. I don't know what I wouldn't give to be able to sit there again, if only to look at the inkblots on your desk pad.” [5.] See Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer’s report in the following letter, 1/23.

1/21-1/23 93 some butter and her mother some of the good sausage. We always divide everything between you and Hans. Now, as Papa already wrote, the visit was truly a joy, and we are grateful to you for bringing such a dear daughter-in-law into our family. Even though she is still very young, her entire attitude already speaks of being very dependable, hardworking, and warmhearted. Her mother, who during this year has experienced so much hardship,|®! is indeed to be admired in how she sees the responsibilities for the household and children, which she now faces alone, and how through this she is coping with the grief for her husband and son.

Maria was, of course, also interested in seeing your books and folders, but 86 the time was too short for that. | think she will come back soon some Sunday. | told her that you are very enamored with Gotthelf’s writings.!”] She unfortunately doesn’t get around to reading anything at all at the moment. | told her that in her free time it’s better for her to catch up on her sleep, and that you would have the pleasure later of reading these texts together with her. We have now begun to read Berner Geist und Zeitgeist!®] and found it very interesting indeed; the problems truly provide food for thought. In the next package, we will include Uli der Knecht, by Gotthelf,!7] which you had requested. | hope you enjoy it. But | don’t have any idea at all what theological or other academic books you would like and forgot to ask. | will now close where Papa began. It was a great, great joy to see you again, and to see you the way you were! | can well imagine what you

are going through on your own. Whenever | entrust you to God in prayer, | give thanks that you are receiving the strength to cope with it in the way you do. May God continue to help us all in these hard times of war. Your confidently hopeful Mother

23. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer! |! Leipzig

May 30, 1943

Dear Dietrich, One week ago today | stopped in Berlin on my way from Hamburg, where | had been on business. | was especially fortunate in that your fiancée and her mother

[6.] See 1/2, ed. note 8. [7.] See 1/9, p. 67. [8.] [Actually Zectgerst und Berner Geist—]DG] See 1/17, p. 80. 19.] See 1/17, p. 80.

[1.] NL, A 76,30; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 47-48.

94 Letters and Papers from Prison had announced their visit at our parents’ home for that day. So | got to know her earlier than | had anticipated. For you it must be very strange that she is now 87 getting acquainted with the family and that you are not present. These are somewhat crazy times for sure. As you can obviously imagine, we all liked her very much. She told us many things about her work in Hanover.!?! She is apparently one of those people who always pick the most difficult and exhausting tasks and who pay no attention at all to themselves. The modest and matter-of-fact way she talked about it impressed me very much. | thoroughly scolded her for saving up her weekly ration of butter for you and for not setting aside the few coffee beans, which she had been given by a patient, for her own night shifts. | trust it

was what you would have wanted me to do. Her mother too is apparently an extraordinary woman. | accompanied her on some errands around town during which we talked a bit about both our families. At any rate, now that | have come to know the new family circle you are entering, | can once again congratulate you very much. By the way, as far as | know, no one apart from the family knows anything of this yet.|°1 | wonder just how you might be doing. Have you become somewhat accus-

tomed to the situation? It is, of course, impossible to imagine all that without having experienced it—and once released, one probably forgets very quickly how it was. Were you cold during the last few weeks? The rooms at home were rather cold if one couldn’t move about. Hopefully, this will really be the last letter | have to write to you in prison. Herel] we have not yet said anything to the children about it. | think they consider me somewhat peculiar since | always ask for homemade cookies and candies when | travel to Berlin. With many regards from Grete and myself, Your Karl Friedrich

88 24. From Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Berlin-Charlottenburg 9 June 2, 1943 My dear Boy,

lam sure you must have been keenly waiting for a letter from us. |, in turn, had expected your last letter to be returned by Karl-Friedrich so that | could answer

[2.] Cf. Love Letters from Cell 92, 28-29.

[3.] See 1/9, p. 68. [4.] [I.e., in Leipzig.—JDG] [1.] NL, A 76,31; handwritten.

1/23 and 1/24 95 it. We always send your letters to him. Now, today, we received mail from him,

but he unfortunately did not include your letter. He writes how his thoughts are with you every day, and how he daily hopes for a message that you are back home. He will come here soon himself, since he has some business in town. He writes that all is well with them. Grete was running around all day looking for groceries, sewing and mending for the children, feeding them, and giving them a thrashing as needed; in short, all is in order! In the meantime, you will have received letters from Maria and your mother-in-law,!?] which you must have enjoyed. Today shel?! sent you another small parcel. You ask whether we talked about the wedding. Now that the engagement has become more widely known, | believe your mother-in-law no longer has any reservations, even though she had, of course, meant to keep it all a secret because of her deep mourning.!“! So let us leave it up to God to decide when he wants to bring you together. You do have the blessing of us all. It is quite good that Maria has work to do that keeps her busy all day and makes the time pass better—which brings us again to the question about the sense of time.'! Papa is still trying to remember what and where he has read something on this subject. | always think a vivid experience seems more recent than one that is less impressive. | thus still see the moment of your “arrest,’ which was utterly improbable to me, as if it had happened yesterday. However, the days since then, which | have lived with you only in my thoughts, all blur together, and | hardly know how much time has passed. | always end up 89 thinking that | don’t understand any of this, and that everything is bound to clear up, and your statements will be found credible. Today three small, used “Calderon” l®! volumes that you ordered arrived from the bookshop. | am putting them in the package. I’ve also put in Reuter’s!7] Ut mine Stromtid, which | love so much. It!8! takes a little patience initially but then becomes quite understandable, and one really gets something out of it. | also include a book with “chess problems,”!?] so you can perfect your skills. . . .

[2.] See 1/20, ed. notes 4 and 5. [3.] [Ruth von Wedemeyer, Dietrich’s mother-in-law.—]DG] [4.| See 1/9, ed. note 12. [5.] See 1/17, p. 79: “Lam currently trying my hand at a small study on the ‘sense of time,’ an experience that may be especially characteristic during a pretrial detention.” [6.] Calderon de la Barca, Calderons ausgewahlte Werke in drei Banden. |'7.] Fritz Reuter. [8.] [Le., the dialect used in the book.—]DG] [9.] This would have been either Eduard Lasker's Schachstrategie or his Lehrbuch des Schachspiels.

96 Letters and Papers from Prison Perhaps you know from the newspaper that Aunt Friedchen, Uncle Paul’s ninety-three-year-old mother,!'°! has died. She was buried here in Westend. Doring preached on the text: “A little while you will mourn, but your mourning will turn into joy.”!!''] Her end was not difficult. At four o’clock, the children were called. She spoke with all of them before telling them at the end: “Do love one another.” Then with a quiet, “I can’t any longer,” she passed away. She was a human being full of kindness and love, and | have never heard her utter a harsh or unfriendly judgment of others. God must certainly have loved her too. ...

You will be happy to know that Hanna Cauer is now passing on one of her two pianos to Renate. Your grand piano that you loaned out!!! has survived the air raid intact even though the houses on both sides caught fire. If only | could hear you play again soon! Meanwhile, let’s not get nervous but try to keep up our spirits. Perhaps we will soon see each other again after one of your interrogations. May God protect you, my boy! Papa, your brothers and sisters, and the young couplel!3] send lots of love.

Your old Mother

90 25. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Ascension Day, June 4, 1943

My dear Parents,

I had already finished a long letter to you when, just now, the mail brought the letters from Maria‘?! and my mother-in-law’! and with them an indescribable joy into my cell. Thus I have to start the letter all over again and

especially ask you to write and thank both of them right away. You can imagine how I feel not being able to do so myself.“ Maria writes with such [10.] Frieda von Hase; Major General Paul von Hase, military commander of Berlin, was a cousin of Paula Bonhoeffer. [11.] Abbreviated paraphrase of John 16:19-20. [12.] To Alexander Stahlberg in Stettin; see Stahlberg, Die verdammte Pflicht, 102ff. [13.] Eberhard and Renate Bethge. [1.] NL, A 76,33; handwritten; annotation by Bethge: “arrived June 10.” Previously published in LPP, 48-51. There are also drafts of this letter dated June 3 [which was Ascension Day—]DG] (NE, A 76,34; original and copy) and June 4, 1943 (NL, A 76,35; copy). [2.] Letter of May 24, 1943; Love Letters from Cell 92, 26-27. [3.] Unpublished letter of May 27, 1943, from Ruth von Wedemeyer to Bonhoeffer: “Tam so happy that I have permission to write to you—that all the obstacles have been cleared away by the events of the last few weeks—that I am now able to write to you as to avery dear son.”

[4.] Bonhoeffer did not receive permission to write to his fiancée until after the conclusion of the first phase of interrogations (end of July 1943); see 1/39.

1/24 and 1/25 Q7 happiness about the day with you, and yet how difficult it must have been for her despite all the love you showed her. How she copes with everything isa miracle, and for me a source of happiness and an example beyond compare. The sense of being completely unable to stand by her would often be almost unbearable if I did not know that, in thinking of her, I can really

be at peace. I do hope, far more for her sake than mine, that these hard times won't last too terribly long. However, I am certain that these months will someday prove infinitely important for our marriage, and for this Iam grateful. I can hardly express how much I was touched by the letter from my mother-in-law. Since the very day I was arrested, I have been tormented by the thought of having inflicted on her even more trouble in addition to all the sorrow of the past year. And now she has taken these very troubles that have befallen us as the occasion to shorten the waiting period,!! and with 91 that made me happy. I find myself truly humbled and grateful in the face of such great trust, inner goodness, and magnanimity, and IT will forever hold this to her credit. This is basically the spirit that I have always sensed in the homes of this family and that so touched me long before I had any premonition about my future happiness. And by now I have also learned from your and Karl Friedrich’s letters that you do like Maria; of course, it couldn’t be otherwise. Indeed, she will be a very good daughter-in-law for you and will certainly soon feel as much at home in our family as I have already felt a part of her large family for several years. lam very happy that Kar] Friedrich accompanied my mother-in-law when she went downtown,!! and that the two of them thus had the chance to become a little acquainted with each other. It’s also very nice of him that, in my stead, he appealed to Maria not to save her rations for me since, given her demanding work, she really needs them herself.!”!

1 thank you very much for your letters. As far as /am concerned, they are always too short, but I do understand, of course! It is as if the door of the prison cell opened for a moment, and I experienced with you a slice of life on the outside. ‘The longing for joy in this somber building is great. One never hears any laughter. Given what they witness, even the guards [5.] Regarding the background, see Bonhoeffer’s report in his letter of November 27, 1942, to Eberhard Bethge (DBWE 16, 1/210, p. 374): “From Tuesday through Wednesday noon I was at Mrs. von Wedemeyer’s. . . . Gist of the discussion she requested: a year of

total separation in order to enable Maria to find some peace. ... My response: ... that I understood and recognized her maternal authority over her daughter; but future circumstances themselves would show whether such a stipulation could be followed; I didn’t think so.” See also DB-ER, 787-90, and Love Letters from Cell 92, 253 and 288-91. [6.] See 1/23, p. 94. ['7.] Ibid.

98 Letters and Papers from Prison seem unable to laugh. One therefore makes the fullest use of all internal or external sources of Joy.

Today is Ascension Day, that is, a great day of joy for all those who are able to believe that Christ rules the world and our lives.'®! My thoughts travel to all of you, to the church and the worship services from which I have been separated for so long now, but also to the many unknown people who move through this building, bearing their fate in silence. Again and again, 92 these and other thoughts truly keep me from taking my own minor privations too seriously. Doing so would be very unjust and ungrateful. I have just written some more on the “sense of time,”!’! and I enjoy it greatly. One writes more fluently from direct experience and feels liberated. Many thanks, Papa, for Kant’s Anthropologie,!'"! which I have now read.

I was not familiar with it. | found many very interesting things in it, but it remains a rococo-like!!!! rationalistic psychology that simply ignores many essential phenomena. Can you send me something good on the forms and functions of memory? I am very interested in it in this connection. Kant’s interpretations of “smoking” as self-entertainment are quite delightful.!!?! I am very happy to know that you are now reading Gotthelf; I’m sure you would enjoy his Wanderungen''*! just as much—I think Susi has it. With regard to academic books, I very much enjoyed Uhlhorn’s large Geschichte der christlichen Liebestatigheil,'*! and Holl’s Kirchengeschichte\’! reminded me of his seminars.!!°!

[8.] See Bonhoeffer’s sermon in the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtnis Kirche in Berlin on Ascension Day 1933, DAW 12, 3/6.

[9.] See 1/11, ed. note 9. [10.] Kant, Anthropology (see also 1/11, ed. note 7); the draft of this letter, dated June 4, 1943, contains the following note: “I found the sections on ‘boredom’ etc, very interesting.” Kant, Anthropology, par. 61, 101-3: “On boredom and diversion.” [11.] [Bonhoeffer uses the word Rokokopsychologie, alluding to the ornate and elaborate artistic style, rococo, of eighteenth-century Europe.—]DG] [12.] Kant, Anthropology, par. 23, 39 (see 1/11, ed. note 7): “This sort of communication with ourselves takes the place of companionship insofar as it fills our empty time, not with conversation, but with sensations that are always stirred up afresh and with stimuli that, though transitory, are always renewed.” [13.] Gotthelf, Jakobs des Handwerksgesellen Wanderungen durch die Schweiz.

[14.] Uhlhorn, Christian Charity in the Ancient Church. In the draft for this letter of June 4, 1943, Bonhoeffer wrote: “... reading the portrayal of the prison system of times past, I was happy indeed not to have been born earlier.” See Uhlhorn, 190-98, 237-38, et passim. [15.] Karl Holl, Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 3: Der Westen; see 1/9, ed.

note 11. [16.] See DB-ER, 68-69.

IZ) 99 Actually Iam reading some Stifter nearly every day. The sheltered and concealed life of his characters—he is so pleasantly old fashioned in exclusively portraying sympathetic characters—has something very soothing in this atmosphere and focuses one’s thoughts on the essential purposes in 93 life. Here in the cell one is both outwardly and inwardly led back to the most basic things in life; thus, for example, Rilke was no help at all. But maybe one’s intellect also suffers somewhat from the constriction under which one lives? Just this moment—it’s Friday by now—TI received your wonderful spring package with the first produce from the garden. For this package, as for the previous one, I again greatly thank you and everyone who had a hand in it.

How much longer will you still be burdened with this trouble and care for me—who can know? When it’s convenient, I would like to get Hoskyn’s Riddle of the New Testament''“! (stands on the shelf above my bed), also some cotton wool since it is sometimes rather noisy at night. I hope to receive another letter from you any day now. Please do always

write everything you know about Maria. How nice that Karl Friedrich and the Schleichers were there too when she visited the other day. The Schleich-

ers, of course, also know her older sister Bismarck,!!*! and you might remember her brother Max, whom I confirmed in Stettin and who died on the front. Please always convey my warmest regards to her grandmother.!!9! Hardly an hour passes in which my thoughts do not wander from the books to all of you, and a reunion after my release will be unimaginably wonderful. Until then, let us remain patient and confidently hopeful. [am very sorry that you now can’t travel at all and relax a little. Are you feeling reasonably well? I am feeling fine, continue to be healthy, eat enough, get tolerable sleep, and time still passes very quickly. Please give my regards to my brothers and sisters, the children, and friends. With deep gratitude and affection, Your Dietrich

[17.] Hoskyns and Davey, Riddle of the New Testament.

[18.] Ruth-Alice von Bismarck, née von Wedemeyer. [19.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow.

100 Letters and Papers from Prison 94 26. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer! | Berlin-Charlottenburg 9 June 8, 1943

Dear Dietrich,

We had actually hoped to have a letter from you yesterday or the day before. Since none has arrived today, | decided to write to you without waiting any longer. We hope that the delay is not caused by any health problems on your part. We cannot complain about our own health. Our life essentially goes on in thoughts of you and Hans.!4]... On Sunday we attended the installation service for Walter DreB.[3! It was a beautiful and dignified celebration. Afterward we had breakfast there with a small circle of their relatives and friends. Among them was the uncle who is the presiding judge at the Supreme Court,!4] whom | had not seen since | worked for the Lubbe trial.) Suse had once again arranged everything very nicely despite the difficulty of the times.

With regard to myself, there is not much to report. | am happy to have plenty to do. For academic work, | have less time than | would like. In the evenings | sometimes read Gotthelf’s Berner Geist!®] to Mama. Recently, | received a request to allow myself to be recorded on film with a soundtrack, for the film archive of notable personalities [“Filmarchiv der Personlichkeiten”], which has recently been set up at the Ministry of Propaganda. The purpose would be to

[1.] NL, A 76,29; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 51. [2.] Hans von Dohnanyi. [3.] Walter DreB’s installation as pastor of the Annenkirche in Dahlem; see 1/27, p. 102.

[4.] Senate president Wilhelm Bunger.

[5.] In 1933 the Reichstag fire trial was held before the Reich Supreme Court in Leipzig; commissioned by the examining magistrate, Karl Bonhoeffer had written an expert opinion regarding the defendant, Marinus van der Lubbe. See K. Bonhoeffer and Zutt, “Uber den Geisteszustand des Reichtagsbrandstifters Marinus van der Lubbe,” 100-101; DB-ER, 263-65. See also Gerrens, “Zum Karl-Bonhoeftfer-Gutachten.” [6.] Gotthelf, Zeitgeist und Berner Geist.

1/26 and 1/27 101 preserve “a portrait of myself for future times.” !7! | believe it is sufficient for my 95 picture to be preserved within the family.!®! Affectionately, Father

Dear Dietrich, | would just like to add a greeting, so that you may get it by Pentecost. | assume that in your situation the holidays are emotionally especially difficult. | will write more as soon as your letter gets here. We are thinking of you so much, and in my mind | write to you daily. However, one must, of course, not overtax the censors. May you have a blessed Pentecost. Affectionately, Your Mother

27. From Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Berlin-Charlottenburg 9 June 10, 1943 My dear Boy,

My brief note added to Papa’s letter should not be the only Pentecost greeting from me. | firmly trust that, even in your solitude, you will be able to celebrate a beautiful Pentecost, for you are, of course, not alone. You do know that all of us are gathered around you in our thoughts. Together let us remember the old Pentecost hymn that says: “Descend on us in fullness, until comfort may return, and all harm be overcome.” !! In the garden a peony is actually about to bloom 96

for Pentecost, the first time ever!3]... |7.| The Filmarchiv der Persénlichkeiten was commissioned by the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda as “a collection of selected portraits of renowned persons from politics, business, and art and science, initially not intended for distribution” (those interviewed included Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Gerhart Hauptmann, Robert Bosch, and Sven Hedin). The series was produced by “a special production team of the Deutsche Wochenschau GmbH.” Fascius, Granier, Henke, and Oldenhage, Das Bundesarchiv und seine Bestdnde, 749.

[8.] See DBWE 7:86: “I am having my portrait painted for my family, not the town hall, grandfather Brake had said.” [This was a character in Bonhoeffer’s novel written in prison.—]DG| [1.] NL, A 76,38; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 52.

[2.| “O Heiliger Geist, kehr bei uns ein,” fourth stanza. Translation by Reinhard Krauss. [The English version of this hymn is “O holy spirit, enter in,” Lutheran Book of Worship, no. 459.—J DG]

[3.] [The German term for peony is Pfingstrose, literally “Pentecost rose." —JDG]

102 Letters and Papers from Prison Your letter of the fourth!*! has just arrived. We had been awaiting it eagerly. It is always a joy for us to see how your inner calling as a pastor and theologian is being confirmed for you, even in these hard times. | will see to it that Maria gets your letter before the holiday. .. . Tomorrow another package will be on its way to you, and we pack all our love into it. Everyone is thinking about what to contribute, even the little ones. That accounts for the few sweets today. They all ask so often about you, about when you will finally return home. We are so grateful that you are healthy. After Pentecost we will try again and see whether we might visit you again at the military court like last time.! Maybe it’s possible. We certainly don’t talk about anything bad with one another, but it apparently takes too much time for Dr. Réder.!®! At any rate, | hope we will get the permission. | wanted to send you Ut mine Stromtid, by Reuter, but couldn't find it, and am now sending you Festungstid!/] instead. | hope that, as you read, you get used to the dialect,[8] and then, | think, you will get much pleasure out of Reuter. | am also sending Hauser iiber dem Rhein,!?! a novel that we very much enjoyed, as you know. | trust it will interest you too. |am not sure whether Papa will find something suitable on “memory” by tomorrow; if not, by next time.

The current weather must actually suit you quite well since we have such moderate temperatures. However, when it’s overcast like the last few days, | often wonder whether it is not too dark for you to read and write. ... | still want to tell you about Walter’s installation service. He was installed by Messow.!!°l Text: “You did not choose me but | chose you.”!!'] Messow spoke very simply and beautifully, and | liked it very much. Walter then also spoke well and briefly on the verse, “Everything belongs to you, but you belong to 97 ~— Christ.”['2] One had the impression that the congregation likes him. Their apart-

ment was decorated with many beautiful flowers. Karl Friedrich plans to visit us after Pentecost. It’s only becoming apparent now, really, how much he is attached to you, and he truly enjoyed Maria. With the limited train service, I’m rather doubtful whether Maria’s visit will work out. If not, then I’m sure sometime soon, and then the other family members should come and meet her as well. | just thought everything at once would be too much for her. [4.] See 1/25. [5.] See 1/21, letter of May 25, 1943. [6.| [Manfred Roeder, the military prosecutor.—] DG] [7.] Reuter, Ut mine Festungstid. [8.] [Reuter wrote in Mecklenburg Low German.—JDG] 19.] Rudolf Low, Aduser tiber dem Rhein.

[10.] [Pastor Werner Messow.—] DG] [11.] John 15:16. [12.] 1 Cor. 3:22-23. [The NRSV translation reads: “all belong to you.”—JDG]

1/27 and 1/28 103 May God continue to keep you and give you the strength necessary to make people believe you. Then everything must turn out well. With loving hugs, Your Mother

28. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer!!! June 12, 1943

Dear Dietrich, Your letter from Ascension Day just arrived, and since it is Saturday afternoon, | have time to respond right away. | have not been in Berlin in the meantime and have also had no news from there. This must mean you!?] are still “inside.” For when you get out, we will, of course, get a call or a telegram right away. But what is worth telling you? Perhaps that, in spite of everything, we did make summer plans and that I’ve once again registered Grete and the children for three weeks at Tempelburg.!?! | hope that this year the summer will be a little warmer than last year so that the boys will finally learn to swim. Up to now it doesn't look like it. | will not be able to come along this year. That’s unfortunate, since last year | really liked it very much down there. Grete doesn’t have much enthusiasm for this undertaking, but I’m sure getting some rest will be good for her. Maybe | will hike for a few days if accommodations can still be arranged and 98 it won't burn too many calories. For one cannot afford to work up a big appetite by just hiking.

Recently we had Benedikt’s boyl*! staying with us for a week. He had had an appendectomy and needed to recuperate before joining the army. He volunteered to enlist, as you probably heard. At sixteen he is still really a baby, a featherweight. For our two older boys,!! it was marvelous, of course. His head was full of nonsense, and he slept with the boys in the same room. They got up one night to stink up the house with hydrogen sulfide, a plan that, alas, didn’t succeed. Other assaults on our pedagogical efforts also came to naught. Despite their having installed electrical alarms, we uncovered their schemes. This fits in well with Karl’s reading, which consists mainly of Karl May.!®! At any rate,

[1.] NL, A 76,39; handwritten; from Leipzig. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 52.

[2.| In using the plural pronoun here, Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer is referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi. [3.] At the Dratzigsee [now Jezioro Drawsko; it was the largest lake in Pomerania —JDG] in what was then Pomerania. [4.] Johann Georg von Hase. [5.] Karl and Johann Friedrich Bonhoeffer. [6.] [A popular German author of westerns.—JDG]

104 Letters and Papers from Prison we were quite happy when, without major damage, the visit came to a natural end. But for our two boys that week will most likely forever remain a glorious memory... .Martin!7] recently came home from school all beaming and said he had to tell us something truly wonderful. He made us really curious, for bringing home an excellent mark was unlikely. What did it turn out to be? “I now have a friend. ...”

| recently came across the little book Weltwirkung der Reformation (1942), by Gerhard Ritter.!®] | read it with great interest and also read sections to Grete in the evening. Next time I’m in Berlin, | will try to find out if you’re familiar with it and then include it in the package, and perhaps also a freshly published collection of lectures on modern physics, or rather the philosophy of nature;!7 but | first have to read it a little more carefully myself in order to decide whether you would get something from it. Recently, Christoph!!°] closed a letter to Hans!!! with the phrase: “Hoping for a reunion soon.” This being our sentiment as well, we both send our warmest greetings and best wishes. Your Karl Friedrich

99 29. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Pentecost 1943, June 14 My dear Parents,

Now, after all, still separated, we celebrate Pentecost, the church [estival that is in a special way a celebration of community. When the church bells rang this morning, I felt a great longing to be in a worship service. But then I did what John did on Patmos'! and celebrated such a good worship service on my own that I didn't feel the loneliness at all, for each and every one of you was a part of it, as well as the congregations in which I have celebrated Pentecost in the past. Every few hours, since last evening, I recite and enjoy Paul Gerhardt’s Pentecost hymn with the beautiful stanzas, “Du

[7.] Martin Bonhoeffer. [8.] Ritter, Die Weltwirkung der Reformation (1941). [9.] Weizsacker, World View of Physics, the German edition was first published in 1943; see.3/ 149) 'p. 408, and 3/102, p: 405;

[10.] [Christoph von Dohnanyi.—]DG] [11.] [Hans von Dohnanyi.—]DG] [1.] NZ, A 76,40; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 53-55. There is also a draft of the letter in NL, A 76,41 (handwritten in pencil; with copy). [2.] Rev. 1:9-10. (“I, John, ... was on the island called Patmos. ... I was in the spirit on the Lord's day.”)

1/28 and /29 105 bist ein Geist der Freude .. .” and “Gib Freudigkeit und Starke . . .”! as well as the Scripture verses: “He who does not stand firm in adversity, is not strong” (Prov. 24),! and “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of prudence” (2 Tim. 1).'! I have also thought a lot again about the peculiar story of the “miracle of tongues.”!°! That the Babylonian confusion of languages, through which people are no longer able to understand one another because each speaks his own language, is to end and be overcome by the language of God, which

each human being understands and through which alone people are also able to understand one another again, and that the church is where this is to take place—all these are indeed very deep and important thoughts. 100 Leibniz wrestled all his life with the idea of a universal script that was to represent all concepts, not by words but with clear and obvious signs!7!—an

expression of his desire to heal the fractured world of his day—a philosophical reflection of the Pentecost story.

It is now again completely quiet in the building, only the steps of the prisoners pacing their cells are audible, and how many desperate and unPentecostal thoughts might they carry around with them. Were I the prison chaplain, I would on such days go from cell to cell from early in the morning until late in the evening; then much would happen.

Thank you very much again for the letters from you, Karl Friedrich, and Ursel. All of you are waiting as much as I do. I must confess that, in [3.] From the hymn “Zieh ein zu deinen Toren,” Lvangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 133, vy. 6: “Du bist ein Geist der Freuden, / von Trauern haltst du nichts, / erleuchtest uns im Leiden / mit deines Trostes Licht. / Ach ja, wic manches Mal / hast du mit stiBen Worten / mir aufgetan die Pforten / zum gtldnen Freudensaal” [You are a spirit of joy, / mourning you dismiss, / you enlighten us in suffering / with the light of your consolation. / Oh yes, how many times / did you with sweet words / open to me the gates / of the golden hall of joy]; and v. 12 from the same hymn: “Gib Freudigkeit und Starke / zu stechen in dem Streit, / den Satans Reich und Werke / uns taglich anerbeut. / Hilf kampfen ritterlich, / damit wir Uberwinden / und ja zum Dienst der Stinden / kein Christ ergebe sich” [Grant joyfulness and strength / to fight the battle / that Satan’s realm and works / present to us each day. / Help us to fight with valor, / to let us overcome / and to the servitude of sin / no Christian might succumb]. The English translations here are by Reinhard Krauss. The English version of this hymn is “O Enter, Lord, Thy Temple,” Lutheran Hymnal, no. 228.

[4.] Prov. 24:10; see also 1/12, ed. note 5, [The NRSV reads: “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength being small.”—]DG] [5.] 2 Tim. 1:7; NRSV reads “self-discipline.” The Luther Bible reads Zucht (discipline) instead of Besonnenheit (prudence). [6.] Acts 2:1-13; see also DBW 14:427.

[7.] Leibniz, Consilium de Encyclopaedia nova conscribenda methodo inventoria, 30-41; also Generales Inquisitiones de Analysi Notionum et Veritatum, 356-99, both in Opuscules et fragments inédits de Leibniz. On this subject, see Kramer, Berechenbare Vernunft, 242-54.

106 Letters and Papers from Prison some region of my subconscious, I had hoped that by Pentecost I would be free again,!! though consciously I always forbid myself to set specific dates. ‘lomorrow it will be ten weeks—this is not what we had naively imagined “temporary” arrest would be. But in any case, it is a mistake to be as

ignorant of judicial matters as I am. I am only now becoming aware how different the atmosphere is in which a jurist must live compared to that ofa theologian. But that too is instructive, for each is appropriate, | presume, in its respective place. We just don’t have any other choice now but to wait with

as much patience as possible and not become bitter, trusting that everyone is doing what he can to bring about a speedy resolution. Fritz Reuter puts it beautifully: “No life flows so smoothly and gently that it would not at some time hit a dam and move in circles, or that people would not throw some stones in the clear water; well, mishaps happen to everyone—one just has 101. to ensure that one’s water remains clear, that it can mirror the reflection of heaven and earth”!?!—that basically says it all. I was really thrilled when, the day before yesterday, both of you handed in the Pentecost package downstairs. It is odd how just knowing that you were physically nearby brought everything, home and your whole life, very close to me again, when somctimes they recede into an unreal distance. For this | thank you very much and also for the package, which again was much appreciated; I was especially excited about the yellow pudding that keeps so well.

T received another lovely letter from Maria.!!°! The poor thing always must write now without receiving a direct reply from me.!!") This must be hard, but Iam happy about every word from her, and every little detail I find interesting because it makes it easier to share in her life. I thank her very much for it. In my bold dreams I sometimes already imagine what our future home will look like. The study on the sense of time is practically done.!'*! It now has to sit for a while; we'll see how it will survive that.!!9!

[8.] DBWE 16, 1/226, p. 409 and ed. note 1; after June 10, 1943, Bonhoeffer wrote letters to the senior military prosecutor, Dr. Manfred Roeder, in addition to the interrogations at the Reich War Court. Drafts of the letters from this period, until the beginning of August, are extant; see DBWE 16, 1/226, pp. 409-11, and 1/228, pp. 413-27. [9.] Reuter, Ut mine Festungstid, sec. 1, chap. 1, first par. [10.] Letter of May 30, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 28-29.

[11.] See 1/25, ed. note 4. [12.] See 1/11, ed. note 9.

[13.] Draft of the letter: “I’ve been reading a rather good biography of Moltke [Count Helmuth von Moltke, the grandfather of Bonhoeffer’s compatriot in the conspiracy—]JDG] by Naso [Naso, Moltke] on the side. However, having just been exposed

1/29 and 1/30 107 It is Whit Monday.!'*! T was just sitting down to a lunch of turnips and

potatoes when, completely unexpectedly, your Pentecost package was handed in by Renate. There are really no words to describe how happy such things make me. Despite the deep certainty about our connection in spirit, the spirit [Geist] nevertheless always seems to have an unquenchable desire

to make visible this connection of love and thinking about one another, 102 and then the most material things become bearers of spiritual realities. I believe this is analogous to the desire in all religions to have the spirit become visible in the sacrament.!'*! Please give my special thanks to Renate

for this special treat. I wish her much daily joy in her marriage and in her calling.!'°! How wonderful that they will get a grand piano; being able to make music with them again will be one of the most special moments after Iam released. I am very grateful for any smoking supplies. Now let us hope that everything will soon come to a conclusion. Please give my love to Maria and my brothers and sisters. Always thinking of you with gratitude and love, Your Dietrich

I would still like some cotton wool; the “Oropax”!!7! gives me such a dull feeling in the head.

30. From Paula Bonhoeffer!!! June I5, 1943

Dear Dietrich,

Now Pentecost has come and gone. How much we all missed you. On Pentecost Sunday, we had a very quiet afternoon in the garden. | wrote to Maria, her mother, and her grandmother, and in the evening Papa then read to me again from the Berner Geist und Zeitgeist.!*] Both of us really enjoy it... . Hopefully, you

to such excellent stylists as Stifter, Gotthelf, or Keller, one is bothered by the poverty of the range of expressions. When Moltke proposed, he was forty-one and his fiancée was sixteen [replaces: “was, by the way, twenty-five years older than his wife”; this is certainly quite another difference in age! And it must have been a very good marriage.” [14.] [The day after Pentecost.—]DG| [15.] See Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 48-49; Gerhard Ludwig Muller, Bonhoeffers Theologie der Sakramente.

[16.] [I.e., as a pastor’s wife.—]DG] [17.] [Earplugs made from wax and marketed under the name Ohropax since 1908. —JDG]

[1.] NL, A 76,42; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 55. [2.] See 1/26, ed. note 6.

108 Letters and Papers from Prison too derived a little joy from the package that Renate and her husband brought you for Pentecost. Of course, it’s not the contents that are the main thing but the knowledge that others are thinking of you; and you can believe me when | 103 — say you are very close to our hearts, not just those of your father and mother and your fiancée, but of all your brothers and sisters and their families. None of us can comprehend that you find yourself in this situation, being as law abiding as you are.] We therefore don’t even know where to begin to unravel this mystery. We just constantly return to the comforting conviction that everything must be resolved soon, and you will soon be back home again. #4] Today we will again ask for a permit to visit. We want to see you again very

much and to find out how you are coping with the long imprisonment, especially because of your asthma. Hopefully, we will get the permission. We are old people, after all, and the pressure on Papa on top of his exhausting work is a bit much. How could we ever have imagined a retirement like this after a full life’s work in profession and family.[! . . . In the garden everything is thriving, but it also is a lot of work. | will now bring you strawberries from the garden! | am happy to have found your suit and the light jacket, by the way, and will bring you the jacket. But where is your fourth clothing ration card? Didn't you

mention to me just before Tegel that you were missing it? Where could | look for it? How about sending you the light gray trousers? Today | mended your brown sports trousers. You had worn them rather thin there by sitting so much! Wouldn’t you perhaps also like some light loafers? This time I’m bringing you Grandfather Hase’s Ideale and Irrttimer.{®! | have asked the grandmother for the book on the senior Kleist-Retzow.|7] And now may God keep you. With affectionate greetings from all of us, and always with you in my thoughts,

Your Mother

[3.] [The German editor notes that this remark was probably intended for the censor.—] DG]

[4.| The family emphasized their hopes for his release repeatedly. [While they may have had doubts, they did not give up hope until after the failure of the plot against Hitler in 1944.—]DG]

[5.] [The German editor notes that this comment was probably intended for the censor.—]DG] [6.] Karl von Hase, /deale und Irrtiimer. [7.] Petersdorff, Hans Hugo Kleist-Retzow. The extant copy (NL-Bibl. 10,3) contains a dedication by Ruth von Kleist-Retzow on the occasion of the announcement of Bonhoeffer’s engagement on June 24, 1943; see Pejsa, Matriarch of Conspiracy, 308

1/30 and 1/31 109

1 [8] ee [9] .

We have just learned that Maria has been transferred to bea nurse here atthe 104 Augusta hospital. ~ She is already here and will join us for a meal. " Greetings, Father

31. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! June 24, 1943 My dear Parents,

I am starting the letter today even though I hope to see you in person tomorrow. In the week after Pentecost, I received many letters, which | enjoyed very much. First yours, which continue to be so very reassuring for me, even though I can’t get over the fact that you have had to suffer with me in my misfortune for such a long time. Then there was Maria’s letter, '*! which, with its fairy-tale-like dreams for the future, really cheered me up. But Hans-Walter also gave up some of his brief moments of being off duty to write me a letter,”! for which I especially thank him; good that he is now

so close to Berlin.'+! Christoph in his letter shared some nice tales from Sakrow.'! Tf only the children were soon relieved of this stress. In the last package little Michael! even sent his sweets to his imprisoned godfather. Although he must never do this again, I do think this sacrifice—for that’s what it really is for such a little lad—will stay in his memory, and that it 105 gave him as much joy as it gave me. When I’m [ree again, I want to fulfill some special wish of his; let him start thinking about it. Karl Friedrich also wrote another nice letter.!’! I’ve probably already sent my thanks for Ursel’s

[8.] Maria von Wedemeyer’s letter of June 9, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 34: “T’ve requested a transfer to the Augusta Hospital in Berlin, and am now waiting to be posted there. It could happen within the next few days. Being near you would be so much nicer, and I look forward to being able to visit your parents more often.” [9.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 36.

[1.] NL, A 76,43; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 70-72. There is a draft of the letter in NZ, A 83,2. [2.| Letter of June 9 and 10, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 33-35. [3.] Unpublished letter of June 6, 1943, from Hans-Walter Schleicher to Bonhoeffer (NL, A 76,36).

[4.] In Cottbus; see 2/45. [5.] Unpublished letter of June 6, 1943, from Christoph von Dohnanyi to Bonhoeffer (NL, A 76,37). [6.] Michael DreB.

[7.|-See 1/28:

110 Letters and Papers from Prison letter.!8! From the packages I continually recognize how the whole family contributes, siblings and children, as well as Maria’s family. All ought to know how much | thank them for it; it is truly helpful. In such hard-pressed times, it is such a treasure to have such a large, close-knit family in which everyone trusts and supports one another. When pastors previously were arrested,|! I sometimes thought it would be easiest to endure for those who are single. At the time I did not know how much the warmth that radiates from the love of a woman and a family means in the cold air of imprisonment, and how in such times of separation the feeling of unconditionally belonging together even grows. I was happy to hear about Walter’s installation;!!°! I forgot to congratulate him recently on the occasion and also on his birthday. Iam also happy for Susi, who had already become so attached to the congregation and done so much for it. Mama’s and Grandmother’s letters!!!! just arrived, and I thank you very

much for them. The reports about strawberries and raspberries, about school holidays and vacation plans, actually make me [eel for the first time that summer has really arrived. In here I’m hardly aware of the seasons. I am happy about the mild temperatures. Some time ago a tit'!*! had her nest with ten young ones in a small shed here in the courtyard. I enjoyed it every day until, one day, a heartless fellow destroyed everything; some tits lay dead

on the ground—incomprehensible. During my walks in the courtyard, I also enjoy a small ant hill and the bees in the linden tree. Watching them, I’m sometimes reminded of the story by Peter Bamm, who is on a beautiful island where he also encounters all kinds of pleasant and not so pleasant

106 people; responding to a nightmare that a bomb might destroy everything, his first thought is: how sad for the butterflies!!'*! Tt is presumably the awareness of nature’s undisturbed, quiet, and free life that gives prisoners a very special—probably somewhat sentimental—relationship with animals and plants. Only my relationship with the flies in my cell still remains completely unsentimental. Prisoners are probably inclined in general to react to the lack of warmth and comfort they experience in their environment with

[8.] Unpublished letter of June 5, 1943, from Ursula Schleicher to Bonhoeffer (NL, A 76,32).

[9.] [There were occasional arrests of Confessing Church pastors throughout the 1930s, including the March 1935 arrest of some seven hundred pastors for reading a statement critical of the Nazi regime from their pulpits. See Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 40 and 56—57.—]DG]

[10.] See 1/27. [11.] See 1/30; Ruth von Kleist-Retzow’s letter is not extant. [12.] [Or chickadee.—] DG] [13.] Not identified.

d/o LE an excessive heightening of their emotional side and may easily overreact in all personal and emotional matters. In such cases it is always good to restore one’s levelheadedness and sense of humor by taking a cold shower in order not to lose one’s balance. I believe that the Christian faith, properly understood, is especially effective in rendering this service. Papa, you know all this very well from your long experience with prisoners. I myself still don’t know what the so-called prison psychosis is; I can just vaguely imagine what leads to it.

I will shortly return my smoking ration card to you. In here, I hardly get any cigarettes anymore, only very bad smoking tobacco! Maria’s and Mother’s cigarettes were magnificent. I have read Grandfather’s Ideale and Frrtiimer'""! with great pleasure; I also enjoyed Stifter’s Nachsommer very much. You must read Waldsteig, by Stifter, and Uli, by Gotthelf,!'°! sometime; they are really worthwhile. T am just returning to my cell and have seen Maria!!©!—an indescribable surprise and joy! I had been told just one minute in advance. It is still — 107 like a dream—really an almost incomprehensible situation—how we will remember this someday! Everything one is able to utter in such a moment is, Of course, so trivial, but that’s not the most important thing. It was so brave of her to come. I had not dared at all to suggest she should, since for her itis so much more difficult than it is for me. I know my situation, but for her everything is incomprehensible, puzzling, terrible. What will it be like, when this evil nightmare will someday be over. And now, to make the joy complete and as an echo from this morning, Maria’s and Mother’s letters!!! [14.] See 1/30, ed. note 6. [15.] Stifter’s Nachsommer and Der Waldsteig; Gotthelf, Ul der Knecht. [Nachsommer was translated as Indian Summer; Gotthelf’s novel appeared in English as Ulric, the Farm Servant.—]DG|]

[16.] Maria von Wedemeyer’s first face-to-face encounter with Bonhoeffer at the Reich War Court, on June 24, 1943. Cf. Wedemeyer-Weller, “Other Letters from Prison,” 25: “Our first meeting... took place in the Reichskriegsgericht [Reich War Court] and I found myself being used as a tool by the prosecutor Roeder. I was brought into the room with practically no forewarning, and Dietrich was visibly shaken. He first reacted with silence, but then carried on a normal conversation; his emotions showed only in the pressure with which he held my hand.” [17.] This presumably refers to Maria von Wedemeyer’s letter of June 20, 1943 (Love Letters from Cell 92, 36-37). In an unpublished letter of June 14, 1943, Ruth von Wedemeyer wrote Bonhoeffer: “Again and again our hearts ache because you have to suffer so much and we cannot help you except through our prayers. But they really dohelp.... With some creativity and craftiness, we now arranged Maria’s transfer to Berlin—an unusual favor! But I considered it to be very important that she be allowed to be close to your parents and to all of us, and not be left so alone as she was. May it soon be granted that you can see and embrace each other. I have no more ardent wish than that.”

112 Letters and Papers from Prison have also just arrived. How fortunate I still really am! Please let them know that this is what I tell myself every day. We will likely be allowed to see each other next week. I am looking forward to it. Maria enjoys her visits with you, and she talked so happily about the Schleichers. For this lam very grateful. And now please give most affectionate regards to all my brothers and sisters, the children, and the friends. Thinking of you always with great affection, Your grateful Dietrich

108 32. From Paula Bonhoeffer'|! June 27, 1943

Dear Dietrich, We were very happy that you were able to see and talk to Maria,!#] even though | was a little worried right away that now it would probably not work out for us.[3] However, it is perhaps a good thing for us to get a little bit used to this, and we were told by Captain Maetz|*! that it will be possible at the beginning of next week... . Maria was overjoyed by the reunion and had to tell us everything, of course. | assume she also told you about us, as she said./>] Right now, we are seriously considering whether we actually shouldn't have the most beautiful of our pictures taken out of their frames and moved to a less dangerous area. A man from the museum would help us. Our air-raid shelter is so full already. And now even the single window is to be bricked up. Papa is already over seventy, so | think | shall stay with him upstairs, come what may or must. Once the window is closed up, it will, of course, also be impossible to take the stuff out. I’m also wondering what to do with your many books in the

attic. | would like to send the most important books away as well but am not able to decide this on my own. Couldn’t you write a list sometime indicating approximately where to find them? But maybe your absence really won't last much longer now. We come to the end of every week disappointed, thinking once again, “not yet,” and who knows how many more weeks we have to live at our age—for war years count double, as they say. | have the feeling it’s “fourfold.”

[1.] NL, A 76,44; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 72-73. [2.] On June 24, 1943, at the Reich War Court; see 1/31, ed. note 16. [3.] Permits were not granted before the conclusion of the investigation and depended on the discretion of the officials in charge. [4.] Commandant of the Tegel military prison. [5.] See letter of June 20, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 36-37.

1/31-1/33 113 It’s nice that you completed your study on the sense of time.!®! I’m looking forward to reading it someday. ... In the garden everything is growing now, though the sparrows are eating the 109 peas again. Beans, tomatoes, and potatoes are thriving, and Papa hopes for a good grape harvest. And then this year, we also planted corn and tobacco!.... On the ninth the Schleichers and Karl-Friedrich’s family will travel to Tempelburg. Then the young couplel’! will live next door in the Schleichers’ home. If only you would be back by then, and you could make some music together! On July |, Emmi and the children will go to Friedrichsbrunn. Then it will be a little quieter around here for a change. .. . Whatever else is happening in the world,

you will probably learn from the paper. For | take it that you are reading the “Daz” l®] as well. Papa sends his affectionate greetings, and both of us are very much looking forward to seeing you again. Hopefully, we will get word in good time so that we can be contacted. May God continue to keep you, my dear boy. With much affection, Your Mother

33. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Sunday, July 3, 1943

My dear Parents,

When the bells at the prison church begin to ring at six o’clock on Saturday evening, it is the best moment for me to write home. What a strange power church bells have over us and how haunting they can be. So many of life’s moments are connected with them. All discontent, ingratitude, and selfishness melt away. All at once you are surrounded by good memories, as 1f by benevolent spirits. I’m always first reminded of quiet summer eyenings in Friedrichsbrunn, then of all the various congregations in which I — 110 have served, then of the many beautiful celebrations at home, weddings, baptisms, confirmations—tomorrow my godchild'! will be confirmed!—it isn't possible to list everything that comes back to life in this way. But only thoughts that are very peaceful, full of gratitude and confident hope. If only one could be of more help to other people! [6.] See 1/29, p. 106 (“The study on the sense of time is practically done”). [7.] Eberhard and Renate Bethge. [8.] Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung; see 1/9, ed. note 3.

[1.] NL, A 76,45; typewritten copy; handwritten note by Bethge: “arrived July 14.” Excerpts previously published in LPP, 73-75. [2.] Marianne Leibholz.

114 Letters and Papers from Prison The past week has been filled with much quiet work and good books, and also with letters from you and Maria,! and today with your wonderful package. lama little concerned that your windows in the air-raid shelter are to be bricked up. I feel you shouldn't under any circumstances consent to this. It would block the only exit, which is certainly not intended. I have spo-

ken about it with the captain here, and he himself successfully refused. It’s just the rigid implementation of a regulation that is not applicable to your house at all. Rudiger ought to help you a little with this. I can understand, of course, that you now plan to stay upstairs during alarms, but I find it disconcerting. So it must be sorted out. It’s certainly possible to cover the window with a thick layer of sandbags.

To part with the beautiful pictures would be sad. But perhaps it’s the right thing to do, ferocious as the attacks seem to be right now. I do hope to be able to take care of my books myself to save you the trouble. Perhaps the large folders with Rembrandt reproductions should be stowed away in a safe place. Maria has written to me about interior-decorating questions,!°! which made me incredibly happy. The sketches of the furniture in her room I find very darling. [am happy for all of them that she is now able to be at home

for a while. ... Please ask her whether she might not want to try the lute instead of the violin, if she really feels there is no prospect for the violin. In that case, however, she would have to study some harmonics at the same time. It would really be nice if this were possible. ... Please also thank her

for her letter and the pictures. | would very much lke an enlargement of the picture of her in Ruth-Alice Bismarck’s wedding procession;'®! it is so I11 lovely; the dress too I find especially beautiful. She baked such a gorgeous cake for me, by the way, that it was already a feast for the eyes and later even more a feast for the stomach; my only regret was that I could not offer you some of it, Mama!

Just to keep you up to date, not because I think it’s really worth mentioning, I should tell you about my lumbago. Although it isn’t severe, I’ve already had it for three weeks, which is somewhat annoying. The stone floor is probably to blame. All conceivable remedies such as electric light baths [Lichtbader]!/! and footbaths have been tried but with no success at all. [3.] 1/32, and Maria von Wedemeyer’s letter of June 26, 1943, in Love Letters from Cell 92, 39-42. [4.] Captain Maetz. [5.] Love Letters from Cell 92, 40-41.

[6.] This photo is included in the German edition of Brautbriefe, 276. [It is not included in the English translation, Love Letters from Cell 92.—]DG] [7.] [This probably refers to treatment using infrared light.—]DG]

1/33 and 1/34 115 A quarter of a year has now passed in custody. From my student days I recall Schlatter®! telling us in his ethics lectures that one of the civic duties of a Christian was to endure a pretrial detention with calmness. At the time these were empty words for me. Over the past weeks I have sometimes thought of them. And now, with the same calmness and patience as we have thus far, let us continue to endure the remaining time imposed on us. In my dreams I am, more than ever, already back with you in freedom. The fire lilies have been gorgeous. The blossoms open slowly in the morning and only last for the day. The next morning new ones open. The last ones will probably be gone the day after tomorrow. Just now [am returning from my visit with you. It was once again so won-

derful; I am deeply grateful for the opportunity. I keep thinking particularly of Renate. You both have already had enough experience of this with my sisters that you can make things easier for her.'?! Iam really very happy. Gocthe’s mother, by the way, was barely eighteen years old when he was born. Please do give her my special regards. Greetings to my brothers and sisters, and the children too; I think there is not one among them who does not come to my mind at least once every day. I was especially happy to hear that the grandmother!!! is so well again. If only you would be freed from your worries soon and be able to travel. That is my constant wish. Again with thanks for everything and much love to you, Your Dietrich

34. From Karl Bonhoeffer! |! 112 Berlin-Charlottenburg 9, July Il, 1943

Dear Dietrich, There has not been much family news since we saw and spoke to each other on Monday. !#] Yesterday, Grete and the four children! left for Tempelburg after staying with us overnight. Karl-Friedrich is still teaching and was thus unable

[8.] See DB-ER, 54: “Schlatter did not lecture on ethics in 1923 and 1924 [when Bonhoeffer attended his lectures]. ... Bonhoeffer may have been recalling some other reading or a statement Schlatter made at one of his open houses.” There is no such statement in Adolf Schlatter’s Ethics, [9.] [Dealing with a newborn baby.—JDG] [10.] [A reference to Maria’s grandmother, Ruth von Kleist-Retzow.—]DG] [1.] NL, A 76,47; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 75. [2.] July 5, 1943.

[3.] Karl, Friedrich, Martin, and Katharina Bonhoeffer.

116 Letters and Papers from Prison to come along... . Did you find anything useful for your project in Heidegger’s Phadnomenologie des ZeitbewuBtseins?!*] For a clinical psychiatrist, it is difficult

reading, almost too difficult. For you it will be less difficult since you grew up with the more recent philosophers. | would rather stay with Stifter’s Nachsommer, which you recommended. The “Einkehr” chapter!?! very much reminds me of the Mappe des UrgroBvaters, where Stifter also introduces the visit to an unknown home with a lovely description of the garden.l¢] Maria wrote that she has requested permission for a visit. Hopefully, her wish will be granted. We hope to receive a letter from you soon. Mama sends her love. She will write before long. Much love, Father

113. 35. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer!!! July Il, 1943

Dear Dietrich,

Hope does not disappoint!!?] Every time | sit down to write you, | am hoping that the letter won't even get to you because you'll already have been released. Since the last time | was in Berlin for business, our parents were able to speak with you, an event that probably nourished you throughout last week. | was very happy that their impression of you was reassuring and obviously good for them. |am a bachelor for the moment. Grete and the children left for Tempelburg the day before yesterday. They left, all having to stand in the terribly crowded train aisle! In Berlin they spent a day and a night with our parents, for whom it was hopefully not just exhausting but also somewhat enjoyable. After all, it was quite a crowd of lodgers. | am now enjoying the complete tranquility and lack of interruptions. During the day | reworked my lecture and once again brought it “up to date.” | also worked in the garden for several hours. Our pear tree had never borne any fruit before, and last year we thought of felling it. This year, [4.] Heidegger, Being and Time, pars. 65-83, pp. 370-488; see also Edmund Husserl’s article (edited by Martin Heidegger), “Zur Phanomenologie des inneren ZeitbewuBbtseins. [5.] “Die Einkehr” (Stopping Off), in Stifter, Der Nachsommer, 42-65. [6.] Stifter, Die Mappe meines Urgrofvaters, 131: “In the garden the irrepressible angel-

ica root still ran riot; next to it stood a gray trunk whose two remaining living branches still bore black wild cherries every year, and dropped leaves as red as blood in the fall.” See also DBWE 7:90, ed. note 77.

[1.] NL, A 76,48; handwritten; from Leipzig; previously published in LPP, 76. [2.] Allusion to Rom. 5:5a, which has become proverbial.

1/34-1/36 117 however, it is absolutely loaded with fruit, which, from a great height, hangs down on long, thin switches that are bound to break at the very first storm. | have built a high scaffold around the tree by nailing together laundry poles and the like and thus hope to save some of the fruit and the tree. This year’s berry harvest isn’t bad either. But the stuff isn’t sweet since there was no sunshine. At least it’s comforting for you to know that you haven't missed too much sunshine lately. ... Warmly, Your Karl Friedrich

36. From Paula Bonhoeffer!!! 114 Berlin-Charlottenburg 9 July 14, 1943

Dear Dietrich,

Your letter from the fifth didn’t arrive until today.[7] Even though mail is not supposed to be routed via FlorastraBel?] anymore, it still took this long. At least it was fortunate that, in the meantime, we were able to speak with you and see you healthy and in good spirits. Please do not worry about the air-aid shelter in the cellar. | have spoken with the sergeant in charge of the case, and he now intends to requisition a gas door for us and also install a gas window, which can be opened and locked. Of course, there is still a lot of mess, for everything must presumably be cleared out beforehand. ...| also like your idea of a lute for Maria.!*] We do have a good one here; only the strings are missing and would have to be found somewhere. | think Maria will soon visit you again. She is keenly hoping to get a permit. ... | rather doubt that we will travel to Uncle Hans’s birthday celebration.! The trains are supposedly crowded; for Papa it would be quite exhausting, and he doesn’t want me to travel by myself. Nor is one at all in the mood for celebrations—

| think in the morning we will go to Potsdam to visit Aunt Hannah’s grave.!®! With Uncle Rudi!7! still in Sweden and Riidiger Goltz!®] in Kiensegg, probably no

[1.] NL, A 76,49; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 75. [2.] The reference is to Bonhoeffer’s letter of July 3, 1943, 1/33. [3.] Not identified [most likely a censorship facility—]DG]. [4.] See 1/33, p. 114. [5.] Hans von Hase in Frankfurt/Oder; he was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s godfather and Paula Bonhoeffer’s brother. [6.| Countess Hannah von der Goltz, née von Hase, the twin sister of Hans von Hase, [7.] Count Rudiger von der Goltz. [8.] Count Rudiger von der Goltz, son of “Uncle Rudi.”

118 Letters and Papers from Prison one else will visit, which | would regret. I’ll be glad to let him know that you have asked me to send him your greetings from prison. July 16

The letter didn’t get finished. ... Please let me know what else you still need, 115 and please do inquire whether your letters are really no longer routed via the detour!’! since they are taking so very long. My own letters, it seems, are getting through more quickly. | am very glad that on Sunday mornings you are at least able to hear the church bells. | am still always especially reminded of the church bells in Gnadenberg,l!°] where, at the beginning, | also often felt like a caged bird. All of us have every reason to be thankful for having such beautiful memories to comfort and

support us in difficult times—memories that make us aware, perhaps only in contrast, of how good we used to have it; now let us cling to them in hard times also. “Thanks be to God for everything.” l!!]

Papa and your brothers and sisters and friends send their love and always surround you in wishing you the very best. Affectionately, Your Mother

37. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Sunday, July 24,'*! 1943

My dear Parents,

Now you delivered the package yourself yesterday, even in this heat. I hope it has not been too much for you. lam deeply grateful to you and for everything you brought. Of course, I especially welcome the summer produce in here. Even the tomatoes are already ripe. Only now am I beginning to feel 116 the warmth; it is not yet bothersome here in my cell, especially since I don’t move around much. However, the craving for fresh air does get stronger. [9.] Not identified, but see ed. note 3 above. [10.] The Moravian boarding school where Paula von Hase was enrolled at age fifteen “because she was so wild” (Sabine Leibholz to the German editors).

[11.] See Bonhoeffer’s sermon for his pre-ordination theological exam in 1930, DBWE 10, 3/22, p. 578: “As has been related regarding the great church father [John Chrysostom—JDG] of the East whose life concluded with tribulation and prison and from whose mouth came the final words: Thanks be to God for all things.” [1.] NZ, A 76,51; handwritten; previously published in LPP, 76-78. There is a draft of the letter in NL, A 76,52; handwritten in pencil; with copy. [2.] Correctly: "25,"

1/36 and 1/37 119 I would like to enjoy an evening in the garden again. The daily half-hour walk, although nice, is just not enough. The various cold symptoms, muscle pains, runny nose, and such, will presumably only clear up once I’m breathing fresh air again. | am always delighted with the flowers, which bring some color and life into the gray cell. I do thank you very much for your letters with the family news. I hope that everyone has had an enjoyable vacation, for all need it. | received another very nice letter from Susi,!?! which gave me much pleasure. She is right; only this period of separation makes

one really aware that in normal times one often doesn’t put enough effort into getting together. One thinks it unnecessary to specially “nurture” the natural relationships among siblings, and for that reason some things are neglected, which is a pity. I also thank Walter very much for his postcard, and especially Susi for often delivering the packages, which, of course, 1s always a strain on her.!*! Given all the trouble you have with the packages, you must also know that I’m enjoying every little bit with deep gratitude and a very hearty appetite, and so thus far I have been able to retain my strength. I always arrange it so that a package lasts me just through the week, and thus get a pleasant reminder and refreshment each day. In this way I already fecl surrounded by all of you during breakfast, which is all the better since | find especially the morning the most difficult part of the day to cope with inwardly.”

I very much enjoyed two nice letters, one from Maria'’! and one from my mother-in-law*!—dated June 27, by the way. Was it left somewhere?

[3.] Unpublished letter of July 18, 1943, from Susanne Dreb to Bonhoeffer (NL, A 76,50).

[4.] Unpublished postcard of July 11, 1943, from Walter DreB to Bonhoeffer (NZ, A 76,46).

[5.| Susanne Dre} describes this delivery service in W.-D. Zimmermann, / Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 215-21.

[6.] Deleted in the draft: “Until I have read the Daily Texts and a few psalms, I am.” [The daily Old and New Testament readings, along with a hymn verse, prayer or maxim (Losung) for each day of the year, are published annually as the Losungen (Daily Texts) by the Moravian Brethren (Bridergemeine) in Herrnhut, Saxony, and are now distributed in forty languages. They are published in English as the Daily Texts.—JDG] [7.] From July 6 and 13, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 43-47.

[8.] Unpublished letter of June 27, 1943, from Ruth von Wedemeyer to Bonhoeffer: “Coming back from seeing you [after their first encounter on June 24, 1943, at the Reich War Court; see 1/31, ed. note 16], Maria was initially so shaken that for a long time she could not utter a word and first had to release her strong emotions through tears. Then she told me many things, and in each sentence one could sense a great, brightly burning joy. To my eyes, her expression was totally transformed. Now she lives entirely from this hour and ponders all the words in her heart. How wonderful that there was no strangeness between you, that you were able to be so cheerful with her!”

120 Letters and Papers from Prison 117 ~=Maria ought to go horseback riding as much as she likes. It makes me happy, and I envy her. However, since she pays no attention to my suggestion that she should give me riding lessons, I assume that she considers me a hopeless case—but could she perhaps be mistaken? If, however, she thinks that horseback riding is not proper for a minister, then I’d just beg to differ! ’'m glad that my musical suggestion’! makes sense to her. It would be wonderful if she could get hold of a viola da gamba.'!"! If necessary, it’s possible to figure out on one’s own how to play the instrument; Renate’s husband is a master at that. However, I do hope that we'll be able to learn it together. Surely Maria isn’t ending her medical leave prematurely, against the doctor’s advice? All other considerations aside, as a future minister’s wife she

will need healthy feet and probably won't be able to count on a horse to ride! I’m glad that she has a lot of reading time. In my own reading I now live entirely in the nineteenth century. During these past months I have read Gotthelf, Stifter, Immermann, Fontane, and Keller with renewed admiration. A period in which such clear and plain German could be written must have been essentially healthy. The most tender things are treated without getting sentimental, the most robust without

ectting [rivolous; convictions are expressed without pathos, and neither the language nor the subject matter is overly simplistic or complicated—in

short, I find all this very appealing and very healthy. But it presupposes intensive work on German style and thus much tranquility.'!"!! By the way, once again I was captivated by the most recent Reuter book.!!*! Tam aston-

118 ished and delighted to feel such an inner affinity, which often extends to the choice of language; the very choice of expression often creates a sense of connection with or distance from an author. I still need to add special thanks for the smoking supplies and to all the kind donors of cigarettes! How is Renate faring? Please do send her my love and also give her my thanks for her greetings. Each time I hope that this will be the last letter | write you from prison. After all, my release is becoming more likely every day, and gradually one has also just had enough of being here. I would really wish for all of us to still have a few nice summer days together. [9.] See 1/33, p. 114. [10.] [A precursor to the modern cello.—]JDG]

[11.] Here the draft of the letter reads: “Incidentally, I continue to study Catholic [the word deleted here is illegible] ethics with an increasing inner objection to casuistry. Undoubtedly the outcome [illegible] closed [illegible] system, but of course a system of duties cannot comprise life.” [12.] Reuter, Ut mine Festungstid; see 1/29, ed. note 9.

1/37 and 1/38 ZI By the way, Papa, did you consent to appear in the “Film of Notable Personalities”?!'!*! T do think it would be quite nice after all. Besides, it would certainly produce a number of good photographs of you, wouldn’t it? Once again, many thanks for all the things you continually do for me. Please pass on my greetings to Maria, her mother, her grandmother, and also the new brothers- and sisters-in-law,''*! and of course all my brothers and sisters and their children. In love and gratitude, Your Dietrich 38. From Karl Bonhoeffer! |! Berlin-Charlottenburg, July 28, 1943

Dear Dietrich,

| have been intending to write to you for the past several days, but something always interfered. In that regard you are more master of your own time; so even in your position there are still areas where one can speak of freedom. This morning we were informed that Maria will be allowed to visit you the day after next.!7] We are happy for both of you. My letter will not get to you until after 119 you have spoken with her. Thus | don’t need to tell you about how we and the extended family are doing. She will tell you the important things. On Sunday the Leipzig clan and the Schleichers!?! will return from Tempelburg; probably again an expansive but amusing overnight stay with us, unless the Leipzig clan already travel on that same evening. Emmi has already returned with her three children, and Suse’s time in Friedrichsbrunn also soon draws to a close.!*] Thus spring and summer go by. During these hot days we think of you often in your cell under the roof. We take some small comfort by remembering those hot days in September when we visited you in Barcelona. When you came to see us in the early morning, you asked us whether we had been cold at night. You apologized for having

[13.] See 1/26, ed. note 7. [14.] Maria von Wedemeyer’s brothers and sisters.

[1.] NZ, A 76,53; handwritten; on the letterhead a penciled note from Bonhoeffer: “Air-raid protection! Travel, Reuter, Captain on vacation. Hans can’t stand the heat!” Previously published in LPP, 78-79. [2.] On July 30, 1943, at the Reich War Court; see 1/39, ed. note 2. [3.| The families of Karl-Friedrich and Margarete Bonhoeffer and Rudiger and Ursula Schleicher. [4.| Emmi Bonhoeffer with Thomas, Cornelie, and Walter, as well as Susanne DreB with Michael and Andreas.

P22 Letters and Papers from Prison taken the woolen blanket, while we ourselves had in fact been unable to escape from the heat during the night.[>! Almost four months have now passed with you being out there. One may hope that the issues are by now sufficiently clarified, and we will soon have you back in our midst. lt would be wonderful if we could spend some time together in Friedrichsbrunn. However, in these times of restlessness and bomb threats, one doesn't dare to think of such idyllic settings. And after all, it’s quite nice in the garden too; if only Mother didn’t have to take care of all the chores, one could be completely content with it. And very often—as patients tell me again and again—people are glad to be back home again since there is still more food available here. Still, nothing can top a walk in the Friedrichsbrunn forest or a beautiful afternoon in the meadow, and | would still like to experience that again sometime. Much love from Mama and Your Father

120 39. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer' || July 30, 1943

My dear Parents,

During today’s meeting at the Reich War Court,! I received permission from Dr. Roeder'*! to write to you and to Ridiger Goltz'*! regarding my

[5.] Regarding the visit by Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer in Barcelona in September 1928, see, ¢.g., DBWE 10, 1/45 and 1/48, as well as DB-ER, 103.

[1.] NZ, A 77,55; handwritten comment by Bethge regarding the date: “Friday.” Previously published in LPP, 80.

[2.] On July 30, 1943, at the Reich War Court, Bonhoeffer was informed that the criminal investigation had been concluded for the time being; this marked the beginning of the preparations for the prosecution case by Roeder as chief investigator. At the same time Bonhoeffer’s fiancée visited; see Love Letters from Cell 92, 40.

[3.] The right of an accused to choose his own defense attorney according to paragraph 72 of the War Criminal Code was applied “very restrictively.” The question of whether to allow the defense attorney chosen by the accused or to have one appointed by the court was decided by the presiding judge or (in the main trial before the Reich War Court) by the president of the senate, who acted as chief justice. Special circumstances applied to cases classified as “secret operations’; here “practically all the defendants had a court-appointed defense attorney” in the main trial. However, exceptions were made in the cases against Hans von Dohnanyi, Josef Muller, and Bonhoeffer, who “in the end were all able to have attorneys of their own choosing” (Chowaniec, fall Dohnanyi, 55). [4.] Count Rtidiger von Goltz (son of Hannah, the sister of Paula Bonhoeffer), attorney and state counsel, and an NSDAP member with a golden party badge [these were

1/38 and 1/39 123 defense. I am not certain about Rudiger’s Bavarian address and would therefore ask you to get in touch with him. Considering his leg injury, which as far as | know has worsened again, [am doubtful whether he himself will be able to take on the case. However, I trust he will be able to recommend someone suitable. Dr. Roeder thought the defense attorney would need one day to study the files, one day to interview me, and another for the trial, that is, three days. That is not very much. And I presume you, Papa, know many attorneys as well. From the Lubbe trial,!°! you also know Dr. Sack.!°! However, it is doubtful whether such a “heavyweight” would be able to give = 121 his attention to a case of such minor importance to him; also he is said to be terribly expensive. I simply mention this as a reminder but am really not able to make a judgment.!7! What I have in mind is a calm, experienced, older man"! who is not partisan with regard to church politics and whom one can trust both professionally and personally. I myself don’t know anyone, but Iam sure you will make the right choice. It would be good if you could clarify the matter soon. I also want to mention that I now have permission to write to you every fourth day; this is very good for me. I think I will alternate between writing to you and to Maria." Many thanks for everything, and please don’t worry! Love to you and my brothers and sisters, Yours,

Dietrich

special honorary badges, held by the first one hundred thousand party members and by those personally designated by Adolf Hitler—JDG]. In 1931/32 he was the defense attorney for Joseph Goebbels, who had insulted Field Marshal von Hindenburg during the election campaign. See DB-ER, 821-22. Bonhoeffer is hinting at his excellent connections for the censor. [5.] See DB-ER, 264-65. [6.] Dr. Alfons Sack, public defense attorney in the 1933 Reichstag fire trial; see also 1/26, ed. note 5. Regarding Alfons Sack, see Konig, Vom Dienst am Recht, 74-77, 161-64.

[7.] “From the Lubbe trial... make a judgment” added later. [8.] This was a hint that the services of attorney Horst Holstein should not be engaged for Bonhoeffer’s political military case, since Holstein had long worked for the Confessing Church; in particular he had represented Martin Niemoller. [9.] See letter of July 30, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 41-42.

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rans = Awaiting the Trial August 1943—April 1944

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40. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! 125 August 3, 1943

My dear Parents,

Iam really glad and thankful that ’'m now allowed to write to you more frequently,'*! for I fear that you are worrying, first, about the heat in my attic cell and, second, about the request for an attorney.!*! Your magnificent

package has just arrived with tomatoes, apples, compote, thermos bottle, and so on, and with the fantastic cooling-salts that I had never seen before. What effort you’ve expended on my behalf yet again! Please don’t worry. I have often experienced worse heat, in Italy, Africa, Spain, Mexico—and perhaps worst of all in New York in July [19]39; and I know more or less

how to manage best; I drink!*! and eat little, sit quietly at my desk, and find myself actually unencumbered in my work. Now and then, | refresh heart and stomach with your fine things. I don’t want to request transfer to another floor; I don’t consider that decent with regard to the other prisoner who would then have to move into my cell, presumably without tomatoes and such; besides, it probably doesn’t matter much objectively whether it’s 34° or 30°! in the room. But T know that, unfortunately, Hans always tolerates heat so poorly;\°! I feel very sorry for him. But it’s always a remark-

able observation that one bears up quite differently under what can’t be changed than when one is constantly thinking one could somehow improve one’s situation. Now with regard to my request for an attorney, I very much hope you have not been greatly disturbed in the meantime but await the unfolding

of events as serenely as I do. Really you must not think Iam now quite — 126 depressed or anxious. Naturally it was a disappointment, as presumably for you as well. Yet in a certain sense it is also a liberation to know that the conclusive clarification of the situation we have awaited for so long will now be coming soon. Iam waiting daily for more precise information. If Rudiger

[1.] NL, A 77,56; handwritten; note by Bethge: “arrived August 10.” Previously published in LPP, 87-89. See also draft of letter in NL, A 77,57. [2.] See 1/39. BA rece Pash B

[4.] From the draft of the letter: “have strong craving in the morning for coffee and after meals for some alcohol to refresh the heart, and after all eventually a thunderstorm will come.”

[5.] [These are Celsius temperatures. The Fahrenheit equivalents are 93 and 86. —JDG]

[6.] See 1/38, ed. note 1, and Bonhoeffer’s penciled note: “Hans [von Dohnanyi] can't stand the heat.”

ea

128 Letters and Papers from Prison Goltz!7! cannot make himself available immediately, that does not matter much. Dr. Roeder said explicitly it’s a case that any proper lawyer could handle, and if it’s a capable, warmhearted, decent man, who in addition is a calm and distinguished negotiator who will maintain the tone cultivated thus far in the proceedings'*!—and you are the ones who can best assess this—I am completely in agreement. Personally I actually feel that one says best oneself what one has to say, but a lawyer is probably necessary nonetheless for the legal matters, of which I understand nothing.

I sometimes wonder these days whether perhaps you ought to go to Sakrow!! for the foreseeable future because of possible air raids. Maria suggested Patzig,!!°! but there the connections are so inconvenient, and you won't want to travel before the conclusion of my case, would you? Wouldn't it also be prudent for Renate to move in with her mother-in-law in the country'!!! for a while and her husband try to arrange his work correspondingly? It’s only an hour’s drive. But perhaps all worries are quite unnecessary, as 1S so often the case. Hopefully!

I have again been reading some good things. /irg Jenatsch''-! brought back youthful recollections with much joy and interest. As to historical mat127 ters, I found the book on the Venetians very instructive and compelling.!!*! Would you please send me some Fontane: Frau J. Treibel; Irrungen, Wirrungen; Slechlin.4! This intensive reading in recent months will also do much good for my work. One often learns more for “ethics” in such places than in textbooks. [like Kein Huisung, by Reuter, as much as you do, Mama. But have I now read through all the Reuter volumes? Or do you still have something more special?

[7.] The defense attorney Count Riidiger von der Goltz (see 1/39, ed. note 4), who as Bonhoeffer’s cousin was an obvious choice, eventually took on the defense of Hans von Dohnanyi, though with little engagement. 18.| The German editor notes that this comment is inserted for the benefit of the censor. Cf. DBWE 7:244, which is the draft for this sentence. It is written on a page of preparatory notes for the Tegel drama fragment. [9.] The Dohnanyis lived in Sakrow (see 1/5, ed. note 1), a small village located near Berlin and easily reached by bus from the HeerstraBe station (the nearest S-Bahn station to the Bonhoeffer home on Marienburger Allee). [10.] The Wedemeyer family estate. [11.] To Kade, the village where Eberhard Bethge’s mother lived. [12.] C. F. Meyer, ftirg Jenastch. [13.] Andreas, Staatskunst und Diplomatie der Venezianer im Spiegel ihrer Gesandtenberichte. [14.] Fontane, Frau Jenny Treibel oder Wo sich Herz zu Herz find’; Irrungen, Wirrungen; Der Stechlin.

2/40 129 By the way, I’ve just remembered, on the question of the lawyer it would be good if the man were to take some time for me and not be too rushed. I think this should be as with a doctor, who also shouldn’t give the impression he has many things to do. Just now for my noon meal I ate two of those wonderful tomatoes from

the garden and thought of the work you put into growing them. But they have really turned out splendidly. ‘Thank you so much! Dear Papa, thank you so much for your letter.!'®! In our love of Friedrichsbrunn, none of us can possibly be outdone by another. This year it’s been thirty years since you

bought it! Iam still very much hoping for a few beautiful days there with you, and perhaps that will also cure my lumbago. After seeing Maria again, I have already been able to write to her,!!°! J was very happy about that. I always feel so terribly sorry for her when she has to go to the Reich War Court. But I thought she looked better.

Are these hot days particularly burdensome for Renate’s condition? I would be very sorry about that. Do send my love to her along with her husband and of course all my siblings and the children. In Der griine Heinrich, I recently read the pretty verse, “And through the powerful waves / Of the scas conspiring against me / Comes to me from your song, / Albeit mulfled, each note.”!!”!

With much love and good confidence, your grateful 128 Dietrich I just read the call to evacuate;!!®! couldn’t you at least spend the nights in Sakrow for a while? All the others will already have made their own plans by now. It is really quite distasteful in such a time to have to sit here uselessly and wait. Hopefully, we'll see each other soon! D.

ED eke; [16.] On July 30, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 41-42. On this reunion, see Maria von Wedemeyer’s diary entry, Love Letters from Cell 92, 41. [17.] Gottfried Keller, Der griine Heinrich, 783.

[18.] Berlin evacuation plans for families and offices following the aerial bombings of Hamburg on July 24, 25, 27, and 29, and August 3, 1943 (reported in Die Wehrmachtberichte, 2:524-3]1).

130 Letters and Papers from Prison 41. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer! ': August 7, 1943

My dear Parents,

This letter is coming to you after all instead of to Maria, as I had originally intended. For I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to send letters to her with my present address on the envelope. Village gossip spreads quickly, and there might be someone there who knows what Tegel, SeidelstraBbe 39 means; I would like to spare Maria that.'*! Also she is not even home right now, so I wish to be extra careful not to put her in a position I can’t manage from here. She already has enough to endure. So I'll wait until I hear from her what she thinks about this. This dependence on waiting in every matter characterizes my present situation, and the closer one hopes to come to the goal, the harder it is to be patient. Now the heat has broken, and I am again sitting at my desk in my jacket. 129 =ButI want to thank you again that you brought me such relief during those hot days. The trip to Tegel was surely a terrible ordeal for you each time. Are you now also very busy preparing for the air raids? Given everything that’s appeared in the newspaper in recent days, one cannot help thinking this through all over again in detail. For instance, | was remembering that at one point we were talking with certain misgivings about the beams in the cellar; weren't there some plans to modify somehow the main beam in the middle? Do you still intend this, and is help available to do it? Timagine that is very difficult right now. I so wish | could help you in this. But do tell me everything; each little detail is interesting. What plans do my brothers and sisters have for their children? Will you be going to Sakrow,!! at least at night?

In order to tear myself entirely out of such thoughts if only for short intervals, I have been reading Hauff’s fairy tales'*! in recent days with great

amusement. They transport a person into a completely different world, where the only fear remaining is that one might awake all too soberly from

[1.]) NL, A 77,58; handwritten; note by Bethge, “Saturday.” Previously published in LPP, 89-91.

[2.] He addresses this concern directly to Maria in an August 12, 1943, letter (see Love Letters from Cell 92, 48-49); on his fiancée’s reaction (of August 15, 1943), see Love Letters from Cell 92, 50-51.

[3.] See 2/40, ed. note 9. [4.] Hauff, Marchen (Marchen-Almanach auf das Jahr 1826, 1827, 1828).

2/41 131 the realm of fantasy and dreams. I would truly like to read Lichtenstein”! again some time; I have it in a Reclam paperback edition!®! at home; the small print wouldn't bother me. Actually I hope from each day to the next that your visits to Tegel will not have to be so frequent anymore, so that at last you can finally take the vacation you need so much, with your minds at ease. The other day I read about the obligatory registering of copper vessels. This includes my Spanish “brassaro”; 7! jt should be recorded, however, that this is a work of art from the eighteenth century. It’s remarkable how little one cares about such things in times like these. From among my books I would like to have Vilmar, Schlatter, Calvin stored someplace safe, perhaps also the old pictures in my room, but please — 130 do not take too much trouble with this. Books can always be acquired again later, after all, and what is most imporiant in these times is that you keep up your strength; in comparison with this everything else is entirely secondary. Now Sunday is also almost over, and I am approaching the new weck with great anticipation.”! I hope there will be more mail soon from you and Maria. I believe I have never yet told you that each day when I am unable to read or write anymore, | study a little chess theory;'”! I do enjoy that. If you find something small and good on this, perhaps with exercises, | would be grateful, but don’t go to any inconvenience; it works fine this way. Now please remember me to all my siblings again and please let me know all your plans and decisions soon. Would you please discuss with Maria what she thinks regarding mail,'!®! and send her my best greetings.—Thinking fondly of all of you,

Your grateful Dietrich

[5.] Hauff, Lichtenstein.

[6.] [Slender paperback reprints published by the Phillip Reclam Jr. publishing house,—JDG] [7.] Spanish: brasero (brazier), from la brasa (ember, fiery coal). [Bonhoeffer had pur-

chased this piece during his time as assistant pastor in Barcelona; he had also taken it with him to Finkenwalde. See DB-ER, 104.—]DG| [8.] This refers to their hopes for an imminent trial date. [9.] See 1/24, ed. note 9. [10.] [See Bonhoeffer’s concerns about addressing letters to Maria at the beginning of this letter.—]DG]

132 Letters and Papers from Prison 42. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer! |! August 8, 1943

Dear Dietrich, | haven’t written you for a long time, with hardly any excuse except that lately | haven’t found a quiet moment to do so. That is, my time as a bachelor!?! was not pure leisure in reality. These days there are constantly things to do and to take care of in a large household where things have to go on. “Being a father, however, very much so”!*! holds true now even when the children are not at 131 all around. Also there are the many invitations from acquaintances who try to rescue me from being bored at home in the evenings—a state | don’t get into easily. Thus despite many attempts at writing, nothing ever came of them. In the meantime, Grete has returned with the children. ... But | don’t want to keep them here. Instead they are all leaving on Monday for Friedrichsbrunn in the Harz Mountains. | believe it is high time to prepare for air raids, and children do not belong in the mess that would result from a severe attack. | had my colleague from Hamburg here to stay for a few days.'! He arrived with a small satchel. He had been in the city center during the first three severe attacks, then slept a night outside in the country, and did not return to the city. Thus he was swept along to us. Now he has gone back again to check on his belongings. | just hope that it won't be Berlin’s turn as long as you both”! are “sitting.” !°! But one must, of course, reckon even with that possibility. Travel conditions are presently very difficult, as you can imagine, so that | am restricting my official traveling as much as possible and will be in Berlin less frequently. Under these conditions, it is not pleasant to be separated from one’s family. For one never knows how often it will be possible to see one another. One must simply remember that today in Europe there are very few families that have been able to stay together up to

[1.] NZ, A 77,59; handwritten; from Leipzig. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 91-92. [2.] [Grete Bonhoeffer and their children were staying out in the country because of the air raids.—]DG] [3.] The third part of Wilhelm Busch’s Tobias Knopp, titled “Julchen,” begins with the couplet “Becoming a father is not difficult; being a father, however, very much so.”

[4.] This refers to Paul Harteck; prior to his appointment to Hamburg, he was an assistant along with Karl-Friedrich at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem (their research focused on hydrogen). See Jaenicke, Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer, 369, and DB-ER, 45. | Karl Friedrich stopped work on hydrogen when its importance for constructing a nuclear bomb became evident. See Bethge, “Nonreligious Scientist and the Confessing Theologian,” 42.—]DG] [5.] [Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi.—]DG] [6.] [Sztzen, “to sit,” is slang for being in prison.—JDG]

2/42 and 2/43 133 now—and be thankful that it has been possible so far. In any case, how the days ahead might look goes beyond human foresight. . . . All the best; don’t lose your patience. We are all hoping very much to see you soon. Yours, Karl Friedrich

43. From Paula Bonhoeffer! |! 132 August II, 1943

Dear Dietrich, ... The news that a lawyer should be notified was of course a shock to us,'*! but since we know that for Christian reasons you are a man of order who wishes to obey all laws, we told ourselves that it could only be some sort of formal error or perhaps lack of information. According to the new German law, justice is clearly administered on the basis of a person’s convictions;'*! so just like you, we won't worry about the outcome of this matter but rather place it, like our entire uncertain life, in this time into God’s hand.... Your most important books have now been moved from the attic into the cellar, and yesterday the record player and records as well. The Durer reproductions are out there.!*! Of course, we missed your directions and help very much. Lotte!®! is in Schweidnitz, where her mother suddenly died. But she returns on Saturday. So | am alone with Else, and even though every child and grandchild is prepared to jump in and help at a moment’s notice, this comes to nothing due to their also needing to take care of so many things. ... A warm and friendly invitation to the country came from your mother-in-law for us or some of the grandchildren. But until your cases are settled, we don’t want to go away. If things become too chaotic, perhaps we will sleep out there. !°! Papa doesn’t want to leave his work despite his seventy-five years. In regard to the film of the “renowned personalities” that the propaganda ministry wanted to make about him,'’! he wishes to make a decision only when his children are no longer in prison, and | understand that. But when the attacks come, do take

[1.] NL, A 77,60; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg; notation by E. Bethge, “received August 23, 1943.” Excerpts previously published in LPP, 92-93, [2.] See 1/39. [3.] The German editors believe that this passage was written for the censor. [4.] In Sakrow. [5.] Lotte Pisker. [6.] [L.e., in Sakrow, outside the city —]DG] ['7.] See 1/26, ed. note 7.

134 Letters and Papers from Prison 133. care of yourself too, as best you can. Make sure you receive something to shield your head, and that you have enough water to wet a towel and make it into a hood over your head, and have them give you your blanket from the cabinet SO you can wrap yourself in it wet, and wet your shoes, and so on; these are supposed to be the most important things when you are forced to go through fire. On Sunday we were with Paul von Hase!®! and his wife, and saw such a display of phosphorescent bombs. This is not beauty! | received a very kind letter from Maria. | think you will have a very dear, brave wife, and that gives us great joy. When she is finished with her treatment,'’! she plans to come to Berlin. | strongly dissuaded her and think her mother will not allow it! She wishes to help me, but instead | would just have one more worry. Today | forced a quiet hour out of the day to write a letter to you. In my thoughts, | am actually so constantly with the two of you that | truly have no real idea whether and when | last wrote. The lines you quoted from Der griine Heinrich!!! gave me great pleasure. Now may God continue to protect you and mercifully lead us all together again. With Papa, always thinking of you, Your Mother

44. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer' || August 17, 1943

My dear Parents,

Iam enclosing a power of attorney for Riidiger'*! in case he is able to take on the case after all; in the meantime, you will presumably have heard from him. Of course, I can understand if he is unwilling to make a special trip

134 to Berlin for a matter like this, particularly at this time and as the father of ten children. But | assume you will also have spoken with him about Dr. Wergin.!®!

The hour with you yesterday! was again indescribably lovely; thank you so much for coming. I find that you in particular, Papa, could be looking somewhat better. Why do you both not do as I do and go to bed at 8:00 or

[8.] See 1/24, ed. note 10. [9.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 54 (letter dated September 13, 1943). [10.] See 2/40, p. 129. [1.] NZ, A 77,61; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 93-95. See also the draft written August 16, 1943, NL, A 77,62 (copy). [2.] Count Rudiger von der Goltz; see 1/39, ed. note 4. [3.] The attorney Dr. Kurt Wergin, a friend of Klaus Bonhoeffer. [4.] Monday, August 16, 1943; his parents had received permission to visit Bonhoeffer.

2/43 and 2/44 135 even 9:00 for a while, and also take a proper afternoon nap? All the work, the meager nourishment, interrupted nights, and on top of it all your worry about me—that is simply too much. This is the main reason the endlessly extended delay in reaching a decision bothers me so much. In more normal times, four weeks are nothing at all; in these uncertain bomb-threatened times, every day is long. But since one may assume that everyone wants the quickest possible settlement, I quietly hope that we arrive at the goal even more quickly. Above all, please worry as little as possible about me. I am holding on well and am entirely at peace within. And how good it is that from earlier experiences we know of one another that alarms truly do not unsettle us. Iam very glad that Dr. Roeder’s courts are remaining in Berlin.'*! I imagine that for men in responsible positions it would be very unsatisfactory to have to leave Berlin now. Besides, you—like me too—surely have better things to do than constantly brooding over possible alarms. ‘To become detached from the events and commotion of the day—once learns this here in the cell practically without trying.

I forgot to mention the birthdays on the twenty-second and twentyeighth.!°! T would very much like to give Susi, who has taken so much trouble with packages for me, something she would enjoy, but the only thing I can think is my last bottle of sherry, which I would like to give her. The Schleich-

ers would most likely be pleased with the new one-volume Bible bound in thick light brown leather located in the air-raid cellar; please put it on the birthday table and tell them both that Iam thinking of them with many — [35 warm and heartfelt wishes. I wish so much | could be there! But the test of patience is still not at an end.'’! If one only keeps the bigger issues in mind while experiencing these small, recurring disappointments, then one soon perceives how trivial are one’s own deprivations.

Since in the last two weeks of uncertain daily waiting’! I hardly did any productive work, I now want to resume writing. In recent weeks I have

attempted to draft a play. But in the meantime, I have realized that the material is not actually dramatic and will now attempt to transpose it into

[5.] Sections of the Reich War Court were moved to Torgau in August 1943,

[6.] The birthdays of Susanne Drei and Eberhard Bethge. To avoid mentioning Bethge by name, Bonhoeffer refers to his wife Renate’s family name, Schleicher. See 1/1, ed. note 4.

|7.] This refers to the fruitless wait for news of a trial date. Dr. Roeder took an extended vacation and was then transferred. [8.] From the draft: “In the last two weeks, in which I was actually anticipating a decision on a daily basis, I was hardly able to work productively; primarily I read.”

136 Letters and Papers from Prison narrative form. It concerns the life of a family. Here, of course, much that is personal creeps in|”!

I would like to have some draft paper and my watch; the other one stopped yesterday all of a sudden; it’s working again now, but I don’t want to risk suddenly ending up without a watch. Could you please buy me Systematische Philosophie, edited by N. Hartmann, Kohlhammer Verlag, 1943?!1!

I would like to work through it while I am still here. Otherwise I am now allowed to use the staff library here, which contains various good things; thus I need fewer from you. But if you could still find Witrko, by Stifter, that would be great. It was truly kind of the Schleichers recently to send me the rabbit liver. A real piece of meat is something most welcome in the face of this neverending gruel; Iam also very grateful to them for the cookies, peaches, and

136 cigarettes. Could you perhaps spare a little tea? Occasionally I can get boiling water here. The death of the three young pastors!!! haunts me. I would be grateful if their relatives could somehow be notified that lam unable to write them now; otherwise they would not understand. Among my students, these three were among those closest to me. It is a great loss to me personally and to the church. The number of my students who have been killed is now probably over thirty, and to a large extent the best of them. I thank K. Friedrich very much again for his letter;!'*! they are always particularly nice. Also Hans Christoph!!! sent a very nice note on my engage-

ment, though he did so as if it were already public. Perhaps one ought to

[9.] This refers to the material found in DBWE 7:25-70 (“Drama”) and 71-182 (“Novel”). The resumption of his literary work coincided with the end of the preceding interrogation phase. In the introduction to the German edition of that volume, the editors wrote: “Bonhoeffer had reckoned with chances of being acquitted in a trial. But in order to camouflage the conspiracy, the family members who were not in prison agreed to the delay of the trial date. During this phase of waiting, there was some quiet for Bonhoeffer to write his novel chapter.” [10.] Systematische Philosophie (Systematic Philosophy), with contributions from Arnold

Gehlen, Erich Rothacker, Nicolai Hartmann, et al., edited by Nicolai Hartmann. [11.] Erich Klapproth, Winfried Krause, and Gotz Grosch. From the draft: “All three were particularly well regarded among the young pastors; many hundreds of young pastors will grieve for Klapproth, who combined unusual spiritual gifts with the capacity to lead others. Winfried Krause was with us a few months ago; I liked him very much with his straightforward manner. I would be grateful if his wife could somehow be told that I am unable to write her at this time, also Grosch’s father, who was my teacher in school.” [12.] 2/42. [13.] Hans Christoph von Hase, who wrote to Bonhoeffer on July 30, 1943 (unpublished; NL, A 77,54).

2/44 and 2/45 137 tell Uncle Hans!!*! that this is not yet the case. Here in the cell there is no greater joy than letters. I completely forgot to ask about Uncle Paul.!!®! Did you actually express to him my condolences following the death of his mother?!!®! Do give him my greetings!!! Now thank you once again very much for everything. After all, the day we will see each other again in freedom is approaching ever closer, and it will be one of those days in one’s life that one never forgets. Warm regards to all my siblings and their children. Do write soon again! The next letter will again go to Maria. Always thinking of you, Your grateful Dietrich

45. From Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer!!! 137 August 22, 1943 My dear Dietrich,

Over the weekend we have again come out here!*! and are now sitting on deck chairs by the water enjoying the peace and quiet, for in the past few days we had plenty to do with rearranging the house and transporting some things from town before the expected air raids. Papa’s books and your most important books are now in the air-raid and supply cellar, and a number of your folders and belles lettres are now in Papa’s study on the emptied bookshelves. Your wardrobe upstairs is completely empty. | sent another package to Patzig and brought one out here. Our walls are also almost completely empty. We took many things out of their frames and [have stored] the frames in the garage. Likewise all the good rugs have been taken away. You wouldn't like it at our house right now. Neither do I! But it cannot be helped. We do what we can. Otherwise we are simply waiting. Last week Papa freed himself from his medical duties, but this means

[14.] This refers to Hans von Hase, Hans Christoph’s father. [15.] General Lieutenant Paul von Hase. L1G) See: ly 24. p. 96.

[17.] From the draft: “I’ve just been summoned for my infrared-light therapy, since my ‘exercise’ today was canceled—probably as a result of the leave of the captain [Maetz]. I always count on that half hour very much because I think the rheumatism is somehow connected to insufficient fresh air.”

[1.] NL, A 77,63; handwritten; from Sakrow; a note by Eberhard Bethge next to the date: “Sunday.” Excerpts previously published in LPP, 95. [2.] To Sakrow.

138 Letters and Papers from Prison he'll have all the more to do in the week to come. So it always goes. Tomorrow we will return home. The Schleichers are also at home. Today they all planned to go to Kottbus to Hans Walter. ... Walter and Klaus!*! are home alone. We are taking care of Klaus, and Walter’s mother is no longer required to do wartime duty!"! and is looking after him. So things are in upheaval everywhere. . .. It was so good that we were able to talk to you last Monday!”! and convince ourselves that your patience has not reached its end and that you remain confident, despite the length of time. May God keep you and us all in this difficult, uncertain time. Your Mother

138 Mama has basically already reported on all that is going on with and around us. The holiday today—it’s also Uncle Otto’s and Suse’s birthday!°!—was restorative, no telephone calls, and our living space comfortable. In Berlin everyone's house looks as if it is in the middle of a move. | gather it is quite hot where you are. But it looks as if it will cool off somewhat toward the evening. Hopefully, rain will come soon; the dryness is also undesirable in case of incendiary bombs. Today before breakfast for the first time in a long while, we again took a walk along Lake Sakrow. We have become somewhat unaccustomed to walking, and the morning temperature was 23°,'7! but it was nevertheless quite beautiful. For Mama | would have wished we could walk somewhere flat but at an elevation of several thousand feet. The Tatras'*! would be such a place, but the times are not suitable for traveling farther away. In the hope of imminent reunion, and with warm regards, Father

[3.] Walter DreB and Klaus Bonhoeffer. [4.] Margarethe Dre® (born in 1882), who was now too old to be called up for women's wartime duty as a factory, agricultural, railroad, or postal worker. [5.] This refers to the visit of August 16, 1943. [6.] [Otto Bonhoeffer, Karl Bonhoeffer’s brother, had died in 1932. Susanne DreBb, née Bonhoeffer, was Walter’s wife.—]DG] [7.] [Celsius; 73° F—JDG] [8.] [A mountain range in Slovakia.—]DG]

2/45 and 2/46 139 46. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! August 24, 1943

My dear Parents, This was certainly a lively night for you!!! I was very relieved when the captain let me know! everything was all right with you. From my upper-story cell and the window, which is lowered completely during alarms, one sees the dreadful fireworks toward the south of the city very clearly, and without the slightest feeling of personal anxiety one becomes overwhelmingly — 139 conscious in such moments of the utter absurdity of my present situation of waiting inactively. Then early this morning the Moravian Daily Text moved me strangely: “And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid.”|4! Annoyingly, I got a stomach and intestinal bug Sunday night, yesterday had a fever of 38°,!5! but today it’s back down. But I got up solely to write this letter and will immediately lic down again to be safe; under no circum-

stances do I want to be sick.!°! Since there’s no special diet here in such cases, Lam lucky to have your crisp bread and a box of thin butter cookies that I had been saving for just this purpose. Also a medical orderly gave me some of his white bread. So 1am coming through this just fine. Probably one should always have something of this sort here just in case, perhaps also a little bag of semolina or flakes that one could have cooked in the dispensary. By the time you receive this letter, the matter will long be settled. Dear Mama, thank you very much for your letter of the eleventh, which arrived yesterday, the (wenty-third.'”! That you witnessed such a display with

[1.) NZ, A 77,64; handwritten; notes by Eberhard Bethge: “Tuesday August 24,” “arrived September 2, 1943.” Previously published in LPP, 96-97, [2.] According to Die Wehrmachtberichte (August 24, 1943), 2:547: “Strong British bomber squadrons attacked the Reich capital during the preceding night. ... The dropping of high-explosive and incendiary bombs produced destruction in residential areas as well as in public buildings and hospitals. The population suffered losses.” [3.] Following severe attacks, Captain Maetz occasionally telephoned Bonhoefter’s

parents to let them know that nothing had happened to the prison and also to receive information for Bonhoeffer. [4.] Lev. 26:6a; in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible, a pencil mark appears next to this verse. [5.] [Celsius; 100.4°F.—JDG] [6.] Because of the anticipated trial. [7.] 2/43. On the postal delays, cf. Love Letters from Cell 92, 63 (letter of September 9, 1943): “I received no mail at all from my parents or my brothers and sisters between August 11 and 30! I presume that one or two letters have been temporarily mislaid in the confusion of the RKG’s [the Reich War Court—JDG] move.”

140 Letters and Papers from Prison Uncle Paul Hase!®! is perhaps very good. In days like these, he will have his hands completely full. While I was lying in bed yesterday, letters also came from Maria!Y! and my mother-in-law. This was particularly cheering. I am really so pleased that Maria has offered you her help, dear Mama. I cannot

determine from here whether you ought to have refused her help. It is so difficult to place oneself entirely into the situation. While one constantly tries to, the knowledge of the details just isn’t there. 140 In the past week I have again been able to work very well and was just making progress when this annoying interruption came along. Incidentally, I’ve been reading Mikrobenjdger''"! with great pleasure, and since K. Friedrich sent it, I assume it is scientifically accurate. It is certainly a very impressive piece of research history. So now as I cannot think of anything more to write, I will lie down again. Might I ask again for envelopes? I only have three left. Please do not let this letter alarm you. I simply didn’t want to lose the opportunity to write even if it is somewhat shorter. By the day after tomorrow, I will surely feel fine. Please remember me to both birthday children!!! again and tell them how often I think of them and how much I wish I were there! With love to you and the whole family, Your grateful Dietrich Do send Christel in particular my good wishes; I always feel especially sorry

for her during the night alarms,''*! and the children as well. Maria had another migraine. They seem to be a particularly awful kind. Could you suggest a remedy?

47. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer!!! August 30, 1943

Dear Dietrich,

As you see, | am presently in Friedrichsbrunn. Grete is with the children up here, and Suse too with hers, and we are now attempting to see if we can fix up

[8.] See 2/43, p. 134. [9.] Letter of August 15, 1943 (Love Letters from Cell 92, 50-52). [10.] Paul de Kruif, Microbe Hunters, a best-selling popular history of medical researchers. [11.] Susanne DreB (August 22) and Eberhard Bethge (August 28). [12.] Because of Hans von Dohnanyi, her imprisoned husband.

[1.] NL, A 77,66; handwritten; from Friedrichsbrunn. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 97-98.

2/46 and 2/47 141 the house for the winter. This requires procuring coal, wood, and petroleum in sufficient quantities, and this is not easy. One trots from one office to the next and engages in battle. Furthermore, the question about school is still completely unresolved, and for the two older children!?! it is impossible to solve satisfactorily. So it remains an open question whether we will remain. But in any case itis 141 surely good to prepare in advance as far as possible and to make it possible to live here. One must always reckon with the possibility that someone in our large family will be forced to come here. A week ago today you lived through a severe attack; we heard the bombing from afar in Leipzig. In any case, we believe that what we were hearing during the alarm at night was Berlin. Needless to say, we especially think of you both!*! at such times. By the time you receive this letter, further attacks may have afflicted you again. If only they would at long last release the two of you. Shortly | will be going [to] Gottingen for two days to visit some colleagues there who are friends. | want to discuss some professional matters with them, particularly to get advice about the directorship of a larger industrial research

laboratory that was recently offered to me.!4! The matter requires serious thought. Despite promises of absolute freedom of research and considerable material enticements, | don’t quite trust the situation entirely. Under no circumstances will the pitiful remains of my freedom be up for sale. Do you have time and peace in your hermitage to do any work for yourself, or is the time entirely lost for you on any scholarly level? Can | get books for you from the university library? Till now | have always avoided this question because | thought by the time | would have your answer you would be out. But even this disappointment does not keep me from continuing to hope it. When | have been able to procure for myself a few quiet minutes amid the children’s tumult, | have been reading a small book on the structure and function of the brain. Here | read recently that the offspring of wild animals born in zoos have smaller brains than

their cousins in the wild.!°! An effect of imprisonment that perhaps interests 142 you—forgive the stupid joke. One never observes this effect from your letters,

[2.] His sons Karl and Friedrich. [3.] [Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, who was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen right outside Berlin.—]DG} \4.| This refers to an offer from the Osram firm (in Berlin) that would lead to a consulting contract (not accepted in this form), which would have allowed Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer to come more frequently to Berlin. [5.] Scharrer, Vom Bau und Leben des Gehirns, 140: “But we can also observe changes within fewer generations. Thus the offspring of animals held in zoos manifest a signifi-

cantly lower brain weight than their parents and others of their species raised in the wild.”

142 Letters and Papers from Prison in any case. They are always a great joy for us. | always receive them sent on from our parents or Maria. In the next few days another should be due. Much love from all of us. Make as much good out of this time as you can. Your Karl Friedrich

48. From Paula Bonhoeffer!!! Berlin-Charlottenburg 9 August 30, 1943 My dear Dietrich,

Your last letter was dated August 7!!*! How can that be possible? It must have something to do with the Reich War Court’s relocation to Torgau.'*! But it is such a pity. It has probably been similar with our letters to you, and there you are without news. We will now request permission to visit and hopefully receive it soon. | keep reading your very last letter over and over, and rejoice that you share our confidence in a good and prompt conclusion to this time of hardship for you and for us parents, and that you don’t lose heart and keep your spirits high.

In any case, the summer has now passed by without you. Nevertheless, may we still be able to spend a few beautiful autumn days together in Friedrichsbrunn? We're naturally clearing all kinds of things out of the house, and there we often miss an energetic hand. Our home doesn't look very nice anymore. ... The garden already looks quite autumnal. The tomato harvest was very good, also the beans. The potatoes stayed small but were good. | ought to replant the 143 ground that’s now clear but never get around to it. For there is a great deal of coming and going in the house, the large family and the many good friends, who all want to hear about you and send you wishes for a quick end to this evil time. Be commended to God. | entrust you to him always and forever. Your Mother

[1.] NL, A 77,65; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 98-99, [2.] 2/41. [3.] On the postal delays, see 2/46, ed. note 7.

2/47-2/49 143 49. From Karl Bonhoeffer!!! August 31, 1943

Dear Dietrich, | want to add a few words to Mama’s letter. As she has already written you, our days too are spent clearing out and getting rid of things, more than is conducive

to quiet work and inner peace. It is a state of being perpetually on the move, made all the more unpleasant because we cannot foresee how long it will last. When things get to the point that one can say of oneself omnia mecum porto, |*! all will be much simpler. | have resumed my consultation hours. They are not in great demand. Those outside the city balk at the trip into unsafe Berlin, and

those in the city have “no time for their nerves,” as old Heim!*! used to say, given all the agitation about their possessions. The worst will come later, when people again have time to think about their bodily life. We have heard nothing from you for some time. Presumably, you have been writing to Maria instead. We do hope you are feeling well again physically. Maria told us about her visit with you.'*! She is a brave human being. | am pleased that she and Mama get along well, and both of them like each other. . . . Because the Landhaus Clinic had to be closed,'”! Georg Schéne is unable to do surgery, which is bad news for him and for his patients.

You wrote recently or else told us when we visited—I don’t recall precisely 144 which—that you wanted to have [a] book on chess. We sent you the wellknown Lasker book a long time ago now.!"! Didn’t you receive it? It was not returned to us. Wouldn’t you like to learn to play Patience?!’! We would send you the cards. Hopefully, your patience won't be strained much longer now. | hope we will speak soon. Affectionately, your Father

[1.] NZ, A 77,67; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 99. [2.] Cicero, Paradoxa stoicorum 1.1.8: “Omnia mea mecum porto” (All my possessions I carry with me). [3.] Ernst Ludwig Heim. [4.] Visit on Thursday, August 26, 1943; see Love Letters from Cell 92, 55-58. [5.] Due to bombing damage. [6.] See 1/24, ed. note 9. [7.] [An English card game. See 4/185.—]DG]

144 Letters and Papers from Prison 50. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! August 31, 1943

My dear Parents,

As you already heard two days after my previous letter, from Maria, who quite unexpectedly was allowed to visit me here,'*! Iam quite well again. Aspirin to relieve fever and carbonate of soda for its side effects are wonder drugs for me, and with the help of your large thermos bottles I was up and about soon thereafter. I didn’t even have to deny myself any of that magnificent liverwurst. Thank you so much for your care. ‘They even prescribed white bread for me here now, so I beg you, Mama, not to deprive yourself of it anymore for me. Maria’s visit here was marvelous, and I was so happy that she had come primarily for your sakes. | was terribly sorry to hear that Renate had bomb damage in her new apartment;!®! it’s also dreadful for Ursel, who went to so

much trouble in furnishing it. I suggest to Renate that she attempt to buy 145 two tin plates and two tin cups at my expense; in the shop where we bought her the tin tureen for her wedding, such things are sometimes still to be found. It would please me very much if she were to succeed in this, and in exchange | will give her nothing for her birthday. So she really should do this.

*Christoph’s birthday't! have unfortunately My10ugthoughts for Christoph \ proven \ fruit-

less; I would like to give him something nice. Do you think Du und das Wetter

would interest him?! That can be found among my books. Perhaps something could yet be found at the Plahn Bookstore!®! for him. (Would [you] please order the newly published book Das Zeitalter des Marius und Sulla\”! for me there from Dieterich Publishing Co. [RM 16]?)'*! Could you perhaps telephone them? They have always served me well. Anyway, do give him my best wishes, and I hope next time we will be able to celebrate a happy birth-

[1.] NL, A 77,68; handwritten; note by Karl Bonhoeffer: “received October 1.” Previously published in LPP, 100-101. [2.] Visit of August 26, 1943; see 2/49, ed. note 4. [3.] This refers to bomb damage to Eberhard and Renate Bethge’s apartment in the

Burckhardthaus in Berlin-Dahlem. [Burckhardthaus was a small church college for women; it also housed some church offices for the Confessing Church.—]DG] [4.] Christoph von Dohnanyi (whose birthday was September 8). [5.] Hans-Joachim Flechtner, Du und das Wetter: Wetterkunde fiir Jedermann (You and the Weather: Weather Science for Everyone). 16.] Plahn Bookstore, Franzosische StraBe 33d, Berlin W 8. [7.] Das Zeitalter des Marius und Sulla (The Age of Marius and Sulla), by Werner Schur. [8.] The sentence in parentheses was added later in the margin of the letter.

2/90 145 day together. This test of endurance for the children is really very hard. But he is, of course, already astoundingly levelheaded, and he knows what kind of attitude he owes his parents. In the meantime, you have celebrated a birthday at the Schleichers’,'’! and needless to say my thoughts were with you especially that day. In these past few days I have been able to work well again and have written a great deal. When after a couple of hours of complete immersion in the material I find myself back in my cell, I always need a moment to orient myself. P’ve still not yet come to terms with the implausibility of my present situation, despite having adapted to my external circumstances. I am

finding it quite interesting to observe in oneself this gradual process of habituation and adaptation. When I received a fork and knife a week ago to eat with—this is a new arrangement—they seemed almost unnecessary since I had become so accustomed to using my spoon to spread something,

and so on. On the other hand, I believe one never, or only with great dif- 146 ficulty, becomes used to conditions that are experienced as absurd, as, for example, the condition of imprisonment as such. In such cases a conscious act is required each time in order to reorient oneself. Most likely there are psychological works written about this as well?

Delbriick’s world history reads just beautifully." But I find it more a German history. I read Mikrobenjdger'''! with great pleasure all the way through. Otherwise I have been reading various things by Storm, though without being very impressed by it overall. I hope you will bring me Fontane or Stifter. Unfortunately, letters are now taking a very long time, mostly ten to twelve days. Given that we are separated from one another by only ten kilometers, this seems a bit excessive. But despite this it is always the greatest joy to receive a letter. It has now been conveyed to me that, since Dr. Roeder is apparently not in Berlin,'!*! Tam to send my letters to Maria via your address. So she must wait patiently even longer. I am sorry for her about this. But of course lam hopeful that I will not have to write too many more letters from here. I think five months of waiting and uncertainty are enough, for you too! And the summer is almost over. But there may still be beautiful September and October days.

[9.] This refers to Eberhard Bethge’s thirty-fourth birthday on August 28, 1943. [10.] Hans Delbruck, Weltgeschichte.

[11.] See 2/46, ed. note 10. [12.] This was because of the transfer of some offices of the Reich War Court to Torgau; see DB-ER, 824.

146 Letters and Papers from Prison Now please give my love to all my siblings and their children. I have such a great longing to see them all again. Most of all, everyone stay well till then!

With love from your grateful Dietrich

147 51. From Paula Bonhoeffer! |! Berlin-Charlottenburg 9, September 3, 1943

Dear Dietrich, Yesterday we received your letter of August 24, in which you wrote about the bombing attack the preceding night!'*! These are impressions that will surely haunt you for your entire life and for which you can thank your stay in Tegel, for in our air-raid cellar you would never have experienced that nightmarishly beautiful air display of which you wrote as seen from your elevated open window. Yet how well | understand your bewilderment about your present situation in such moments, when you're forced to watch passively and can’t help in any way, here in your prime years. But then, on the other hand, | think that despite imprisonment you do have another weapon with which to help. Your intercession for those you carry in your heart and for our entire people [Volk]. Can't you perhaps help more through intercession than the rest of us, who exhaust ourselves often in vain trying to protect and to save? In the meantime, there was another severe attack the day before yesterday,'”! and by chance we were spending the night in Sakrow with Christel. From there we could watch it quite differently than at home. We saw our neighborhood around Heerstrae severely threatened, yet we actually remained quite peaceful in the face of the unalterable. But our hearts were heavy for the Schleichers next door to us. When we returned home in the morning, we saw many beautiful mansions destroyed on Heerstrabe, the train station on fire as well, and on Ldotzener Allee some incendiary bombs, on the Soldauer Allee and Kurlander and Marienburger Allee, damage from the blasts: shattered windows and roofs. In our home only a kitchen window and the roof of the storage chamber next to your room were somewhat damaged. Apparently, it was worse in Charlottenburg and Moabit; those too we probably had seen burning. But unfortunately 148 Susi has the same damage again as previously, if not substantially worse damage

to windows and doors, brought about by a bomb that exploded close to the Sehring house. We spent the entire morning there clearing the place so that you [1.] NL, A 77,70; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 102. [2.] See 2/46, ed. note 2, about the August 23, 1943, air raid. [3.] In the night of August 31, 1943 (Die Wehrmachtberichte, 2:552).

2/90-2/52 147 could at least move around, and then we packed a few more things and brought them in the wooden cart [Leiterwagen],'*! for this area seems to get hit nearly every time. Suse will probably come to Berlin sometime this week, when Grete is up there again!°! with the children. Nothing happened at Klaus’s. | enclose a letter from Grandmother and one from Karl-Friedrich'®! and will therefore close for now. If only all humanity would unite in prayer and appeal to God to be angry no longer and to give peace to the entire world he has created! Be commended to God. Papa sends his love with mine. Your Mother Papa has requested permission to visit; we are very much hoping to receive it; there are so many things to discuss.

52. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer! |! September 3, 1943

Dear Dietrich, It is now almost a half year since you have been locked up. | would never have believed that it would last so long. | wonder whether at least the time is going by more quickly than previously. By some mistake in organization | now no longer receive your letters from Berlin, which | am very sorry about. But | still go to Berlin often and hear of your latest news then. | am sitting here a bachelor. Grete is up in Friedrichsbrunn with the children. After it had looked at first as if it would be practically impossible to make the 149 house habitable for a larger number of people in winter under the present circumstances, now it appears to be feasible after all.'-! Just today a decisive step was taken. | found someone who will install lights in three rooms: the kitchen

and two other rooms. One can’t get enough petroleum"! even for everyone to huddle in one room, and that is completely out of the question if the boys want to study. Moreover, we found an apparently very amiable and erudite older [4.] [A four-wheeled wooden cart light enough to be pulled by hand.—]DG] [5.] In Friedrichsbrunn. 1G.| 52/792:

[1.] NL, A 77,71; handwritten; from Leipzig. Excerpts previously published in LPP, LOS:

[2.] The Friedrichsbrunn house, which had been used only for vacation stays (for instance, it had no electrical power), was now being equipped to serve as a long-term residence for the families who wanted to escape the air raids on Berlin and Leipzig. [3.] [For the lamps.—]DG]

148 Letters and Papers from Prison schoolteacher from Hamburg as a tutor with whom the boys can, it seems, learn very nearly every language that exists. Now the heat is the only thing still not working—apart from the water supply, which has been out of order for weeks in the village. But I think that will also function eventually. Tomorrow | am going up for a couple of days. When | think of how much | look forward to seeing them all again, | can somewhat imagine how you must be longing to be free soon. If this goes on much longer, | will apply for permission to visit you—provided that this would not deprive you of a visit from your beloved. Now when the summer season of beauty is soon past and everything will look gray and sad outdoors, perhaps you will miss freedom less. With fond wishes and all the best, Your Karl Friedrich

150 53. From Christoph von Dohnanyi!|! September 4, 1943 Dear Uncle Dietrich,

Now we are back home. We had to help at Uncle Walter’s. He had bad luck again. On March I, it happened for the first time at his place.!*! But today everything is ina mess. That is no wonder. Four explosive bombs fell right near him— sometimes even a single one causes such a huge draft that people are sucked right out of their beds. With four of them it must really be unpleasant, of course. In the grove of woods near my grandparents, an Australian parachuted down. He was found sleeping near his parachute, and immediately Mr. Schroter took him prisoner. His parachute is still in the woods, not far at all from Grandpa and Grandma's house. | have no idea how a man in such a situation can sleep.

lt was good that Grandpa and Grandma happened to be here with us that night, since it eases everyone’s mind (as the grown-ups say). Today they are coming over again. There’s the doorbell. | have to go downstairs. | have to quickly finish the letter because lots of help is needed. Pictures, laundry, rugs, shoes, and everything you can think of are being dragged out of the city to us. At any rate, if we get bombed, we'll make a worthwhile target. But of course that’s not very likely. Uncle Klaus is planning to come tomorrow.'*! Hopefully, it will happen. Then the family will be back together again comfortably. Except sadly it’s not quite

[1.] NL, A 77,72; copy; from Sakrow. Previously published in LPP, 103-4.

[2.] This refers to damage to the house of Walter and Susanne DreB on HelfferichStraBbe in Berlin-Dahlem. [3.] Klaus Bonhoeffer.

2/52-2/594 149 complete. But that too will come about. And then the long-awaited celebration will also come. One must just wait patiently. Sometime that day will come for certain. The lovely fruit season is over now. The last apple dropped from our tree yesterday. | immediately devoured it. Unfortunately, the wasps had already gnawed = [51 much of it, but that is not necessarily a bad sign. Soon the pears will be ripe; then things will be better again. This week we have to rake the potatoes. | can’t wait to see how many there are. Overall the harvest is said to be not so good. But that can vary a lot. Now I have to close because today we are supposed to finish things very early. For one never knows what will happen in the night. So now | wish you, first, an undisturbed night and, second, everything that will improve your “wellbeing.” With love from your grateful Christoph

54. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer'!! September 5, 1943 My dear Parents,

We probably don’t need to say anything to each other about the night before last.'*! I will certainly not forget the view through my cell window of the ghastly night sky. I was very happy to hear from the captain right away in the morning that everything had gone well for you. That Susi had damage for the second time and now has to move out of her apartment makes me very sorry for her. She has indeed a great load to bear. How good that the children weren't there! It is a great consolation for me that Maria doesn’t have to be in Berlin.) But wouldn’t it now be time for you as well to set up at least your night quarters in Sakrow? It is remarkable how in such night = 152 hours one’s thoughts revolve quite exclusively around those people without whom one wouldn’t want to live, and thinking of oneself recedes entirely or as good as disappears. Only then does one sense how interwoven one’s own life is with the life of other people, indeed, how the center of one’s own life lies outside oneself and how little one is an isolated individual. The line “as if it were a part of myself”!! is quite true, and I have often felt it at hearing

[1.] NL, A 77,73; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 104-6. [2.] Air raid in the night of September 3-4, 1943 (Die Wehrmachtberichte, 2:554). (3.] Until the end of 1943, Maria von Wedemeyer was staying primarily in Patzig and Klein-Reetz, the neighboring estate to Patzig. [4.] Quote from Ludwig Uhland’s poem “Der gute Kamerad” (The Good Comrade).

150 Letters and Papers from Prison news of the deaths of fallen colleagues and students. I think that is simply a fact of nature; human life extends far beyond one’s own bodily existence. A mother probably feels this most strongly. Beyond this, however, are two passages in the Bible that have always summed up this experience for me. The one from Jer. 45: “Iam going to break down what I have built, and pluck up what I have planted. ... And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; . . . but I will give you your life as a prize of war,”'°! and the other from Ps. 60: “O God. ... You have caused the land to quake; you have torn it open; repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.”!°! Now I want to thank you and all those involved again very much for the last package. I will never forget it, and every day I remind myself how much thought, effort, and sacrifice such a package always brings with it. But that is precisely why it is always not only an external but also a great inner help. That the Schleicher girls again sent me some of the small amount of sweets they receive is truly very kind of them, but I think they would really need it themselves. I also thank Hans Walter very much for his gift of tobacco. 153. Of course, | recognized Grandmother’s cookies. The Patzig additions are a natural part of the whole and draw my thoughts daily toward that day we are already all looking forward to. I can imagine Maria now sewing and working on her trousseau!’!—thus preparing for this day quite concretely—and that makes me very happy. I can’t contribute anything here toward it except wail, hope, and anticipate it with joy. It would be nice if the letters didn’t take so long to arrive. Something has presumably gone wrong. Your last letter was from August 11! Maria’s, from the sixteenth.!*! That is really too long. For instance, I would like to know about Maria’s plans or also what

éoé

came of the great billeting of Berliners. T would like to hear from you

[5.] Jer. 45:4—5. In Bonhoeffer’s Bible the entire five-verse chapter (the only place in the entire neighboring pages) is marked strongly with indelible pencil. The final two verses, with Bonhoeffer’s underlining, read [slightly edited from the NRSV to correspond to the German]: “Thus you shall say to him, “Thus says the Lorp: I am going to break down what J/ have built, and pluck up what J have planted—that is, my whole land. And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for | am going to bring disaster upon all [handwritten marginal note: “righteous and unrighteous”] flesh, says the Lorn; but I will give you your fife [Luther: your soul] as a prize of war in every place to which you may go.” Cf. DBWE 5:37, ed. note 13. See also Heinrich Ott, Reality and Faith, 15-17.

[6.] Ps. 60:2. [In Luther’s Bible it is v. 4. The German word zerschellt means “shattered” rather than “tottering” as in the NRSV.—]DG] [7.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 51.

[8.] The date on the letter was August 15 (Love Letters from Cell 92, 50-51). [9.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 46-47. [Maria’s mother had taken fifteen acquaintances from Berlin into her home in Patzig to escape the bombing.—]DG]

2/54 and 2/55 151 whether the protective trench has been dug and whether you were able to make an opening from the cellar into the trench. Captain Maetz had this done this way. How is Renate doing? Aren’t these night alarms particularly bad for her condition, even if she is experiencing them out there in Sakrow? I am continuing to do well. I have been moved two floors down!!®! because of the danger of air raids. Now from my window I look out just at the level of the church towers; it is quite lovely. This past week my writing progressed again very well. The only thing I miss is exercise in fresh air, on which I am very dependent for productive work. But now it won’t be much longer, and that’s the main thing. Please give Maria my love, and she should have some more patience and stay in Patzig and/or Klein Reetz and not worry! Also love to all my siblings and their children. Please don’t let the air raids exhaust you too much, get some rest in the afternoons, and get the best nourishment you possibly can! In my thoughts I am with all of you, always,

Your grateful Dietrich

55. From Christoph von Dohnanyi!!! 154 September 7, 1943

Dear Uncle Dietrich,

Now three more days have gone by since | wrote you the last time. Not much has happened in this time, which, however, was not very long. As | probably already wrote you, on Sunday my grandparents and Uncle Klaus were here. Uncle Klaus came later. This was because he had had a visitor who kept him company from eight o’clock in the evening until 7:30 the next morning.'-! And so then he slept all day. All of them stayed overnight with us and then left early Monday morning to go home. Tomorrow we all have permission to visit Papa. It is truly wonderful that this falls right on my birthday. This is my second visit since Papa has been away. Tonight Eberhard is coming home again. The English have bombed Kade.!*! Thirty-eight farmsteads burned down. But there was no damage at Eberhard’s

[10.] Transfer to cell 92, station A IV (see DB-ER, 799). See also Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 139; cf. Latmiral, “Einige Erinnerungen der Haft.” [1.] NL, A 77,74; copy; from Sakrow. Previously published in LPP, 106-7. [2.] Bethge recalls that this was most likely a visit by Otto John to Klaus Bonhoeffer. [John worked closely with Klaus Bonhoeffer in the conspiracy.—] DG] [3.] The village where Bethge’s mother lived.

152 Letters and Papers from Prison mother’s. It’s really going too far when they even go into the countryside and smash it to ruin.

Yesterday | got a small hematoma. And since it was right on my ankle, | couldn't bike to school. | hope it’s better by tomorrow so | can go to Papa. | have to go there regardless. Now | can’t think of much more that | can write to you. But | will write you again soon. Wishing you all the best, your grateful Christoph

155 56. From Renate Bethge'!!! Sakrow, September 8, 1943 Dear Uncle Dietrich,

We had wished so much that you would be able to visit us soon in our beautiful apartment. Actually we have been waiting for this from week to week. You would presumably have had many familiar things to discover, but you would have

been truly delighted to see how everything came together in one place—the pictures, the books. And seeing all this is now no longer possible. Everything is in chaos and scattered.!2] In the meantime, you have had to wait and wait, have

had to tell yourself so often that your help would have been so useful in the tumult, and surely were often afraid during the alarms because you could not know immediately that we were faring well. We had certainly hoped to see you again at the birthday celebration./?] We celebrated with my mother-in-law and parents, Aunt Christel, my grandparents, and Barbel at my parents’ home with some good food. And you arranged such nice greetings and congratulations, for which we thank you very much. We were overjoyed to find also the beautiful pigskin leather—bound Bible.[4] Even there you come up with the most marvelous gifts. We wonder whether you also incited Maria to her nourishing gift by telling her how something like that would be appreciated? Unfortunately, my husband was obliged to depart again that evening. He has such a demanding program that

[1.] NL, A 77,75; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 107-8. The letter was partially dictated by Bethge since it seemed advisable not to let any correspondence between Eberhard and Dietrich pass through the censor. Renate Bethge herself was supposed to make an appearance as seldom as possible. The uncensored (illegal) correspondence did not begin until November 1943; see 2/73. [2.] This refers to bomb damage to Eberhard and Renate Bethge’s apartment in the Burckhardthaus in Berlin-Dahlem; see 2/50, ed. note 3. [3.] Eberhard Bethge’s birthday, August 28. [4.] See 2/44, p. 135.

2/55 and 2/56 153 | am often alone.!°] But we are nevertheless doing well. | myself am doing much better again, except that | can’t keep up with studying at the music conservatory from here, unfortunately. Of course, it is difficult that we can’t truly settle down

anywhere for the moment. There are difficulties everywhere. The Busses!® are staying at my mother-in-law’s, and of course we would prefer best of allto 156 be independent. A room we rented in Kadel”! as a last resort faces due north and so is completely impossible in the winter. Our efforts continue. It is very nice that we can use Barbel’s rooml®! at Aunt Christel’s for the time being. This gives us our own little domain again, at any rate. It’s difficult with our scattered belongings, above all the books. When we need one, we never know where the right resources are, in the Burckhardthaus cellar, at my parents’, in Kade, or in Barbel’s room and/or in Aunt Christel’s cellar. But for all that we are still doing really well. The furniture question has not yet been resolved. The grand piano, which is so especially beautiful, is going to my parents. Margretl?] is with the children in Késlin. Fritz,{'!®] however, is mostly in Stettin. Christophl!'] is doing his military service on Borkum. All of them send you lots of love.

Did you know already that your publisher Lemppl'2] has died? Apparently quite suddenly. Ebeling held a quite excellent memorial service for Erich Klapproth.!!3] Fritz in Késlin, the one for Winfrid Krause.!'*! All these events will make

your isolation particularly difficult for you. We would so much love to discuss all these things with you. Soon this will be possible. Anyway, we hope and wish for that very much. We envy you for just one thing in your horrible situation,

[5.] |[Bethge was working for the Gossner Mission in Berlin, which required frequent travel throughout Germany.—]DG] [6.] Margarete Busse and her husband. [7.] The village where Eberhard Bethge’s mother lived. [8.| This refers to the use of the room belonging to the Dohnanyis’ daughter, Barbara, in Sakrow. [9.] Margret Onnasch, Eberhard Bethge’s sister. [10.] Fritz Onnasch, Margret’s husband. [11.] Christoph Bethge, Eberhard’s brother. [12.| Albert Lempp, owner of the Chr. Kaiser Verlag in Munich. [13.] The memorial service for Erich Klapproth, who was killed in Russia on July 18, 1943, was held by Gerhard Ebeling on August 15, 1943, in the house of the Gossner Mission, Berlin-Friedenau. The sermon on Matt. 26:71 (“This man was also with Jesus of Nazareth”) was published in the Bonhoeffer Rundbrief, no. 51 (1996): 25, 28-34. [14.] The memorial service for Winfried Krause (who died on August 7, 1943, in the military hospital in Marburg and was buried on August 11, 1943) was held for the Pomeranian Brotherhood of Assistant Pastors and Vicars by its chairman, Fritz Onnasch, in Koslin (DB-ER 598). Krause, who was a participant in the fifth Finkenwalde course in the summer of 1937 and in 1938 became Hilfsprediger (assistant pastor) at St. Mary’s Church in Késlin, was wounded on September 12, 1941, in northern Russia; see also Bonhoeffer’s circular letter of November 22, 1941 (DBWE 16, 1/137, p. 237).

154 Letters and Papers from Prison however, namely, the many good things you have been reading. These past few weeks have devoured us completely. There was no music; even | only rarely had a chance to practice.

157 With much love and hopes that you are continuing to do well, Your Renate

57. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer! |! September 13, 1943 My dear Parents,

In response to the wish I expressed in one of my last letters to get somewhat more mail, in recent days I have now received a whole stack of letters, which gives me great joy. I feel like Palmstrom, who orders “a three-month’s supply of assorted mail.”!*! But seriously, a day with mail rises noticeably out of the monotony of all the others. Your visit topped it off, so Tam truly doing very well. After the unpleasant delay in mail delivery in recent weeks, I was especially grateful. I also thought you looked a little better, and that

made me very happy. But the fact that you have been deprived this year of the vacation you need so much continues to be the primary burden of my whole saga. Before winter comes, you really must go away for a while, and most of all I would like to come along. Today letters from September

3! arrived from you and K. Friedrich, and Christoph even wrote twice, which is terribly nice of him and for which | thank him very much. ‘That you have now removed my things without my help was also an extra load of work, and I thank you for that very much. It is a strange [feeling to be utterly dependent for everything on the help of others. But in any case, one learns in such times to be grateful and hopefully not forget it later. In normal life one is often not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we

158 give, and that gratitude is what enriches life. One easily overestimates the importance of one’s own acts and deeds, compared with what we become only through other people.

[1.] NL, A 77,76; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 108-10. [2.] Christian Morgenstern, “Das Warenhaus” [Palmstrom cycle], in Gesammelte Werke, Yet 3a

[3.] 2/51 and 2/52. [4.] Christoph von Dohnanyi’s unpublished letter of September 1, 1943, to Bonhoeffer (NL, A 77,69) and 2/53.

2/56 and 2/57 155 The stormy world events in recent days,!*! of course, race through one’s body here like electricity, and one wishes to be able to accomplish some-

thing useful someplace; but at the moment that place can only be the prison cell, and what one can do here plays itself out in the realm of the invisible, and there of all places the expression “doing” is quite inappropriate. I sometimes think of Schubert’s “Miinich” and his crusade. Otherwise I am studying and writing as much as possible, and Iam glad that in these more than five months I never had to suffer a moment’s boredom. The time has always been full, though in the background there hovers this incessant waiting from morning till night. A few weeks ago I requested that you might procure for me a few newly published books: N. Hartmann, System der Philosophie,'"! Das Zeitalter des Marius und Sulla from Dieterich Verlag;°! now I would add R. Benz, Die deutsche Musik.! I don’t want to let these

things go by unread and would be happy to be able to read them all while IT am still here. At some point K. Friedrich mentioned a generally comprehensible physics book that he wanted to send me.!'”! Klaus too makes lovely book discoveries from time to time. I have read nearly all of what is usable here. Perhaps I will try again with Jean Paul’s Siebenkds or Flegeljahren."""! They are in my room, Later Iam not likely to choose them, and there are — 159 after all many well-read people who really love him. ‘To me, despite many attempts, he always seems too long-winded and affected. Since, however,

i's already the middle of September, I hope that all these wishes will be outdated belore they are fulfilled.

[5.] These events included the Allied landing on Sicily on July 10; the overthrow of Mussolini on July 25; the capitulation of Italy on September 3; and the Allied landing in southern Italy on September 9 (“Operation Overlord”). [6.] A reference to the monk (“Mtinich”) in Franz Schubert's song “The Crusade” (Schubert-Album, Lied no. 72, 232-33). “A monk is standing in his cell / its window grill is gray. / So many knights in armor bright / are riding through the field. / The hymns they sing are pious songs, / a choir earnest and fine. / Amid them flies, in silk so soft, / the banner of the cross, / the banner of the cross. / They mount the ship, so high above / the shoreline of the sea. / Its path is green, it runs away, / will soon be but a swan. / The monk looks through his window still / and contemplates their fate. / ‘Iam like you a pilgrim yet / though I but stay at home. / Life’s pilgrimage through waves’ deceit / and singing desert sand / is nothing but a crusade into the promised land, / the promised land.” [Translation of Schubert's German text by Lisa E. Dahill.—JDG] ['7.] 2/44, ed. note 10. [8.] 2/50, p. 144. [9.] Richard Benz, Die Stunde der deutschen Musik.

[10.] 1/28, p. 104. [11.] Jean Paul, Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornensticke (Siebenkds); Flegeljahre.

156 Letters and Papers from Prison Another short note has just come from Christoph.!'*! T have a great long-

ing by now to see him and all the children again. They will have changed in these months. Christoph is fulfilling his duties as a godchild truly better than I as his god-uncle, but I look forward to undertaking something with him that will give him pleasure. When you speak to Maria or see her, do give her my love. I thank Grandmother warmly for her letter. Do remember me to all my siblings and their children. With thanks to you for everything, Your Dietrich

Where has Karl-Friedrich actually been appointed? Is he going to accept it?!!S!—Please send stationery!

58. From the Senior Reich Military Prosecutor!!! Notarized Copy

Torgau, Ziethen Barracks!*! September |6, 1943

Military Detention Center!”! Branch Office Ent[ry]: September 23, 1943 Flile] n[umber]: 83.43 g Mz. |4!

160 Decree

Secret! !*|

Attorney Dr. Kurt Wergin, WoyrschstraBe 8, Berlin W 35, is authorized as counsel for Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in accordance with §323, par. 4 Military Criminal Ordinance, §51 War Criminal Ordinance. '°!

[12.] 2/55. [13.] See 2/47, ed. note 4.

[1.] NL, A 77,77; typewritten; letterhead reads: “Reich War Court Criminal Trial Docket III 114/43.” Previously published in LPP, 110-11, and DBWE 16, 1/230, p. 435, ed. note 1, [2.] Crossed out: “Berlin-Charlottenburg 5, WitzlebenstraBe 4-10, Telephone 38 06 81.” [3.] Stamped with receiving date and with additional handwritten entries. [4.] Handwritten signature notation by Captain Maetz, commander of Tegel prison. [5.] In red stamp. [6.] Regarding the authorization of an attorney, see 1/39, ed. note 3.

2/97-2/99 157 Signed,

the President of the Reich War Court as Supreme Judicial Authority, Admiral Bastian

Senior Reich Military Prosecutor Signed on his order By Dr. Lotter

Reich War Attorney To Mr.

Dierich [sic] Bonhoeffer Presently c/o Berlin-Tegel Military Detention Center SeidelstraBe 39

Reich War Court 18! Notarized: Ladenig Army Judicial Inspector

59. From Paula Bonhoeffer '!' 161 Berlin-Charlottenburg 9, September 20, 1943 My dear Dietrich,

Now it’s the middle of September and still the same old thing. This is indeed a difficult test of patience, but you are truly doing everything you can to ease the burden on us parents by summoning the strength to cope with it and not being defeated by it. Every letter from you reveals this to us afresh, and so, for us too, they strengthen our patience. ... Our plan for a trip to the cabin!*! for a few days will now probably come to nothing for this summer or fall. Very painful! | sometimes think | do want to go up there with Papa once more for a week. With all his work at seventy-five years old, he has not had a single day of relaxation for a year now, but he can’t do it until both your cases are in order, and | feel the same way. This will make it [7.] Stamp.

[8.] Handwritten; Ladenig served as clerk of court of the administrative office of Reich War Court 18. He also signed the service of process of the “Decree of the Senior Reich Military Prosecutor” of November 18, 1943, establishing the date of the main trial for December 17, 1943; ct. DBWE 16, 1/233. p. 451, ed. note 1. [1.] NL, A 77,78; handwritten; note by Bethge: “received October 2.” Excerpts previously published in LPP, 111-12. [2.] The house in Friedrichsbrunn.

158 Letters and Papers from Prison all the more marvelous when it is possible again, and then this time your Maria will come with us. She so kindly offered to come and assist me with the house, but | would have no peace and a very bad conscience during the alarms, while | myself am so absolutely calm. A slit trench that is not reinforced with wood on the sides serves no purpose, and the wood cannot be procured.'*! During the last severe attack, Walter'"! was in this sort of trench, and when the bombs dropped nearby the sand collapsed on him from above and the sides, so that he doesn’t want to go in anymore. Eberhard is now quartered in the Seeckt barracks in Spandau.'*! Dearest Renate can visit him daily when his duties are done, and she always brings him 162. something nice. He is doing quite well there. Uncle Paul!®! intends to look him up sometime too, and we want to go see him in his uniform tomorrow at some point. We hope he will remain here a little while, for in her condition it is not very easy for Renate. ... Papa is going to request permission to visit again. Each time we have seen and spoken to one another, we are helped to keep going on. By the way, | did get Hartmann’s Systematische Philosophie!’! and will bring it along next time. We are happy to hear that you have begun working on a family story, and we are very eager to read it sometime. But unfortunately | can’t find the chess book you wanted!*! nor Stifter’s Witiko. If you would like the Wanderungen durch die Mark, by Fontane,'”! that would be available. But | will look further for the other books. Your bookshelves upstairs have now been completely emptied, and everything has been brought downstairs, also the pictures and contents of your cupboards. When one sees the many damaged roofs, it is clearly better this way, even though naturally everything has become quite mixed up in the process. In Kade!!! several incendiary bombs were also dropped onto barns. And that’s a place one assumed was safe. Dear Renate had sent a number of things there. !!!! That’s how it goes; one can't foresee anything at all, and perhaps that is good; [3.] [This is in response to Bonhoeffer’s suggestion that they create such a trench, 2/54, p. 151.—JDG] [4.| Walter DreB. [5.] After Bethge’s UK classification and assignment to the Foreign Office/ Military

Intelligence [Abwehr] [declaring him “indispensable” for the war effort and therefore exempt from military service—]DG] was rescinded and his military basic training had begun in late summer 1943 (cf. Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 126-33), the Bonhoeffers began to risk mentioning his name in letters passing through the censor, [6.] General Lieutenant Paul von Hase, city commander of Berlin. [’7.] See 2/44, ed. note 10. [8.] See, however, 1/24, p. 95. [9.] Fontane, Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg. [10.] The village where Eberhard Bethge’s mother lived; cf. no. 2/55, p. 151.

PEL SEG 2/96, Loo:

2/59 and 2/60 159 otherwise our families would be even more anxious. Papa wants to include a note. Always thinking of you, Your Mother Mama didn’t leave me much room. But she did convey everything essential, so all that remains is to send my love. |am presently drying tobacco leaves. But | hope you are back out before it is smokable. Zacharias always brought me cigarettes from his own homegrown tobacco that tasted quite good. With love, Your Father

60. Last Will and Testament, September 1943!!! 163 In the case of my death, Maria should choose from among my things what-

ever she would cherish as a remembrance. Eberhard should receive the entire library, the large Rembrandt Bible, the Durer Apostles, the grand piano, the car and motorcycle, the high desk (still in Altdamm), and one of the two icons; all these things have had significance for our shared labor and life in the eight years from Finkenwalde on. Similarly, he should have the six Indian scorpion spoons (which Mama is safeguarding), the small rug (at Mr. Lang’s),'*! and my savings balance. From among the books he should first allow Marianne'’! to choose what she would like, also my sib-

lings, and then should send one book each to Jochen Kanitz, A. Schonherr, W. Maechler, O. Dudzus, F. Onnasch, W. Rott, Hans Christoph,!! G. Ebeling, and Uncle George Ch.! Marianne should have the Mexican rug, Dorothee!®! the little jewelry box from Toledo, Christoph'’! the clavichord if he would take pleasure in it, Thomas!*! my baptismal watch, Michel! the gold pencil (Mama has this), the chair from Trent, and the [1.] NL, A 82,22; handwritten in ink; 1 page; dated September 20, 1943. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 112-13. On the envelope intended for Dr. Wergin is written: “To be delivered to my relatives in the case of my death.” Cf. also 2/75 (the second will, dated November 23, 1943) and DBWE 16, 1/152 (Bonhoeffer’s testamentary disposition of April 9, 1942), p. 266: “Dear Eberhard, Just in case, you should know that it is my wish for you someday to receive my books, musical instruments, and pictures.” [2.] Theodor Lang, who in 1933 was chancellor of the German embassy in London, belonged to Bonhoeffer’s Sydenham / Forest Hill congregation; see DB-ER, 329 and 408. [3.] Marianne Leibholz, Bonhoeffer’s godchild. [4.] Hans Christoph von Hase. [5.] George Bell, bishop of Chichester, England; see also 2/75, ed. note 7. [6.] Dorothee Schleicher, Bonhoeffer’s godchild. [7.] Christoph von Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer’s godchild. [8.] Thomas Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer’s godchild. [9.] Michael (or Michel) DreB, Bonhoeffer’s godchild.

160 Letters and Papers from Prison crucifixion scene painted on canvas, and Martin!"! a nice book. Everything else should be distributed to my brothers and sisters, to their children, and to friends, though in such a way that Marianne should always be considered first. 1 can give nothing to my parents but my thanks. I am writing these lines in the grateful awareness of having lived a rich and fulfilled life, in the certainty of forgiveness, and in intercession for all those named here.

164 Berlin, September 20, 1943 Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Eberhard should not torment himself with my funeral. It is quite all right with me if Ebeling, Rott, Kanitz, Schénherr, Dudzus, Fritz,'!!! Walter,'!?! Asmussen, Dibelius, Bohm, Jannasch, or Lokies does it. 61. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer '! |!

September 25, 1943 My dear Parents, Yesterday, dear Mama, you left such a marvelous package for me again. Your

imagination 1s truly inexhaustible; the warm meal in the thermos bottle was particularly surprising and welcome. But I also thank you both and all those involved very much for everything else. [f only this effort could soon be spared all of you! Outdoors it looks as if it is gradually settling in to a continuous rain, and I have a runny nose developing to go with it, along with my lumbago again. In my opinion the problem 1s simply the lack of fresh air. The brief half hour from which the busy sergeant loves to shave a few additional minutes, because he would otherwise not fulfill his duty, is simply too little, especially when a person catches cold as easily as I do. This is annoying only in that it hinders one from doing the only thing one can do here, namely, read and write. But it is in no way dire or a reason for anxiety on your part, only maddening—and thus can be ignored as unimportant.

[10.] Martin Bonhoeffer, Bonhoefter’s godchild. [11.] Fritz Onnasch. [12.] Walter DreB. [1.] NL, A 77,81; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 113-14.

2/60 and 2/61 161 A few days ago a very nice letter arrived from Renate,'*! for which I thank her very much. She’s now leading a real wartime marriage, with many aus-

terities and difficulties. But those two will not lose their good spirits so easily. In any case, they did have some wonderful months together. Perhaps 165 I will soon face a similar decision.!°! If one can foresee that one can be together at least a couple of months, then I would be in favor of marrying; otherwise I would find having wedding leave for just a few days too little, primarily for the wife; for this reason I would consider it better to wait— though, for how long? But these sorts of questions can be decided only in practice and not in advance."! I am so terribly sorry for Maria about this dreadful protraction of my case. Who could have imagined this in April? I would rather that one be told how long such a case would presumably take, right from the beginning. In my work here as well, | would have been able to arrange things differently and more fruitfully. In the end, given our mindset, every week and every day are precious. As paradoxical as it sounds, yesterday I was really glad when first the authorization for the attorney”! and then the arrest warrant!®! arrived. So the apparently aimless waiting may be coming to an end at last after all. Nonetheless, it is precisely the long duration of my detention that has permitted me to gain impressions I will never forget. | always read the unusual books you bring me from Karl Friedrich with much pleasure between my periods of proper work. Otherwise I am writing and notice that I also enjoy free, nontheological creative writing. But Iam only now perceiving how truly difficult the German language is and how easily one can botch it! Please thank Ursel very much for what she recently sent along. But she should now really devote everything to her two soldier sons!!“!

In reading through this letter, | find it sounds somewhat dissatisfied. It 166 shouldn't, however, and that would also not correspond to the reality. As

(2) 27-98:

[3.] Here Bonhoeffer is thinking about his wedding in anticipation of a possible release following the trial, of which he has just received notice (see ed. note 6) and his expected conscription into military service thereafter. [4.] See also Love Letters from Cell 92, 75 (letter of September 30, 1943): “Everything really depends on when we can get married, and that’s precisely what we still can’t tell.” [5.)] See 2/58 (authorization of attorney Dr. Kurt Wergin as Bonhoeffer’s counsel). [6.] Indictment of the Reich War Court and another indictment of the senior Reich military prosecutor of September 21, 1943 (DBWE 16, 1/230, pp. 435-46). Cf. also the

passages concerning Bonhoeffer in the Reich War Court’s indictment of Hans von Dohnanyi and Hans Oster, September 16, 1943 (DBWE 16, 1/229, pp. 427-34), which is published unabridged in Chowaniec, Der “Fall Dohnanyi,” 166-93. [7.] Hans-Walter Schleicher and Eberhard Bethge.

162 Letters and Papers from Prison much as I long to be released from here, I nevertheless believe that not one single day is lost. What effect this time will eventually have is impossible to say. But it will have an effect. Please remember me to Maria and all my siblings and their children. I have recently received only Renate’s letter. Do stay well in these autumn days! With my love and gratitude, Your Dietrich 62. From Christoph von Dohnanyi!!! September 28, 1943 Dear Uncle Dietrich,

Today | brought something to Papa. Then after | had bought something else in the city, | went home around noon. My flute teacher has now come back again. He was in Spain. Tomorrow | can go see him. He lives in Steglitz. That is not exactly advantageous for an air raid. He takes his fourteen flutes—I think he has that many—into the cellar with him at every alarm. Incidentally, the flute that until now did not belong to me is now my very own property. This was told to me by none other than Papa himself on my birthday, when we had permission to visit.[7] It was truly my greatest and nicest birthday present | have ever received. Yesterday we were at Aunt Else’s.!3] Not all of us but only Klaus and |. We picked her some fruit. We were there already once before and had to go back again, namely, on Friday, and even then only managed to pick all the summer fruit. We'll have to go back again to pick the winter apples. Yesterday she gave 167 us acouple of apples to take along for Papa. Real red Christmas apples like the ones that always hang on the Christmas tree. This cold weather is totally crazy and not only that but also bad. Our potatoes are still in the ground. Hopefully, it will still get warmer again. This morning | had dressed very lightly and ended up freezing to death. And when | came home | changed in a hurry. Now | am a little warmer. Our little goat—l think you were still here when it was born—is growing up quickly; now it’s already almost as big as the old one. The two of them create a lot of work. First, cleaning out their stall and, second, the problem of feeding them is not easy to solve at all. We can't give the animals our own potatoes.

[1.] NZ, A 77,82; handwritten; from Sakrow. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 114-15.

[2.] September 8, 1943; see 2/55, [3.] Else Heidenhain, the sister of Martin Heidenhain, Karl Bonhoeffer’s Breslau colleague; she lived in Falkensee near Berlin.

2/61-2/63 163 They have to be outside most of the time and eat green fodder. They both love this, and the old one gives more milk afterward. Of course, the garden loses

some of its beauty, but these days milk is more important than a beautifullooking garden and you can’t have both at once. Now | will close and go clean out the aforementioned and already very filthy goat stall. All the best! Your grateful Christoph

63. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer'!| October 3, 1943 Dear Dietrich, The day before yesterday your letter of August 31!4] arrived—a record transit time, one month for a distance of thirteen kilometers—apparently due to the Reich War Court’s move to Torgau. This is a shame. We hope it will not take as long to get permission to visit. | requested it about ten days ago. Tomorrow it will be half a year since we witnessed your arrest amid the flowers still there from my seventy-fifth birthday. It is a joy for us to hear you say that you have 168 the capacity to concentrate, at least at times, to such an extent that you’re completely able to forget your present situation. | am eager to read your study on the experience of time.?] When one lives in the face of predetermined dates, as we are presently doing from Friday to Friday, when we deliver your weekly packages, the weeks seem short; in looking back, what one has experienced appears to be receding quickly into the distant past. The latter has perhaps something to do with age, but also, perhaps, with the profusion of new challenges in the present time. My capacity for work is not well satisfied. There are too many demands requiring attention. The garden now takes up less time. We will harvest three apples, and no pears at all. In contrast, the grapevine yields much this time. | think we will be able to provide you a sample on Friday. Yesterday the day was filled with glazier work. The glazier had to cut the panes and teach us how to fit them into the window frames with nails and putty. It looks simpler than it is. But nevertheless we got everything taken care of except one pane in the dining room. Mama will report to you on the back about your siblings and household matters. Best wishes and keep up your spirits for the rest of your ordeal, Your Father [1.] NL, A 77,83; handwritten, from Berlin-Charlottenburg 9. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 115-17. [2.] 2/50. [3.] Not extant; see 1/29, p. 106.

164 Letters and Papers from Prison Dear Dietrich,

It is inhibiting to write letters when one assumes they will be outdated in the course of things before they reach the other person. For instance, when | would now like to give you suggestions for your congestion, since | deduce that you have one from your request for lozenges from Bad Ems. Since these are unfortunately no longer available anywhere at all, this question is moot as well, and | only hope you can get the advice of a doctor. | sent you the wool sweater and your tracksuit pants. Don’t you want the sweatshirt as well? | always get 169 so much back that | have no real idea what you want. Well, the temperature is also changing rapidly. You can’t believe how difficult it is to get the Fontane and the Stifter. You had two volumes of Stifter in your library, says Renate, and your Fontane./4] But regardless | have no opportunity to look for something in your library, because we moved everything from the attic downstairs to Papa’s office on the ground floor and to the second floor, where it is stacked in a heap on top

of the cupboards. | decided to do this—not happily but of necessity—when | saw how often attics were destroyed by fire. But | can send you the Hungerpastor, by Raabe.'>] Let me know once more what you already have had of Fontane and Stifter there; the things often go to Hans and then | am no longer aware of

where they have already been.... And do keep letting me know your wishes. | so much want to help ease your situation as far as it is within our power. For members of our family this is truly an entirely improbable state of affairs. But one thing | can say with certainty: | have always been proud of my eight children, and now | am even prouder when | see how they are conducting themselves with dignity and decency in such an indescribable situation, now more than ever. To be sure, | am also convinced that this test of patience also has meaning for you and | [en]trust you further to divine guidance. God will make it turn out well.[®] So let us continue to wait and work in order that this evil time passes. That is also at times a blessing of work. Thank God you can do so on the intellectual level; and | have no lack of work in the house and with the families, and | will be glad as long as | can.... All the best, my good boy, Your old Mother

[4.] Not found in Bonhoeffer’s library after his death. [5.] Raabe, Der Hungerpastor. [6.] See Ps. 37:5b.

2/63 and 2/64 165 64. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!|! 170 October 4, 1943 My dear Parents,

Many thanks for your letter of September 20,'*! which arrived three days ago together with one from Maria dated September 2,!°! and one from Christoph dated September 28.'4! Could you please let Maria know immediately that I only just now received her letter; otherwise she won’t understand at all that I have not answered it; a later letter from September /3!°! arrived sooner. Outdoors these autumn days are enchanting, and I wish you—and I with

you—were in Friedrichsbrunn; I also wish this so much for Hans and his family, who are all especially fond of the cabin. But how many people may there be in the world today who are still able to fulfill their wishes? I don’t share Diogenes’ opinion that the absence of desire is the highest joy and an empty barrel the ideal vessel; why should we foolishly believe what we know is not true? But I do believe that, especially when one is still younger, it can be very good to have to renounce one’s wishes for a time; only I find it dare

not reach the point that the desires dic off altogether and one becomes resigned. But this danger does not yet exist In any way with me at present.

In her last letter Maria wrote about her thoughts about a career; only after I had answered her did it occur to me that perhaps the Rackow language school might be the right thing for her; in any case, I would consider that very sensible if she really does want to get out of Patzig. Would you please write this to her right away before she possibly makes different deci-

sions. She should ask them to send her a brochure. One can take all the various examinations for translators there, and the courses do not last long but are presumably rather demanding. But that wouldn't put her off. Another letter from Christoph has just arrived.'®! T find it amazing how 171 often he remembers to write. What sort of image of the world must be form-

ing in the mind of a fourteen-year-old when for months he has to write to his father and godfather in prison? There won't be too many illusions about the world in a mind like his. For him childhood has probably come to an

[1.] NL, A 77,84; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 117-18. [2] 2759. [3.] Love Letters from Cell 92, 59-61. RalReydors

[5.] Love Letters from Cell 92, 65-67.

[6.] Unpublished letter of September 24, 1943, from Christoph von Dohnanyi to Bonhoeffer (NL, A 77,80).

166 Letters and Papers from Prison end with these events. Please thank him very much, and I look forward greatly to seeing him again. It’s wonderful that you have managed to find Hartmann’s Systematische Philosophie.'7) 1 am now immersed in it, and it will occupy me for several weeks if in the meantime the longed-for interruption does not take place.!®! In one of her last letters Maria wrote so very nicely about the hours spent with you.!¥! She feels so at ease with you, and needless to say I am overjoyed by this and thank you very much that you always make it so pleasant for her. I would find her offer to take over the household from you, dear Mama, very attractive indeed, also with an eye to my return; I also believe that the worst period of the air raids is past. But of course I also don’t wish to assume the responsibility for this decision. I am looking forward to the next visit you have apphed for. Can't one of my siblings come with you then? How are Renate and her husband doing these days? I think often of them, of course. Please remember me fondly to them and all the others. With love,

Your grateful Dietrich Would you please try to get me Ortega y Gasset, System der Geschichteand Vom romischen Imperium, two essays published in 1943 by Deutsche Verlagsanstalt

in Stuttgart.

172. 65. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!'! October 13, 1943 My dear Parents,

Before me is the colorful bouquet of dahlias you brought me yesterday, reminding me of the lovely hour I was able to spend with you, and of the garden and simply of how beautiful the world can be in these autumn days. A stanza that I came across from Storm resonates with this mood and echoes over and over in my consciousness, like a melody one can't get out of one’s mind: “If outside it’s all gone mad / in Christian ways or not / still

[7.] See 2/44, ed. note 10. [8.] [This refers to Bonhoeffer’s hopes for a speedy trial and release from prison. —JDG] [9.] Love Letters from Cell 92, 72-73.

[1.] NL, A 77,86; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 118-20.

2/64 and 2/65 167 is the world, this gorgeous world / entirely resilient.”!*! A few colorful fall flowers, a glance out of the cell window, and a half hour’s “exercise” in the

prison yard, in which a pair of beautiful chestnut and linden trees stand, suffice to confirm this. Yet in the end the “world” is summed up, at least for me, in a few people one wants to see and with whom one wishes to be together. These occasional appearances by you and Maria for a short hour, as if from far away, are actually that from which and for which I primarily live. This is being in touch with the world where I belong. If in addition I could occasionally hear a good sermon on Sundays—sometimes the wind bears fragments of hymns to me—it would be even lovelier. By the way, Ursel or Karl-Friedrich ought to apply to accompany you on a visit; that would give me great Joy.

I took great pleasure in your most recent letter, of October 3,'°! which arrived with startling dispatch. In the meantime, you have seen for yourselves that Iam doing well, and this time I truly thought you were looking a little better. also thank you very much for the grapes from the garden; they are, of course, quite excellent, and lam only sorry that you, Papa, are now not eating them yourself. In recent days I have been writing a great deal again, and in light of — 173 everything [ intend to do during the day, the hours in the day are now often too short, so that at times | even have the bizarre feeling that—for this or that more incidental matter—I have “no time” here! In the morning after breakfast, from 7:00 a.m. on more or less, I do theology, then [I] write until noon; in the afternoon | read, then comes a chapter from Delbruck’s world history,'4! some English grammar,!°! of which I always have all sorts of things to learn, and finally, depending on energy, I write or read some more. In the evening I am then tired enough to be glad to lie down, if not yet to sleep. When ts Maria now coming to stay with you? Mama, wouldn't you like to

let her simply take over the household, if only temporarily?!°! That could be a sort of vacation for you, and | imagine Maria would do a splendid job. Iam so sorry that you and she have now dragged the fur coat here for nothing. But in the warm white sweater and the ski suit, Iam really quite warm [2.] Theodor Storm, “Oktoberlied” (stanza 2), published in Gedichte, bk. 1. [“October Song,” in Bernd, Theodor Storm, 107; translation here by Lisa E. Dahill.—JDG] [3.] 2/63. [4.] Cf. 2/50, p. 145. [5.] Twenty-four lines of English idioms with German translations are listed on Tegel note 23 (NL, A 86), for instance, “to take a strong line = einen klaren Kurs fahren,” “my in-laws = meine Schwiegereltern,” “to part with = sich trennen.” [6.] On this, see also 2/64, p. 166.

168 Letters and Papers from Prison despite its being only 12°!”! in the building. How long will we keep having to write each other letters? On the twenty-sixth I will be thinking very much of Christel’s and Renate’s birthdays. They will both celebrate them with particular concerns. By the way, that is also the anniversary of Max von Wedemeyer’s death.!®!

Please give my fondest wishes to all my siblings and their children. The longing to see them all again increases from week to week. Do also give Aunt Elisabeth"! my best regards. And just stay well in the cooler weather! With love from Your grateful Dietrich

174 66. From Karl Bonhoeffer to the President of the Reich War Court!!! October |7, 1943 To the President of the Reich War Court:

| request the expeditious release from prison of my son the Reverend Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He has been imprisoned since the beginning of April. | hardly need say that it would be a great joy to my wife and me, who are old people, to have him with us for the festive season!?! after such a difficult time. On the occa-

sion of a meeting with Senior Military Prosecutor Roeder a while ago, we were informed that the completion of the trial was due to take place in the middle of July. Given that, as we are told, the investigations have been concluded for some time, and given that for a member of my family the idea of evading trial in the case of release is out of the question, we hope that our request can be granted. | am also convinced, given the character of my son, that he has done nothing to justify further imprisonment. [Karl Bonhoeffer]

[7.] [Celsius; the Fahrenheit equivalent is 54°.—]DG] [8.] [Max von Wedemeyer was Maria’s brother who died on the eastern front. See Bonhoeffer’s first letter to Maria, DBWE 16, 1/206a, p. 366.—JDG] [9.] Elisabeth von Hase, who lived in Breslau. [1.] NL, A 77,87; typewritten unsigned carbon copy on his official stationery kept by Karl Bonhoeffer; from Berlin-Charlottenburg 9. Previously published in LPP, 120. [2.] Christmas 19453.

2/65-2/67 169 67. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! October 22, 1943 My dear Parents,

I’ve been told just now that Suse!*! and little Michael were here to deliver your package. I thank you and her for it very much. I hope prison didn’t make too stark an impression for the little boy. Such a young child naturally can't yet have any standard for what is possible and perhaps pictures my condition in overly dark colors. It was really painful for me that Iwas unable to — 175 greet him cheerfully and talk to him; that would surely have reassured him. I gather that Suse is of the opinion that children should not be intentionally shielded from whatever life brings with it, and in principle I believe this is correct, for it will not have been by accident and without meaning, precisely for this generation, that they are learning early on to come to terms with difficult impressions. But how different they will be at age eighteen than we were; I hope not too disillusioned and bitter, but truly only more capable of resistance and stronger through all they have experienced. Do tell Michael that I send my very best thanks for his bouquet! It appears that now my affairs are moving forward, and I am very happy about this.!! It is all the more unnatural that I can’t discuss with you what is affecting me, as I do with everything else. But I think it cannot go on much longer now. By the way, you mustn't think that lam preoccupied all day long with my situation. That is in no way the case and in my view also not necessary. lam using the last quiet days and weeks to work and to read as much as possible, and unfortunately I almost never get my daily quota of work entirely done. For me it has been of great benefit that during this time I have been able to read so calmly the great German novels of formation and education [Bildungsromane] and compare them with one another: Wilhelm Meister, Der Nachsommer, Der grune Heinrich, Der Hungerpastor—at the moment

Tam reading Flegeljahre\!!—and I will be nourished for a long time by them. Also, reading the world history’! was very useful to me. I continue to like

[1.] NL, A'77,89; typewritten copy found in Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer’s papers. Previously published in LPP, 120-22. [2.] [Susannah DreB.—]DG]

[3.] Following the serving of the indictment documents issued on September 21, 1943; see 2/61, ed. note 6. [4.] Goethe, Wilhelm Meister; Stifter, Der Nachsommer; Keller, Der griine Heinrich; Raabe, Der Hungerpastor; Jean Paul, Flegeljahre. [5.] Weltgeschichte, by Hans Delbrtick; see 2/50, p. 145, and 2/65, p. 167.

170 Letters and Papers from Prison Hartmann’s Systematische Philosophie.!©! It is a very usable overview. So I feel

like someone who has been given a semester filled with great publica! 176 ~My own production has certainly also benefited. But now I endlessly look forward to the day when I will be dealing not only with thoughts and imagined figures, but with real people and all our various daily tasks. This will be a great adjustment. How are you both? Is Else'*! away? What are the Schleichers doing? What

do you hear from Hans Christoph in Calabria?!*! T am doing well and as far as possible am enjoying the last warm days of the year. Thank you very much for everything. I hope your worries will soon be coming to an end! It would be about time. I thank Karl Friedrich very much for his letter.'1?! I hope to see him sometime for a visit. That would really be wonderful! With confidence, with love to you and the entire family, Your grateful Dietrich When is Maria coming to stay with you?!!!! She wrote me today that she is going for a while to her sister [Ruth-Alice von] Bismarck in Kniephof.!!*! She writes that you spoil her too much and I am to tell you that. But I find it actually very nice.

68. From Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer!!! October 23, 1943 My dear Dietrich,

Now Susi has left with the things for you, and the few cigarettes Papa saved for you and the little piece of sausage are still sitting here. So | am rather annoyed, 177 and you will be too. It is such a long way out to you, but | will definitely see that | send it to you soon. My memory is unfortunately getting worse and worse. ...

[6.] See 2/44, ed. note 10; 2/57, p. 155. [7.] “Public [lectures],” i.e., lectures for students of all disciplines. [8.] Else was the family household helper and Karl Bonhoefter’s receptionist. [9.] Hans Christoph von Hase, Bonhoeffer’s cousin and a senior military chaplain, was with a tank division involved in rearguard action in southern Italy in the fall of 1943. [10.] 2/52. [11.] See also 2/64, p. 166, and 2/65, p. 167. [12.] Letter of October 15, 1943, Love Letters from Cell 92, 83-85; Kniephof was the Bismarck family estate.

[1.] NZ, A 77,90; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg 9. Excerpts previously published (only the section from Karl Bonhoeffer) in LPP, 122.

2/67 and 2/68 Wa Maria is now, at her mother’s request, at her sister’s for about two weeks to help with her new little boy.[?] But unfortunately the language coursel?! began already on October |. She will write you about this. The woolen scarf | sent you is from her. She had knitted it for her brother.[4] .. . | can’t enjoy these magnificent fall days at all when | think how you are missing them, though of course one would have no time to enjoy them right now. But who knows what all this will turn out to be good for. | remain convinced that this long period of waiting for you is for the best. In any case, many new things are coming to life there in the silence, and much is ripening. In the agitation of these times, we never have a moment to ourselves. That you have so little exercise in the fresh air and no possibility of music weighs on Papa and me very much. Papa wants to add a note. Hoping to see you soon, and continuing to commend you to God, Your Mother

Dear Dietrich,

| hope we can speak to you again soon out there./! | requested permission to visit with the specified wish for regular visits every two weeks. | hope this will be approved and then speedily made unnecessary by your release. It is a crying shame that these gorgeous, warm fall days are passing by us and millions of others without our being able to enjoy them without reservation. One good thing is that it appears these days are still warm also for our soldiers in the east. Thus the winter will be somewhat shortened. ... It will soon be time when | can send you some homegrown tobacco. | will, however, indicate this in some way so that you recognize it and, if it is unusable, can discard it. Warm wishes, Your Father

{2.] Hans von Bismarck. [3.] See 2/64, p. 165. [At the Rackow language school.—JDG]

[4.] For Max von Wedemeyer, the first anniversary of whose death fell on October 26, 1943. [5.] [l.e., in Tegel prison.—J]DG]

172 Letters and Papers from Prison 178 69. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! October 31, 1943 My dear Parents,

I thank you again very much for your visit. [If only it could be somewhat more frequent and more extended. With our large family the time doesn’t last even long enough to ask about each person. But the main thing is that you and all the others are doing tolerably well. It goes without saying that everyone has particular worries and a great deal of work these days, even if at your age you would actually deserve to feel less of this; instead of us younger ones relieving you of some of these burdens, unfortunately it is just the other way around. I also thank you very much for the packet; I know precisely how [much] effort and thought this costs you each time, and if you are always annoyed when you forget something, as you wrote recently, dear Mama,'*! I beg you not to be. First, in fact things are almost never forgotten, instead just the opposite, everything is always much nicer than I consider possible; and, second, [am quite clear about all that you must think about these days. I would really be sorry if that which never fails to provide pure pleasure for me were somehow to cause you subsequent clistress. So thank you very much and please tell Ursel and all others involved. Today is Reformation Day, a day that can evoke a great deal of reflection

again, precisely in our time. One wonders why consequences had to arise from Luther’s action that were exactly the opposite of those he intended"! and that overshadowed his own last years of life and at times even made 179 him question his life’s work.""! He wanted an authentic unity of church and the West, that is, of Christian peoples, and the result was the collapse of the

church and of Europe; he wanted the “freedom of the Christian,”! and the result was complacency and degeneration; he wanted the establishment of an authentically worldly ordering of society without clerical domination,

and the result was the insurrection in the peasants’ revolt of his ime and [1.] NL, A 77,91; handwritten; note by Eberhard Bethge: “arrived November 5.” Previously published in LPP, 122-24. [2.] 2/68, p. 170. [3.)] Cf. DBWE 6:111-13; DBWE 4:53: “Luther’s teachings are quoted everywhere, but twisted from their truth into self-delusion”; DBWE 4:51: “It is the same word of the justification by grace alone, and yet false use of the same statement can lead to the complete destruction of its essence.” [4.] On this, see Bonhoeffer’s seminar paper written for Karl Holl: “Luther's Feelings about His Work as Expressed in the Final Years of His Life Based on His Correspondence of 1540-1546” (DBWE 9, 2/5, pp. 257-84). [5.] [See Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” 1520, LW31:329-77.—] DG]

2/69 173 soon thereafter the gradual dissolving of all authentic bonds and orders of life. [remember from my student years a debate between Holl and Harnack

as to whether the great intellectual movements succeeded as a result of their primary or their secondary motives.!°! At the time I believed that Holl, who asserted the first, must be right. Today I think he was wrong. Already

one hundred years ago Kierkegaard said that Luther today would say the opposite of what he said back then.'! I think that is true—cum grano salis.'®! 180 Now just one request: would you please order for me Wolf Dietrich Rasch, Lesebuch der Erzdhler'9! (Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1943), Wilhelm von Scholz, Die

Ballade (Thomas Knaur Verlag, 1943), Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, Briefe der Liebe aus 8 Jahrhunderten (Keilverlag, 1943)?!'°! Presumably the printings are not large, so they must be ordered quickly. My rheumatism is much better again. Recently it was so bad for a few hours that I was unable to stand up from the chair by myself or even to raise my hands to eat. They brought me immediately to the infirmary and put me under the light rays. But since May I haven’t ever been entirely rid of it. How does one deal with this later? Good that you have found a well-organized receptionist! [6.] On Karl Holl’s position, see The Distinctive Elements in Christianity: “How exactly

did Christianity gain the victory over the other religions?” (12). “Christianity can have conquered only through what differentiated it sharply, and differentiated it as a religion, through somcthing quite unique, which stamped with its own particular impress even what it borrowed” (14). For Holl, this unique aspect is what Jesus proclaims: “a God who wants to have dealings with sinful men” (15). On Adolf von Harnack’s position, see his essay “Karl Holl,” Aus der Werkstatt des Vollendeten, 5:286: “When in history has a religion

ever achieved victory in this world of its own accord and through its best aspects? Has it not always been the secondary reasons and the secondary motives that have moved the masses and led to victory in the world?” See also Harnack, Die Lntstehung der christlichen Theologie, 17-20. On this, cf. Staats, “Adolf von Harnack im Leben Dietrich Bonhoeffers,” 109n48. On these themes, cf. also DBWE 7:162-63. [7.] See Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves! 49: “But imagine Luther in our age, observant of our situation. Dost thou not believe that he would say... “The world is like a drunken peasant: when you help him up on one side of the horse, he falls off on the other.” |The Luther citation is from Table Talk (Tischreden), WA 62:470.— JDG] See also Geismar, “Wie urteilte Kierkegaard tiber Luther?” 19-20: “Luther stood up against these works; he reinstated faith again to its rightful place. ... In order to give order to the whole, he had to... push the apostle James out of the way... . Truly if Luther were living today, he would certainly say that James ought to be emphasized.” See also the student notes for Bonhoeffer’s lectures on the history of twentieth-century systematic theology, winter semester 1931-32, DBW 11:205-6, ed. note 282: “Kierkegaard ’s statement that the Pharisees and tax collectors had reversed their roles in the church today: [the] arrogance of humility.” [8.] “With a grain of salt,” 1.e., within certain limits. [9.] Wolfdietrich Rasch, Lesebuch deutscher Erzahler. [10.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 108n1.

174 Letters and Papers from Prison Do please send my love to all my siblings and their children. Hoping daily to see one another again soon, Your grateful Dietrich The letter from Grandmother Kleist arrived yesterday.!!!!

70. From Karl Bonhoeffer!!! November 5, 1943

Dear Dietrich, Your letter of Reformation Day!?! made a gratifyingly quick journey. We received

it today. | have ordered the books you wanted. The bookstore didn’t have them 181 in stock but will send them as soon as they come in. Since we saw each other, nothing special has occurred within the family. ... Mama invokes the specter of my November flu when | work in the garden without a hat. | have promised to improve. In point of fact, all kinds of things must now be done in the garden. Gardeners are hard to come by. The one we used to have seems to be sick. The two of us are no longer up to it, but we have help from the two Bormann daughters, |3] so we may perhaps manage in this way, providing the frost doesn’t come too quickly. Last night, unfortunately, the blossoms of our beautiful dahlias dropped. | managed to rescue the last rose for Mama’s desk. Today it has been seven months since you were imprisoned. It reassures us to know that you can

work and that you have the capacity to order your day. In this way the rest of your ordeal will also be endurable. With regard to your rheumatic problems, November, of course, is not exactly the best month to get rid of them. Perhaps you can ask for a half tablet of aspirin three times a day or Nelutrin three times a day. Admittedly, | do not know if the latter is available. | assume that when you return to normal circumstances and get more exercise in fresh air, you will leave these problems behind. We just now had the brief alarm. That they are coming so early is considerate. One is still dressed and can still hope for an undisturbed night.

[11.] Letter not extant. [1.] NZ, A 77,92; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 124-25. Lane 709,

[3.] Dr. Eugenie Bormann, a psychiatrist and student of Karl Bonhoeffer’s, who with her sister had stayed in touch with the Bonhoeffer family.

2/69-2/71 75 Karl Friedrich wrote that he intends to discuss the professional opportunity here in Berlin with his ministry in Dresden,!! and in any case he will not leave Leipzig during the war but will possibly come here on a regular basis for orientation. Mama sends much love; she will write soon herself. Warmly, your Father

71. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! 182 November 9, 1943

My dear Parents,

Now the dreary fall days have begun, and one must attempt to brighten them from within. Your letters always help with this—which, by the way, have been coming through with astonishing speed recently. And your last package was again particularly nice. I was very pleased and surprised by the Stifter anthology.'! Since it consists mainly of letter fragments, almost all of it is new to me. The last ten days have unfolded for me entirely under the spell of Witko,'3! which—after I had pestered you so long to find it—turned out to be right here in the prison library, where I had truly not reckoned to find it! With its thousand pages, which can’t be skimmed through but must

be read with much leisure, it is presumably not accessible to more than a few people today, and for this reason I don’t know if I ought to recommend it to you. For me it belongs among the most beautiful books of all I know; by its purity of language and of the characters it transports one into a quite rare and curious feeling of happiness. Actually one should read it for the first time at age fourteen, instead of the Battle for Rome,'! and then grow up with it. Even the good historical novels of today, such as those by Baumer,! can’t be mentioned in the same breath with it at all. It is a book

[4.] This refers to the consulting contract with the Osram firm in Berlin; see 2/47, ed. note 4. [1.] NL, A 77,93; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 125-26. [2.] On the inside cover of the Stifter breviary Weisheit des Herzens (see Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 144) isan underlined penciled signature, which was the prearranged signal of an encoded message contained in this book: the message itself reads, “Brilef] an Eberh|ard] bei Werg|in] dlietrich]” (English: “letter to Eberhard

via Wergin Dietrich”); see also 2/75, ed. note 1. [While imprisoned the conspirators passed messages to the family and to one another via coded messages in books; the code consisted of a penciled dot under a letter on alternate pages.—]DG| [3.] By Adalbert Stifter. [4.] Dahn, Ein Kampfum Rom. [5.] Gertrud Baumer (e.g., Adelheid, Mutter der Kénigreiche).

176 Letters and Papers from Prison sui generis. I would very much like to own it but most likely wouldn’t be able to find it. Among all the novels I’ve read to date, I have had an equally strong impression only of Don Quixote! and Gotthelf’s Berner Geist.'”! I have

183. foundered on Jean Paul once again this time. I can’t get past the sense that he is affected and vain. He must have been a rather deadly person too. It is wonderful to go on journeys through literature in this way, and the kinds of surprises to be experienced are astonishing, even after so many years of reading. Could you perhaps help me toward others? A few days ago I received Rudiger’s letter, for which I thank him very much. I thought with longing from here of the program performed at the Furtwangler concert he attended.'*! I hope I don’t unlearn the last of my technique in this time here. I sometimes have actual hunger for an evening of trios, quartets, or singing. Once in a while, my ears would really like to hear something other than the voices in this building. After more than seven months, one gets fed up here. But of course that is to be expected, and I needn't have said it to you. What is not to be expected, however, is that | am doing well despite everything, that | am provided various joys to experience, and that | am of good spirits in it all—and for this lam grateful every day. Tomorrow Maria is to come for a visit.! From month to month I comfort her and ask her to be patient, but it is nevertheless indescribably difficult for her.

I hope to see you again soon as well and in the meantime to receive a letter. Give all my siblings and their children my love. I thank Anna!!! very much for the cigarettes!—Just stay well, all of you, and don’t worry about me. “What takes a long time... .”!!! With love from your grateful Dietrich And many thanks for the book on chess theory!!!*!

[6.] See “After Ten Years,” ed. note 14. [7.] Gotthelf, Zeitgeist und Berner Geist.

[8.] Rudiger Schleicher wrote to Bonhoeffer on November 3, 1943 (the letter was found in 1989 and is therefore not listed in the NZ index): “Now I have come today... from the first Furtwangler concert, in which Hansen played Beethoven's G major concerto quite marvelously, and in the process reminded me very much of you again.” [9.] Wednesday, November 10, 1943; see Love Letters from Cell 92, 89-91.

[10.] Anna Dammeier. See 2/97, p. 257. [11.) “What takes a long time will turn out all right.” Cf. Korte, Die Sprichworter, no. 6450. [12.] Cf. 1/24, ed. note 9.

2/71 and 2/72 177 72. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! 184 November 17, 1943

My dear Parents,

As I write this letter, the Schleichers, as Ursel told me, are all listening to the B minor Mass!*! for today’s Repentance Day. For years it has been part of Repentance Day for me, just as the St. Matthew Passion'®! is part of Good Friday. I remember quite clearly the evening I heard it for the first time. I

was eighteen years old, was coming from a Harnack seminar in which he had discussed my first seminar paper very graciously! and had expressed the hope I would someday become a church historian;!°! I was still quite full with this when I entered the Philharmonic Hall; then the great “Kyrie eleison” began, and at that moment everything else sank away completely. It was an indescribable impression. ‘Today lam moving through it by memory, section by section, and rejoice that the Schleichers are able to listen to what is for me Bach’s most beautiful music.

Ursel’s visit this morning was a very great joy. I thank her for it very much. It is always so reassuring to find you all serene and cheerful in the face of all the disagreeable things you have to go through because of my imprisonment. Dear Mama, you wrote recently that you are “proud” that your children behave so decently in such a dreadful situation.'°! In reality we all learned that from the two of you, especially when you would grow so completely calm in the face of serious illnesses in the family and let nothing show. So that has probably become part of your legacy to us. Ursel told me a great deal about everyone, and it was really time we saw each other again after such long months in which so much that affects us together has taken place. Now I hope very much that Eberhard ’s petition for a visit will

be approved before he is sent to the front. But should that not be the case 185 after all, we both know well that we are bound to each other in our daily thoughts. Iam very happy for Renate that he received this leave!”! and hope

[1.] NL, A 77,94; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 126-28. [2.] J. S. Bach, BWV 232. [3.] J. S. Bach, BWV 244.

[4.] “Seminar Paper on | Clement,” winter semester 1924-25 (DBWE 9, 2/4); on this, see DB-ER, 78.

[5.] On the relationship between Harnack and Bonhoeffer, se DB-ER, 67-68, 73-77, 138-39, inter alia; Kaltenborn, Adolf von Harnack als Lehrer Dietrich Bonhoeffers; Staats, Adolf von Harnach im Leben Dietrich Bonhoeffers.

[6.] 2/63, p. 164. [7.] A so-called bomb leave, because of the damage in August to Bethge’s apartment in the Burckhardthaus in Berlin-Dahlem.

178 Letters and Papers from Prison that Hans Walter too will soon receive the leave he has truly long since earned. There is not much news to report about me. It’s now quiet in the building as evening approaches, and I can pursue my thoughts undisturbed. During the day I repeatedly notice the different volumes at which people go about their work and are probably equipped by nature to do. A fortissimo!! just outside the cell door is not exactly conducive to quiet scholarly work. In the last week I read Goethe’s Reynard the Fox again with great pleasure. Perhaps you would also enjoy it again some time. What are the possibilities of a piece of jewelry for Maria? I would so much

like to have something for her when I am free again. It would have to be something with very simple lines. But this will presumably be very difficult?

I thank Ursel again very much for the bottle with the magnificent cocoa, and thank Tine!”! for the milk she sacrificed for it. Also many thanks for the cookies! From week to week I hope for the end to this test of patience. For Maria too, it seems to me, it is all becoming too great a burden. But it can’t possibly be much longer. I wish you a beautiful first Sunday in Advent together with the children. I will be thinking of you very much, and I wish the Schleichers some beau-

tiful musical evenings as we used to do. Good that Renate now plays the piano part better than I could. Farewell, and above all stay healthy! Give my love to all my brothers and sisters and their children. With heartfelt love,

Your grateful Dietrich Many thanks for Papa’s letter of November 5.!!”!

186 73. To Eberhard Bethge''! November 18, 1943

Dear Eberhard, I simply must avail myself of the opportunity of your proximity to write to you.'*! You know that those in charge here have even refused me access to a

[8.] “Very strong,” a musical notation. [9.] [Christine Schleicher.—]DG] [10.] 2/70.

[1.] NL, A 77,97; handwritten. Excerpts previously published in LPP, 128-37. [2.] The uncensored correspondence between Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge that

began with this letter was delivered back and forth by various means. It began at the

2//20na 277/35 179 pastor;'§! but even if he had come—and I am actually very glad that I have only the Bible—I would not have been able to speak to him in the way I can only with you. You can scarcely imagine how much I worried in the first weeks of my imprisonment that your wedding plans not be shattered. I prayed for you

very much and for Renate and thanked God for every day I heard good things about you both. Your wedding day'*! too was truly a day of joy for me like few others. Later in Sept{ember]! I suffered from being unable to support you.!®! But the certainty that you have been led to this point with such unbelievable kindness made me quite confident that you are in God’s good care. That you two are expecting a child, Eberhard, gives me joy beyond words. Let us accompany this child on its way into the world with many, many prayers! And now today, be for me—after so many long months without worship, confession, and the Lord’s Supper and without consolation fratrum!?!|—my pastor once more, as you have so often been in the past, and listen to me.

There would be so infinitely much to report that | would like to tell you 187 both; but for today there can be only what is most essential, and so this letter is intended for you alone. You yourself will know what you can tell others. Since the time you prayed for me and with me many years ago!*!—this I will never forget—lI believe that you can pray for me like no one else. I want to ask you for this, and I also do the same for you every day. And now

let me tell you some things that you should know about me. In the first twelve days here, during which I was kept isolated and treated as a dangerous criminal—to this day the cells on either side of mine are occupied almost exclusively by death-row prisoners in chains—Paul Gerhardt proved conclusion of the interrogation phase, which in Bonhoeffer’s view—due to the agreement to shift all responsibility onto Hans von Dohnanyi—had exonerated him. |'This was at Dohnanyi’s insistence, since he was in the best position to determine what information could be given without endangering others in the conspiracy. See DB-LR, 800-811, as well as DBWE 16, 1/231.—JDG]

13.| The contact with Harald Poelchau and Hans Dannenbaum (see DB-ER, 850 and 852) had to remain concealed. [4.] May 15, 1943.

[5.] The words “in Sept.” were added later. [6.] He wanted to help in the (unavailing) attempt to extend Bethge’s UK classification; see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 126-34. [See also de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 57-58.—] DG]

[7.] “Consolation of the brethren,” following | Thess. 5:14, where Paul exhorts believers to console the “faint-hearted.” [8.] [See DBWE 16, 1/68, p. 136. Bethge was Bonhoeffer’s “confessor” in the House of Brethren at Finkenwalde. See DB-ER, 506, and de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 28-35.—JDG]

180 Letters and Papers from Prison of value in unimagined ways, as well as the Psalms and Revelation. I was pre-

served in those days from all severe temptations [Anfechtungen]. You are the only person who knows that “acedia”-“tristitia”! with its ominous consequences'!?! has often haunted me, and you perhaps worried about me in this respect—so I feared at the time. But I have told myself from the beginning that I will do neither human beings nor the devil this favor; they are to see to this business themselves if they wish; and I hope I can stick to it.!"!! In the beginning the question also plagued me as to whether it is really the cause of Christ for whose sake I have inflicted such distress on all of 188 you; but soon enough I| pushed this thought out of my head as a temptation [Anfechtung] and became certain that my task was precisely the endurance of such a boundary situation!'*! with all its problematic elements, and became quite happy with this and have remained so to this day. 1 Pet. 2:20; 3:14,(131

[9.] On acedia (Capathy,” “sloth,” “resignation,” as later in the note) and fristitia (“melancholy”), see Pieper, Uber die Hoffnung, 56: “According to the classical theology of the church, acedia is a kind of sadness, namely, sadness in view of the divine good in the human being.” Pieper, Zucht und Maf, 103: “Acedia is that indolent sadness of the heart that refuses to demand of oneself the great [task] to which God has called the human being.” See also Secberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3:428. The reference occurs alreacly in Bonhoeffer’s seminar paper written for Karl Holl, “Luther’s Feelings about His Work as Expressed in the Final Years of His Life” (DBWE 9, 2/5, p. 280): “Luther might have called such a mood a perturbation of tristitia acedia.” On this, see Karl Holl, “Martin Luther on Luther.” Cf. Bonhocfter’s 1938 Bible study on temptation (DAW 15:401), where he speaks of “the temptation toward desperatio, toward sadness (acedia).” See also Bonhoeffer’s circular letter for the first Sunday in Advent, 1942 (DBWE 16, 1/212, p. 377): “From early times the Christian church has considered acedia—the melancholy of the heart, or ‘resignation’—to be one of the mortal sins.” On the connection between acedia and temptation, see 1/17, ed. note 5. Regarding these tendencies noted in Bonhoeffer’s biography, cf. DB-ER, 39, 140, 506, 831-33. [See also ed. notes 10 and 11 immediately below.—J]DG]

[10.] Cf. DBWE 6:202-3, and its reference to the “temptation to self-murder.” [11.] [Bonhoeffer is referring to his resolve to resist the temptation to commit sul-

cide. See the other references in the immediately preceding notes, as well as 1/12, [12.] [See DBWE 6:273, 366, inter alia, where Bonhoeffer discusses the significance of the “boundary situation,” or Grenzfall._J DG] [13.] 1 Pet. 2:20: “If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God's approval.” [In Luther’s translation the concluding phrase refers to God’s grace and not just to God’s approval.—]DG] 1 Pet. 3:14: “But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated.” On these Bible citations, cf. DBWE 6:346.

2/72 181 Personally I reproach myself for not having finished the Ethics (at the moment it is presumably confiscated),''! and it comforts me somewhat that I told you the most important things. Even if you were not to remember it any longer, it would nevertheless resurface in some way indirectly.!!°! Furthermore my thoughts were, of course, still incomplete.!'®! Then I felt neghgent not to have followed through on the long-fostered

desire to go with you once more to the Lord’s Supper. I had wanted to express to you there how grateful I was that with so much patience and forbearance you bore my tyrannical and self-serving manner, which often made you suffer, and everything with which I sometimes made your life difficult. | ask you for forgiveness for this and yet know that—even if not physically—we were granted participation spiritualiter'™! in the gift of confession, absolution, and communion, and may be very happy and at peace in this.'!5! But I wanted to express it nevertheless. As soon as possible I began (in addition to daily Bible study; I have read the Old Testament two and a half times through and have learned a great deal)!!! nontheological work. An essay on “the sense of time”!*"! arose primarily out of the need to make my own past present to myself in a situation in which time could so easily appear “empty” and “lost.” Gratitude and repentance are what keep our past always present to us.“ But more on this — 189 later.

Then I began a bold undertaking that I have long had in mind; I began to write the story of a middle-class [btrgerlich] family of our time.??! All

[14.] The manuscript on which Bonhoeffer was working immediately prior to his arrest (sce DBWE 6:408, ed. note 70, and 400, ed. note 40) was temporarily in the possession of the Gestapo. [15.| The word “indirectly” was added later. |16.| This final sentence was added later. [17.] “Spiritually.”

[18.] [See Bonhoeffer’s discussion “Confession and the Lord’s Supper” in DBWE 5:108-18.—JDG]

[19.] The parenthesis was added later. [20.] This is not extant; see 1/11, ed. note 9, and elsewhere. [21.] Cf. Zettelnotizen, 55-56: “Time is empty, filled by Jesus Christ, who is the fullness

of time... . Gratitude, repentance, connection backwards. Tradition, parents, history, roots, heritage. Not cut off.” See also Bonhoeffer’s 1940 section “On Gratitude among Christians” (DBWE 16, 2/5, p. 491, including ed. note 11): “In gratitude and repentance my life is gathered into unity [note 11: “my present life with my past.”] [22.] See “Novel,” DBWE 7:71-182. [It is difficult to convey the meaning of biirgerlich in English today without some degree of misunderstanding. Although “middle class” or “bourgeois” are the dictionary translations, they do not convey the fact that the Bonhoeffer family was an upper-class family, in some sense aristocratic, and numbered among the leading citizens in Germany.—]DG]

182 Letters and Papers from Prison the countless conversations we have had along these lines and everything

I myself have experienced formed the background for this—in brief, a rehabilitation of the bourgeoisie as we know it in our families, and precisely from a Christian perspective. The children of two families connected by friendship grow up gradually into the responsible tasks and offices of

a small town and attempt together the creation of common life, mayor, teacher, pastor, physician, engineer. You would recognize many characteristics familiar to you in the story, and you yourself also appear in it. But I have not yet moved very far beyond the beginnings, particularly due to the repeatedly inaccurate prognoses regarding my release and the inner unrest connected with that. But it is a great joy to me. If only I could talk to you about it every day. Truly I miss this more than you can imagine. The origin of our ideas often lay with me, but their clarification entirely with you. Only in conversation with you did I find out whether an idea was of any use. I long to read out loud to you some of what I have written. ‘The observation of details is so much better on your part than mine. Perhaps it will turn out to be crazy pretentiousness?! On the side I wrote an essay on the subject, “What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?”!'*4! and at the moment I am attempting to write prayers for prisoners,?"! of which oddly enough there are none yet written. Perhaps they should be distributed at Christmas. And now the reading. Yes, Eberhard, I regret very much that we did not 190 get to know Stifter together. That would have stimulated our conversations very much. This will now have to be postponed until later. But I have much to tell you about it. Later? When and how will that be? Just in case, I have passed on to the lawyer a will?! in which I have signed over to you almost everything I have. Only Maria must be allowed first to choose for herself something she would like to have as a remembrance. In this case please be very good to Maria, and if possible even now write her a few nice words in my stead from time to time, as you are able to do so well, and simply tell her that I asked you to do this. But perhaps—or surely°!—you are now movying into greater danger. I will think of you every day and ask God to protect you and lead you back. Please take everything you can use from among my things; I am happy only to know they are with you! And please take from among the groceries that have come for me as much as you can possibly use. This would be a very reassuring thought for me. [23.] See DBWE 16, 2/19, pp. 601-8. [24.] See 2/76-78. [25.] Will of September 20, 1943; see 2/60, “Last Will and Testament.” [26.] “Or surely” was added later.

vi 183 I would love to hear very, very much from you! Sometimes I have thought it may actually be very good for both of you that Iam not there. You both were spared the conflict between marriage and friendship that in the beginning is by no means so easy to resolve and later will not be perceived as such. But that is just a private and passing thought that you must not laugh at! Might it be arranged, in the case of my not being sentenced but released and drafted, for me to come to your region? That would indeed be marvelous. By the way, if I should be sentenced, which one can never know, do not worry about me in any way. 7hat truly doesn’t bother me at all, except that

Iam then presumably forced to stay put a few more months until the end of the “probationary period,” and that is, of course, not pleasant. But many things are not pleasant! The matter for which I would be sentenced is so unobjectionable that I should only be proud of it.!*7! Also I hope, if God preserves our lives, that we can at least celebrate Easter together again with joy! And then—sub conditione Jacobea'*|—I will baptize your child! And now, farewell, dear Eberhard. I do not expect a long letter from you. — 191

You have little time now. But let us promise each other to remain faithful in intercession for each other. I will pray for strength, health, patience, and preservation [rom conflicts and temptations for you. Please pray the same for me. And if it should be determined that we never see each other again, then let us think of each other to the end with gratitude and forgiveness, and may God grant to us then that we one day stand praying for each other and praising and giving thanks with each other before God’s throne. God protect you and Renate and us all! In faithfulness, your grateful Dietrich How"! difficult it must be for you not to be able to be with Renate for the next few months!"! I very much hope that the departure may be not too bitter for you both, but full of confidence, trust, and gratitude. With the

very best one has, one can surely do no better than to place it in God’s hands. Only in this way can one move beyond the bitter feeling of being cut

[27.] [Bonhoeffer had been formally charged with evasion of military duty and assisting others in evading duty. For the indictment documents against him, see DBWE 16, 1/230. See also 2/79, ed. note 27.—JDG] [28.] “According to the condition [specified in the book of] James,” i.e., Jas. 4:15: “You ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’” [Luther’s German translation has, “If the Lord wishes and we live, we will do this or that."°—]DG] [29.| At this point the writing in the margin begins. [30.] Following basic training in Berlin-Spandau (see 2/59, ed. note 5), training was

continued in Lissa (Leszno) near Posen (Pozna ) for the units of the Foreign Office/ Military Intelligence.

184 Letters and Papers from Prison off, with which we have both now become acquainted. At least you can still write daily and receive letters. That is no small thing. I hope your future

commanding officer will be reasonable. I readily believe and hear with amusement that you are such a splendid soldier. It will make many things easier. In this way as well you are certainly my better. I will someday stand at

attention before you and am already looking forward to it. Is the language truly disgusting and repulsive? But I believe you will very quickly meet with trust and influence among the others. By the way, I hear that Warsaw is terribly expensive. Take as much as you can with you; if you need money, just take a thousand marks from my account. I have no use for it, after all. Are you actually receiving my letters to my parents to read? Have them send 192. them to you. I find here—and I think you as well—that waking up in the morning is the most difficult part emotionally. (Jer. 31:26!)’" I am now praying quite simply for freedom. There is also a false serenity that is not at all Christian. We need feel no shame as Christians about a measure of impatience, longing, protest against what is unnatural, and a strong measure of desire for freedom and earthly happiness and the capacity to effect change. In this I believe we are of the same mind. After all, despite—or precisely because of—all that we are presently experiencing, cach in his own way, the two of us will surely remain entirely our old selves, won’t we?! 1 hope you don’t think that I will emerge from here as a man of the “inner line,”’*! now much less than ever! And in the same way I believe this of you. What a day of joy it will be when we tell cach other our experiences! It sometimes makes me very angry that | am not free now. My wedding plans: if lam free and not to be drafted for at least a couple of months, then I will get married. If I have only two to three weeks [ree until my induction, I will wait until the end of the war. What an engagement we have. Maria is astonishing. But isn’t this too much to expect? If only we had seen each other a couple of times in January. I don’t know why Maria, young as she is, has to endure so much. I hope it is not too much for her, and yet lam so happy to have her now of all times. Or do you think it would have been more proper and selfless if following my imprisonment I had [31.] “Thereupon I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant to me.” [32.] This was an expression widespread in the Confessing Church, comparable to the concept of “inner emigration”; cf. Willem A. Visser ‘t Hooft, “Notes on the State of the Church in Europe” (DBWE 16, 1/98, p. 178): “Inside the Confession [szc] Church there is a... group which believes that the Church should stick to what is called ‘the inner line,’ and concentrate exclusively on the building up of its own spiritual life. This tendency is often combined with a strongly apocalyptic note. There is, however, another group which believes that the Church has also a prophetic and ethical function in relation to the world and that it must prepare for the moment when it can again fulfill that function.”

v4 i 185 asked her simply to wait for my release, without letters and visits? I would have considered that unnatural, and I believe she would have as well. Please 193 think of her too when you think of me. G. Seydel’s death'°*! hits me very hard. It’s always the best who die. With the help of you all, I have survived well physically (strange what a minimal role concupiscentia’") plays here; cf. 1 Pet. 4:1).°! What is going on with your sudden attacks of fatigue? (I remember with horror how inconsiderate I often was about that. Terrible! But I know you don’t hold that against me); and shouldn't you have Papa give you a few Pervitin for when you are on guard at night? Here it is often used for this purpose, and I recently tried it out myself. It is very good. Go ahead and talk it over. Now [ll end. In any case, we have experienced incomparably beautiful years together. And may many still await us!

Dietrich” November 20 Your joint letter of November 9”! has just arrived with so much news, which I was very happy about and also with the sorrowful news of B. Riemer’s and R. August’s deaths.'°*! Now you have lost the last one of your actual childhood friends."! More and more our gaze is now being directed toward the present and the future. Thank God you have Renate, and you yourself know well that behind her stands a family whose many members regard you as one of their own and who will always stand by you. I ask myself, did in some way alienate you from your old friends? I don’t believe it; rather it was your path that led you in a different direction, without affecting your faithfulness to them in the slightest. I was often impressed by how seriously you took the

duties of your friendship toward them. But your marriage with Renate isthe 194 strongest proof for me that the way that separated you from some things externally was the right and necessary way. I think of Gerhard!°! as my [33.] Gustav Seydel, who was killed in the Ukraine on October 20, 1943. In the circular letter of November 22, 1943 (DBWE 16, 1/137, p. 237), Bonhoeffer had reported Seydel’s being wounded. [34.] Latin for “(sensual) urges”; cf. the lengthy note 11 in DAWE 1:110-14, esp. p. 111. [35.] “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin).” [36.] This marks the end of what is written in the margins. [37.] This letter is not extant. [38.| This refers to Bernhard Riemer, killed in Russia on October 9, 1943, and Reinhold August, killed in Russia on September 27, 1943. [39.] This refers to Riemer; see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 51-63. [40.] On Gerhard Vibrans, see Bethge, Jn Zitz gab es keine Juden, 63-71, as well as the

letters from the Church Struggle (which also refer to Riemer and Zippel) written by

186 Letters and Papers from Prison own brother even today, and of H. H. Zippel!!! and Riemer with respect and friendly sentiments. They were good and special people who accompanied you through your youth. I probably don’t have the funeral sermon for R[iemer]'**! anymore, but I think I gave it to them at the time.

The thought of not being able to talk to you immediately upon my release is difficult for me too. But if this should in fact be the case, then at least we will have to write each other extensive letters for a while and so we will not forget our different experiences. In case I am still sitting here in this hole at Christmas, don’t let that bother you. Iam actually not afraid of doing so. As a Christian, one can celebrate Christmas even in prison—at any rate, more easily than at family festivals. | thank you most especially that you have requested permission to visit. I think it has also become possible now?! with fewer complications. However, I would not have dared to request this of you. But since you have now done so on your own initiative, it is all the more marvelous. My entire hope is now that this will really come about.!'"! But you know, even if it is denied, the joy that you tried will remain, and only my anger at certain people will increase somewhat for my trial date, which is not a bad thing. (For I sometimes think I am not yet cnraged enough about the whole thing!) So in that case let us swallow even this bitter pill—we are both becoming gradually accustomed to doing so 195 — of late. 1am glad that at the moment of my arrest I saw you, and I have not forgotten it. | know that my feeble attempts to care for you are now in much better hands with Renate and with the best conceivable mother-in-law of all conceivable mothers-in-law (free use of Leibniz).!4”!

A bit more regarding my external life: we get up at the same time; the day lasts until 8:00 p.m.; I am sitting holes into my trousers while you are

Vibrans and members of his circle of family and friends, and published under the title So ist es gewesen. |Vibrans was Bethge’s cousin, boyhood friend, and colleague at Finkenwalde and a pastor in the Confessing Church.—]DG] [41.] Hans-Henning Zippel. [42.] See Bonhoeftfer’s handwritten outline for the sermon from July 18, 1936 (DBWE 14, 3/15). [43.| This refers to the end of Eberhard Bethge’s UK classification; see 2/59, ed. note 5.

[44.] On November 26, 1943, Eberhard Bethge and Maria von Wedemeyer accompanied Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer to Tegel. The guard on duty also kindly made it possible for a short meeting between Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Bethge, and Maria von Wedemeyer while laundry was being exchanged. [45.] This refers to Ursula Schleicher. Bonhoeffer is playing off the comment in Gottfried Leibniz, Theodicy, pt. 1, point 8 (cf. DBWE 3:45) that “there is an infinity of possible worlds, among which God must have chosen the best” (128).

vi 187 walking the soles off your shoes. Iam reading V.B.!°! and Reich;'4"! T have become acquainted with several very nice people. Daily I am led for half an hour of solitary walking. In the afternoon my rheumatism is being treated in the infirmary with great kindness but without success. Each week I receive the most magnificent things from you all to eat. I thank you very much for everything, also for the cigars and the cigarettes from your trip!4*! If only you all are able to eat enough! Are you often hungry? That would be ter-

rible! Iam lacking nothing—only missing all of you. I want to play the G minor sonata!!! with you and sing Schiitz, and hear you play Pss. 70 and 47.!°°] Those were your best ones! My cell is being cleaned. Then I can pass on something to eat to the prisoner who does the cleaning. One of them was recently condemned to death. That affected me greatly. In seven and a half months one sees a great deal, particularly what major consequences minor stupidities can have. My observation is that extended deprivation of freedom has a demoralizing effect in every respect on most people. I have thought up a different penal system;

principle: to penalize each person in the actual area of wrongdoing; for example, to penalize “absence without leave” by canceling all leave; “unwarranted wearing of medals for bravery” by deploying the person to danger-

ous frontline service; “thievery of comrades” by temporarily marking the 196 thief; “illicit trading of food” by reducing the person's rations, and so forth. Why are there actually no deprivations of freedom in the O.T. law? Just in case they’re ever needed, you have, of course, preparatory studies for your unfinished doctoral project that you can show (set of lectures on the Psalms)? It was never discussed, but just in case.!51l Ts your rank as an “orderly” to the sergeant actually considered a particular honor? Ridiculously funny! Or also repugnant? | am so happy that you can still spend so

[46.] Volkischer Beobachter, Berlin ed.; this was the national Nazi daily paper. [47.] Das Reich, a Nazi weekly paper founded by Joseph Goebbels to appeal in particu-

lar to the educated public. [48.| In July 1943, Bethge traveled to Switzerland on behalf of the Gossner Mission as an inspector (India department) under orders of the Foreign Office/ Military Intelligence Office. This trip was organized by members of the resistance to show that the UK classification Hans von Dohnanyi had procured for Bethge had not been without purpose; see Bethge, Jn Zitz gab es keine Juden, 131-33; de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 56-58. [49.] Sonata for Obligato Cembalo (piano) and Flute in G Minor, by J. S. Bach. [50.] See 1/17, p. 81. [51.] This is a reference to the fact that the connections between Bonhoeffer and Bethge had remained unmentioned in the interrogations. A teaching doctorate (licentiate thesis) was to be given as the reason for Bethge’s UK classification during the first months of the war, in case interrogations went in this direction.

188 Letters and Papers from Prison much time with Renate. Do thank her very much for the letter!!°! Also give Christoph?! my best regards when you two write to him next. I hope you will stay together in Lissa yet a good long time. [54] wish you both much joy and don’t want it to be darkened in any way by thoughts of me. I myself have every reason to be grateful for so infinitely much. Now in the hope of a happy reunion soon as in old times! Your Dietrich The enclosed verses!®°! have made a particularly strong impression on me. Perhaps you would like to keep this piece of paper in your wallet? The rest of the letter must, of course, be destroyed.!"! Does it perhaps please you to hear that prisoners and guards here tell me over and over that they “marvel” (?!) at my peace and cheerfulness [heiterkeit]?°”! T am always amazed myself at this sort of comment. But it is still quite nice? Ifyou can thing of anything by which I could still give you some pleasure,

you would be giving me the greatest joy! It is among the most dreadful aspects of life here that one can do utterly nothing of this sort. Please at least occasionally take some of my bacon along; tell Mama that / urgently request it! 197 = T still have plenty of it and will certainly need none in the next six weeks, If only I could give you the Krossin smoked goose to go along with it. Can that

sort of thing be mailed?! November 21

Today is Remembrance Sunday. Are you holding the memorial service for B. Riemer? It would be lovely but difficult. Then comes Advent, a time during which we share so many beautiful memories. You were the first to open for me the world of music making, as we did for years during the Advent weeks. By the way, a prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside. That has just occurred to me; don’t get the idea one cares much about symbolism here! But | have to

[52.] Letter of November 9, 1943 (see p. 185), which is not extant. [53.] Christoph Bethge. [54.| Here the writing in the margins begins. [55.] Not extant. [56.] Because the correspondence was smuggled past the censors, it had to be hidden or destroyed. [57.] Cf. the poem “Who Am I?” 3/173. | Heiterkeit, or the Latin equivalent hilaritas, frequently occurs in Bonhoeffer’s letters and papers from prison as a mark of a genuine human being.—]JDG] [58.] This marks the end of the writing in the margin.

v2 i 189 tell you two things yet that may seem peculiar to you: 1. I very much miss table fellowship; every “material” greeting I receive from you all is transformed here into a remembrance of table fellowship with you. Is it not an essential dimension of life precisely because it is a reality of the reign of God?! 2. T have quite spontaneously experienced Luther’s instruction to “bless oneself with the cross” at morning and evening prayer as a help.!¥ There is something objective about it for which a person here particularly longs. Don’t be alarmed! I will definitely not!°!! come out of here as a “homo

religiosus”!!?! Quite the opposite: my suspicion and fear of “religiosity” have become greater here than ever. That the Israelites never say the name of God aloud is something I often ponder, and I understand it increasingly better. Did you two receive my wedding sermon, °*! actually? . .. This letter has become much longer than I expected. Now various things are in it that are also intended for others. You will be able to distinguish these.

I am presently reading a great deal in Tertullian, Cyprian, and other church fathers, with much interest. To some extent they are much more — 198 contemporaneous than the Reformers and simultaneously a basis for Protestant-Catholic conversation. Is either of you sometimes surprised that I let you send me things to cat without the slightest protest, even though I know you yourselves have so little? In the beginning, during the months of interrogation, I considered it important for the sake of the cause, to keep up my strength. Later I was

repeatedly told that the trial date would be soon, and I wanted to be in good shape for it physically as well, and now this is again the case. Once | am either free or sentenced, this will, of course, cease. By the way, on purely legal grounds I consider a sentence practically impossible. November 22

If there is anything that might ease Renate’s condition a bit and you need money for it, please—without more ado—simply withdraw as much as you need. And all the more so when the time arrives.'°*! There is really no sense

[59.] [“Das Reich Gottes,” normally translated “the kingdom of God.” The Greek original is more accurately translated as “the reign of God.”"—JDG] [60.] Luther’s Morning Blessing: “In the morning, as soon as you get out of bed, you are to make the sign of the holy cross and say: ‘God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit watch over me. Amen.” This and Luther’s Evening Blessing are found in the Lutheran Book of Worship, 34.

[61.] The word “not” was added later. [62.] Latin for “religious person.” [63.).1/ 1s; [64.] [I.e., when the baby is born.—]DG]

190 Letters and Papers from Prison in money moldering in the bank. Be glad that you went ahead and bought Renate the jewelry back then. I will probably not be able to get anything for Maria. I have often been glad that you asked me at the time to attend the civil marriage ceremony.'®°! I think happily of that day and have the feeling of having come with you right up to the decisive moment. Say, how do you actually manage among the other soldiers with your willingness—which | often admired—simply to accept unfair allegations (probably an aspect of your anima naturaliter christiana)?'©°! Here there have

been several times when I have quite colossally told off people who permitted themselves merely the slightest rudeness with me, so that they were quite dumbfounded and from then on completely above reproach. That truly gives me a great deal of pleasure, but I realize clearly that it is actually an utterly impossible sensitivity that I can scarcely ever overcome. You know well enough that I was hardly able to swallow even your well-deserved

199 reproaches, a horrible trait that you truly bore with endless patience. I can become quite ferocious when I see here entirely defenseless people being unjustly roared at and abused. These petty tormentors!°”! of others, who vent their cruelty in this way and of course are found everywhere, can upset me for hours. I think you find a better balance in such things. It would surely be good for me if I could be a soldier near you. The Neues Lied!°>! that I received just a few days ago stirs up countless beautiful memories! You see, things keep occurring to me that I want to discuss with you. When one

begins alter such a long time, there is no end, and many things that I very much wanted to ask and tell you aren't even expressed. We truly must see each other soon. Now [’Il really stop! With heartfelt love to you and Renate, Your Dietrich

Arel69] you by any chance writing occasionally to Papa and Mama? I could imagine they are delighted by any greeting that reminds them of me. | was very pleased with the intercessory prayer at the ovvodos.!7°! Do you at least have time to read the Daily Texts in the morning? [65.] March 22, 1943. [66.] “A soul, Christian by nature” (Tertullian). [67.] Cf. DBWE 7:121: “Whoever has brought down even one of these petty tormentors can boast of saving many human lives.” [68.] Lin Neues Lied (A New Song). This songbook for German Protestant youth was used in the preachers’ seminary at Finkenwalde (in the 2nd ed. from 1933, which had not yet been influenced by National Socialism). See, e.g., DBW 14, 1/16. [69.] Beginning of writing in the margins.

[70.] “Synod.” Bethge had let Bonhoeffer know that the Confessing Synod of the Protestant Church of the Old Prussian Union in Breslau had prayed for him by name at its worship service on October 17, 1943.

2/73 and 2/74 191 November 23

The attack last night was not exactly enjoyable.'’"!! I immediately thought of you all and especially of Renate. In such moments being imprisoned is 200 indeed no longer funny. Hopefully, you two will be going to Sakrow. Last night I was wondering how nervous seasoned frontline soldiers are during alarms. My parents were just here and brought good news. So the long trip was not in vain. How on earth did they manage to fight their way here? The city must be an awful sight. I was so very sorry that we were not able to

speak, but was nevertheless very glad to hear that nothing happened to either of you—December 17 is the date!!7*! Finally! Will T see you this week Se ereCan’t a be PPeeenE Menonphone ed . A ° . ° ee Z [37]

Sabine be a nice name? You both have a good relationship with het and I find the name itself quite charming, a bit old-fashioned, but maybe Just because of that. By the way, | don’t think Amalie would be so bad; I also have always liked the name Angelica, which I always instinctively associate with Fra Angelico. And what do you think of Adelheid? Funny, those are all names with along Ain them. Perhaps they're more resonant than others (or

[29.] See the poem “The Friend,” 4/196. [30.] 2/96, p. 256. [31.| This is a reference to the Gethsemane passage, Matt. 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:40-46. [32.] E.g., Pss. 22:12[11]; 25:17; 32:7 [“trouble” in NRSV]; 48:7[6]. [33.] Cf. Dehn, Der Gottessohn, 229: “What Jesus said out of his deepest distress had no witness”; and Weiss on Mark 14:35-36 in “Die drei altesten Evangelien,” in Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, 209: “We must not deceive ourselves, the words of the prayer are not an exact reproduction of those which Jesus must actually have spoken. The disciples were sleepy or asleep, and were in no position to hear the words of someone praying some distance away.” [34.] “Gospel of the forty days,” a concept coined by Reinhold Seeberg (see Seeberg, Evangelium quadraginta dierum) to indicate a “last and final revelation” of the Risen One (as in Matt. 28:16—20; Luke 24:44—49; Acts 1:6-8) shared with his disciples “during the forty days after Easter, planting ideas, inspiring plans” (trans. altered). Seeberg, Textbook of the History of Doctrines, 1:34—35; see also Seeberg, Christliche Dogmatik, 2:206-9.

[35.] 2/96, p. 254. [36.] Horace, Carmina 3.1. (37.] Sabine Leibholz, Bonhoeffer’s twin sister.

270 Letters and Papers from Prison does my subconscious somehow begin, very personally, with Maria’). But I'll keep quiet on the subject of a boy’s name. Something more for you, Eberhard: could you send me the name of the doctor for your unit? I’m noticing that Papa’s name makes quite an impression on the doctors here! What kind of condition are you in?!8*! So, that’s all for today! Yours always, with you in countless thoughts and good wishes, Dietrich

Havel"! you paid a visit to the “Propaganda”?"! in Rome? What all did you see? Memories of 1936'#!! have all come alive again, but you will be remem-

bering much more than I do from that trip. If you see the Laocoén!"?! again, look and see whether the father’s head may have been a model for later images of Christ. Last time this classical man of sorrows really gripped me and stayed in my thoughts for a long time.!48! How wonderful it would be if we could go there together! You don’t need to worry about me; all is well, and there are a few very nice people here whom you must meet later

294 on. If only it could be soon.—Did you get the Isophan tablets I requested

for your! I have had to take a different tone with my companion”! on our daily walks. Despite all his efforts to throw himself at me, the other day he let slip

a remark about the Gert problem!?®! and so on, which made me despise him and treat him as coolly as I have never yet treated anyone. I’ve also seen to it that all the little comforts he had come to enjoy were promptly taken

[38.] [If Bethge had health problems, he might be classified as unfit for duty at the front.—]DG| [39.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [40.|] See 2/86, ed. note 31. [41.] Their trip to Italy; see 2/88, ed. note 34. [42.] A group of marbles of Laocoon and his sons (first century CE) in the Vatican Museums, cf. DBWE 9, 1/57, p. 89. [43.] Cf. the diary fragment (dated July 16, 1942, and used for camouflage purposes) in DBWE 16, 1/223, p. 402: “Did the head of Laoco6n become some sort of model for later portrayals of Christ? The ancient ‘man of sorrows. No one was able to inform me about this; will attempt to investigate it. Curious, until now, the Laocoon never made any particular impression on me.” [44.] For Bethge’s reply, see 2/113, p. 300. [45.| See 2/384, pp. 214, and 2/66, p. 235. [46.] “Gert” refers to his brother-in-law Gerhard Leibholz, who had to emigrate with his family in 1938 because of the persecution of non-Aryans; here the name is used as a code word for the so-called Jewish problem.

2/102 Ziti away. Let him whimper around awhile if he likes—that leaves me absolutely cold—which surprises but also interests me! He’s really a pitiful figure, but certainly not a “poor Lazarus”!!“7! That we’re both godfathers to Dieter Z.’s children!*®! is very nice. Lokies’s opinion'®! is indeed important and reassuring to me. I would very much like to see you, Renate! But please make that long journey only if it’s not too strenuous for you. I found the escapade through the window!*®! great fun. I admire such enterprise because I know I myself would be too cowardly, too obedient, and too old for that! Incidentally, to my knowledge my parents have been apart only once in

their lives, when Papa had to go on a brief inspection trip to the western front during the World War. What times those were, and what marriages! And how many forms good marriages can take, nevertheless— Witzko is one thousand pages long, so you wouldn’t be able to read it now," but someday you must read it together. Maria enjoyed it too.

I'd be very interested to hear how you are getting along with the other

people there and on what basis. I'd like to listen in on a conversation between you and your comrades. Could you write about that someday? I’m still doing fine, working and waiting. By the way, I’m still optimistic'®>?! in 295 every regard, and wish you might be too! Here’s hoping for a happy reunion soon! Dfiietrich]

I’m already making efforts here to get us together somehow.!°?! I would find that a good thing in any circumstances. Do you know of a possibility? Sometimes | think that 1f you were here, much would already be different for me. I'm only dealing with theories; nothing concrete is happening. Is that “bourgeois”? Was that your impression too in September?!>#! To put it briefly, later we'll do better!

What's going to happen to Rome? The thought that it could be destroyed is a nightmare to me. How good that we got to see it in peacetime. I hope to hear from you soon.

[47.] Allusion to Luke 16:19-31. [48.] Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann; see 2/95, p. 250, and 2/96, p. 256. [49.] 2/94, p. 248. [50.] See 2/96, p. 254. [51.] Stifter, Wetzko; see 2/96, p. 255. [52.] Cf. the section on “Optimism” in the essay “After Ten Years” in thisvolume, pp. 50-51.

[53.] Planning for the time after his expected release. See, e.g., 2/101, p. 263, and Bethge’s reaction, 2/107, p. 280. [54.] See 2/73, p. 179, and ed. note 6.

272 Letters and Papers from Prison 103. From Karl Bonhoeffer! |! January 25, 1944

Dear Dietrich, We have to write well ahead of time if our birthday greetings are to reach you in time. Hopefully, it will be possible for us or Maria to visit you on that day too. We have applied for permission to visit, but not for that particular day, so as not to interfere with Maria’s.!4] What we wish you, and ourselves, is clear enough. That your freedom will come to you as a birthday gift is not to be expected, based on the previous course of your case, but we are convinced that it won't

296 take much longer, since almost a year has passed. We are thankful that so far you have stood up to it well, have kept up your courage and desire to work, and

stayed in good health. | have no doubt that these grim months have enriched your inner life. To have lived personally through everything that imprisonment means, for months on end, is surely quite different from having some acquaintance with it from outside and through conversations with prisoners, as | did back then on my observation ward.2] But now it’s certainly been enough. May your new year of life bring your and Maria’s wishes to fulfillment soon, together with a life in peacetime and the return to your true calling. If we old folks could live to see that, it would be wonderful. One hardly dares to imagine anymore what it would be like to live without this pressure on our shoulders. But it does have something to do with age, that one gradually loses the optimism and elasticity that one once had; on top of that comes the unproductive restlessness with which one fills the time outside actual daily work with taking precautions against the air raids at night. That is gradually tiring us out, and | think it could easily lead to an indolent resignation, if we were not refreshed by the sight of our children and grandchildren. That is something for which we old folk are grateful to you young ones. | hope we shall see each other soon. Until then, you have all my good wishes for your birthday. Despite your unpleasant circumstances, may it bring you some nice things. Yours affectionately, Father

[1.] NZ, A 79,125; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 195-96. [2.] Maria von Wedemeyer had permission to visit on February 4, 1944; see Love Letters from Cell 92, 144.

[3.| From 1898 to 1903, Karl Bonhoeffer was director of the observation ward for mentally ill prisoners in the Breslau prison; see his memoirs (“Geschrieben ftir die Familie”) in Zutt, Straus, and Scheller, Karl Bonhoeffer, 8-107, esp. 53ff.

2/103 and 2/104 2435

104. From Paula Bonhoeffer! |! 297 January 27, 1944

My dear Dietrich, February 4 is drawing near, and | am thinking of how times change! In my mind’s

eye so many blissful children’s birthdays pass in review, with cake, whipped cream, puppet shows, and masquerades! This makes me feel that I’m getting old; recalling one’s earliest memories is surely a sign of it. Who could have imagined

that | would live to see with you, that is, without you, such a different sort of birthday? Life is often really unbelievable. The important thing is surely to be true to oneself nevertheless, not to lose oneself, and not to despair of humankind despite all its shortcomings. | hope you'll see Maria on your birthday; then we'll come a few days later. | must tell you that the better | get to know her, the more lovable | find her. You will have a good, brave wife in her, and this is a great joy and comfort to me. May God grant that it will not be too much longer until you can be together. That is one of my birthday wishes for you. You are urging us so to take a trip away, but there are just so many reasons not to go. It’s not only your fault, so to speak, that we want to stay here. Christel is quite worn out,|?] and we can certainly be of some help to her. And Papa does

have a great deal to do with patients, despite his old age; the doctors and sick people know how valuable he is to them, and | think that keeps him younger than if he just sat somewhere and rested.

We do stay out therel?! most nights, so you don’t need to worry about us. For your birthday we would like to ask what you would wish for from among the

things in the house. Think about what you might like. Perhaps Minna Herzlieb’s 298 little cupboard, which Goethe gave her?!‘I I’ll close here. God keep you and be with you through the coming year. Love,

Mother

[1.] NL, A 79,126; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 196-97. [2.] Christine von Dohnanyi, whose husband had been moved on January 22, 1944, from the Charité hospital to the military prison hospital in Buch; see DB-ER, 807-8. [3.] At the Dohnanyi family’s house in Sakrow. [4.] This had been inherited by the Hase family. Minna Herzlieb had been the inspiration for the character of Ottilie in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften. There is a photo in the guidebook to the Bonhoeffer home exhibit in Berlin, Marienburger Allee 43, 13. [Cf. DB-ER, 6.—JDG]

274 Letters and Papers from Prison 105. From Renate Bethge'!!! Sakrow, January 28, 1944

Dear Uncle Dietrich,

| want to send my warmest congratulations and all good wishes for your birthday. We must really expect the next year of your life to go better than the last. You yourself wrote that you are an optimist.!?] We are too, of course, since how else can one go on living? Thank you for the greetings that my grandparents passed on; | was very glad and have sent them on to Eberhard. I’m hoping very much for permission to visit. Hans-Walter and | applied for it together, and we’re waiting every day for a reply. Hans-VWalter’s leave is only until the second. Now the post office has been bombed out, last night, so that nothing was delivered out here today./?] | hope it wasn’t there yet. | haven't had any news from Eberhard for a week already; it’s really upsetting;

his last letter was written on the fourteenth and fifteenth, when he had just arrived there. He isn’t south of the capital after all, but just to the north, or at least that’s where he was then. What has become of him since the landing at Nettuno,|4] of course, we don’t know. At that point he wrote that he was quite content with his situation; he was in an isolated country house with a fifteen299 — man unit including an officer. He had the feeling that the tone among them was quite nice. He was to have a driving test the next Monday and thought he would then be assigned to that line of work, perhaps in addition to the clerk’s job. If things stayed this way, we could be quite happy about it, but we can't really expect it, and since we haven't had any mail for so long it doesn’t seem likely. We're all glad to hear that you are getting on pretty well and that you can keep doing so much work. But now it’s really time for this business to be over. Besides, you need to be here to baptize our baby. Who is likely to see the baby first, Eberhard or you? We still haven’t decided on a girl’s name, and now it’s harder to do it by letter. Of your suggestions!*! we like Angelika best, but we had already been thinking of it and not been able to settle on it; the other names you suggested were all also ones we had considered. It’s funny how hard it is to decide.

I’ve almost finished getting the baby things ready; Mother helped me a great deal with that. I’m also going through Eberhard’s clothes thoroughly, mending

[1.] NL, A 79,127; handwritten; note by Bethge, “arrived February 23.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 197-98. [2.] 2/102, p. 271. [3.| HeerstraBe, a suburb. [4.] See 2/102, ed. note 7. [5.] See 2/102, p. 269.

2/105 and 2/106 215 them and packing them away. So at least I’m not bored. Besides, | have time for piano practice. Eberhard gave me the music for Beethoven’s C minor piano concerto for Christmas, my favorite concerto, and that’s what I’m practicing mainly. Yesterday | was at my parents’, and Hans-Walter and | played some music together. It isn’t so good that my parents are now staying in town all the time; the air

raids upset Mother so. But Father is determined to stay in the house, because he thinks perhaps he could put out any fires. So, of course, Mother doesn’t want to leave him all alone. I’m sorry we don’t have a proper gift for you this time. I’ve just baked you a few S’le,[6] which I’ll send with Maria, along with all my good wishes and love. Renate

106. To Eberhard Bethge' |! 300 January 29-30, 1944 Dear Eberhard, You must be getting letters from Renate every day—though they may not distribute them to you every day, so you can't avoid the torment of waiting and uncertainty, but presumably you're happy to get any letter. Not only for that reason but also because I myself find it hard nol to be writing to you, I’m using this quict Saturday afternoon, which is a remarkable contrast to the din of the last two nights,'*! to talk with you a bit. How have the first days of direct contact with the war affected you, and possibly your first personal impressions of the Anglo-Saxon opponents, whom until now we have known only in peacetime? That we can’t go through these fundamental experiences together is so hard for me to comprehend, since later on—sub conditione Jacobea'*!|—we’ll need to digest them together and make use of them professionally. { When | think of you now, morning and evening, I must seriously guard against dwelling on the many worries and deprivations you are encountering, instead of really praying for you. In this connection I should talk with

[6.] An S-shaped Swabian pastry, customary in the Bonhoeffer and Schleicher families.

[1.] NZ, A 79,128; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 198-201. [2.] Air raids on Berlin in the nights of January 27-28 (7:58 to 10:10 p.m.) and January 28-29, 1944 (2:57 to 4:20 a.m.); targets included the Borsig factory near Tegel prison (Die Wehrmachtberichte, 3:20—21). Cf. 2/79, ed. note 9.

[3.] Jas. 4:15; cf. 2/73, ed. note 28.

276 Letters and Papers from Prison you sometime about prayer in time of need. This is a difficult matter, yet our misgivings when praying for ourselves are perhaps not good either. Ps. 50 says plainly: “Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”!4! The entire history of the children of Israel consists of such cries for help. And I must say that just these last two nights have made

301 me face this question at the most elementary level. When the bombs are crashing down around this building, I can’t do otherwise than think of God, of God’s judgment, of the “hand stretched out” of God’s anger (Isa. 5:25 and 9:11-10:4),'°! of my own unreadiness; I sense that people around me are making vows, and then I think of you all and say, better me than one of you—and it makes me realize how attached I am to you all. I won't say any more about this, I can only do that in person, but that’s the way it is; It takes a crisis to shake us up and drive us into prayer, and every time I find this shameful, and it is. Perhaps it’s because so far, at such moments, I’ve found it impossible to speak a Christian word to the others. Last night when we were lying on the floor again and one man called out aloud, “O God, O God!"—he’s otherwise a pretty frivolous fellow—I couldn't bring myself to offer him any sort of Christian encouragement and comfort,'®! but I remember looking at the clock and just saying, it won't last more than another ten minutes. | did this without thinking, automatically, probably with the feeling that I shouldn’t use it as an opportunity for religious blackmail. (Incidentally, Jesus on the cross didn’t try to talk the two thieves into anything—it was one of them who turned to him!) I’m sorry to say that night before last 1 suffered a great loss. The man whom I’ve found to be by far the most intelligent and humanly likable person in this place was killed by a direct hit downtown.!7! I would certainly have brought the two of you together later on, and we already had several plans for the future. We had many good conversations. Recently he brought

[4.| Ps. 50:15.

[5.] In the Luther Bible, there is a cross-reference at Isa. 5:25 (“Therefore the anger

of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them.. .”) to Isa. 9:11[12]; Isa. 9:11[12]b (“For all this his anger has not turned away; his hand is stretched out still”) is repeated in 9:16[17]b and 10:4b. [6.] Cf. DBWE 16, 3/5, p. 641; “It is a misuse when for every human question and need we instantly have at hand the word ‘God’... as if it were the most obvious thing in the world that God responds to all human questions and is always immediately ready to help in every difficulty.” [7.] Note in Daily Texts 1944 under the date January 27: “Engel +.” [The guard’s name

was Holzendort. Bonhoefter referred to him as “Engel,” or “angel,” to protect his identity. —JDG]

2/106 277 me Daumier und die Justiz'®! and I still have it here; a truly educated man 302 from the working class, a photographer and father of three children. I was really shaken. In the last few days I’ve again been working on that little literary piece

about which I already wrote you;'"! it’s a meeting between two friends of many years’ standing who have been apart for a long time during the war.!!”!

I hope I can send you their conversation soon. Don't be afraid; it’s nota roman a clef!

Now I need to talk with you some more about my engagement. I don’t need to explain to you what a “lucky strike” I’ve made. In Maria I find truly everything I had hoped for in a wife—apart from music, but as one can see with Ursel and Rudiger,!'"! that isn’t essential. And with regard to literature, there seems to be some accommodation taking place lately, by way of Witiko,''*! which allows us to say all the decisive things. Sometime in a letter [Il tell you something about this book. But Just now it’s something else that is on my mind at times. You see, we actually hardly know cach other, and for me—could it be my age, or my nature, or the many questions occupying me these days?—what I would call a truly exclusive and great love can only grow from knowing the other person fully, or at least from intense togetherness with her. I’m quite certain that would happen if Maria and I could be together. But as long as it all has to take place through letters and talking in the presence of other people—and we have to leave out things that are important to us—somchow it all lacks color and life for me. Now, ’m not the sort of man who consciously gets worked up about things. But I'm feeling, in Maria’s letters—does it have to do with her sex, or her youth, or the way she can give herself up wholly to such thoughts?—a differ-

ent intensity, which, on one hand, makes me very happy but, on the other, 303 makes me somewhat uneasy as to whether I’m being fair to Maria. I think in my letters to her I’m being quite honest; I can’t speak the way she does, and perhaps that’s becoming hard on her. She does have some of her grandmother’s blood in her.'!°! Do you understand what I’m saying? These things are much more important than music or literature and can only be cleared

[8.] Rothe, Daumier und wir: Daumier und die Justiz.

[9.] 2/89, p. 241; 2/101, p. 263. [10.] See Bethge, riendship and Resistance, 82. [11.] Rudiger Schleicher played the violin well and had “perfect pitch.” [12.] Cf. Maria von Wedemeyer’s characterization of Witiko as “clear, simple, lucid, powerful and honest” in her letter of January 7, 1944, Love Letters from Cell 92, 128. [13.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow.

278 Letters and Papers from Prison up when I really have time with her. Incidentally, weren't these the sort of problems that Gerhard struggled with before he was married?!'! Although it’s clear that there were entirely different expectations on the woman’s side. It used to be so that just one of the problems we now have to deal with was enough to occupy us fully. Now we are supposed to take war, marriage,

church, profession, housing worries, the danger to and death of people close to us, and on top of that my present particular situation, and reduce them all to one common denominator. Most people probably let these things run parallel to and separate from one another. For Christians and “educated” people that is impossible; we don’t allow ourselves to be split or torn apart; a common denominator must be found in reflection as well as In an integrated personal way of life. Those who let themselves be torn apart by events and questions haven't passed the test for the present and the future. At one point [it] is said of young Witiko that he goes out into the world “to do the whole.”'!>! The issue, then, is the dvOpwmtos TédeLos!!6! (TéEXELOS originally meant “whole” = perfect)—“Be whole (ted€tos), there-

fore, as your heavenly Father is ‘whole’” (Matt. 5:48)—in contrast to av7p 304 dtkvxos—the doubter—in Jas. 1:8.!'7! Witiko “does the whole” by trying to find his way to real life, always listening to advice from experienced persons, thus by being himself a member of the “whole.” One becomes “a whole person” not all by oneself but only together with others. ‘This is the sense in which my previous questions''!®! to you were intended. Are you finding the separation from Renate awfully hard to endure? I think you know pretty well how to deal with whatever your circumstances are. But the separation tugs at you badly. Yet even that should not tear us apart.

[14.] Gerhard Vibrans, in a letter of November 15, 1940, to his future father-in-law, points out the “difficulty” that “I’m already thirty-three years old. So there’s a great difference in our ages” (Andersen, Bethge, and Vibrans, So ist es gewesen, 378). [15.] Stifter, Wittko, in Adalbert Stifters Werke und Briefe, 5/1:31-32: ““And are you the

right man, as you say?’ asked the girl. ‘Whether Iam the right man, replied the horseman, ‘I don’t know yet, you see; but I want to do the whole of whatever in the world I can dacs [16.] “Whole person”; see also 3/172, p. 456; and cf. DBWE 6:62 and 97; DBWE 4:278, ed. note 93. [17.] Cf. DBWE6:319: the avip dtibuxos, the “double-minded person,” [German Zweifler, “doubter,” contains the word for “two,” thus doubled-minded—JDG] as the “antithesis of the single-minded person,” “cannot expect to receive gifts from the Lord” (Jas. 1:8). [18.] Beginning of writing in the margin.

2/106 and 2/107 279 In a few days it will be my birthday. I remember gratefully how, over the years, you have made it a nice day for me, at the seminary and later through prayer, songs, music, and specially chosen gifts (last year it was the Napoleon pictures). The day won't be hard for me otherwise. Maria will come, and you will all be thinking of me. I have just started reading Harnack’s history of the Prussian Academy; !!¥! it’s very good. I think his heart is really in this subject, and he said several times that he thought it was his best book. How are you doing physically? Do let me know. I’m actually still surprisingly well. The awareness that I mustn't

get sick here under any circumstances must make a difference. I always have the strength and concentration for reading, not always for writing and producing something, but now and then even this goes quite well. How ’'m going to get used to being around people again, I don’t know yet. That’s all for now. The letter must go off. |!commend you and Renate and all of us to God’s loving kindness. ‘Today’s Gospel is Matt. 8:23ff.! ““Why are

you afraid, you of little faith?’ ... ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’”*! In daily, faithful fellowship, your Dietrich

107. From Eberhard Bethge'!!! 305 February |, 1944 Dear Dietrich, Only a few days until your birthday, and | still don’t have any news of you all, how

the most recent air raids around the thirtieth!?] were—apparently dreadful— what happened, how things are with you and with Renate. My thoughts are constantly with you all. Even though everything here is decided for us, just like for the donkeys that toil unwillingly up the steep mountain paths here, one hangs on to this piece of personal life that becomes a torment. Your idea that precisely

[19.] Harnack, Geschichte der Kéniglich Preupischen Akademie. See also Bori, ““Ti daro la

tua anima come bottino.” [20.] Note in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible above Matt. 8:23-27: “(Gospel for Fourth Sunday after Epiphany).” Bonhoeffer quotes here from vv. 26 and 27. [1.] NL, A 79,130; handwritten; from Rignano, Excerpt previously published in LPP, 201-2. [2.] See 2/106, ed. note 2.

280 Letters and Papers from Prison this is a necessary part of our situation, and that in precisely this respect we have to prove ourselves to be what we are, comforts me somewhat. And now | have your letter in which you mention “Ridiger’s” visit at the end.[3] Many, many

thanks for so faithfully remembering me. | was really tremendously lucky to have a few days in Berlin again and thus to feel that | hadn’t missed or been left out of anything, as far as humanly possible. Of course, even that wasn’t enough

to satisfy Renate and me, and | can clearly sense from her letters how hard it is for her. Fortunately, letters are being delivered fairly regularly now. The last one is dated the twenty-second. One letter did take three weeks, however. The transit routes are being massively destroyed, get rebuilt and then smashed again. Besides, there are really few roads over the Alps at all. It’s depressing even to think about our march back home again. You are very kind to try to see what you call my modesty in a positive light and make me glad about it.!*] As before, my feelings about it, here in a strange place, are the opposite: I’m lacking in what you have to a high degree, the vitality to assert yourself and not take anything from anybody. | have somewhat the impression that Renate is continuing your teaching in this regard, to good effect. Perhaps the proof that you've taught me something is that my expectations of

306 others have been raised, and there is at long last some confidence in my own feelings and reactions (it’s high time there was, at my age). What is missing or underdeveloped there is perhaps still lacking in Christoph,?! and that gets him into plenty of conflicts and unhappy moments. As to whether you could be here with me as a soldier,!°! the changing situation in Berlin makes it less likely than ever that you could stay there. So if you must be sent out, then why not here? There’s not much camaraderie in evidence here, rather the contrary, immense jealousy, gossip, and pushing for elbow room. The chief,!7! of course, doesn’t know anything about my background but shows personal interest and humanity. Of course, on many things he seems to have quite different opinions. Still, one can have a talk with him, and there is plenty of need for interpreters. But that will only be possible when the moment is right. I’m glad you got to hear so much about Christmas.|®] | didn’t mention anything about it in my last long letter, just as now it’s probably not necessary to

[3.] 2/101. [4.] See 2/101, p. 262. [5.] Christoph Bethge [Eberhard’s brother—]JDG]. [6.] See 2/102, ed. note 53. [7.] Major Tilp from Austria; see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 136, and Friendship and Resistance, 38-57. [8.] See 2/101, p. 263.

2/107 281 describe my outward circumstances here. You will hear about all that anyway, and sooner. The younger generation’s knowledge about life, about which you wrote,|?] is certainly true. Perhaps that is also why they lack a certain modesty. In any case, they are growing up quite differently, with completely different

views and positions. But one couldn't say that it’s better and more pleasant for them than before. You all weren't just doing nothing at that age, and | think that whole problem areas and experiences are simply being suppressed and at some point are bound to come to light. But what | recently wrote about,!!°l the literary legacy and social standards, are just as good and indisputably present as they were when planted in your generation. But the political and religious standards are completely changed from what we had and are now instilled at such an early age. Why the new generation is going to be “clear-headed and open, and less fearful,” !!''] as you put it, isn’t entirely plain to me; perhaps just with fewer illusions?

I'm eagerly looking forward to your literary piece.!!4] | hope it will come 307 soon! I’m mainly busy with studying Italian and writing letters. I’ve brought along Burckhardt’s Renaissancel'?] and am enjoying it very much from time to time. But the noise, the constant possibility of being called away, and the lack of my own

place to sit make these private occupations very difficult. There is one fellow here among these cads and pigs, an expatriate German lawyer from Tyrol, who does have somewhat different, naive views, but we have similar natural human reactions to things large and small. When duty allows, | escape with him into the valleys or the huts in the countryside (he’s an interpreter) .!'4] | think too that hilaritas,!'?] as you wrote, is an important feature of good artistic production. | wonder if Burckhardt missed this in Michelangelo? These days everyone is so besotted with problems, fanatical and strained and grim. One could even say that they don’t yet feel inwardly enough wedded to whatever position they have, be it Christian, ethical, biological, or whatever, and to the form that they have taken as an ideal. Rather, they’re trying desperately to express their convictions [position], relying on others rather than themselves,

[9.] Ibid. 110.) See 2/96, p. 252.

[ir See-27101. 265. [12.] Cf. 2/89, ed. note 14. [13.] Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. [14.] Attorney Josef Rainalter from Meran. See Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 136 land Friendship and Resistance, 39—J]DG] .

[15.] “Cheerfulness”; see 2/101, p. 263.

282 Letters and Papers from Prison none of it independent but rather dependent on that of others, with their backbones tied fast to others. How | envy you your reading! Did W.l'¢] finally come to see you? | do hope so. And has Renate been to see you? | really wished that might happen. When | think about how I’m going to miss part of the life of our child, whom we're looking forward to so much, | lose all patience and composure. As far as how things will go, in the end | have good faith in Renate’s state of health and strength, her courage and astuteness, and also in her mother’s help and advice. But not being able to be there is just too crazy. This is selfish and, when | look 308 at you, pretty stupid. Out here one doesn’t become more optimistic as to how quickly things will go, but we knew about this difference between inside and outside long ago.!!7] Incidentally, the saying “you just have to have lived with such people, Volksgenosse . . .”['8] looks even more desperate to me here, and the differences become even plainer. Many good wishes to you, especially for your birthday. The Daily Text for the

fourth!!7] will be especially thought-provoking for you. |!?°] wrote to Mrs. von Kleist!?'] some time ago from here. | wonder whether you will have a letter from me? Always your faithful Eberhard

By the way, | heard that Schénfeld!**! is pretty upset, didn’t get his salary. | don’t yet understand it; | only hear hints. | just found out that Paton!**! died in August; that will give you pain.

[16.] Attorney Wergin. [17.] [This seems to be a reference to a rapid end to the war and the Nazi regime, or perhaps to the conspiracy itself.—]DG] [18.] As the term Volksgenosse (“comrade”) indicates, the sentence conforms to the Nazi line. On the term, see Martin Onnasch, “Zeitgemabe Theologie?” 156. [19.] Ps. 65:3[2]: “O you who answer prayer! To you all flesh shall come.” [20.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [21.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. Her birthday was also February 4.

[22.] Johannes (Hans) Schonfeld, who was on the staff of the World Council of Churches in process of formation in Geneva; cf. DB-ER, 669 et passim, and DBWE 16, 1/162, p. 280 (on the “suspicion ... directed at the German nationals in Geneva, Dr. Schonfeld... .”). [23.] In Geneva in 1941 Bonhoeffer and Visser *t Hooft had written a response to William Paton’s Church and the New Order; this is published in DBWE 16, 2/11. See also “After Ten Years,” ed. note 3, and DB-ER, 739-42.

2/107 and 2/108 283 108. To Eberhard Bethge!!! February 1, 1944

Dear Eberhard,

Carpe diem!!—in this case that means I use every opportunity to write you a letter. First, 1 could go on writing for weeks without coming to the end of everything I have to tell you, and, second, one never knows how long — 309 it will still be possible. And since you will someday be called upon to write my biography, I want to make sure the material you have is as complete as possible! So here I go! { Loday I saw Susi, nice and fresh and warmhearted. It’s quite remarkable how someone who seemed as unlikely to become a pastor’s wife as she

did as a girl can adapt to her calling, both personally and in the church. She’s really fulfilling her role, and it’s lovely to see. And what were we like as boys of seventeen or eighteen? Was it much different? Yet somehow we have

become pastors. How strange are the paths by which one is led to “being a Christian”! These visits are in general strikingly different, one from the next, although, of course, I enjoy each one of them. On the whole, the women are [reer, less self-conscious—except for you (that was almost like sitting up in our room for an hour!). Of course, K/arl/ F[riedrich] was very nice as well. But especially Ridiger, whose visit | enjoyed very much, and who really had kind words for me (for example, the culpa!?! wasn’t mine for my parents’ state of health, I was only the causa—Latin, naturally!), was

touching, the... way he spoke, and kept turning to Maetz,'! making sure to exclude any topic that might not be within regulations. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist mentioning our friend R[oeder] to him”! and hope he won’t be too cross with me. l’ve seen nothing of Alaus, nor heard from him; apart from everything else, it could be that he’s too sensitive by nature to subject himself to the sight of this place. In our calling we have fortunately become somewhat more robust. The recollection of December 23 continues to be for me a source of joy and pride and gratitude.

[1.] NL, A 79,131; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 202-5. [2.] “Seize the day,” from the saying “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero” (seize the day, put no trust in the future); Horace, Carmina 1.11. See also DBWE 9, 2/2, p;-211.

[3.] “Fault.”

[4.] Captain Maetz, the prison commander, who was present during all conversations in the prison meeting room. [5.] Roeder was at one time briefly assigned to the Reich Ministry of Aviation, so Rudiger Schleicher knew him officially.

284 Letters and Papers from Prison 310 You will have heard that the last few nights have been bad, especially the night of January 30.°! Those here who had been bombed out came to me the next morning for a bit of comfort. But I don’t think I’m good at consoling people. I can listen, but I can almost never say anything. But perhaps

the way one asks about certain things and not others does in some way suggest what really matters. It also seems to me that it is more important really to share someone's particular distress and not try to wipe it away or touch it up. It’s only certain false interpretations of the distress that I have no sympathy for, because they're supposed to be comforting, but it’s a false kind of comfort. So I leave the distress without interpretation and believe this is a responsible beginning, although only a beginning, and very seldom do I get further. Sometimes I think that true consolation must come upon one unexpectedly, the same as the distressful situation did. But I admit that this can be an excuse.

Something that is often a puzzle to me, both in my own case and in that of others, is the forgetfulness about one’s impressions during a night’s bombing. Only a few minutes later practically everything one was thinking beforehand is just blown away. For Luther it took one bolt of lightning!’! to change the direction of his life for years to come. Where does this “memory” go these days? Isn't the loss of this “moral memory’—what a horrid word!—the reason all ties are sundered, of love, marriage, friendship, loyalty? Nothing holds fast;'*! nothing stays in place. Everything is short term and short winded. But the good things like justice, truth, beauty, all great achievements, need time and steadfastness, “memory,” or else they degenerate. Anyone who doesn’t have the sense of a past to answer for and a future

311 to plan for is “forgetful,”! and I don’t know where to take hold of such persons, challenge them, and bring them to their senses. Everything one can say, even if it makes an impression at the moment, is lost to forgetfulness. So what is to be done? It’s a big problem for Christian pastoral care. You put it very well recently, that people make themselves so quickly and “so

[6.] In the night of January 30-31, 1944 (from 7:58 to 9:10 p.m.). [7.] Scheel, Martin Luther, 1:248-49: On July 2, 1505, on the return from Mansfeld to Erfurt, “near Stotternheim, north of the city, he [Luther] was surprised by a violent

thunderstorm. A lightning strike close by aroused a terrible... fear. ..in him. In this condition he called out to St. Anne, the patron saint of those in danger, especially during a thunderstorm, and vowed to enter a monastery”; see also WA 8:573-76 (“De votis monasticis M. Lutheri iudicium,” 1521, foreword). [8.] Cf. DBWE 6:119.

[9.] See Bonhoeffer, Zettelnotizen, 49.

2/108 285 shamelessly at home.”!'®! I’m going to steal that from you and make good use of it. Perhaps you should write “prose poems”? Your language would not be bad for that purpose.

By the way, have!!! you also noticed that uneducated people have a very hard time making objective decisions, that they allow some more or less fortuitous minor circumstance to tip the scales? I find it striking. The

distinction between objective and personal thinking must truly first be learned.!'*! Many people never learn this (look at our colleagues in the ministry! among others).!!°! February 2, 1944

Is it correct that you are north of Rome and that at present you are assigned

to kitchen duty? I hope you will still get to see the city again; that must be tantalizing, to be stationed at the very gates and not be allowed in. It’s hardly any comfort that you have already seen it once.'4! T hope to hear more soon. Whether I will get to see Renate before the baby is delivered is doubtful because the transport connections are so bad, but I'd be very glad. We could then spend a whole hour talking about you, and I would certainly learn plenty of things I don’t know yet. Since a lot of mail has been lost in the past few nights, did you perhaps not get my letter of January 29?''°! That would be a pity. The one to both you and Renate (about a week ago),'!°! hopefully, you must have by now. How long I shall have to keep myself amused at my present location is still no more definite than it was eight weeks ago. lam using all my powers every 312 day to getas far as possible with my reading and writing schedule, since what is to come is completely uncertain. Obtaining the books is, unfortunately, the one thing that doesn’t work very well. So my plans get somewhat mixed up. I really wanted to get to know nineteenth-century German thought as

thoroughly as possible. But I still particularly lack a good knowledge of Dilthey.!'”! Evidently his works are not to be had. I greatly regret my lack of knowledge of the natural sciences, but it’s too late to catch up on that.

[1022/96 p2255. [11.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [12.] Cf. DBWE 6:241, 292, 333.

[13.] End of writing in the margin. [14.] In 1936; see 2/88, ed. note 34. [15.] 2/106, letter dated January 29-30, 1944. [16.] 2/102. [17.] Cf. 2/98, ed. note 6.

286 Letters and Papers from Prison My current walking partner, about whom I have already written several times,!!®! is becoming more and more pathetic. He also has two colleagues here, of whom one spends the whole day crying, and the other literally wets his pants during air raids, last night even when the warning sirens started. When he told me about it yesterday, in tears, and I burst out laughing and told him off, he tried to instruct me that one shouldn't laugh at or condemn a human being in his [distress]. But that was really too much for me, and I expressed to him most emphatically my contempt for people who treat others harshly and lecture them about facing life’s dangers and so forth, and themselves break down under the slightest test of their endurance. I said that was downright disgraceful and I had no sympathy for it. Besides, I would throw such people out of the guild for making it look ridiculous and so on. He was quite astonished and probably considers me a very dubious Christian. Anyway, these gentlemen’s behavior around here is already becoming a byword and having an effect that can’t be exactly pleasant for them. IT found this experience uncommonly instructive, even though it’s one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen here so far. I really don’t think I’m quick to despise anyone in trouble, and said so in no uncertain terms, which probably made his hair stand on end, but I really can’t feel anything but contempt in this case. Seventeen- and ecighteen-year-olds stand at much more dangerous posts during the air raids here, and their behavior is above 313 reproach, and then these ... (almost used a military expression that would have astounded you!) go whimpering around, really enough to make you sick. Well, everyone makes a fool of himself as best he can. I hope you won’t think I’ve become just another foul-mouthed bruiser. There’s certainly little occasion for that otherwise around here! But there’s a sort of weakness that Christianity has no time for, and precisely in the name of which people demand Christian charity and drag it through the mud. We have to make sure the demarcation lines are kept clear. {Yesterday Susi brought me the big volume!!’! about the Magdeburg cathedral. I’m really thrilled by the sculptures, especially some of the wise virgins.'*°! The beatitude expressed by these wholly earthy, almost peasantlike faces is really a delight, really moving. I didn’t remember them at all, but you must know them well! Good-bye for today, Eberhard. I’m always thinking of you. Your faithful Dietrich

[18.] See 2/84, p. 214; 2/88, p. 233; 2/102, pp. 270-71. [19.] Not identified. [20.] [Cf Matt. 25:1-13.—]DG]

2/108 and 2/109 287 109. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer! |! February 4, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

Who would have thought that today, on your birthday, you'd still be sitting in prison? Your patience is really being sorely tested. Will you at least have a visit from our parents or someone in the family today? Maria isn’t in Berlin, is she?! She called me here in Leipzig from Altenburg last Saturday,@! but unfortunately

I'd just gone to see Grete and the children in Friedrichsbrunn. It would have been very pleasant there if only our worry about you in Berlin weren’t hanging 314 over us. Every time Berlin is attacked, swarms of planes come roaring over the Harz like wild hunters, so that the whole air is full of their vibrations. One feels embarrassed about every hour in which one forgets the suffering of so many

thousands and feels an urge to rush off there and try to help. But the terrible thing these days is that there is hardly any way to help. The few hours of freedom

from work are certainly enough for thinking of others but not enough to give them serious support. From Friedrichsbrunn | went to Gottingen—I hadn’t been there in ten years. I’ve been getting invitations from there for many years, and my temporary bachelor status due to the bombing finally gave me enough mobility for it to happen. | lectured in the physics colloquium on the mechanism of rhythmic reactions, and it met with the interest | had hoped for from biologists.!4] | was staying on Herz-

berger Road, diagonally opposite from where Sabine used to live.P! | thought about her a good deal during those days; ten years ago | stayed there at her place. Today!®! she must be thinking and worrying about us too, especially you. As a scientist | enjoyed myself more in Gdttingen than | have for a long time! It wasn't just the kindness with which | was received everywhere. | also got to see a whole lot of people again for whom pure science is simply their whole life— and | met some new ones too. | really felt “transported into a better world.” !/]

[1.] NL, A 79,133; handwritten; from Leipzig. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 205-7. [2.] Maria von Wedemeyer had permission to visit on Bonhoeffer’s birthday and had indeed traveled to Berlin from Altenburg; see Love Letters from Cell 92, 145. [3.] Love Letters from Cell 92, 147: “I telephone Karl Friedrich from time to time. I love hearing his voice because it’s so like yours.” [4.] Cf. 2/74, ed. note 8. [5.] The Leibholz family home, left when they emigrated to England in 1938.

[6.] [It was, of course, Sabine’s birthday along with that of her twin brother, Dietrich.—J DG]

[7.] An die Musik (“To Music”), op. 88, no. 4, by Franz Schubert: “O gracious Art, in how many grey hours / When life’s fierce orbit encompassed me, / Hast thou kindled my

288 Letters and Papers from Prison Here in Leipzig I’m fighting to get workers to put up a temporary roof to save what’s left of my institute, running from one office to the next to get the plumbing and electric wiring finally repaired for my apartment, writing my fingers

315 raw ordering replacements for the library books and chemicals that burned, and negotiating with Osram|®! on adding an advisory position. All the scientific work that really has my heart in it is being left undone.

Tomorrow I’m expecting a call from Maria, according to her message last Saturday, and looking forward to whatever news she may [have]. The day after tomorrow early, if nothing gets in the way, I'll go to Berlin. All my best to you, and here’s to your freedom soon! Yours, Karl Friedrich

110. To Eberhard Bethge'!!!

February 4

Dear Eberhard,

Today on the morning of my birthday, nothing seems more natural to me than to write to you, remembcring that we celebrated this day together eight times in succession. My work is put aside for a few hours, and perhaps that will actually do it good, and I’m waiting for a visit from Maria or my parents, although it’s not yet quite certain that there will be one. Eight years ago in the evening, we were sitting around the fireplace together,”! and you all had given me the D major violin concerto,'”! and we listened to it together. Then I had to tell you all stories about Harnack'*! and times past, which for some reason you particularly enjoyed, and finally we decided definitely on the trip to Sweden."”! The year after that, you all gave me the “September Bible,”'©! nicely inscribed, and the first name on the list was

heart to warm love, / Hast charmed me into a better world!” [Translation of the Franz von Schober poem that Schubert set to music, by Gerard Mackworth-Young, in Brown and Sams, New Grove Schubert.—]DG]

[8.] See 2/47, ed. note 4. [1.] NZ, A 79,134; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 207-9. [2.] At the preachers’ seminary in Finkenwalde. [3.] A reference to a phonograph recording of Beethoven’s 1806 Concerto in D major for Violin, op. 61 (GA, no. 29). [4.]| See 2/72, ed. note 5. [5.] On Bonhoeffer’s thirtieth birthday (1936), the seminary students in the second Finkenwalde course had requested a study trip to Sweden. For accounts and documents of this trip, see DB-E-R, 506-17, and DBW 14, sec. 1/b. [6.] The leather-bound facsimile of Luther’s Bible.

2/109 and 2/110 289 yours. Then followed Schlénwitz and Sigurdshof,'’! celebrated in the com- 316 pany of a good many people who are no longer with us. The singing outside my door, the prayer during the worship service that you led on these days, the Claudius hymn, for which I thank Gerhard!—all these are wonderful memories, which the dreadful atmosphere here cannot diminish. I am full of confidence that we shall celebrate your next birthday together, and who knows? perhaps even Easter! Then we'll get back to what is really our life’s work, and there will be plenty of good work to do, and what we have been through in the meantime will not have been in vain. But we shall always be grateful to each other that we have been able to live through the present time in the way we are both doing. I know you are thinking of me today, and if these thoughts include not only memories of the past but also hope fora future together, even though it will be a changed one, then Iam very happy. It won't be much longer now until you have the blessed news from Renate. It will not be easy to celebrate such a uniquely joyous day among strangers,

who can’t help you properly express your joy and give it its place in your daily life, but rather think more or less every happy event is summed up in a glass of brandy. I wish so much for you that you may find some person to whom you can be closer—the one person who might have been that for me here, as I already wrote, was killed in an air raid'*!—but | think it’s harder for us to find what we are looking for and must do without, since we have come to expect more from friendship than most other people do. In this respect as well, it’s not so casy to make do with “substitutes.”!!0!

Right in the middle of this letter, 1 was called downstairs, where Maria received me with the joyous news: “Renate had a little boy, and his name = 317 is Dietrich!”"'" Tt all went well, only an hour and a half and there he was, with Mama and Christel as midwives! What a surprise, and how fortunate! I can't tell you how delighted lam. How ecstatic you must be! And that it all went so well, and so quickly! So now you have a son, and all our thoughts turn to the future, full of hope. What abundant gifts he stands to inherit! Your merry heart and talent for making people love you; Renate’s energy, [7.] This is a recollection of the period of the collective pastorates in East Pomerania; see DB-ER, 588-92, and DBW 15.

[8.| Gerhard Vibrans. In a March 4, 1942, letter to Vibrans’s father after Gerhard’s death (DBWE 16, 1/145), Bonhoeffer wrote of his gratitude that “he taught me the Claudius hymn, ‘Ich danke Gott und freue mich’” (p. 256) (in neues Lied, no. 349; English: “I thank God and rejoice”). The first verse: “I thank God and rejoice / like a child over a Christmas gift / that Iam, and that I have / you, my lovely human face.” [Hymn translation by Isabel Best.—]DG] [9.] See 2/106, p. 276. [10.] Cf. 2/88, pp. 227-28. [11.] The birth of Dietrich Wilhelm Ridiger Bethge, February 3, 1944

290 Letters and Papers from Prison which is so uniquely a part of her charm; the ability you both have to cope with life; your drive to be open to the world; your musicality; the quiet, wise, and down-to-earth tranquility that has always so impressed me in the portrait of your grandfather;!!*! and the truthfulness and transparency of character that you Bethges have—I’m thinking especially of Gerhard!!8!— unfortunately I never knew your father!!4!—Ridiger’s!!! kind heart and tender conscience, and Papa’s'!®! humanity—there are truly a great many positive strengths coming together here, and it won't take long until we see them begin to develop. {So he is really going to be called Dietrich. I don’t know what to say about that; | hope I can promise you to be a good godfather and “great’uncle (!) to him, and I'd be a hypocrite if IT didn’t say I’m really tremendously pleased and proud that you have named your firstborn after me. That he beat me to it with his birthday, a day before mine, surely means he’s going to assert his independence of his namesake uncle and always keep a bit ahead. I think it’s especially nice that our birthdays are so close. When he hears someday where his uncle was when he received his name, perhaps that may leave some impression on him too. Thank you very much for deciding to do this—I think the rest of the family will be pleased as well!

318 February 5 Yesterday many people did nice things for me, but I actually forgot all about my own birthday and just kept celebrating little Dietrich’s birthday. Even the little bouquet of flowers that some of my fellow inmates picked for me,

so touching, I thought of as standing by your little boy’s bed. There was really no greater joy that the day could bring me. But it was only just before going to sleep that I realized you’ve pushed our family into the next generation. On February 3, great-grandparents, grandparents, great-uncles, great-aunts, and young uncles and aunts were newly created. Look what you ve achieved—you promoted me, for example, to [the] third generation! { Maria sat by Renate’s bed for quite a while yesterday and thought she looked amazingly fresh. But apparently she said she “hadn't imagined it would be that bad.” So thank God it went so quickly and so well. Ursel and Christel, in their time, took twenty-four and thirty-six hours! I wonder if that’s already a sign that the younger generation is stronger. ‘That would

[12.] On his grandfather, see Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 31. [13.] Gerhard Vibrans, Eberhard Bethge’s cousin. [14.] Wilhelm Bethge. [15.] Rtidiger Schleicher; see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 163-70. [16.] Karl Bonhoeffer.

2/110 291 be amazing in view of all the psychological and physical stress of these past years. In any case, any fear that Renate might be too young is definitely over. By the way, they say the baby wasn’t born too early; he came just right. That's a relief as well. Do write a few words to Mama and Christel; on top of all that they both have on their shoulders, this surprising event!'’! brought a particular responsibility, and I know from earlier occasions how exhausting a baby’s birth always was for my parents. I think the fact that Mama helped

bring this, her first great-grandchild, into the world will create a special bond between them. Renate sent me some wonderful homemade “S’le”!!®! for my birthday yes-

terday. Maria brought me a fabulous package, and my parents gave me the 319 little “Herzlieb” cupboard, which Goethe once presented to Minna Herzlieb.\!9! From Klaus I received Dilthey’s Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik;

Pll tell you about it later. Are you going to ask Mama and Christel to be godmothers? I’m afraid I must stop so the letter can go off. My head and heart are overflowing so with good and happy thoughts; I can’t put them all on paper anyhow. But you know how much I’m thinking of you and trying to share your joy, and keep on talking with you in my mind. I think your marriage is really a fortunate one—by the way, Rudiger recently said such nice things about it, so happily, that 1 was really glad—How I'd like to be following in your footsteps soon! Good-bye, stay well; God keep you both and bless you and the little boy! Yours ever, Dietrich

Pll'*°! write to Renate as well right away. You can then send each other the letters. Klaus also gave me a Moravian community hymnal of 1778; !7!!

or have I confused things, and this comes from you? It looks like the sort of present you give, but Klaus is also very good at gilt giving. From you I wasn't really expecting anything other or better than your good wishes and thoughts, and I thank you for them, even if they had to be brief amid the turmoil of your duty! I hope to hear from you soon. . . .2*! is a prisoner of

[17.] The baby was supposed to be born in the hospital, but since the delivery was not expected so soon, departure for the hospital was delayed until it was too late. Thus, the child was born in the Dohnanyi home, which was also the registered residence for Eberhard and Renate Bethge. [18.] See 2/105, ed. note 6. 119.] See 2/104, ed. note 4. [20.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [21.] Gesangbuch zum Gebrauch der evangelischen Briidergemeinen.

[22.] Name illegible, perhaps Erwin Kunert.

292 Letters and Papers from Prison war with the British. I'll write to you as often as I can. Of course, there may be intervals when I can’t, but I hope not. I’m all right.

320-111. To Renate Bethge!!! February 5, 1944

Dear Renate,

How shall I tell you how much I share in your and Eberhard’s happiness? I’ve just written to Eberhard,'! and he will surely send the letter on to you, but I wanted him to get it as soon as possible. I'll never forget the moment yesterday when Maria'*! told me, first of all, that you had a little boy and that his name is to be Dietrich. Then it was really a birthday celebration for me, but little Dietrich’s birthday rather than my own. Maria told me she sat by your bed for a while and that you looked bright and cheerful. How surprised and happy your mother must have been when she arrived, to be welcomed by both you and the baby! And how good that Grandmama and Christel were both right there. And I think it’s especially nice that you aren't lying in a hospital somewhere, but can be in Sakrow!"! instead. If only the air force would spare us for the next few days; actually | think they will. Once again we see that so many things we worry about beforehand are resolved unexpectedly simply and well in the end. So it isn’t worth worrying! Tell yourself that every day now when you're thinking of Eberhard. Our affairs are really in better hands than our own. That you have named the boy Dietrich pleases me so much. Not many people in my situation would experience anything like that. In the midst of all that is hard to bear, we keep being overwhelmed with goodness and friendliness. Isn't that the way things have always gone for Eberhard? The Daily Text for February 3,!5] which you both are reading as well, is a fine one. If your boy someday sees more of God’s righteousness and power 321 onearth than we do, we can consider him lucky. And the interpretive text!®! challenges us to bow down for a while longer in blind trust under God’s

[1.] NL, A 79, 135; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 210. [2.] 2/110. [3.] During her visit to Bonhoeffer in prison on February 4, 1944. [4.] See 2/110, ed. note 17. [5.] 1 Sam. 2:10b: “The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king.” [6.] 1 Pet. 5:6: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.”

2/110-2/112 295 mighty hand; then we shall do that in the hope that the next generation will feel not only the might but also the grace of God’s hand.

I must close so that the letter can go off. God keep you and Eberhard and your child! Much love from your Uncle Dietrich

I wrote Eberhard that you would send him this letter too.

112. To Eberhard Bethge!!! February 12, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I’ve been in bed with a bit of flu for a few days but am up again, and it’s a good thing too, since in about a week I expect to need all my five senses in good order.!*! Until then T intend to read and write as much as I can, since who knows when it will be possible again the way it is now. { Chis morning I had a great surprise. I was skimming the newspaper

when my eyes [ell unthinkingly on the name Dietrich, and then right 322 nearby—still without making the connection—on the name Bethge.!! But then it didn’t take long until I got it. Say what you like, there is something about seeing words in print; you must have felt it too; it underlines the objective fact once again, and now the world can share in the blessed event. My parents were here yesterday and told me again all about February 3 and how well everything went, and even Papa said it was an especially nice-looking baby. How fortunate that there haven't been any heavy air raids these first ten days, and hopefully we shall be spared them for a while longer. ‘They say Renate is well, though still a littke weak. ’m going to see to it that some of the good food intended for me goes to her instead, so that she can regain

555

[1.] NL, A 79, 157; handwritten; note by Bethge, “received February 27.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 211-14.

[2.] On February 10, 1944, Max de Crinis, Karl Bonhoeffer’s successor as director of the neurological clinic in the Charité hospital, had declared Hans von Dohnanyi “fit to stand trial.” The “stay in the surgery clinic [was] stopped and Dohnanyi was taken to the special camp in Buch” (according to de Crinis’s letter of February 10, 1944, to the Reich Central Security Office, literary estate of Hans von Dohnanyi, NL Dohnanyi A 87,2-2, BA Berlin-Lichterfelde. Cf. Chowaniec, Der “Iall Dohnanyi,” 72). Since at this time it appeared possible that Hans von Dohnanyi’s trial was about to begin, Bonhoeffer was expecting a decision soon in his case; see also 2/112, p. 296. [3.] The announcement of Dietrich Bethge’s birth in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.

294 Letters and Papers from Prison her strength very soon. I was also very glad to hear that you had written to her—and also to my parents, which really pleased them—and that you are getting along all right. Are you seeing any signs of spring yet? Here winter is just getting started. In imagination I spend a good deal of time outdoors, in the midland mountains in summer, actually, in the forest glades near Friedrichsbrunn or on the slopes where one can look across Treseburg to the Brocken.'*! I lie on my back in the grass, watching the clouds float across the blue sky in the breeze and listening to the sounds of the forest. It’s remarkable how our whole outlook is shaped by childhood impressions like these, so that it seems impossible to me and against my nature that we could have had a house in the high mountains or by the sea! It’s the central uplands [Mittelbirge] which are my natural environment—the Harz Mountains, the Thuringian Forest, or the Weser Mountains—and which made me who I am. Certainly there is a petit bourgeois side to the Harz, and parts of the Weser hills belong to the Wandervogel,!"! just as there is a fashionable and a Nietzschean Enga-

dine; there is a romantic Rhineland and a Berliners’ Baltic shore; and 323 seaside fishermen’s huts, coquettishly poor and melancholy. So perhaps “my” midland mountains are “bourgeois” (in the sense of being natural, not exalted, modest but self-sufficient (?), nonideological, content with the down-to-earth and especially “not-making-themselves-known’”). It would be tempting sometime to pursue this sociological view of natural scenery. {Incidentally, Stifter has made clear to me the distinction between simplicity in its different senses, on one hand, innocent and even naive [einfaltig], on the other, simple and uncomplicated [einfach].'7! Stifter is not naive, but rather simple (just as the “bourgeoisie” is simple). “Naiveté” is more an aesthetic concept (in theology too)'*!—(Was Winckelmann really

[4.] [The highest peak in the Harz Mountains, important in German folklore anda favorite hiking goal.—JDG] [5.] [The German Youth Movement, which began in 1901, chose the name “Wandervogel” (hiking bird). The movement was later incorporated into the Hitler Youth.—]DG] [6.] [The valley of the river Inn in eastern Switzerland, around St. Moritz. Nietzsche spent the summers of 1883-88 in the Engadine.—]DG]| [7.] [Einfaltand einfach are words that recur in Bonhoeffer’s writings, and their meaning sometimes varies. But generally, Einfalt conveys a sense of childlike simplicity, naivete,

or purity, and Einfachheit an uncomplicated simplicity, a meaning that relates well to Stifter, whose works idealized the lives of simple country people. For an overview of Bonhoeffer’s understanding and use of these terms, as well as their christological significance, see the editor’s introduction to DBWE 10:7-8.—]DG] [8.] [Bonhoeffer has in mind purity and simplicity in the sense of being untainted and therefore portraying the essence of something, both in art and in theology.—]DG]

Z/1iZ 295 right to define the art of antiquity as “noble simplicity” [edlen Einfalt]?!! Certainly not with regard to the Laocoon, for instance,!!! but I find “quiet grandeur”!!! very apt). “Simplicity” is an ethical concept. One can become “simple,” but one can only be innocently naive. “Simplicity” can be attained

by education—and is even one of the chief aims of education—while “naiveté” is a gift. I see them as related in the same way as the concepts “pure” [rein] and “temperate.” One can only be “pure” from one’s origin or with respect to one’s destiny, namely, through baptism or through forgiveness in the Lord’s Supper. Like “naiveté” it implies wholeness; lost purity— and we have all lost our purity!—can be given back through faith; but in ourselves, as we live and grow, we can be no longer “pure” but only “temperate,” and that is a possible and necessary aim of education. How does the landscape of Italy strike you? Is there such a thing as Ital-

ian landscape painting? comparable to Thoma or to Claude Lorrain or Ruysdael or Turner?!!*! Or is nature so completely absorbed into art there that you don’t see it as such anymore? At the moment I can only recall good pictures of cities, nothing in the realm of pure landscape.

February 13. 324 I often notice here, in myself and in others, the difference between the need to talk, the wish to discuss something, and the desire to confess. In women the need to talk can perhaps be quite charming at times, but in men

I find it repugnant. They chatter indiscriminately to anyone at all about their own affairs, and it makes no difference to them whether the other person is interested in or has anything to do with it—just because they feel the need to chatter. It’s an almost physical urge, but if you’ve managed to suppress it for a few hours, you're glad afterward that you didn’t let yourself go. Here I’m sometimes ashamed to see how people reduce themselves in their need to talk, how they jabber on ceaselessly about their affairs to others who aren't worth telling it to and are hardly listening anymore. And the

strangest thing is that they don't even feel the need to tell the truth; they just want to talk about themselves, whether it’s lies or truth.

[9.] Winckelmann, Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, 33: “The gen-

eral and most distinctive characteristics of the Greek masterpieces are, finally, a noble simplicity [Einfalt] and quiet grandeur, both in posture and expression.” [10.] See 2/102, ed. notes 42 and 43. [11.] A reference to Winckelmann’s statement; cf. ed. note 9 above. [12.] [The landscape painters Hans Thoma, Claude Lorrain, Salomon van Ruysdael, and John Turner.—JDG]

296 Letters and Papers from Prison { The desire for a good conversation, a meeting of minds, is something else entirely. But so few people here can carry on a conversation about anything beyond personal affairs. ‘The desire to confess is something else again. I think that doesn’t happen here often because what matters, whether subjectively or objectively, isn’t primarily “sin.” Perhaps you will have noticed in the prayers I sent you!!*! that they don’t focus on asking for forgiveness of sins. From a pastoral as well as a practical viewpoint, | would consider a “methodist”!!! way of proceeding entirely inappropriate here. We should talk about this sometime.

PAS February 14 If it would make things easier for Renate in any way, please don’t hesitate to help yourself to my money! It’s looking as though there may be a decision on my case in a week’s time.'!*! I hope so. If it turns out that they send me in Martin’s direction,!!°! which T don’t expect, let your mind be at rest even about that. ’'m not at all worried on my own behalf, so please don’t you worry either. Farewell, I have to send this letter. The thoughts, style, and handwriting are considerably impaired by a head dulled by aspirin and such. But I needn’t excuse myself to you about that. When I was ill in the autumn of °41,!!7! you saw me In an even more stupid state! So, with all my good wishes, Yours as ever, Dietrich

I’m already wondering what to give my godchild! Would Renate like my fur sleeping bag? She could crawl into it with the baby, and there are lots of!'®! furs at Maria’s, so we don’t need it. Have you made any contact with the chaplain for your division? Is there a possibility of your being deployed together with him, or anywhere, as a chaplain?!'¥! Are you going to try? [13.] 2/76-78. [14.] On Bonhoeffer’s concept of “methodism” or “method,” see Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 145, 189, 201, and its reference on p. 11 to DBWI 2:92: “Knowledge of God depends in each instance on whether God has known me in Christ (1 Cor. 13:12; Gal. 4:9)... . There is, therefore, no method for the knowledge of God.” See also DBWE 6:149 (“There is no Lutheran or Pauline method for attaining the ultimate word”) and 150: “The qualitatively ultimate word excludes every method once and for all.” [Here and elsewhere when he uses the term “methodism” (e.g., 3/161, p. 427), Bonhoeffer is not referring to the Methodist Church.—JDG] [15.] See ed. note 2. [16.] Martin Niemoller, who was in the Dachau concentration camp. [17.] See DB-ER, 746.

[18.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [19.] Service regulations for wartime chaplains in the field (from Beese, Seelsorger in Uniform, 61n43): “Pastoral care for the army in the field is performed by wartime

2/112 and 2/113 297 You could get support here through Dohrmann.!?°! Write me about this sometime. Jurgen Bismarck-Lasbeck and Gunther Bismarck-Kniephof are both in southern Italy. Perhaps you will run across one of them. Jurgen is considered a serious type. I don’t know Gunther, but of course he knows of our family.

113. From Eberhard Bethge!|! 326 February 15, 1944

Dear Dietrich, Where should | begin? You’ve written me so much that | hardly know where to start. And | think it has all arrived here, from that [letter] to Renate and me to the one with congratulations.!4] Thank you very, very much for writing so faithfully. Your letters have made me very happy, and one thing or another from them keeps coming to my mind. Of course, I’m completely absorbed with the new situation into which Renate has plunged me so surprisingly and so well. When the major!?] showed me and gave me the telegram on Friday (Feb. I!), with the names all misspelled, | was so shocked and happy that | actually went weak in the knees and was shivering all over. Beforehand it was just impossible for me to imagine what it would be like when the baby was there. And it’s still difficult. | keep being depressed that | can’t see Renate and that little being. But obviously I’m indescribably happy and thankful that it all went so well. And I’m happy for Renate. | keep saying to myself, and it takes effort, that’s your son and hers. Something from the two of us. Of course, it’s true that | can’t talk to anyone about it. With whom should one talk about this, in every detail, but one’s wife? To anyone else it is too general, but in reality it is an individual event as almost nothing else can be. I’d just like to go on and on writing to her, but unfortunately my desk duties have been piling up

chaplains. Civilian clergymen are appointed to this office for the duration of the war, with revocable status, as army officials. After the war, wartime chaplains return to their peacetime positions.” Regarding the term Ariegspfarrer (literally: “war pastor”), see also Schtibel, 300 Jahre Evangelische Soldatenseelsorge, 95-96. See the German editor's afterword

to this volume, pp. 579-80. [20.| Field army bishop Dr. Franz Dohrmann. On the position and duties of the Protestant field army bishop, see May, /nterkonfessionalismus in der deutschen Militarseelsorge, 76-77. [1.] NZ, A 79, 138; handwritten; from Rignano. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 214.

[2.] Letters 2/102, 106, 108, and 110. [3.] Major Tilp; see 2/107, ed. note 7.

298 Letters and Papers from Prison these days and take a lot of time. Overall I’m spending the whole day on these writing tasks, and in my free time, which doesn’t come regularly at all, writing to Renate or working a bit on Italian. Besides that, I’m also driving the car fairly often and thus making myself indispensable. In this way | recently did get to see the Eternal City again, and instead of the Forum or the Pantheon, used the time 327 | had for the living: St. Peter’s, and was able to get in with a guided tour. Otherwise there are guards outside. This time it was Michelangelo’s Pietal*] that made a huge impression on me, even though | already knew it’s not that big, standing there in its niche. It’s a work from when Michelangelo was very young. | now feel | want to see the church again and again. From the hilltop where we are getting our meals and so on,! occasionally on a very clear day we can see its dome looming over everything. {The guided tour ended with an audience with the pope,!°! so | saw him as well. There were about forty officers and four hundred enlisted men, and he spoke a few words with each one. He looked older than | expected from photos. How easy it is for the Catholics now, since they can largely dispense with words and preach Habitus!’] and gestures. After all, it’s noticeable how sensitive people are to false words, how they reject them. | couldn’t make any other visits that time,!®! because | wanted to buy something for Renate. It was time consuming because of inflation and the growing shortages. But | managed to get a gown for the baby; nothing for her personally, unfortunately. And now to your letters, however far | shall get with them. Thanks very much for everything, including the little birthday flower. That was great that Maria could bring you the news right away, and your congratulations were almost the first | received; only Perels’s came sooner. It’s very nice that you are so pleased that he is named after you. I’m certain you will be a good uncle to him, and

[4.] In St. Peter’s in Rome. [At that time it was located in one of the chapels, whereas now it is displayed under bulletproof glass near the entrance.—JDG] [5.] Monte Soratte, where Army Group C (under Field Marshal Kesselring) had its headquarters in a tunnel; see Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 137 [and Bethge, Friendship and Resistance, 40 —]DG].

[6.] Bethge, Friendship and Resistance, 41: “Hundreds of us filed past Pius XII, and we

were given a picture of him posing in deep prayer. I tried quickly to let him know that I was an illegal pastor of the Confessing Church, but to my disappointment he gave no sign of responding.”

[7.] [In Catholic teaching Habitus is a permanent metaphysical quality that exists in opposition to transitory Dispositio.—]|DG| [8.] This refers to Bonhoeffer’s recommendation that he visit Father Robert Leiber and Monsignor Schonhoffer, both of whom were well informed about the conspiracy, at the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda fide) in Rome (the Vatican); see 2/56, ed. note $1; and 2/102; 'p, 279.

2/113 299 perhaps he’ll be a reason for you to look in on us even more often than otherwise. I’m really envious that you got to celebrate my boy’s birthday so much sooner than | did—exactly one week sooner. As for my own outward celebration, it consisted merely in the major inviting us for a glass of wine. On that day 328 especially, but also afterward, | have felt rather as if I’d been taken prisoner— deported is more like it. Even good news that makes one tremendously happy can be tormenting. ql’ve already written to your mother and to Christel.!?] We haven't finished discussing the question of godparents. I'd like to see how things go for a time before we take up the question of baptism. It was really a good thing for Renate that it turned out she was spared the not so pleasant hospital stay with strang-

ers’ hands taking care of her. I’ve already received a first letter from Renate herself, written on the fourth, but nothing more at this point (I’m now writing on the seventeenth). Hopefully, it’s still going well. So your birthday was largely occupied, for you as well as all the others involved, with our new citizen. That must have been quite fine. Did you get my letter for your birthday?!'°] There was no present from me this time. | think it’s very, very nice that the little Herzlieb cupboard is going to be yours.!!'] When will you be setting up your apartment? | spent a good hour reading your morning reflection on your birthday, |'?! recapitulating all the years of our celebrations. Recently on the radio—which deafens everyone here throughout the day—lI heard Gerhard’s lovely Regensburger (Prinzchen) record,!'?] and it reminded me of so much. I’ve noticed here that thinking a lot about when we shall see each other again just wears me out. Whenever some of us go on leave, it makes the rest nervous. Coming home and seeing everybody again appears to me as something unimaginably splendid. Most of my work now is desk work, and there is a lot to do, some of it interesting but overall unpalatable. That is, outwardly | have quite a good life and am also treated well. What should my attitude be toward all the things in which |

have to be involved? Where does it, or doesn’t it, go beyond merely clerical work? The major is interested in having me handle some things more independently from time to time, and of course he knows nothing about me otherwise. 329 On the other hand, | don’t want to make my situation worse, if there isn’t any way to make it better.

L9.] Cf. 2/110, p. 291: “Are you going to ask Mama and Christel to be godmothers?” [10.] 2/107. ME | See 27110, 9.291, [12.] 2/110, pp. 288-89. [13.] Apparently a recording by the Regensburger Domspatzen [a famous cathedral boys’ choir—JDG] with the song “Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein” [Go to sleep, my little prince], which Gerhard Vibrans had also owned.

300 Letters and Papers from Prison The letter you wrote to me and Renate, which Renate sent me, | was just about to answer when the telegram came, so | didn’t answer it at length. | especially liked the quote from Lessing.{'4] Renate sent me some photos.|!>] Cornflowers in the wheat field (blue, of course) make a lovely image of friendshipl'®] (necessitasl'”] of freedom), sui generis next to the three mandates and belonging with them. | haven’t yet seen a military doctor, and besides we're going

to change our location somewhat more to the south, near the pope’s summer residence.l'®] | got the Isophan tablets;!'!?! thanks very much. | haven’t needed them so far, but now we are to have some sentry duty. Nothing particular to say yet about my position among the people here.!?° They know what | am. They’re all older soldiers, stubborn and rather stolid. One, a lawyer!!! who roomed with Eugen Rosel??! at the interpreters’ school, seems interested. Incidentally he says very nice things about Eugen. He’s Catholic. Otherwise they’re mostly “swine.” They’re in a very different situation from your companions there, quite secure and holding to the official line. But once in a while something human comes through. The first thing that occupies a man here is asserting himself in the dreary pecking order, who has to tend the stove,|?3] sweep the room, or peel potatoes. | can’t get to your letters of February | and January 30[24] just now. This letter has to go off, and | have sentry duty today, for the first time. There’s too much traffic here now. While I’m on watch, I'll talk with Renate and you and all the others. Yours, Eberhard

[14.] 2/102, p. 266. [15.] [Of Bonhoeffer, for Bethge to have with him in case he were taken prisoner of war. See 2/102, p. 267, and ed. note 12.—JDG] [16.] 2/102, p. 269. [17.] “Necessary condition.” [18.] To Velletri, near the Allied beachhead at Anzio-Nettuno, south of Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. [19.] See 2/102, p. 270. [20.] Ibid. (Bonhoeffer had asked how Bethge was “getting along with the other people there, and on what basis.”) [21.] Attorney Josef Rainalter; see 2/107, ed. note 14. |22.] Aseminarian at Finkenwalde from1935 to 1936.

[23.] [Probably a coal or wood stove for heating, which had to be emptied of ashes and restarted every morning.—] DG] [24.] 2/108 and 106.

2/113 and 2/114 301 114. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! 330 February 20, 1944 My dear Parents,

Forgive me for not writing to you regularly lately. In the hope of being able to tell you something definite about my case,!*! I’ve been putting off letters from day to day. After being decisively assured that the case would be concluded, first in July “43, then—as you will remember yourselves—at the very latest September °43, and then month after month goes by without the slightest movement, and when I’m thinking optimistically that a really thorough hearing would easily clear things up, and finally when I consider the tasks awaiting me these days, once Iam out—despite all my efforts to be patient and understanding, I sometimes get into a frame of mind in which

it seems better not to write letters, but to keep quiet for a while. First of all, because disordered thinking and emotions will only give rise to saying something unjust, and, second, because what one has written will usually be long out of date by the time it reaches the other person. There’s always a little inner struggle to keep soberly to the facts, to chase the illusions and fantasies out of one’s head and content oneself with the situation, since even when one doesn't understand why these things are necessary outwardly, one believes there is an inner, unseen necessity. {{ Moreover—our generation may no longer expect a life that unfolds fully, both professionally and personally, so that it becomes a balanced and fulfilled whole, as was still possible for your generation. ‘That is probably the greatest renunciation, with the example of your lives still before us, that has been imposed on us younger folk and is required of us. Probably that is why

we feel especially strongly how unfinished and fragmentary our lives are. 331 But precisely that which is fragmentary may point to a higher fulfillment, which can no longer be achieved by human effort. This is the only way I can

think, especially when confronted with the deaths of so many of my best former students. Even when the violence of outward events breaks our lives in pieces, as the bombs do our houses, everything possible must be done to keep in view the way all this was planned and intended to be. At the very least, it will still be possible to recognize from what kind of material here we build or must build.

[1.] NL, A 79,140; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 215-16. [2 .| See 2/112, ed. note 2.

302 Letters and Papers from Prison Today Maria was here on the way to her new job.'*! It was lovely to see her, but all this is really very hard on her. Now that Karl Friedrich’s institute in Leipzig is completely in ruins, will he accept the call to Berlin after all?"!

I'd like to see him here again. It is gradually becoming quite depressing indeed that Hans"! is not really getting better. It must be ghastly not to feel fully in possession of one’s intellectual faculties. I’m really very sorry. Renate is doing well, it seems? What does she hear from her husband? Perhaps she’ll write me something about him when she’s up and around. Who is going to operate on the baby?!©!—I had a very nice birthday letter from Ursel, and thank her very much for it. Do go to Patzig again sometime! It would really do you good, and my mother-in-law would look forward to it so much. Please give my love to everyone, and much love to you— Yours thankfully, Dietrich

332 115. To Eberhard Bethge' |! February 21, 1944

Dear Eberhard, What an indescribable joy it was to hear from you! I also heard today from Maria!?! that you wrote to her for my birthday—that was really an act of friendship. Thanks very much for both. Reading Job, chap. 1, it recently occurred to me that these days Satan has permission from the Lord to try and separate me from my friends—and that he mustn't succeed! I heard very briefly today about the audience in the Vatican,!! and now I’m infinitely curious to hear more about it. ’m very happy that you got a

taste of it, even though it’s probably no longer quite the old ceremony | [3.] Permission to visit on February 20, 1944, on her way to Bundorf (in lower Franconia, northern Bavaria) to be governess for the children of her cousin Hedwig von TruchseB; see Love Letters from Cell 92, 155-57.

[4.] See 2/47, ed. note 4. [5.) Hans von Dohnanyi, who had been pronounced “fit to stand trial” by Max de Crinis (see 2/112, ed. note 2), “was considered unfit to be questioned. ... Questioning took place nevertheless, but he could manage it only with difficulty” (Chowaniec, Der “Fall Dohnanyi,” 73).

[6.] [Dietrich Bethge had a brown spot on his skin under his chin. Because the family feared it might turn into skin cancer, they considered removing it. But Karl Bonhoeffer advised against it. Information received from Renate Bethge.—]DG] [1.] NL, A 79,141; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 216-20. [2.] Visitor’s permit on February 20, 1944; see 2/114. [SOt 2711S, ps 298:

2/114 and 2/115 303 experienced in 1924.'4! Nevertheless, in contrast to what you are experiencing otherwise these days, it will have been especially inspiring and important. I assume some pigheaded Lutherans will put it down as a shameful blot on your life history, and that’s precisely why I’m glad you did it. ’m looking forward very much to Renate’s feeling fit again and coming to see me, so I can finally hear all about you in great detail. Otherwise I only have pieces of a mosaic that I have to fit together. About myself, [am sorry to have to tell you that Iam not likely to be out of here before Easter.!°! As long as Hans is ill,!°! nothing can be changed. I cannot help feeling that there has been rather too much messing about and fantasizing, while the simplest things have been left undone. I’m sure that everyone concerned means well; but it is all too easy to assume that a conversation, a new idea, or a hope is the same as an action.!// lam continually 333 amazed that for the last six months nothing has actually been done, although

people have actually sacrificed a great deal of time and even sleep with their deliberations and discussions. The one thing that could have taken place automatically—namely, that my case be settled before Christmas— has been prevented. | wonder whether my excessive scrupulousness, about which you often used to shake your head in amusement (I’m thinking of our travels), is not a negative side of bourgeois existence—simply that part

of our lack of faith that remains hidden in times of security, but comes out in times of insecurity in the form of “fear” (I don’t mean “cowardice,” which is something different: “fear” can be expressed in recklessness as well as in cowardice), fear of straightforward, simple actions, fear of havying to make necessary decisions. I’ve often wondered here!*! where we are to draw the line between necessary resistance [Widerstand] to “fate” and equally necessary submission [Ergebung].'! Don Quixote!!! is the symbol of resistance carried to the point of absurdity, even lunacy—like Michael Kohlhaas,'"!! who, insisting on his rights, puts himself in the wrong. You know that I’ve often been reminded of Klaus when reading Don Quixote!

[4.] On Bonhoeffer’s trip to Rome with his brother Klaus from April to June 1924, see his “Italian Diary” in DBWE 9, 1/57, esp. p. 107. [5.] See 2/112, ed. note 2. [6.] See 2/114, p. 302. [7.] See 2/88, ed. note 43. [8.] “Here” inserted afterward. [9.] [See the editor’s introduction to this volume, p. 4.—JDG].

[10.] The “knight of the doleful countenance” in the Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes; he is accompanied by the crafty peasant Sancho Panza. Cf. DBWE 6:80; DBWE FAW fos

[11.] Character in the novella of that name by Heinrich von Kleist.

304 Letters and Papers from Prison In both cases resistance finishes by losing its meaning in reality and is dissipated in theories and fantasies, while Sancho Panza represents the cunning and complacency to accept things as they are. | think we must rise to the great demands that come to each of us, but also do the commonplace and necessary things. We must stand up to “fate’—to me the “neuter”!!! gender of this word is significant—as resolutely as we must submit to it at a given time. Only on the other side of this twofold process can we speak of “being led.” God meets us not only as Thou!'*! but also in the “disguise”! 334 ofan “It,” so my question is basically how to find the “Thou” in this “It” (Le., “fate”), or in other words—excuse me, I really find grease spots disgusting, but I can’t write this page over again, since then the letter will be delayed even longer!!!®!how “fate” really becomes “the state of being led.” So the boundaries between resistance and submission can’t be determined as a matter of principle, but both must be there and both must be seized resolutely. Faith demands this flexible and alive way of acting. Only in this way can we endure our present situation and make the most of it. Gan we find differences here between theological existence and that of the legal profession? I’m thinking, for instance, of the extreme contrast between Klaus and Rudiger within the “legal,” juridical standpoint. ...on the other hand, our more flexible and lively “theological” standpoint, which is so because it is ultimately more attuned to reality.

f t / oS oS

February 23 If you have a chance to be in Rome during Holy Week,!!®! I'd advise you to

attend the Maundy Thursday afternoon service (from about 2 to 6) in St. Peter’s. That is really the Good Friday service, since the Roman Catholic Church begins its feasts at noon on the previous day. As | remember (but am not exactly sure), there is also a big service on the Wednesday. It’s on [12.] [Das Schicksal, “fate.” By contrast, the French term, /e sort, is masculine, and in ancient mythology fate was represented by three goddesses.—]DG]. [13.] [The formal “Thou” in contrast to “It” is used here in keeping with the personalist philosophy of the period read by Bonhoetter.—] DG] [14.] According to Luther (/n epistulam S. Pauli ad Galatas Commentarius, [1513] 1535), the ordering (Ordnungen) of human life and the events of history are “masks” and “disguises” behind which God’s activity is concealed. WA 40/1:174, 13-15: “All creatures

are God’s larva and mummery, which he permits to work with him and to help to do everything that he can do” (translation from The Sermons of Martin Luther, 2:141). See also DBWE 9, 2/5, p. 261, Bonhoeffer’s note 20. [See also the section titled “Some Statements of Faith on God’s Action in History” in “After Ten Years.”—]DG] [15.] Bottom of the page. The rest of this paragraph is written in the margin. [16.] In reference to what follows, see the 1924 “Italian diary,” DBWE 9, 1/57, esp. pp. 90-93.

2/41) 305 Maundy Thursday that they extinguish the twelve candles on the altar, symbolizing the disciples’ running away, so that in that enormous space there is only one candle still burning in the center—Christ—then comes the cleans-

ing of the altar. On Saturday morning about seven o'clock, there is the blessing of the font (as I remember it, in conjunction with the ordination of | 335 young clergy), until at noon the great Easter Hallelujah is sung, the organ starts playing once again, the little mass bells peal, and the veiled paintings are unveiled again. That is the real Easter celebration. Somewhere in Rome I also saw a Greek Orthodox Easter service, which impressed me very much at the time—that’s twenty years ago now!!!7! By the way, the Easter Eve service in the Lateran'!*! (beginning in the baptistery) is quite famous; I was there as well, back then. If you happen to be on Monte Pincio toward sunset, go by the Trinita del Monte church and see whether the nuns there still sing at that time of day. I heard them once and was thrilled; I think it’s even in Baedeker‘(!).!!9!

How much do you come into contact down there with the events of the war? I would assume mainly with air strikes, like us here. The way the air war has intensified in about the last ten days, especially the heavy daytime raids, makes one wonder. Are the British deliberately challenging us to air battles in preparation for an invasion, to tie our defense forces down increasingly inside Germany?

The longer we are uprooted from our real professional and personal lives, the more we experience our lives—in contrast to our parents’ lives— as fragmented. ‘The portrayals of the great scholarly figures of the previous century in Harnack’s Geschichte der Akademie'*®! make that particularly clear

to me, and almost make me nostalgic. Where do you see an intellectual “life’s work” these days? Where is anyone gathering, working through, and developing what it takes to accomplish such? Where is there the blissful lack of fixed goals and yet the planning in broad strokes, which belong to sucha life? I think even for technicians and scientists, who are the only ones who still have freedom for their work, no such thing exists anymore. If the end of the eighteenth century means the end of “universal scholarship,” and in the nineteenth century intensive study takes the place of extensive learning, 336 and finally toward the turn of the century the “specialist” has developed, today really everyone has become nothing more than a “technician”—even

[17.] See DBWE 9, 1/57, p. 92, where Bonhoeffer mentions attending an Armenian Church Easter celebration. [18.] [Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral church of Rome.—] DG] [19.] [The famous German series of travel guidebooks.—]DG] [20.] See 2/106, ed. note 19.

306 Letters and Papers from Prison in the arts (in a good form in music, but in painting and poetry a mediocre one at best!). Our intellectual existence remains but a torso. { What matters, it seems to me, is whether one still sees, in this fragment of life that we have, what the whole was intended and designed to be, and of what material it is made. After all, there are such things as fragments that are only fit for the garbage heap (even a decent “hell” is too good for them), and others which remain meaningful for hundreds of years, because only God could perfect them, so they must remain fragments—I'm thinking, for example, of the Art of the Fugue.'*"! If our life is only the most remote reflection of such a fragment, in which, even for a short time, the various themes

gradually accumulate and harmonize with one another and in which the great counterpoint is sustained from beginning to end—so that finally, when they cease, all one can do is sing the chorale “Vor Deinem Thron tret’ ich allhier”!**!—then it is not for us, either, to complain about this fragmentary life of ours, but rather even to be glad of it.!73! T can’t get Jer. 45!*4! out of my mind anymore. Do you remember that Saturday night in Finkenwalde when | expounded it? Here too, necessarily, a fragment of life: “but I will give you your life as a prize of war.”!?>!

I just had a very nice letter from Renate,?°! written January 28, still worried about you as she hadn't heard from you for a week. That has now been happily cleared up. Are you now a secretary or a driver? Or both? You always liked making lists—shades of the first year of secondary school!—and I have 337 often enough, unjustly, made fun of you for it. Now it will be an exemplary accomplishment that only you can bring off. I’m very glad you’ve found

a companion!?’! more congenial than the ordinary types, to talk and do things with. But how much more I'd like to be in his place. Do you suppose we shall ever do that again, or perhaps even celebrate Easter here this year, the way we used to? You see, I’m not giving up hope, and don’t you either! I’m feeling more or less well again, just very tired, as I usually am after these bouts of flu, and unfortunately that hinders any productive work con-

[21.] J. S. Bach, The Art of the Fugue (BWV 1080); see Pangritz, Polyphonie des Lebens,

40-53. [22.| This chorale is traditionally handed down with Bach’s Art of the Fugue; see Pangritz, Polyphonie des Lebens, 46-4757. [23.] [See DBWE 10:631.—JDG]

[24.] Jer. 45:5a: “And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them.” Cf. 2/54, ed. note 5. [25.] Jer. 45:5b. [Luther Bible has Seele, “soul,” rather than “life."-—JDG] [26:)' 2/105: [27.] Josef Rainalter.

2/115 and 2/116 307 siderably. Even so, I hope to finish my shorter literary piece soon.'**! How are you holding up physically? What’s the food like? When is your next leave? When shall we baptize your boy? When shall we have a talk together again, for hours and hours? Farewell, Eberhard. Stay healthy. How’s your Italian coming? Are you getting to do any sort of music? God keep you. You're in my thoughts every day. Faithfully yours, Dietrich

February 25

Couldn't you try to write a little art history of some kind down there? What do you think of my question about the Laoco6én as “man of sorrows”?9! My parents have just been here. All is well at home.

116. From Eberhard Bethge'!! February 22, 1944

Dear Dietrich, Having the offer of a messenger, | want to use it to thank you again for your let-

ters and to begin to respond to those of the thirtieth and February |.!2] | was greatly relieved to hear so quickly that you came safely through the air raids of 338 those days. On my occasional trips a bit further south at night, | see and hear the furor,@] and it makes me think especially of Sakrow and of you all. It’s much the same here except that it lasts longer. But I’ve only experienced it rarely until

now. Of course, | wasn’t here for the worst of it. Those among us who have been here longer and have no experience of attacks back home get all excited and keep repeating and exaggerating every detail. | have to add that | wasn't here for the worst of it. Artillery fire in the distance disturbs one remarkably little. We know more or less how far they reach, and a few kilometers behind the lines the whine of the [shells] doesn’t bother one much, although of course all our

[28.] Cf. 2/89, p. 240. [29.] See 2/102, p. 270.

[1.] NZ, A 80,142; handwritten; from Rignano. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 220-22. [2.] 2/106 and 108.

[3.] Artillery exchanges around Anzio-Nettuno. On February 16, 1944, German troops had begun their (unsuccessful) counterattack against the Allied beachhead there.

308 Letters and Papers from Prison senses are on alert. | saw the [Allied] fleet at anchor on the sea in the distance; through binoculars | could distinguish the large and small units, and there were occasional flashes of so-called broadsides with that high whine. What is going on there must be enormously grim. This whole area, all the well-known beautiful places in the Alban Hills, even the papal residences look terrible and are in complete confusion with soldiers camping there. Cattle running loose are shot down and carelessly “devoured.” In many houses there are wild, destructive rampages, ending with people immortalizing themselves indecently in the middle of a room. We first had to clean laboriously the house for our people there, to get rid of this and other kinds of filth. Among my comrades I’m the youngest in terms of months as a soldier (not otherwise, of course, although most are my age or a bit older), and as | men-

tioned, have plenty to do to assert myself and not become the community wastepaper basket. But | must say that by and large everybody is decent to me. It’s no use being oversensitive to the way people talk and their repetitious pornographic expressions. If the talk gets into spiritual matters because of my profession, here where we aren't really in danger, such self-confident older soldiers are quick to launch into a long, wordy, self-justifying declaration of their personal 339 — standpoint. There’s a lot of “to each his own.” !*] Recently one of them admitted to me, after an audience with the pope, to be sure, that he was turning from a negative into a positive Catholic. The fact that I’m married is of interest—and good—to the Catholics, who regard celibacy as an essential reason why they get taunted. All this always takes place in front of the whole staff. | have the feeling that, in this setting, it’s not appropriate to get into discussions about selfjustification or to contradict them very much. But maybe it’s not right to hold back. |am what | am among these people. There is one “God believer”?! among us, but he never attacks me and only expresses himself once in a while; he’s a soldier too, and to me that’s now all he is. | did briefly contradict something he said on that score. Everything | say is, of course, most essentially subject to the way | have to conduct myself among people who have unshaken convictions!®] on many matters, so | am well advised to be careful and not speak of things that are important to us.

[4.] In German, jeder nach seiner Facon, a citation supposedly from King Frederick II in 1740: “All religions must be tolerated, and fiscal policy must only have a watchful eye to see that no religion causes damage to the other religion, for here everyone must get saved according to his own fashion.” Cited in Buchmann, Gefltigelte Worte, 352. [5.] Gottglaubig was the common term in Nazi Germany to describe a form of religiosity favored by National Socialists, unaffiliated with any Christian confession; Nazis who left the church often continued to consider themselves goligldubig. [6.] A reference to National Socialist convictions.

2/116 309 It’s deeply painful for me to drive past places you and | saw together. The day before yesterday | was near the place where we drove out one evening together in the car,!7] a bumpy ride, and finally such hard going that we turned back. Now | am seeing how the war, in its destruction and the relentlessness with which everything gets sucked into it, seeks out the most beautiful places. There is no consideration whatsoever for anyone or anything anymore. Women and children wander along the roadside starving and begging for bread. And to think I’m involved in all this! Most people are completely deadened to it. What a job it will be to teach them to be human again. I’m really looking forward to your piece about the encounter between the two friends.!®] | also was glad to read about how helpful Witiko is to you.l7] Yes, 340

the problems that Gerhard had!!°l—I think | understand what you mean and believe you will really have some adjusting to do and getting to know each other. | had an easier time, entirely against my expectations or fears. At the time | did write Gerhard a long letter and tried to knock down all his scruples. I’m not sure you should focus on this and scrutinize it too consciously.

As to whether the separation is hard for me to endure, it’s not odpél!'] that torments me! That’s all absorbed into the spiritual pain. Yes, it’s true that overall | have always been fairly able to get along, whatever my circumstances. But here too I’m discovering that I’ve changed. There are no fantasies anymore, toward which my longings perhaps at times used to lift me out of my present situation. Now my yearnings know the actual place where they can gain earthly fulfillment. It’s as if | had just awakened. So | keep doing my work, motivated by the certainty that the time is being eaten up day by day and | shall be back again there where

everything makes sense. Excuse me for the odd way this is expressed. People are interrupting me again. | find it delightful the way you describe women being on the whole so much freer and more natural when they visit you.l'2] Klaus’s silence is indeed hard to understand, although | did take his side! He was really under terrible pressure, so perhaps he just forgets to write actual letters. By the way, when Hans seemed

[7.] On the Via Appia, during their holiday together in 1936; see 2/88, ed. note 34. [8.] See 2/115, p. 307, with ed. note 28. [9.] 2/106, p. 277, with ed. note 12. [10.] Gerhard Vibrans; see 2/106, with ed. note 14. [The “problem” referred to is the age difference between Vibrans (who had in the meantime died in the war) and his much younger wife; Bonhoeffer worried about this since Maria von Wedemeyer was so much younger than he; Bethge, of course, had confronted the same situation in marrying Renate Schleicher.—] DG] [11.] “The flesh.” [12.] 2/108, p. 283.

310 Letters and Papers from Prison in low spirits and needed to get some mail, | think Klaus immediately wrote him a very warmhearted and encouraging letter, thoughtful and nice.!!?]

Forgetting a desperate situation one has just experiencedl'‘! is indeed a strange thing. | wonder if it isn’t a physical reaction at first, because you don't forget entirely. You take what you experienced with you as a burden into the 341 next danger, unfortunately. You have a bodily sensation when driving out of the war zone, as I’ve done twice recently,l'?! but shaking it off, you free yourself from it. What you have seen and heard is a burden until you enter the Eternal City. On reaching the first houses, life begins to pick up again, in the hubbub, and once beyond the city you almost begin to feel “at home.” After surviving danger people are usually more talkative; you do this and that with zeal, when you’ve just climbed out of the cellar, when it’s been really bad. My comrades there told

me that after the worst night they were romping on the swing in their garden and jumping around like kids. The dancing after the World War! You can draw many conclusions from that observation.!'®] As for the inability of uneducated people to make and report objective judgments, | was recently talking about that with the major,!'!7] who must struggle with this problem in his official capacity.

Too bad that Renate wasn’t able to visit you. | was looking forward to it myself and eager to “show off” my wife to you. I’m so terribly proud of her. And she was a very pleasant sight. I’m tickled that you were so taken with Magdeburg Cathedral.['8] | was last there a year ago in April, with Renate—we visited both it and the monastery.l!?] Now | have to close for today. I’m thinking of you a great deal, with all good wishes and prayers. Affectionately yours, Eberhard

[13.] In an undated letter (April 1943; literary estate of Emmi Bonhoeffer), Klaus Bonhoeffer had written Hans von Dohnanyi: “Even though you are separated from us all at present, you still needn't feel lonely. This certainty should give you strength, again and again, to bear all adversities calmly.” [14.] See 2/108, pp. 284-85. [15.] From Velletri, south of Rome, to Rignano. [16.] Refers to the “forgetfulness” after air raids that Bonhoeffer mentioned in 2/108, pp. 284-85. [17.| Major Tilp. [18.] See 2/108, p. 286. [19.] [The Monastery of Our Dear Lady, where Bethge had attended the gymnasium. —JDG]

2/116 and 2/117 311

117. To Eberhard Bethge'': 342 March 1, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I don't have anything particular to write today, but I don’t want you to feel lonesome or to think for a moment that you have been somehow forgotten or that one has somehow become used to your being away. I want you to know that, as far as possible, I’m in daily conversation with you—there’s no book that I read or paragraph that I write without talking with you about it, or at least asking myself what you would say about it. In short, all of this just automatically takes the form of a letter, even when there isn’t really “anything to tell.” That is, there would be enough to tell, but I don’t know where to begin, so I’m putting it off until that great moment when we see each other again. What a day that will be for you, when you see your son for the first time (according to my mother-in-law, who came to see me recently,'*! he even looks a bit like me—the general opinion is that he looks like you, and that he has a particularly nice and distinct face), and when you see Renate again—and finally, I imagine to myself that you also look forward to being with me again and sharing the experiences and insights from a whole year; in any case, this is one of the great hopes I have for the near future. You probably also sometimes think that day will never come. It’s hard to believe that we shall be able to break through the wall of obstacles that separates us from the fulfillment of our wishes. But “what delays is all 343 the sweeter,”!’! and 1 must say | am beginning this new month with great hopes and think you are doing the same. I’m making a new start at using this last part of my time here as intensively as possible. Perhaps you too can gain impressions that will be of value to you all your life. The daily threat to life most of us experience at present spurs us like nothing else to fill each moment, to “make the most of the time.”!*! Sometimes I think I will go on living as long as I have a truly great goal to work for. Do you have this feeling too? Or is it a bit presumptuous?

I am surprised, as I have been before at times, that you deny having enough “vitality” to assert yourself and “confidence in (your) own feelings [1.] NZ, A 80,143; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 223-24. [2.| Comment written in 1944 Daily Texts, February 15: “Mother Wedemeyer—Maria briefly/air raid.” Ruth von Wedemeyer wrote to Bon hoeffer on February 94, 1944: “It’s already been a week and a half since we saw each other.” [3.] A phrase from Paul Gerhardt’s hymn “Gib dich zufrieden und sei stille,” v. 10: “What moves slowly, we grasp more surely, and what delays is all the sweeter” (Lvangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 371).

[4.] Eph. 5:16: “making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

312 Letters and Papers from Prison and reactions”!®!—in any case, in the past. My experience was that in your own (naturally modest) way, you always did assert yourself in the seminar group, and also (though you always dispute it) that you stood up to me (and I don’t imagine that would be so easy), and the “confidence in your own feelings” (though perhaps not after thinking it over) was, if I may say so, just what attracted me in your intellectual Habitus.!°! It is most likely no accident that you, so to speak, just naturally came to have a place in our family, that

we counted you as a member before you became one, and that from the beginning your musical, artistic, and human contributions have been gladly and gratefully accepted and assimilated by the family. The spiritual development of the younger generation has without doubt

been very decisively shaped by your introducing them to making music together'”! and keeping it up energetically, which became for them (much 344 more than for me as a boy, for example) an element of universal human culture; the same goes for your involvement in gardening or swimming or ice skating. I am convinced that for the Dohnanyi and Schleicher children, the memories of all this will remain inseparable from memories of the period of their earliest spiritual development. In this respect'®! it’s well and good, and no accident, that you finally joined the family as the eldest of the grandchildren. The less reflective aspect of your nature makes you more a member of the younger generation than of my own, and to this extent I can even feel like an “uncle” to you. What has impressed you among us older ones 1s probably the confidence that has come and been solidified through reflection, that is, not the reflection that leads to intellectualism and thus to dissolu-

tion and relativism, but [reflection] that has become a part of our whole attitude toward life and not weakened, but rather strengthened, our life’s impulses. Nevertheless, | think “you younger ones” are fitter for life than we are. In America they say that the Negroes survived because they didn't forget how to laugh, whereas the Indians perished because they were too “proud.” What I’m talking about is somewhere along these lines. But that’s all for today! It was only meant as a brief sign of how I’m thinking of you every day.

Faithfully yours, Dietrich

[5.] 2/107, p. 280. [6.] [Le., his essential or metaphysical nature.—]DG] [7.] Cantatas by Heinrich Schiitz, Samuel Scheidt, and Johann Hermann Schein. [8.] Beginning of writing in the margin.

2/117 and 2/118 313 P.S. That you succeeded, for instance, in getting Hans and Christel to sing with us is one of your best and most amazing accomplishments and truly

also a form of asserting yourself! Each of us can only assert himself in certain areas. Also the appreciation you earned from the elder Mrs. von Dohnanyi"! means something.

118. From Eberhard Bethge!|! 345 In the south, March 2, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

| was overjoyed to get your letter of February 12!4] on Sunday. Thanks very much. Any letter from you is an event and gives rise to a host of questions, brings me new stimuli and new ways of seeing things. Each time it’s very exciting for me. | gather that by now a decision must have been made.!3] How long, | wonder,

will it be until | hear something about it. And when you are figuring out what to do in case that becomes possible, | won’t be there, and | would have liked so much to be your “spiritual clarification plant.” !41

I've been thinking of you a good deal these days. It started early Sunday morning when the Epistle reading was 2 Cor. 6:|—l0, and | saw you standing in the pulpit in Schlénwitz and remembered your splendid long sermon.! For the brothers it was an event. | was playing the organ that day. {| find your observation about the landscape most suggestive.!° At this point I’m seeing no Italian cities at all, with very few exceptions, but only the countryside, still somewhat wintry. Beyond the Tiber valley toward the hills. Here

and there on the summits a little town, all boxed together, just as we viewed Radicofani together in 1936, by the Via Cassia.!7] But it’s true, as my lawyer friend herel®] and | were saying, that there really isn’t any typical Italian landscape painting; you only see it as decoration or background. What interested [9.] Hans von Dohnanyi’s mother, Elsa von Dohnanyi, who was a pianist. [1.] NZ, A 80,194; handwritten; from Rignano, Excerpt previously published in LPP, 224-26. [2.| 2/7112,

[3.] This refers to the expectations that the date would be set for his trial; cf. 2/112, p. 296, “It’s looking as though there may be a decision on my case in a week’s time.” [4.] See 2/88, p. 235. [5.] See Bonhoeffer’s outline for a worship service on 2 Cor. 2:14; 6:10; and 6:1, from the period of the collective pastorates (probably for February 25, 1939, in Gross-Schlonwitz), DBWE 15, 3/5.

[6.] See 2/112, p. 294. [7.] On their 1936 trip to Italy; cf. 2/86, ed. note 6. [8.] Josef Rainalter.

314 Letters and Papers from Prison the Italians is always the human form, and architecture, the building of cities. ls that why they produced Machiavelli, and matters of state began so early to play a decisive role, in addition to art? Is it so that peoples of the South as such

346 take their lush landscapes for granted and don’t expect to discover anything there—or is nature their enemy, in the scorching heat? Is there any Greek, or Spanish, landscape painting? | actually don’t think so. The ones who discovered and painted the landscape here, besides the antiquities, churches, and cities, were Germans of the Romantic period, of the generation around Kalckreuth,|?] 1820-40. The beautiful Lakes Nemi and Alba, and Rocca di Papa,!!°! I’ve seen them all recently, but completely laid waste! How many drawings were made there—gnarled oaks, river valleys, and such. Being here brought back memories of Klaus’s beautiful folios of Kalckreuth and friends, which he showed us at his house after our betrothal, and the lovely “Oak Forest” he has hanging in the stairwell.

In any case, | greatly enjoy looking at the landscape in the mornings and evenings and discovering effects of light and contours that one never sees back home. It’s becoming plain to me how poor the Havel region is with its sand, like the Weser. Yet I’d rather be back there than here. The rain here comes down in buckets; then soon afterward the most gorgeous sun is warming the land, so in a few hours big fat daisies and yellow and blue [flowers] open up along the road. Nothing struggles for long; everything comes bursting out full strength. And how our troops go tramping through the world, among these people and through this landscape without the least consideration or feeling for it. All they wish for is to have the German police here, to keep order and see that work is done. Things aren’t going badly for me. There’s a lot to eat at the moment, so that | really long for vegetables—just meat, meat all the time. If only | could send some home to Renate! At the moment | have so much work, especially because of comrades being on leave, that | hardly get to anything else and barely manage a daily letter to Renate. It’s been several days now of that. I’m seeing and experiencing quite a bit that is interesting and could certainly learn plenty from it, but | need to shut myself off and harden myself so as not to feel like an agent, a chauffeur, or a henchman for people like R.!!!]

347 It’s sickening how many people get a thrill out of this business, and it can be the very same person who is otherwise quite human and likable, with whom one can talk and laugh and do things together. Of course, that’s depressing. But it’s true that by putting up with being here | manage to obtain a number of little comforts that aren't available to others who are stationed elsewhere. [9.] Count Leopold Kalckreuth; see DB-ER, 4. [10.] A town in the Alban Hills, a summer resort for residents of Rome. [11.] Colonel Roeder, senior military prosecutor.

2/118 and 2/119 315 Thanks so very much for deciding that good food intended for you goes to Renate. That’s extremely kind of you. I’m somewhat worried that there do seem to be difficulties with nourishing her properly. But as these are hard days for you right now,!'2] you need it all yourself. We've been able to attend other such court hearings, but not this one. Or don’t they allow anyone in at all? I’m afraid that’s the way it will be. It will upset the grandparents and be hard on them. The definition of “noble simplicity” (Winckelmann)|'?] forgets perhaps to take into account the underlying passionate character of southern peoples, out of which the quality he is referring to would have to develop—their hot blood, the aloofness of their mountains and the towns on top of them, their grandeur and hardness, their untamed vigor, everything that so surprised me on coming to Italy. In any case, it brings back ideas acquired during my education, which | now have to correct considerably on seeing for myself.

And you’re already worrying about a gift for your godchild.!'4] | just can’t bring myself, at this point, to ask Renate to have the baby baptized. In the normal course of events, | could expect to be home this summer, and | want so much to be there for that. The fur sleeping bag is really wonderful. | haven't yet seen any

chaplain for this division. It’s not so simple, since our quarters here are pretty isolated. Perhaps we'll have to wait a little longer with the military chaplaincy.!'>!

|! wonder whether you will soon behold my son, or whether you have to expect much worse things to happen?!®] | can hardly wait for news from you. Thinking of you as always, yours affectionately, Eberhard

119. To Karl And Paula Bonhoeffer!!! 348 March 2, 1944 My dear Parents,

So you made the long journey here again and handed in a package for me downstairs, and again I couldn't thank you for it myself but had to rely on the sergeant to do it properly for me. I hope the permit to visit comes soon!

112.) See ed. note 3. [13.] See 2/112, ed. note 9. [14.] 2/112, p. 296. [15.] See 2/112, ed. note 19.

[16.] This voices the fear that either Bonhoeffer would be released in time for the baptism of Dietrich Bethge, or he would be transported to a concentration camp (like Martin NiemoOller; see 2/112, ed. note 16).

[1.] NL, A 80,145; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 226-27.

316 Letters and Papers from Prison Maria probably told you that I said to her last time—although this isn’t otherwise something we talk about—that our rations here had been reduced, so there was less to eat and sometimes | got a little hungry. But surely that was also because I hardly ate anything those few days when I had the flu.!?! Now you've provided for me splendidly again, and I don’t hesitate to admit

that the world does sometimes look rather different when one has good food inside one, and work goes better as well. But I dread to think I might be depriving you of food, when you have so much to do all day; you need to keep up your strength now, more than I do. Now it’s March again and you still haven’t been away. My mother-in-law is looking forward so much to seeing you. But it’s just a pity that Maria isn’t at home now. By the way, I got my first letter from her from Bavaria today.'*! She especially likes this cousin"! whose children she is teaching, as well as helping with housework, and she seems comfortable there. So I hope this is the best solution for her for these final weeks—I hope that is all they will be—until we see each other again and can make plans together. Of course, it would be nicest if we could all travel together to Patzig and then discuss the future there all together. But after our patience has been tried for this long, it’s almost presumptuous to

expect that to happen. 349 I had very nice birthday letters from Karl-Friedrich,!! Hans-Christoph,! and Hoérnchen.!’! I was surprised by Hans-Christoph’s description of how peaceful life still is in Bucharest.'*! It amazes me that a country in Europe can still afford such a privileged existence. He himself liked it better serving with his division in Africa and Italy. Please thank all of them very much for me. I was very impressed with Harnack’s history of the academy;'! it made me both happy and nostalgic. ‘There are so few people today still looking for

[2.] According to entries in his 1944 Dazly Texts, February 8-10. [3.] Letter of February 23, 1944, Love Letters from Cell 92, 155-57. [4.] Hedwig von Truchseb. [5.]-27109.

[6.] Hans-Christoph von Hase’s February 2, 1944, letter to Bonhoeffer [Hase was serving as an army division chaplain—JDG], NL, A 79,132.

[7.| Letter of February 5, 1944, from Maria Czeppan née Horn, nicknamed “Hornchen” [former nanny to the Bonhoeffer children—JDG], NL, A 79,136. [8.] NL, A 79,132 (see ed. note 6): “So now I’ve been two weeks in this land of milk and honey [Schlaraffenland], in a city like Berlin as it was in peacetime. From the number

of taxis to the fully stocked delicatessens, it’s beyond even the boldest imaginings of Germans nowadays. It’s because of the wealth that oil brings these days. The city is half ‘Middle West’ or Chicago, half primitive Balkan.” [9.] See 2/106, ed. note 19.

2/119 and 2/120 317 spiritual and intellectual connections to the nineteenth and eighteenth centurles; music turns to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for renewal, theology to the Reformation period, philosophy to Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, and today’s worldview comes from the early Teutonic, distant past. But who still has any idea of the work and accomplishments of the last century, that of our grandfathers? And how much of what they knew has already been lost to us! I think that the day will come when people won't be able to get over their amazement at how fruitful this period was; it’s so often disregarded and scarcely known. Could you please get me Dilthey’s Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation? How is Renate getting along, and her husband and the baby? Please give my love to everyone.

With my love and gratitude to you, Dietrich

Congratulations to Hans Walter on his twentieth birthday!

120. From Karl Bonhoeffer!!! 350 March 3, 1944

Dear Dietrich, We got your letter yesterday.!?! It’s the same for us as for you—one thinks that by the time the letter is in your hands, we shall perhaps have seen each other and it will be out of date. So we too have been writing less regularly. We are looking forward very much to the next permit to visit. Everything gets delayed because of having to go by way of Torgau./?] We are provisionally planning to leave for Patzig on the thirteenth of this month. But now Karl-Friedrich is coming for a

longer stay, about two weeks beginning the fourteenth, so we are undecided whether to have him at home with us for at least a few days. He himself says we should go. At present we are planning to stay here at home for the next few bright nights.!4] This going back and forth and keeping two houses is rather

[1.] NZ, A 80,146; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 227-28. FAB anes [3.] The censorship office as well as the Reich War Court had been moved to Torgau because of war damage in Berlin. [4.] On nights with a full moon, air raids were less likely because of increased defense by night fighter planes.

318 Letters and Papers from Prison strenuous for Mama. Unfortunately Lottel?! is very ill and hasn’t much prospect of recovering. The Drees are now also staying in Sakrow at night until they have their things ready to move. Then Suse wants to go back to the children,!°! while Walter will probably stay out there for the time being. Renate with her mother and baby and Christine,!7] who is inseparable from her mother, are also there. So Christel has four generations there on top of everything else, even though we eat at three separate tables, as though in a hotel, and each family cooks for itself. Usually the swarm flies off to Berlin in the mornings and doesn’t come back until evening, so she has some quiet during the day. | do wish Mama could have some

chance to rest. The travel back and forth, standing in the kitchen, which she isn’t used to, and her desire to help here, there, and everywhere tires her out, although she won't admit it. It will relieve her of a great burden when, as we are certain, the end of our worries comes in the spring, at least for our family if not yet for the world at large.

54 9 | March 4 Just after | applied for the visit permit to be speeded up, it has come.!®! So this letter will probably be out of date when it reaches you. In the meantime, you have probably received the letters from Hans Christoph!?! and the grandmother in Klein Kréssin.{'!°9] Mama keeps wanting to write to you and is unhappy that she is so distracted. Love from Father

121. To Eberhard Bethge'!!!

March 9, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I heard today again from my parents that in any case you are getting along tolerably. That’s not much; we'd like life to be more than just “tolerable,” [5.] Lotte Pisker [the Bonhoeffers’ household help for many years—JDG]. [6.] [In Friedrichsbrunn; the DreB family had been bombed out of their parsonage. —JDG]

[7.] [Renate’s younger sister.—]DG] [8.] For March 9, 1944. [9.] Hans Christoph von Hase; see 2/119, ed. notes 6 and 8.

[10.] The letter from Ruth von Kleist-Retzow is not extant, but it is mentioned in 27 121s 922 (6d; note 25). [1.] NZ, A 80,147; handwritten; under the date is a comment by Bethge: “replied, please [or perhaps “possibly”] to be kept! like the others.” Previously published in LPP, 228-33.

2/120 and 2/121 319 but it’s some consolation, as long as we regard our present condition as merely a “status intermedius.”! If only we knew how much longer this “purgatory”!’! will last! For me personally, ’m now being told that I shall have to wait ull May! Shouldn't they be ashamed to dawdle like that? My parents are now going to Patzig, where I hope they will have a good rest. Sepp is now back home and has pushed through his case with all his old vigor and defiant mien.'*!

I haven’t yet responded to your thoughts about Michelangelo, Burck- 352 hardt, and hilaritas.!©! In one way I find it illuminating, at least with regard to Burckhardt’s theses. On the other hand, Azlaritas shouldn't be regarded just as classical jocundity (Raphael, Mozart); to name a few others, Walther von der Vogelweide,“! the Knight of Bamberg,!”! Luther, Lessing, Rubens,

Hugo Wolf, Karl Barth also have some of that Ailaritas, which I would describe as optimism about one’s own work, as boldness, willingness to defy

the world and popular opinion, as the firm conviction that they are doing the world good with their work, even if the world isn’t pleased with it, anda high-spirited self-confidence. I grant you that Michelangelo, or Rembrandt as well, and—at a distance—Kierkegaard and Nietzsche follow an entirely different line from those I just mentioned. There is something less assertive, obvious, conclusive in their work, something less of having overcome, of detachment from self, of humor. However, I would apply to a few of them the concept of hilaritas as described, as a necessary attribute of greatness. This is where Burckhardt—probably consciously—mceets his limit.

Lately I’ve been studying the “worldliness” of the thirteenth century, which wasn’t influenced by the Renaissance but grew out of the Middle Ages, presumably from the emperor concept in the struggle against the papacy

[2.] “Intermediate state” (between death and the Last Judgment). [3.] Tup Kabdapo.ov; Luther disputed the existence of purgatory (WA 30/2:367-90; 1530); LW31, “Exhortation against Purgatory.” [4.] See Hettler, Josef Miiller, 147-70. Dr. Josef Miller, arrested in Munich on April 5, 1943, was transferred to the Lehrter StraBe prison (where Hans von Dohnanyi was also detained). On March 3, 1944, his trial by the Fourth Senate of the Reich War Court began. The charge was “that Muller had prepared the documents for the Dohnanyis’ travel to Italy” and “obtained the necessary foreign currency.” He was acquitted “on proof of innocence.” This verdict had been rescinded and Muller remained in prison, but Bonhoeffer could not have known that at this time. [5.] 2/107, pp. 281-82. [6.] [A medieval German troubadour-poet.—J]DG] [7.] [A reference to the statue of a smiling knight on horseback in Bamberg Cathedral, Germany.—]DG]

320 Letters and Papers from Prison (Walther,!®! Nibelungen,|*! Parsifal!'®?!—the tolerance toward Muslims embodied in Parsifal’s half brother Feirefiz is astonishing!!!'!!—and the

353 cathedrals of Naumburg and Magdeburg).!!*! This is no “emancipated” worldliness, but rather a “Christian” one, though anticlerical. Where does this “worldliness,” which is so essentially different from that of the Renaissance, actually break off? I think that in Lessing!'!*!—in contrast to the Enlightenment of the West—I still see some of it, in another way still in

Goethe and later in Stifter and Morike (to say nothing of Claudius and Gotthelf), but not at all in Schiller and the idealists. It would be so important to trace the proper lineage here. That also raises the question of how significant classical antiquity still is. Is it still a genuine problem and source

of strength for us or not? The modern view from the standpoint of the “TOALS person”!"4! is actually one that has also already passed by. The view of

classicism, from an aesthetic standpoint, is only important to a few people, the museumgocrs. The fundamental concepts of humanism—humaneness, tolerance, leniency, moderation—are already present in their finest form in Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the Knight of Bamberg, and so on, and in a more accessible and inviting way than in classical antiquity itself. So how far does “culture” still depend on classical antiquity? Is the conception of history as we have it from Ranke to Delbruck, a continuum consisting of “ancient,” “medieval,” and “modern,”!!”! really valid? Or is Spengler also right,

[8.] Walther von der Vogelweide; see Dilthey, Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik, 72-94.

[9.] Das Nibelungenlied, a Middle High German heroic epic [which inspired Wagner's opera.—]J] DG]

[10.] Wolfram von Eschenbach’s version [of the Parsifal legend—J]DG]; see Dilthey, Von deutscher Dichtung, 107-30.

[11.] See the following sections of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival: “Der Kampf

zwischen Parzival und Feirefiz” (The Battle between Parsifal and Feirefiz) and “Das Erkennungsgesprach zwischen Parzival und Feirefiz” (The Conversation in Which Parsifal and Feirefiz Recognize Each Other) (v. 735, 1. 5-v. 754, 1. 28). See also Dilthey, Von deutscher Dichtung, 108.

[12.| Bonhoeffer’s study of the thirteenth century was closely connected with his readings in Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung and Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik, both of which he received for his birthday, February 4, 1944 (see 2/108, p. 285), and later Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation, which he had asked his parents (2/119, p. 317) to get for him. [13.] Cf. 2/102, p. 266, and DBWE 6:116: “We can no longer go back to the time before Lessing and Lichtenberg.” [14.] “City person”; see Spengler, “World-history is city-history,” in Decline of the West, 247.

[15.] See Spengler’s critique of this scheme in The Decline of the West, 12: “‘Ancient,’ ‘Medieval’ and “Modern’—an incredibly jejune and meaningless scheme, which has, how-

ever, entirely dominated our historical thinking—we have failed to perceive the true

Z/iZl oa at least with his thesis of self-contained cultural domains—even ifhisunder- 354 standing of historical processes is too biological?!” { The concept of history as a continuum comes basically from Hegel, who saw the whole course of history as culminating in “modernity,” that is, in his own philosophical system.!'”! So it is idealistic (despite Ranke’s statement that every moment in history is “immediate to God”;!!®! this could have resulted in a correction of the basic concept of a developmental continuum, but it did not). Spengler’s “morphology” is biological, and that is its limita-

tion (what does “aging” or “decline” of a civilization mean?).!'9! For our conception of cultural formation [Bildungsbegriff],”°! it means that we can neither idealistically consider classical antiquity as such as the foundation, nor simply eliminate it, “biologically-morphologically,” from our cultural circle [Bildungskreis]. Until we have more insight here, it would be good to base our relationship to the past, and to classical antiquity in particular, not on a general concept of history, but solely on content and specific topics. Perhaps you will come back from Italy with something important along this line? Personally, ’'m afraid my relationship with the Renaissance and classicism has always been cool; they both seem somehow alien to me; I can't really make them my own. Write me sometime what your impressions

and thoughts are about this. Isn’t a knowledge of other countries and a deeper encounter with them a much more important element of education 355 for us today than knowing the classics? Of course, there can be philistinism either way. But perhaps it’s one of our tasks to make encounters with other peoples and countries a real cultural experience that goes beyond politics or business, beyond snobbery. This would be a fruitful use of cultural and position in the gencral history of higher mankind, of the little part-world which has developed on West-European soil from the time of the German-Roman Empire to judge of its relative importance and above all to estimate its direction.” [16.] For Spengler’s basis for his “idea of a morphology of world history,” see Decline of the West, 1-50.

[17.] Cf. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, pt. B: “The Realisation of the

Spirit in History,” 44-124, and pt. C: “The Course of World History,” 124-52. [18.] Ranke, Theory and Practice of History, 53: “Every epoch is immediate to God, and its value rests not at all on that which issues from it, but in its existence itself, in its own self.” Bonhoeffer had already used the Ranke quotation—in the form “every moment is in direct relationship to God”—in 1928 in Barcelona (“Sermon on Romans 12:11c”); see DBWE 10, 3/12, p. 527. [19.] “Every Culture passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age” (Spengler, Decline of the West, 74). “Let the words ‘youth, ‘growth, ‘maturity, ‘decay’... be taken at last as objective descriptions of organic states” (ibid., 21).

[20.] [Bonhoeffer has in mind the transmission of culture through the process of education and moral formation as discussed at length in his Ethics. See DBWE 6:105-33. —JDG]

22 Letters and Papers from Prison educational currents that to date have been neglected, and it would also bring us back in touch with an old European tradition. Just now the radio is again announcing the approach of large contingents of aircraft. We could watch some of the last two daytime raids on Berlin!?"! quite well from here. We saw large formations flying with their vapor trails across a cloudless sky, sometimes through plenty of flak. The air-raid alert yesterday (March 9) lasted two and a half hours,'**! longer than they do at night. Today the sky is overcast. [am very glad that Renate is out in Sakrow, for your sake as well. Now the sirens are starting again, so I'll have to stop and write some more later. Again it was two hours of “bombing in all parts of the city,” according to the radio. In the months that I’ve been here, I’ve been trying to observe to what extent people still believe in anything “supernatural.” In general, I’m

still finding three ideas that are widespread, partly expressed in superstitious customs: |. “Keep your fingers crossed for me” is heard innumerable times a day; the sympathetic thoughts of someone are supposed to have some sort of power, and at crucial moments you want not to be alone but to feel that others unseen are watching over you. 2. “Touch wood” is invoked every evening when the question is “whether they're coming tonight or not’; it reminds us of God’s wrath at human hubris, so it’s a metaphysical reason, and not just a moral one, for humility. 3. “No one can avoid his fate,” with

356 the conclusion that you might as well stay where you are. A Christian interpretation of these three points might be that they are reminders of intercession and church-community [Gemeinde], of God’s wrath and mercy, and of divine guidance. On this last point one also hears very often here, “What's the use of that?!” What I don’t see at all is any relic of an eschatological sort. Or have you noticed any? Write me sometime about whatever you have observed in this connection.

This will be the second time I have spent Passiontide here. I inwardly resist expressions, in letters from my mother-in-law and her mother, for instance,|**! that speak of my “suffering.”!**! That seems like profanation. These things must not be dramatized. I doubt very much whether I’m “suffering” any more than you or most other people these days. Of course, a [21.] On March 6, 1944, from 12:47 p.m. to 2:08 p.m. A comment written in Bonhoeffer’s 1944 Daily Texts reads: “Ist daytime attack”; the second was on March 8, 1:23 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. All times for the attacks are from Girbig, /m Anflug auf die Reichshauptstadt. See 2/73, ed. note 71. [22.] From 12:46 p.m. to 2.35 p.m. Bonhoeffer apparently continued writing the letter on March 10. [23.] Ruth von Wedemeyer and Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. [24.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 163-64.

2/121 320

ai “ ae ae | ’

great deal here is horrible, but where is it otherwise? Perhaps we've made too much of this question of suffering and been too solemn about it. I sometimes used to wonder how Catholics pass by such circumstances without even saying anything. But doesn’t that show greater strength? Perhaps, with their history, they know better what suffering and martyrdom really are, so they remain silent about minor harassments and hindrances. I think that, for instance, “suffering” definitely includes bodily suffering, real pain, and so on. We do like to emphasize spiritual suffering, yet this 1s just what Christ is supposed to have taken from us, and I don’t find anything about it in the New Testament or in the acts of the early Christian martyrs.'°! Undoubtedly, it makes a great difference whether “it is the church that suffers” or whether something happens to one or another of its servants. I think there is much that needs to be corrected here; to be frank, lam sometimes almost 357 ashamed of how often we have talked about our own sufferings.'7°! No, suffering must be something guite different, must have a quite different dimension from what I have so far experienced. That’s enough for today! When shall we see each other again? Stay well, enjoy that beautiful country, spread hilaritas'*’! round about you and keep some for yourself!

Thinking of you faithfully every day, yours with all my heart, Dietrich Do!*5! you see any possibility of my getting to where you are? And are you still being very sensible at all times?! T hope so! We now have people here

of every age from “little” Klaus’s to Papa’s age.) Are you really getting enough to eat? Can we send you anything? Maria would be happy to do it.

[25.| DBWE 4:89: “The acts of the church’s first martyrs give witness that Christ transfigures the moment of greatest suffering for his followers through the indescribable certainty of his nearness and communion.” See also Bonhoeffer’s contribution to the Festschrift for Adolf von Harnack, “‘Joy’ in Early Christianity,” DBWE 9, 2/11, pp. 370-85, esp. 383. Cf. Holl, “Die Vorstellung vom Martyrer und die Martyrerakte in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung,” in Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Kirchengeschichte, 2:68-102.

[26.] During the Church Struggle, during the period of the preachers’ seminary in Finkenwalde, 1935-37. See, e.g., DBWE 4:55 and ed. note 41. In Bonhoeffer’s index of subjects for the German edition of Discipleship, he listed “the cross of the churchcommunity.”

[27.] See ed. note 5. [28.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [29.] This meant not saying or doing anything politically dangerous, as well as being careful in light of the illegal correspondence.

[30.] Ages ranging from that of Klaus von Dohnanyi (b. 1928) to that of Karl Bonhoeffer (b. 1868).

S24 Letters and Papers from Prison I’ve again been waiting three weeks for a visit from W.,;!3!! he said he was coming and then didn’t show up, without any message. Not very considerate. But one gets used to this after a while, though I don’t really understand it. In contrast, my parents’ untiring devotion really does me good. And if you were here, so much would be different. I recently said so very clearly. But don't worry about it! You've really done everything possible and more. I’m not sure I can say that of everyone else. There are situations in which the simplest deed is much more than the most extensive proposals and plans and discussions. Based on my present experience, I can say that to myself too. That journey you once made to see Gerhard!**! and your visit (and several attempted visits) here, and my parents’ traveling here every week, and

358 the journeys Maria has made are examples of what I mean. I really don’t want to be unfair to anyone. They're all doing what they find themselves able to do at the moment. But Matt. 25:36 is still the most important.'**! Farewell! The letter is just going now!

122. To Eberhard Bethge'!!!

Laetare Dear Eberhard, With the news of heavy fighting near where you are,'*! you’re hardly ever out of my thoughts; every word I read in the Bible and every verse of a hymn, I relate to you. You must be especially homesick for Renate and little Dietrich

at such a dangerous time, and every letter will only increase that longing.

But isn’t it an essential part of human maturity, as opposed to immaturity, that your center of gravity is always wherever you happen to be at the moment, and that even longing for the fulfillment of your wishes can't pull you off balance, away from being your complete self, wherever you are? In youth we are never entirely present, no matter where; that’s part of the essential nature of youth; otherwise they would be dullards. A man is always a whole person!! and wholly present, holding back nothing. He may have [31.] Attorney Wergin. [32.] The trip to Gerhard Jacobi in connection with his arrest, in late May 1937; see DB-ER, 579.

[33.] “Iwas naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

[1.] NZ, A 80,149; handwritten; dated March 19, 1944 [Laetare is the fourth Sunday in Lent—J]DG]; note by Bethge: “replied.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 233-35. [2.] Die Wehrmachtberichte, 3:60, for March 18 and 19, 1944.

[3.] Areference to Stifter’s Witiko; see 2/106, ed. note 16.

2iI2T and 2/122 520 his longings but somehow masters them and keeps them out of sight, and the more he must overcome in order to live fully in the present, the more he will keep his own counsel and have, fundamentally, the trust of the people around him, especially younger ones who are still on the road that he has 359 already traveled. Wishes, when we cling to them too tightly, can easily rob us of what we ought to be and can be. On the other hand, when we keep our desires under control, again and again, for the sake of what we have to do in the here and now, we are the richer for it. Not to have any desires is poverty. Here I’m surrounded almost entirely by people clinging to their desires, so that they're not there for anyone else; they don’t listen anymore and aren't able to love their neighbor. I think that even here we have to live as if there were no wishes and no future, and just be our true selves. It’s remarkable then to see how much other people rely on us, look up to us, and even seek our advice. I’m writing all this to you because I think you too have something very important to do these days, and later you will be glad to recall that you rose to it as best you could. When we know someone is in danger, then we want to know that person is being everything he or she can be. We can have abundant life even though many wishes are not fulfilled; that must be what I’m really trying to say. Forgive me for coming at you with so many such “reflections,” but I’m living a life of reflection here for the most part, and you'll understand that rightly. For the rest, I must add to what I said above that I believe more than ever that we are on the way to the fulfillment of our wishes, and we must not give in to resignation. I’ve just been told that Ursel is coming to visit. | hope she brings Renate with her. You know that Maria is in Bavaria for a few weeks. She’s helping to tutor the children of her cousin von TruchseB.!"! It will soon be more than

enough for her. Her mother was here again recently;'! really touching, the whole trip takes her from four in the morning till eleven at night! She is one of those people who are always wanting to do “good”; that for me is the difference between her and Maria’s grandmother.” I noticed this first, back then, with Herbert Jehle; a bit more selfishness would make one truly selfless!!!

[4.| Dietrich von TruchseB. [5.] Unpublished letter of April 4, 1944, from Ruth von Wedemeyer to Bonhoeffer: “IT hope Maria has told you in the meantime how happy and relieved I felt after our last meeting.” [6.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. |7.| Cf. Bonhoeffer, Zettelnotizen, 116: “There’s a measure of ‘psychic’ selflessness that is worse than naked egoism. It is precisely the truly (spiritually!) selfless persons who have a lovely freedom to express their own wishes.”

326 Letters and Papers from Prison 360 Once again, I’m going through weeks without reading much in the Bible;!®! I still don’t know what to make of this. It doesn’t make me feel guilty, and I know that after a time I'll be ravenous for it again. Can that be considered a completely “natural” spiritual process? I'd almost say so. Do you remember, it happened during our vita communis'! too;!!®! certainly there’s always the danger of some laziness there, yet one shouldn't be anxious about it but trust that after a few swings the compass will point in the right direction again. Don’t you think so too? Did you find the Daily Text Gen. 41:52!!! recently as helpful as I did? It wasn’t a familiar one to me. {it’s been a year now since our last days together and the things we did, and I was a witness at your marriage!!'!?! [I’m] still amazed that I was able to be with you until that day and only left you at a time when you no longer needed me acutely. That thought truly fills me with gratitude and satisfaction, and I’m eager to know how our path will continue in the future, whether we can share it as before, professionally in any case—as I should really like—or whether we must be content with what we have had in the past. Those were really wonderful years. If only I could hear soon, at some length, about your impressions these days. That would be really important to me. God keep you, Eberhard. Yours as ever, Dietrich

361 When do you get your next leave? [won't get away from here until the middle of May.

[8.] Cf. DBWE 16, 1/185, p. 329.

[9.] “Life together”—in the House of Brethren at the Finkenwalde preachers’ seminary (see Bonhoeffer’s plan, DBW 14:78), from the autumn of 1935 until it was closed by the police in the autumn of 1937, [10.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [11.] Daily Text for March 17, 1944 (Gen. 41:52): “God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes.” In the 1944 Daily Texts, a verse from a hymn (Gesangbuch der Evangelischen Bridergemeine, no, 040, v. 3) is printed below the Bible text: “At last do know that God is loving you, although it seemed that he first made you sad. So keep, when God is testing you, quite still, and think all humbly, that it is God’s will.” Bonhoeffer put a question mark in the margin next to this. [12.] At the civil wedding at the town hall in the registry office [always necessary in Germany in addition to the religious ceremony—]JDG], which was held very early—on March 23—to prevent Renate (Schleicher) Bethge’s being drafted into civilian wartime duty.

2/122 and 2/123 327 123. To Karl Bonhoeffer!!! April!*! 23, 1944

Dear Papa,

Our wonderful memories of your seventy-fifth birthday a year ago!®! will have to last for this year as well. ‘Today it seems almost unbelievable that, just last year, we could still have such a joyful gathering of family and friends.

We mustn't let this temporarily gloomier present time rob us of the splendid past days, which still are ours inwardly. The great cantata Lobe den Herren that we sang in the morning and the evening of your birthday, and the sight of all those children joining in the music making, will still be very present to us all this year, truly a great joy. And for both adults and children alike, the harsh memories of the past year will only confirm in us what we meant back then. Christoph'*! sang some Hugo Wolf spring songs for you that morning—probably by now his voice has changed. Renate made you gereat-grandparents a few weeks ago. My fate has perhaps brought you closer

to your future daughter-in-law! than might otherwise have been the case. In the course of the year the war has scattered our family. But in all these outward events, we have experienced more intensely than ever how firm are

the ties that bind all the members of our big family together. And this is because you and Mama are decidedly the center of the family, the same as ever; there’s no doubt of that. For that especially I want to thank you today. 362 I also believe you'd want me to let go of my self-reproaches over having been the cause of so much worry in this past year of your life. Certainly your con-

cerns for me have deprived you considerably of peace and quiet in which to do your work. But I know from your letters and visits that you accept and interpret the adversities of the past year in the same way I do, and that helps me, again and again, to take these things calmly. And the confidence that better days will come again, and that the day when we are reunited in freedom will be so marvelous, keeps me going from day to day. I’m glad you made the trip out to the country!”! for at least a few days and hope so much that it’s refreshing for you; and I’m very eager to hear what you have to tell. What did you take along to read? If this letter is forwarded

[1.] NZ, A 80,150; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 235-36. [2.] Error; actually March 23. [3.] March 31, 1943; see 1/1, ed. note 3. [4.] [Praise the Lord.—JDG] See 1/1, ed. note 2. [5.] Christoph von Dohnanyi, accompanied by Bonhoeffer on the piano. [6.] Maria von Wedemeyer. [7.] Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer visited Patzig from March 24 to April 4, 1944.

328 Letters and Papers from Prison to you in Patzig, please give my warmest greetings to everyone there. Whata pity that Maria isn’t there now. She wrote to me that she is staying in Bavaria over Easter.!*! It’s surely better for her not to be pulled back and forth too much, so that she gets some peace and quiet. Still, that’s hardly possible as long as my business hasn't been cleared up and decided. Will Hans Walter be allowed to visit me before he goes to the front? You said he had asked about it, and I’d be very glad to see him. I'd also like very

much to see a brother or sister, but I’m especially looking forward to my next visit with you and Mama. My wish for you, dear Papa, is a better and quieter new year—one that brings us all back together again.

With deep gratitude and love to you both, Dietrich

363 124. To Eberhard Bethge!!! March 24, 1944

Dear Eberhard, What a joy for me to hear from you at such length! It’s really quite wonderful that we are still keeping up our dialogue, and for me it is always the most rewarding one that I have. It must be one of the laws of the way our minds work that when one’s own thoughts have been understood by another, they

are also transformed and stimulated through the medium of that other person. This is what makes a letter such an “event,” as you wrote.!*! {1 am surprised by how well you are able to concentrate on getting hold

of, thinking through, and formulating thoughts so far removed from the work you have to do at present. I could well understand if there were only three issues for you at present: war, marriage, and church. That the scope of your observations and interests reaches so much farther, in such fine intellectual freedom, delights me and proves that you are your usual self. I know that for many of our brothers, standing watch at night has become very meaningful. Is it so for you too? Hopefully, it isn’t taking too much out of you physically. Have you not had any more circulatory problems? They usually appeared as a result of your being tired. [8.] Letter of March 12, 1944 (Love Letters from Cell 92, 172): “I shall be remaining here

over Easter. ... Anyway, where would I go if can’t come to your ... I shall feel homesick, of course, but homesick primarily for you, and no trip home can cure that.” [1.] NZ, A 80,151; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 236-41. [2.] 2/118, p. 313.

2/123 and 2/124 329 { The baptism of your child must often be on your mind, and I am writing about it mainly because I could imagine you might be bothered by a certain “inconsistency.” We sometimes used to tell people that babies should be baptized as soon as possible for the sake of the sacrament itself, even if their fathers couldn't be there. The reasons for that are clear. And yet I can’t do otherwise than agree with you in your decision to wait. Why? I still think it good and desirable and right, especially for a pastor as an example to the congregation, to have one’s own child baptized soon, as long as one is truly doing it out of faith in the effectiveness of the sacrament. Nevertheless, a 364 father’s wish to participate in this act, to join in the prayers for his child, has its own relative right; and when I’m honest with myself, I must confess I’m guided by the thought that God also loves a child who is still awaiting baptism. ‘The New Testament has no rule about infant baptism. It is a gift of grace, bestowed on the church to be received and used in deep faith, and therefore it can also be a striking witness to faith for the congregation. But to force oneself against one’s will, without being persuaded by faith to do it, is not biblical. It’s not justified to baptize children just as a demonstration.!! {Our prayers for a baby, and our asking God to grant us the day soon when we can bring the child to be baptized together, will not go unheard. As long as we have a justifiable hope that this day is not too far off, 1 cannot believe that the actual day matters to God. So we can confidently wait awhile, trusting in God’s kind providence, in order to do then, with stronger faith, what we would [eel to be a burdensome rule if it had to be now. Of course, you must also think of Renate, who would find it hard to understand having a baptism without you there, but would probably find it deeply meaningful if it were held later. So I shouldn’t have any scruples, if I were you, about waiting, and sce about it later. I think it is more important to focus on baptism itself and how it can be the strongest possible expression of our faith than to carry it out legalistically. You're probably not telling us much about your direct impressions of the war in order not to worry us. But I think even so I can imagine more or less what you are experiencing, and I think of you every day, praying that you may be kept safe. What you are doing must actually be relatively interesting; it’s really all the same, in such an affair, whatever wheel of the

huge machine one is helping to turn. That you are repulsed by people’s 365 interest in the business at hand, which so easily becomes part of it, I can [3.] Cf. also Bonhoeffer’s “Theological Position Paper on the Question of Baptism” (1942), DBWE 16, 2/14, p. 567: “A misuse of infant baptism . . . will therefore necessarily lead the church-community to an appropriate limitation of its practice and to a new appreciation of adult baptism.”

330 Letters and Papers from Prison imagine and understand. In the end, however, the one who is really intact as a person has the greater authority. ’m experiencing here too how hard it is for some people to keep things in their proper place; often it strikes me as almost tragic. { You are getting to know a part of the world that I love so much, a great deal better than I do. How Id like to be sitting in the car with you and seeing the Cecilia Metella'*! or Hadrian’s villa.!°! ’'ve never been able to make much of the Pieta;'°! you must tell me sometime why you are so impressed with it.

March 25

Last night was pretty lively again. The view of the city from the roof was appalling. Stull haven’t had any news from the family—my parents left yesterday for Patzig, thank God—but to the west there wasn’t much going on. To me it’s crazy when they announce the arrival of bombers and we are immediately tempted—as in “Holy St. Florian, spare my house, burn someone else’s”"—instinctively to wish the horror on other cities, anyone’s neck but ours: “perhaps they won't come further than Magdeburg or Stettin,” and so on—how often someone bursts out with that fervent wish! At such moments one is very aware of our natura corrupta and peccatum orginale;\”! to that extent it is perhaps a healthy development. Incidentally, air war has been extraordinarily stepped up again in the last few days, and I’m wondering if it’s once again to make up for not going ahead with an invasion.

I won't be able to make any further plans for the future until May; by now I’m beginning to doubt any such prognoses of dates and am becoming indifferent to them. Who knows whether I'll then be told “in July”? My per-

sonal future is beginning to seem a minor matter compared to the future we all share, though they are both so closely related. So ’m hoping we shall 366 be able to discuss our plans for the future together again, and you will again be my “water purification plant”;!®! actually ’m quite certain of that.

I’ve written to Maria about the state of Renate’s nutrition and had a very nice letter from Renate herself.!%! Hans W."'°! wasn’t allowed to visit me, unfortunately, so that may happen with Renate as well. But Ursel has

[4.] A funeral monument on the Appian Way. [5.] Near Tivoli. [6.] Michelangelo’s Preta in St. Peter’s in Rome. See 2/113, p. 298. [7.] [“Corrupt nature” and “original sin."—JDG] [8.] See 2/88, p. 235, and 2/118, p. 313. [9.] Letter of March 17, 1944, NL, A 80,148. [10.] Hans-Walter Schleicher [Renate’s brother—J] DG].

2/124 331 applied for a visit; that too would be nice. The natural unselfishness of a good mother is something magnificent; there you are in luck, with your mother-in-law. You were so nice to stick up for Klaus,!'" J liked that... . In any case, ’m amazed at all these fantasies concocted by supposedly dry lawyers! We'll just have to look somewhere else for sober judgments and actions!

The address I gave you recently is out of date. Please send letters to our home!!! again. I’m still doing well here. I’m gradually becoming a part of the inventory here and sometimes don't even get left alone as much as I'd like.

You may be right that landscape painting is hardly known in southern countries;''! is the south of France an exception? and Gauguin? or perhaps those weren't southerners either? I don’t know, what about Claude Lorrain? It’s in Germany and England that landscape painting lives. Southerners have the beauty of nature, while we long for it and have a nostalgic love for it, like something rare. By the way, unconnected with that, do you think the line from Morike, “What is beautiful appears blissful in itself,”'!*! more or less fits in with J. Burckhardt? We go along too easily with Nietzsche's primitive alternatives, as if the “Apollonian” concept of beauty, and the “Dionysian,”!!°! the one we call demonic nowadays, are the only ones. But 367 that isn’t the case at all. Take, for example, Brueghel or Velazquez, or even Hans Thoma,!!®! Leopold Kalckreuth, or the French Impressionists. They have a beauty that is neither classic nor demonic, but simply carthly in its own right; and I must say that this is the only sort of beauty that speaks to me personally. The virgins of Magdebureg!"’! that I mentioned recently and the Naumburg statues also belong here. Are we perhaps wrong to interpret

Gothic art as “Faustian” at all?!'S! Otherwise why would there be such a

[11.] See 2/116, pp. 309-10. [12.] To Renate Bethge or Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer; cf. 3/140, ed. note 18. [13.] See 2/118, pp. 313-14, and Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 192-98. [14.] Eduard Morike, “Auf eine Lampe,” 93. This line is also quoted by W. F. Otto, Homeric Gods, 101 (see 3/166, p. 440 et passim). [15.] On the contrast between “Apolline” (of Apollo, god of light, poetry and music, 1.e., measured, harmonious, controlled by form) and “Dionysiac” (of Dionysus, god of wine, 1.e., ecstatic, out of bounds), see Nietzsche’s thesis “that art derives its continuous development from the duality of the Apolline and Dionysiac; just as the reproduction of species depends on the duality of the sexes” (Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, 14). [See also 4/184.—]DG| [16.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [17.] 2/108, p. 286. [18.] See Spengler, Decline of the West, 199-200.

ra Foy Letters and Papers from Prison contradiction between its sculpture and architecture? I'd like to talk with you in depth about all these things. You see more, and more sharply and clearly, than I do. Can you talk about things like this with your lawyer friend?'!9! How will it be someday when you introduce your son to these things? That’s all for today! Otherwise you'll never finish this letter. It makes me so happy to remember you practicing the cantata Lobe den Herren last year!!?9! Tt did us all so much good!

Always your faithful friend

Dietrich

March 27

Should I perhaps already be sending you, today, my special good wishes for Easter? I don’t know how long letters take to reach you, and I want you to know that during the weeks before and alter Easter I feel a special bond with you through many good memories. These days I keep looking through Das Neue Lied'**) and being aware that it’s mainly to you that | owe my enjoy-

368 ment of Easter hymns. It’s been a year since I heard a chorale sung. But it’s strange how music, when one listens with the inner ear alone and gives oneself up to it utterly, can be almost more beautiful than when heard physically. It’s purer, all the dross falls away, and it seems to take on a “new body.”

I only know a few pieces of music well enough to hear them from within, but I can do so especially well with Easter hymns. I’m getting an existential appreciation of Beethoven’s music from when he was deaf, especially the

a SE

ereat set of variations from opus 111,!*5! which you and I once heard Gieseking play:!*4J

By the way, I’ve sometimes listened lately to the Sunday concert from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m., even on the atrocious radio here. How you get along without music I can’t imagine, or do you have your flute with you? Couldn’t you try to buy a viola da gamba or an oboe, or a good guitar? I’d like to give it {19.] Attorney Rainalter. [20.] For Karl Bonhoeffer’s seventy-fifth birthday; see 1/1, ed. note 2. [21.] End of writing in the margin. [22.] [Lin neues Lied, a songbook for Protestant youth—]DG.] See 2/73, ed. note 68. [23.] Sonata in C minor, second movement in C major (Adagio molto semplice e cantabile); cf. Pangritz, Polyphonie des Lebens, 56-58, 67-70. [24.] [The German pianist Walter Gieseking.—]DG]

2/124 and 2/125 333 to you as a present, if German money is any use to you. And if you could get something like that for me as well, it would be even better!

Easter? Our thoughts are more about dying than about death. We’re more concerned about how we shall face dying than about conquering death. Socrates mastered the art of dying,!?°! Christ overcame death as Eaxatos €xOpds (1 Cor. 15:26).!*°! Being able to face dying doesn’t yet mean

we can face death. It’s possible for a human being to manage dying, but overcoming death means resurrection. It is not through the ars moriendi!*"! but through Christ’s resurrection that a new and cleansing wind can blow through our present world. This is the answer to the 60$ [Lol Tov OTH Kat KWjow Thy yiv.'?5! Ifa few people really believed this and were guided by it 369 in their earthly actions, a great deal would change. To live in the light of the resurrection—that is what Easter means. Do you too find that most people don’t know what they really live by? The perturbatio animorum'*! spreads far and wide. Unconsciously people are waiting for the word that will unbind them and set them free. But the time probably hasn’t yet come when it can be heard. Yet it will come, and perhaps this Easter is one of our last great opportunities to get ready for our future task. I wish you the joy of Easter, despite everything you are having to do without this year. Good-bye, I must close; the letter has to go. Yours with all my heart, Dietrich

125. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer!!! March 26, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

When you get this letter, perhaps it will be exactly a year that you’ve been in prison. Unthinkable for those of us who haven’t experienced this! Your letters [25.] Plato’s dialogue Phaidon deals with Socrates’ dying, esp. 116e—118a.

[26.] “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” [27.] “The art of dying” [cf. Bonhoeffer’s sermon on November 26, 1933, DBWE 13, 3/3, p. 335.—JDGI. [28.] “Give me [the point, the place outside the earth] where I can stand and I will move the earth [from its hinges]” (Archimedes, cited in Pappus, Collectio 8.11). Bonhoeffer used this quote often; cf. 4/187, p. 502; DBWE 7:69; DBW 14:401 (“Archimedes’ point”); and DBWE 10, 1/88, p. 189, ed. note 2, and 2/1, p. 326. {29.] “Confusion of minds.” [1.] NZ, A 80,152; handwritten; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Previously published in LPP, 241-42.

334 Letters and Papers from Prison are still circulating around the entire family, and we’re very happy to have them. But | would very much like to see you and talk with you again, and have requested another permit to visit. With so many of us in the family, each one doesn’t get many chances, and parents and fiancée have priority. I’m sitting here in our parents’ living room, while they are in Patzig getting 370. to know the home of your future mother-in-law. I’m really glad that they finally

made up their minds to go. Mama particularly was quite reluctant inwardly, although she so urgently needs to get away. It’s just too much for her; she must have some time to relax. During air raids she doesn’t show the least reaction, however, and if someone advises her in any way to be careful, she almost resents it. But of course that means a further strain on her, on top of everything else. It’s too bad they’re not expecting to stay much longer than a week and are hurrying back partly because they've got permission to visit you. So you'll probably see them during the week before Easter, even before you get this letter from me. Meanwhile, I’m halfway to becoming a Berliner again. Perhaps not all of half-

way, but | do expect to have things to do here more often in the near future, in connection with my new work at Osram.!?] Of course, it’s possible that I'll “evacuate” away from here again; that’s a term that has become very relevant for us since you've been in prison. You'll be amazed, when you get out, to see how the world has changed in that one year. It’s becoming very difficult to do any scientific work. Libraries have “evacuated” their books, making access to them a major problem; institutes have been damaged, and people are distracted by all

sorts of worries at home. It takes more energy than one can summon to force oneself to concentrate. I’ve left things that were 80 percent finished lying around for months and can’t get them done. Yet in our field it’s crucial, for technology as well, that the main purely scientific things are kept moving forward. In the long run we cannot go on living off our capital. | should be happy if | could find a

quiet, suitable place to which to move, somewhere that would let me carry on my scientific and technical research, and perhaps take Grete and the children there as well. | would then concentrate my lectures in Leipzig on a few days and become a visiting lecturer there, so to speak. But I’m afraid that no such place can be found anymore. 37 | I’m going back to Leipzig in a few days and won't be back here again until after Easter. | hope I'll get permission to visit by then. May | nevertheless wish you a “happy” Easter? All the best! Yours as ever, Karl-Friedrich

[2.] On the consultancy with the Osram firm, see 2/47, ed. note 4.

2/125 and 2/126 335 126. From Karl Bonhoeffer!!! Patzig, March 27, 1943!°!

Dear Dietrich,

When we came back from Tegel last Thursday, we found the permit to visit waiting. That was very distressing, since we now have to put off our visit to you

until we return from Patzig.2] We couldn’t very well postpone the trip here again. However, Maria is hoping she will be able to visit you very soon, probably

on the thirtieth.[4] We arrived here on Friday without any particular trouble. Karl Friedrich had taken us to the railway station. We are getting very spoiled here, and | do hope that Mama will benefit from some rest during the days here where there is nothing for her to worry about. The weather is cool and windy, usually with light snow. That has the advantage that we are not outdoors much and really have to sit still and rest. The surroundings here are very pleasant. We are enjoying being here with the Wedemeyers, both mother and children, in every way, and especially the thought that you will have no trouble feeling at home here one day. Even the many refugees from the bombing who are here?! are nice, considerate people. The selfless, caring nature of the mistress of the house influences everyone. On Saturday evening we had all sorts of musical 372 offerings by the young people—cello, piano, flute, and recitations. It reminded us very much of our Saturday musical evenings when all of you were still at home. Yesterday Mrs. von Wedemeyer read aloud to us her husband’s memoirs of his father.'*] They interested me not only as the account of an exceptionally strong-willed man, who, despite being confined to a wheelchair for years, had the reins of his business firmly in hand, but also because, despite very different interests, the basic attitude to life and upbringing was hardly different from that of our Swabian families.

{]We shall probably go back on Tuesday, April 4, and hope to be able to visit you on Wednesday or Thursday. Mama wanted to write to you as well, but we

decided that she would do so a few days from now, so you wouldn't get two

[1.] NZ, A 80,155; handwritten; Berlin letterhead. Previously published in LPP, 243-44. [2.] In error; the date is 1944.

[3.] Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer’s visit to Maria’s mother, Ruth von Wedemeyer, in Patzig, from March 24 to April 4, 1944.

[4.] A reference to the visiting permit for March 30, 1944. The name “Maria” is entered in the 1944 Daily Texts for this date; see Love Letters from Cell 92, 177-78 (letter of March 31, 1944). [5.] Letter of August 6, 1944, from Ruth von Wedemeyer to Bonhoeffer: “I have my house jam-packed with refugees from Berlin.” See also 2/54, ed. note 9.

[6.] Hans von Wedemeyer, “Memories of Father” [Maximilian von Wedemeyer, Schonrade], written in 1935.

336 Letters and Papers from Prison letters from the same set of circumstances saying essentially the same things. | believe our stay here will do Mama good. We are somewhat worried about the most recent attack on Berlin, about which we haven't yet heard any details. We can’t get through by telephone. Mama sends much love; she is just writing to Maria. We'll see you soon. Your Father

127. From Eberhard Bethge!!! [Dear Dietrich, . . .]

When you are drafted into the army, first there is a time as a recruit, and then after that they start making demands. Sometimes I’m fearful about being here, but then | always manage to think of reasons to console myself. The chief here!?]

373 and the second in command are both personally very nice to me, but so modern! and military in their attitudes that up to now | haven't been able to talk with them about my problems as | would like to do sometimes, and I’m afraid it will stay that way. There is one fellow here who said to me recently, when he was boozed up, that in peacetime after the victory the party would deal properly with types like Rain[alter] and me (academics). Of course, most of the others found this completely misplaced. Whenever | can come, we'll have a lot to think about. What will have happened by then? The Wehrmacht reports these days are calling for intrepid and steadfast hearts,!‘] that is, only from those who are interested enough to read them at all. I’m very curious about all that you are now reading about music and in Dilthey. | haven't been able to get to any reading for weeks, except the Bible in the evenings (Psalms and Corinthians). In the last few weeks I’ve even had to stop working on Italian, for lack of time, and I’m already starting to forget it. But when I’ve finished sorting out the filing pile here, things will get better. | would indeed like to see Sepp.!?! | only spoke with his wife very briefly. He will surely have kept his hilaritas.{©] Interesting that you’ve been so preoccupied

[1.] NL, A 80,153; handwritten; from Rignano, late March 1944; first page of this letter missing (see request at the end “Destroy the first part right away”). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 242-43. [2.] Major Tilp. [3.] In the sense of being National Socialists. [4.] [Official army bulletins] during the Soviet spring offensive of March and April 1944; see Die Wehrmachtberichte, 3:47-92.

[5.] Josef Muller, after his expected release since he had been acquitted on March 3, 1944: see 2/121, ed. note 4. [6.] Cf. 2/121, p. 319.

2/126-2/128 337 with the Middle Ages, the thirteenth century.!”! I’ve been feeling something like resentment against the talk of “empire” [Reich] these days, when it’s in fashion.[®! But your observation about “worldliness” without an anti- is quite intriguing.!7]

At the moment I’m sitting out here in the country and seeing nothing of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, only the Campagna. Farmlands, here and there an ancient paving stone and marble remains of old buildings along the road,!!®! with a frieze. To your observations of what people believe in,!!'] here one could 374 add fortune-tellers. Some people, in fact, keep going to them from time to time and at the same time assure you they don’t believe in all that. Now | need to write to Renate as well. The business about dramatizing one’s “sufferings,” ['4] describing them and making them into a role that one plays, | think | understand very well. Among other things, it’s a way of defending oneself inwardly against pain, or even a form of distancing oneself from it. In the process one may indeed easily admire certain things in other people and friends. Maria is offering to send me a package if | can provide her with a ration ticket for it. |am so well off, and Renate is so much less so, that I’d much rather it went to her. It’sl!3] very kind of her. Farewell. Destroy the first part right away. All my very, very best to you. Soon it will be Palm Sunday and Easter. Yours, Eberhard

128. To Eberhard Bethge!!! April 2, 1944

Dear Eberhard,

So Easter too will come and go without our being home and seeing each other. But I’m not putting off our hopes any further than Pentecost. What do you say to that? By now it will be spring where you are, in all its glory, ['7.] Ibid.

[8.] During the Third Reich, there was widespread discussion about the concept of “empire” (Reich); cf. the name of the National Socialist weekly Das Reich that Bonhoeffer was reading in prison; see 2/73, p. 187. Regarding “Reich” in the sense of “Western unity” (before the Reformation), see DBWE 6:110-11. [9.] See 2/121, pp. 319-20. 110.) Via Flaminia.

[id] See 27121 p.322. [12.] 2/121, p. 323. [13.] Beginning of writing in the margin [“her” in this sentence = Maria von Wedemeyer—JDG].

[1.] NL, A 80,154; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 244-46.

338 Letters and Papers from Prison and you will be longing for the day in peacetime when you can show Renate

everything you are seeing now. In normal times I expect you would have confirmed Klaus and Christoph today.'*! Here we are having a clear but still rather cool Palm Sunday morning. How we could celebrate such a feast day with the family! But how good it is that for all these years—TI think since

375 Papa’s seventieth birthday—you have been part of, and brightened, all our family festivals. I always think it such a pity that Maria has really only gotten

to know our family under the pressure of this past year; she was there for Hans-Walter’s farewell party,'*! but that’s all. She was here a few days ago!!! and gave me a vivid description of how they celebrated Papa’s birthday”! a

bit early, on March 29, in Patzig. Maria made the journey to be there two days and see my parents. In the morning there was singing outside their door, then a birthday breakfast with just my parents, Maria, and her mother, apparently quite an epicurean breakfast with produce from the farm, latera grand feast where Hans Werner'®! gave the birthday toast (that amazed me most of all), coffee with just the four of them again in Maria’s room; then Maria and her mother had to travel on. All this really delighted me, for my parents’ sake as well, since they are very open to such spontaneous acts of friendship. They are both reported to be in a more relaxed and cheerful mood, and I’m very happy about that after these dreadful months. Maria’s mother and grandmother recently hit on the idea that when Maria visits me here, I should always have a little prayer service with her, and that Maria should write down and bring questions for me, “religious problems” and such.'”! Otherwise Maria’s visit wouldn’t be “satisfying” for me. It was a kind thought, but I was very pleased to find that Maria was as radically opposed to it as I was. It wasn’t so casy to explain to my motherin-law (the last time she visited) that my purpose when Maria visits is not to discuss profound questions but to get in touch with a bit of real life. She sees my present situation in such “dramatic” terms—certainly out of genuine sympathy—that she underestimates the significance of what is simply

[2.] Klaus and Christoph von Dohnanyi. [3.] Before his departure for military service on October 4, 1942. [4.] Permit to visit on March 30, 1944. [5.] Karl Bonhoeffer’s seventy-sixth birthday on March 31, 1944. [6.] Maria’s brother Hans Werner von Wedemeyer, born in 1927, [7.] See Bonhoeffer’s letter of March 11, 1943, to Maria von Wedemeyer, in Love Letters from Cell 92, 168: “Mother told me [visit of March 10, 1944] that you're somehow not entirely satisfied with your visits here. She proposed, obviously at Grandmother’s suggestion, that I treat you to a brief biblical exegesis each time, in other words, that we hold a little prayer meeting together. She said you should come prepared with questions for us to discuss.”

2/128 339 natural. I also said that such a planned procedure seemed to me to showa = 376 “lack of trust.” We don’t need to discuss everything thoroughly to know that we are united in certain matters. The main thing was that Maria was of the same mind, entirely of her own volition.!*! The other day I got to see Ursel and Dorothee here, quite by chance. That Hans-Walter was denied permission to visit!?! is one of the things I shall keep in mind! To me that’s a low-minded style of bureaucracy, and one shouldn't just let it pass without protest. I thought Dorothee looked well, but found Ursel still rather thin. I’ve now asked for a picture of the baby!!! and am looking forward to it very much. Once again I openly shared my concern about Renate’s physical well-being with Maria. It hurts that there is so little I can do directly. But I have also asked again that some of the food intended for me be given to Renate regularly; I don’t know whether it is being done, but I hope so. Just think, purely by chance I’ve suddenly taken up graphology again. I’m enjoying it very much and am now working through Ludwig Klages’s

book.) But Iam not going to try it on friends and relatives’ handwriting; there are enough people here who are interested in it.!'?! However, I am convinced of the thing’s reliability. You remember that as a young student I had so much success with it that it became embarrassing, and I put it aside until now, almost twenty years. But now that I think I have the dangers of psychology behind me, I’m very interested again and would like to talk about it with you. [fit gets uncanny for me again, Pll drop it again right away. | could imagine that you might be very successful with it as well,

because it calls for two things, in the second of which you're more gifted than I am: empathy and extremely precise powers of observation. If you like, 1] write you some more about it sometime.

In the fat (800-page) 1941 biography of Klopstock by Karl Kindt (a 377 Christian), | found very striking excerpts from Klopstock’s drama Der Tod Adams, portraying the death of the first human being.!'*! The idea itself is

[8.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 171-72, 175-77.

[9.] Hans-Walter Schleicher had been denied permission to visit during a brief military home leave. [10.| Dietrich Bethge. [11.] Klages, Handschrift und Charakter. On Bonhoeffer’s study of graphology [handwriting analysis], see Tegel notes 12 and 14 (NL, A 86). [12.] Six handwriting samples from fellow prisoners, which Bonhoeffer was to analyze, have been preserved (NZL, A 84,2). [13.] Kindt, Alopstock (given to Bonhoeffer by Pastor Dannenbaum; see DB-ER, 842), 153-63: “The Death of Adam” (1757); 156: “I'm not afraid of death, ’ve had centuries to get ready for death; but I shall feel it!”

340 Letters and Papers from Prison interesting, and it’s powerfully executed. I sometimes used to think of rehabilitating Klopstock, so I’m finding the book quite interesting. Maria’s birthday is April 23. Perhaps you would like to send her a little greeting? She would surely like it very much. The address is c/o Baron von TruchseB, Bundorf near Hofheim in Mainfranken, 13a.!'*! So, this has just been a newsy letter, written simply because I wanted to talk with you this morning (in different times we'd have played some splendid music today!) and not wanting to leave you without news of me. I have a very detailed map of the surroundings of Rome and look at it often when I’m thinking of you, imagining you driving around the roads there with which you are now well acquainted, hearing the sounds of!!! war not very far away, and looking down from the mountains to the sea. God keep you every day and everywhere you go! Yours as ever, with all my heart, Dietrich 129. From Riidiger Schleicher! |! Berlin, Good Friday, April 7, 1944

My dear Dietrich, It’s high time | sent you my good wishes directly for a change; it’s almost Easter, and the first anniversary of the day when you had to leave us is already past. We

378 are thinking of you with all our best wishes during these days. This morning we went to the Annenkirche and heard Walter DreB;!4! it was a good service, and | was very pleased with the seriousness of his sermon. The church was completely full. The organ had been damaged by a disruption of the electrical lines, and the congregation had to sing without it, but it went pretty well. After the service we, that is, Ursel, Dorothee, and I, with Walter and Suse, went with Mother and Ilse DreBl3! to their new replacement apartment in a big mansion in Dahlem. They are quite lucky to have two small rooms and a tiny makeshift kitchen. I’m very happy that the Easter holidays have begun and | have at least two days free again (Good Friday and Easter Sunday); that does me good, because |

[14.] |[Mainfranken is a region in Bavaria. 13a was the postal code at that time.—]DG] [15.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [1.] NZ, A 80,156; handwritten. [2.] Martin NiemOoller’s church in Berlin-Dahlem. Niemoller had been in a concentration camp since 1938, and Dre, husband of Bonhoeffer’s sister Susanne, was now pastor of the Annenkirche. [3.] Margarethe DreB, née Vogt, mother of Walter Dre.

2/128—2/130 341 currently have to put in rather strict service hours!*! and am out of the house from about quarter to 8 until 7:00 p.m. Tomorrow afternoon we're going to hear the St. Matthew Passion!?! at the Marienkirche (Renate will probably come with us, since she'll be visiting us over Easter for the first time with her little boy). I’m looking forward to it very much. | recently heard the first half of it in Potsdam, when Hans-Walter was here on leave, and enjoyed it greatly—in contrast to Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony,!®! which | heard a few days earlier with Carajan!7] conducting and which left me cold. | have no feeling for Bruckner, despite the sympathy that might be expected in view of this man’s life story.

Hans Walter was recently transferred to Brandis, near Leipzig, for training in instrument flying; he didn’t yet know himself what other sorts of training he might receive there. We hope to hear more about it from him soon. The letters that come from Eberhard are always gratifying, although by now things must not be easy anywhere in Italy, according to all that I’ve been hearing from a soldier who just came back from there. But Eberhard’s sunny nature will certainly help him through every difficulty. When shall we all be able to sing and make music together again?

May things go well for you too, Dietrich; keep in good health and spirits. 319 Yours as ever, Rudiger

130. To Ruth von Wedemeyer!!! April 10, 1944

Dear Mother,

On your birthday!*! when you are together with a large circle of family and friends, joyfully and thankfully celebrating this great day, please know and sense that from the quiet of a locked prison cell good thoughts and wishes are constantly flowing to you. Know that there can be no one with a heart more filled with joy and gratitude than he who since last year is permitted [4.] [This refers to the civilian duty that all able-bodied Germans had to perform during this period.—J DG] 15.| By J. S.-Bach; see: 2/72, ed. note. [6.] Anton Bruckner, Ninth Symphony in D minor. [7.) Herbert von Karajan [renowned director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. —JDGI.

[1.] In possession of Ruth-Alice von Bismarck (the original was made available for DBW 8); handwritten. Cf. NZ, A 80,157; typewritten copy. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 246-47. [2.] On April 19; see also Love Letters from Cell 92, 180.

342 Letters and Papers from Prison to call himself your son and knows that in you he has found a good mother. When Maria is with you, you will feel this through her.

{1 looked up the Daily Text readings for April 19.'°! They direct our thoughts to those who are calling to us from the eternal realm, who are with us—Father and Max.'"! In your thoughts you will be with them, but still very much with us and with those who need you here on earth. The time between Easter and Ascension has always been an especially important time for me. We are already looking toward the last things, yet we still have our work to do, our joys and sorrows here on earth, and through Easter we

are given the strength to go on living. I’m not saying anything other than what I have experienced when I thank you today for going ahead of us on this road between Easter and Ascension; this is the blessing!®! that Father 380 and Max have left to you and to us. I too want to travel this road with Maria, of being wholly ready for the last things, for eternity, and yet wholly present

for the tasks, for the beauty and the troubles here on earth. Only by keeping to this path can we become completely happy and at peace with one another. We shall receive with open and outstretched hands what God gives us and be wholeheartedly happy with it. And with quiet hearts we shall let go of that which God doesn’t yet grant us or takes away. I know that Maria and I are of one mind in this, and I know that you, our good mother, will be glad to help both of us when needed and when we ask your help. ‘Thank you for everything you have done for me this past year. God preserve you in the year to come, for us and [or all in your house. Your grateful son Dietrich

My parents were so happy with their visit to you,'®! and you made it such a particularly lovely time for them, that I was just delighted. They feel that they get along especially well with you. Thank you so very much for those days in particular!

[3.] Ps. 31:6 [5]: “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lorn, faithful God.” Phil. 1:23: “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” [4.] See 1/2, ed. note 8. [5.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s August 25, 1942, letter to Ruth von Wedemeyer, DBWE 16, 1/197, p. 351: (“the power of the blessing that emanates from a father who believes in Christ”). [6.] Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer’s visit in Patzig from March 24 to April 4, 1944.

2/130 and 2/131 343 131. Report on Prison Life after One Year in Tegel! April 1944

The admission procedures were carried out correctly. For the first night I was locked in a reception cell; the blankets on the cot stank so abominably that in spite of the cold, it was impossible to cover oneself with them. The next morning a piece of bread was thrown into my cell, so that had to pick 381 it up off the floor. One-fourth of the coffee in the cup was grounds. For the first time from outside my cell came the foul curses inflicted on those detained for interrogation by the prison staff; since then I have heard the abuse daily from morning till night. When I had to line up for inspection with the other new arrivals, we were addressed as “scoundrels,” etc., etc. by a warden. Each of us was asked why he had been arrested, and when I said I did not know, the warden answered with a jeering laugh, “You'll find out soon enough!” It was six months before I received the warrant for my arrest. As we were being taken through the various offices, occasionally one of the sergeants, who had heard what my profession was, wanted to talk with me briefly. They were told that no one was allowed to speak with me. Another

sergeant whom I had never seen before or since appeared suddenly while T was taking a bath and asked whether I knew Pastor N.! When I said yes, the man declared, “He’s a good friend of mine,” and went away. I was taken to the most isolated single cell on the top floor, and a sign was hung outside forbidding anyone to enter without special permission. I was told that I was

not permitted any correspondence until further notice and that, unlike the other prisoners, I was not to be allowed outdoors for half an hour each day, although I was entitled to it according to the prison regulations. I was not allowed any newspapers or anything to smoke. After forty-eight hours my Bible was returned to me. It had been searched to make sure I had not smuggled in a saw, a razor blade, or the like. Otherwise, during the next twelve days the cell door was opened only to bring me food and take out the latrine bucket. Not a single word was exchanged with me. I was given no information about why I had been imprisoned or for how long. I concluded [1.] NZ, A 70,2; handwritten in ink; 7 pages; no title or date [but as the circumstances and title indicate, it was probably written around April 1944—JDG]. Previously published in LPP, 248-52. The prison report was intended for Bonhoeffer’s uncle Paul von Hase, who as city commander of Berlin was also responsible for the military detention centers. It describes the degrading methods of punishment, the food, and the living conditions in the Tegel prison. For this report, he got “wardens he could trust to check the weight of the food rations and compare it with what was set in the regulations” (DB-ER, 850). See also Bonhoeffer’s short story “Corporal Berg,” in DBWE 7:183-94. [2.] Martin Niemoller.

344 Letters and Papers from Prison from remarks overheard, and this turned out to be true, that I had been put in the section for the worst cases, with prisoners who were condemned to death and were kept shackled hand and foot.!’! During the first night in my cell, | could hardly sleep because a prisoner in the next cell wept

aloud for several hours and no one paid any attention. I thought at the 382. time that this sort of thing went on every night, but in all the months since it has happened only once more. In those early days of complete isolation, I saw nothing of what actually goes on in the building, only what I could gather from the almost constant shouting of the wardens. My fundamental impression, which remains unchanged to this day, is that those detained for interrogation are treated as if they were already convicted criminals, and that prisoners have practically no possibility of asserting their rights when they are treated unjustly. Later I overhead several conversations among the wardens in which they said quite bluntly that if a prisoner should complain of being treated unjustly, or even of being beaten—which is actually strictly prohibited—the prisoner’s word would never be believed against their own, since they could always find a colleague to testify on their behalf under oath. I have, in fact, heard of cases in which this evil practice was followed. After twelve days my family connections became known in the prison. For me personally this made things much easier, but it was shameful to see how everything changed from that moment on. I was moved to a more spacious cell, which an orderly cleaned for me every day. I was offered larger portions of food, which I always refused, since they would have been provided at the expense of the other prisoners; and the captain! came to take me for a daily walk. The result was that the staff treated me with exceptional politeness, and some even came to apologize, saying, “Of course we didn’t realize,” and so on. ... How embarrassing!

Overall treatment: The tone is set by those wardens whose behavior toward

the prisoners is the most nasty and brutal. The whole building resounds with foul curses, which are so insulting that the quieter and more fatrminded wardens are repulsed as well, but they have scarcely any influence. 383 Prisoners who are later acquitted will have endured months of detention for interrogation, during which they are completely defenseless against being cursed as criminals, since the prisoner’s right of appeal is purely theoretical. Having private means, cigarettes, and promises for later make a huge difference. ‘The ordinary man without connections simply has to endure it [3.] See the poem “Night Voices,” 3/175. [4.] Captain Maetz, commander of Tegel prison.

2/131 345 all. The same people who take out their frustrations on other prisoners bow and scrape to me, and attempts to reason with them about how they treat the others don’t get far. They will agree with what I’m saying at the moment, but an hour later they are carrying on the same as before. | must not fail to mention that there are also a number of wardens whose conduct toward the prisoners is calm, matter-of-fact, and when possible kind; but for the most part these men remain in subordinate positions. Food: The prisoner cannot escape the impression that he doesn’t receive the full rations to which he is entitled. Often there is no trace of the meat

that is supposed to be in the soup. Bread and sausage are sliced very unevenly. I personally weighed a portion of sausage, and it turned out to be 15 g. instead of 25 g.!°! Kitchen staff and noncommissioned officers on kitchen duty can tell many a tale of what they have observed along these lines. Among seven hundred prisoners, even the slightest inaccuracy has an cnormous effect. I know from reliable sources that when doctors and officers come to check on the prison diet, meat and cream sauce are added generously to the servings to be tested, so it is no wonder that the diet provided by the prison has a good reputation. In the same way, I know that meat intended for the prisoners first has the goodness cooked out of it in the pots of food for the staff. If one has the chance to compare meals served to prisoners with those served to the staff, it’s staggering. Dinner on Sundays and holidays is beneath contempt, consisting of watery cabbage soup completely devoid of any fat, meat, or potatoes. On these days nobody will be checking on the food. There is no doubt in my mind that for young people imprisoned for long periods this is a completely inadequate diet. No 384 records are kept of the prisoners’ weight. Although these are detainees for interrogation and also soldiers, some of whom will be released directly back to combat units, it is strictly forbidden to receive food packages;'! prisoners

are threatened with severe punishment when they are told this. Anything to eat, even sandwiches and boiled eggs that prisoners’ relatives bring them when they visit, are turned away, which causes great bitterness among both visitors and prisoners. Military police bringing prisoners to be admitted can get a meal in the kitchen, despite existing regulations. Occupation: The great majority of those detained for interrogation spend their days without work to do, although most of them ask to be given work. They can get three books a week from a very mediocre library. Games of any sort to pass the time (such as chess) are forbidden even in communal cells, [5.] [About half an ounce, instead of almost an ounce.—JDG]. [6.] This prohibition could be bypassed through bribery, but also thanks to the kindness of individual guards.

346 Letters and Papers from Prison and if prisoners manage to concoct such games themselves, these are taken

away and the prisoners are punished. There are no common projects for the seven hundred prisoners that could benefit the whole community, for example, digging air-raid bunkers. There are no religious services. Some of the prisoners are very young!’! (including antiaircraft auxiliaries), and they are bound to suffer in body and soul from the lack of occupation and supervision, especially in long periods of solitary confinement. Lighting: During the winter months prisoners often had to sit in the dark for several hours, since the staff were sluggish about turning on the lights in the cells. When the prisoners, who have the right to have the lights on, tried to attract attention by putting out their little flags or by knocking, the staff yelled at them angrily and refused to turn the lights on until the next day. 385 Prisoners are not allowed to lie down on their cots until taps, so they have to spend the hours until then sitting in complete darkness. ‘That is psychologically very depressing and only causes bitterness. Air raids: There is no air-raid cellar for the prisoners. It would be a small

matter, with all the labor available here, to attend to this speedily. Only a command bunker has been prepared for the commander and his staff. Morcover, during air raids only the prisoners from the top floor are locked in with the inmates in the ground-floor cells. When I asked why the inmates on the third floor were not moved to the second floor, the answer was that it makes too much work. There is no bunker for the sick bay either. When a heavy attack rendered the sick bay unusable, we couldn’t begin bandaging the wounded until the bombardment was over.!! The screams and frenzied struggles of the prisoners locked in their cells during a severe attack, some of whom are here only for very minor offenses or may even be innocent,|! is unforgettable for anyone who has heard it. Seven hundred soldiers are exposed here to the dangers of a bombing raid without any protection. Various: The only possibility the prisoners have to communicate with the staff in case of an emergency is by putting out their little flags. Often no notice is taken of this for hours, or else a passing warden simply shoves the flag back in again without asking the prisoner what he wants. If the prisoner then knocks on his door, he is bombarded with curses. If a prisoner reports illness outside of sick-bay treatment hours, this inconveniences the [7.] Bonhoeffer’s fellow prisoner Gaetano Latmiral, in a letter of November 9, 1979, wrote: “Most of the prisoners were there for ‘subverting the army, soldiers or noncommissioned officers who in the presence of several persons had complained about the war and the government while on leave. A great many of these boys (often turned in by women) were condemned to death for this. A few were deserters.” Cf. 4/205, ed. note 3. [8.] See 2/80, pp. 205-6. [9.] “Or may even be innocent” inserted later.

2/131 347 staff, so they usually respond with anger; only with great difficulty can such a prisoner get himself taken to sick bay. I have twice seen prisoners being

literally kicked into the sick bay; one of them had acute appendicitis and had to be taken to the military hospital immediately, and the other had prolonged hysterical convulsions. All those detained for interrogation, even for very minor matters, are taken in chains to their interrogations and trials; for a soldier in uniform this is extremely humiliating and has a depressive 386 effect on his response to questioning. The orderlies whose job it is to empty latrine buckets as well as to distribute food are given the same small amount of soap for washing as ordinary prisoners, for whom it is already scarcely enough.

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PART 3 Holding Out for the Coup Attempt April—July 1944

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132. To Eberhard Bethge!!! 389 April 11, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I really wanted to write to you during the holidays, but due to many very well-

meant visits I had less peace and quiet than I should have liked. I couldn’t even get a letter to Maria finished. I’m already so used to the silence of being alone that it only takes a little while before Iam longing for it again. I can't even imagine spending my day the way I did before or the way you do now. As you know, even in earlier days I used to have trouble lasting through family celebrations;!*! I hope this problem won’t have grown any worse. I do greatly long for a good conversation, but meaningless talk gets on my nerves terribly. It’s the same with the usual sort of music on the radio; I hear it not

even as music but just as empty racket. There’s surely a danger in all this. Even so, I think you must often feel the same way now. Onc’s feeling for quality can’t simply be stifled; it only gets stronger from year to year. How did you spend Easter? Were you in Rome? How did you manage your homesickness? I could imagine that this is even harder in your situation than in mine, because diversions and distractions don’t take care of it. It’s necessary to muster up the whole range of ultimate truths in order to get clarity with oneself, and for that you need a lot of time to yourself. For me the first warm days of spring are somehow wrenching, as they probably are for you. When nature comes into its own again but the tensions in our own lives and the historical communities in which we live remain unresolved, we feel the split especially strongly. Or it may just be a sense of longing, and perhaps it’s good for us to long for something again. For myself at any rate, 390 I must say that for many long years I have been living, not without goals and work to do and hopes that completely absorbed me, but without personal yearnings, and perhaps that makes one old before one’s time. Everything has become too “objective” [sachlich]. Almost everyone nowadays has goals and work to do. It’s all tremendously objectified and thingified. But who today can still afford strong personal feelings, real yearnings, and take the trouble and spend the energy to carry around a sense of longing within him, to explore it and let it bear fruit? A few sentimental hit songs on the radio with their labored naiveté, empty and primitive, are the pitiful remnant, the maximum that anyone will allow in terms of being stirred inwardly—awfully dreary and impoverished. So let’s really be glad when something affects us deeply and feel enriched by the pain it brings us. High [1.] NZ, A 80,158; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 271-73. [2.] Cf. 2/89, p. 240.

g01

Oe Letters and Papers from Prison tension gives off big sparks (or isn’t that a physical fact? well, you translate it into the right language!).!”! I have long had a particular affection for this season between Easter and Ascension Day. Here, too, there is great tension. How should people endure

tensions here on earth when they know nothing of the tension between heaven and earth? Do you have Ein Neues Lied\*! with you? I remember so well learning Ascension hymns with you, including the one that is still my favorite, “On this day we remember. . . .”°! By the way, just about now we are beginning the tenth year of our friendship.'°! That’s a pretty large slice of our lives, and we've shared the past year hardly less intensely than the former years of our vita communis.\"!

April 23 is Maria’s birthday. She'll have to celebrate it alone again, and I have the impression that both of us—I mean you and I—!"! will be getting 391 home about the same time.'9! I have been told!'!®! not to expect any change in my current situation for the time being, and this comes after having fresh

ox

promises made to me once a fortnight until now. I can’t call that either right or clever, and lam keeping my own counsel about it, which I very, very much wish I could talk over with you. But on a practical level, I just have to go along with it, since my view of things can’t have any effect. ’m hoping for Pentecost! Yesterday I heard someone say that these last years have been lost years for him. I’m glad I have never for one moment had that feeling; I’ve never

even regretted my decision in the summer of ’39.!!" Instead, I am wholly under the impression that my life—strange as it may sound—has gone in a straight line, uninterrupted, at least with regard to how I've led it. It has [3.] [A recognition of Bethge’s natural talent for science and his understanding of such matters.—]DG] |4.] Cf. 2/73, ed. note 68. [5.] Ahymn composed by Johannes Zwick (Lin Neues Lied, no. 83; Evangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 552).

[6.] For this, Bethge’s essay “Mein Freund Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Gremmels and Huber, Theologie und Freundschaft, 17-18. [7.] “Life together.” [This may be an allusion to Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together (DBWE

5), which gives an account of the life they shared in the House of Brethren at Finkenwalde.—JDG]

18.| Parenthetical comment inserted afterward. [9.] After the hoped-for success of the coup. [10.] Cf. Love Letters from Cell 92, 185: “Yesterday I left this building for the first time in months. They were very polite, but told me I would have to be patient for quite a while longer; there was no prospect of any new development before Whitsun. I'm afraid the early summer months will be over before the longed-for day arrives.” [11.] This refers to his decision on June 20, 1939, to return to Germany from the United States (DBWE 15, 1/137). See DB-ER, 651-57.

3/132 353 been a continually enriching experience for which I can only be grateful. If my present situation were to be the conclusion of my life, that would have

a meaning that I believe I could understand. On the other hand, all this might be a thorough preparation for a new beginning, which would take

//5 =//

place in marriage, peacetime, and with new work to do. A nice letter has just come from Ridiger,!!*! from which I gather that you too aren't exactly hanging about in base camp. I'd like to know a lot more about your daily life. Are your lodgings bearable? But you’re used to quite a bit, having been at boarding school.!'’! I was very happy to see the seventyfifth-birthday pictures again, with you there among the grandchildren,!!*! when my parents brought them along recently. Your photo of Lissa,!'*! which IT still think is rather good, is in the front 392 of my Daily Texts.\!! I’m very glad that my parents were so pleased with their visit in Patzig.!!7'

The way my mother-in-law appears to have looked after them was so touching, and even Papa sounded really happy about their stay. Of course, it’s odd the way my mother-in-law always kisses Mama’s hand, something that I can’t bring myself to do. I don’t feel it’s appropriate, in my profession; besides, it probably has something to do with my reserved Swabian background. I

expect that the more distant of my honored relatives will take offense at some point, but certainly in vain. By the way, my mother-in-law’s selflessness seems to make a particular impression on everyone who meets her. I'll close now for today, as I have to do another handwriting analysis;!!®! that’s the way | now spend the hours in which I can’t do any real work. This letter is somewhat disjointed because I kept being interrupted while writing

i ’ / /? /

it. But I think you'd rather have it than none at all. I think of you often, every day, and commend you to God’s care. Affectionately yours, Dietrich Pte | 2 A128.

[13.] At the humanities gymnasium of the Monastery of Our Dear Lady in Magdeburg; see Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 53-56. [A gymnasium is the German equivalent of a college preparatory school.—]DG] [14.] This refers to photos of Karl Bonhoeffer’s seventy-fifth birthday party, March 31, 1943. See Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 134. [15.] |The military training camp in Poland where Bethge was stationed from July 1943 to January 1944.—]DG] [16.] Cf. 2/89, p. 237, and 2/95. [17.] [Patzig was the residence of the Wedemeyer family in Pomerania. Bonhoeffer’s parents visited his future mother-in-law, Ruth von Wedemeyer, from March 15 to April 4, 1944.—JDG]

[18Gb 2/123; ed: note t2;

354 Letters and Papers from Prison 133. From Ursula Schleicher!!! April 18, 1944

Dear Dietrich, This week Rudiger has gone to Stuttgart and Speyer on business, and Christine has been invited to a country house in Mecklenburg along with Gudrun Diem. So Dorothee and | have come to spend a week with Aunt Ruth!?] and have a

bit of a rest. This is a splendid place to do that, and the weather is wonder393 — fully springlike. In the garden, the daffodils, squills, violets, crocuses, and daphne are in bloom, just delightful. Aunt Ruth’s eyesight keeps getting worse, but she

enjoys the splashes of color and is pleased with each one. | spend most of my time on the deck chair in the arbor, just enjoying the outdoors. | have Stifter’s Der Nachsommer!?] to read, so | am leading an unusually tranquil life and enjoying

it very much. After all there was to do at Renate’s, baby care and so on, | was quite worn out. We think about you a lot and wish you could be here. It’s very hard that once again you don't get to enjoy springtime. Aunt Ruth is as lively as ever and interested in everything, but she does look older. She complains about her fading eyesight and about great difficulty with sleeping. Unfortunately, her daughter-in-law herel*! has had a bad attack of diph-

theria but is now better. We are really being spoiled here. Dorothee is happy that she finally has enough to eat.!>! She has to study hard; at the moment she’s working on history. She is hoping to take her exams [Abitur]!® this autumn, but I’m not so keen, because she'll only be sixteen in May. Christine is about to start confirmation class. Since she has very good religious instruction in school, it will only take her a year. We will be sending her to the class in Potsdam. Hans-Walter hasn't been deployed yet after all; he’s being trained for another

three to six months as a long-distance aircraft radio operator. He is stationed near Leipzig, so we will surely be able to visit him sometime. He was pretty let down that he wasn’t allowed in to see you,!”! especially since Klaus Dohnanyi is

also your nephew and did get in, and he was expecting to go on active service [1.] NZ, A 80,159; handwritten; from Klein-Krossin. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 273-74. [2.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. [3.] Adalbert Stifter, Indian Summer. [4.] Maria von Kleist-Retzow, née von Diest.

[5.] [People living in the cities had to live on rations. Food rationing cards were issued by the authorities for this purpose.—] DG] [6.] [The secondary school examination for entrance to the university.—JDG] [7.] Cf. 2/128, ed. note 9.

3/133 and 3/134 355 soon. The letter you wrote him when he was called up!®! has helped him often, and he really wanted to talk with you. Maybe it can still happen sometime. Little Dietrich is doing well; he’s growing and will be taken to the photographer soon, and you too will get a picture. The pictures we have taken aren't so good, but Eberhard thinks he has discovered one hundred likenesses! Even though there's really more baby pillow than baby to be seen. Now I’m hoping to have my permit to visit soon; Riidiger has already applied 394 for me twice, so we can finally see each other again after so long. So good-bye for now. | wish you all the very, very best, with all my heart. Yours, Ursula

Love from everyone here.

134. From Eberhard Bethge'!!! April 21, 1944

Dear Dietrich, Since we didn’t get to see each other at Easter, we have to keep hoping for the next holiday. Meanwhile, you have sent me some more thoughtful greetings, |?! and |’m happy that you give me the important job of setting new dates. | spent a very quiet Easter here with letters from Renate and lovely flowers, was able to take short walks and read some Burckhardt (Kultur der Renaissance).@] Are you familiar with Cardano’s autobiography!*! from the same period? It must be a noteworthy example of objective self-observation; he’s a doctor. Does your father have it? The spring is already quite beautiful here, especially in the ravines, but | hardly ever get out to see other areas. We like bad weather, however, since it’s then generally quiet in the air./]

[8.] Bonhoeffer’s letter of October 10, 1942, DBWE 16, 1/206.

[1.] NZ, A 80,160; handwritten; from Rignano, Excerpt previously published in LPP, 274-75. [2.] See 2/128. [Because many of his letters were smuggled out of prison, Bonhoeffer usually uses the code word Griife (greetings) for such illegal correspondence.—]DG.| [3.] Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.

[4.) Hieronymus Cardanus (Cardano), De propria vita; in German, Des Girolamo Cardano von Mailand, (Birgers von Bologna) eigene Lebensbeschreibung. [See Bonhoeffer’s

response to Bethge’s question in 3/140, p. 377.—JDG] Cardano is mentioned in Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 2:330—-31, and in Dilthey’s Weltanschauung und

Analyse des Menschen (cf. 3/161, ed. note 10), 429-32.

[5.] [A reference to the reduction in air raids during bad weather. Cf. 3/140, p. 377. —JDG]

356 Letters and Papers from Prison | too need to think of what should be done about Klaus’s and Christoph’s 395 confirmation. How difficult these things have become. Maria’s birthday is the day after tomorrow; | wrote a note to her. Will she be able to come and see you? Instead of such celebrations yesterday, we had promotions and then a glass of wine to the Fihrer’s health for April 20.'°] The conversation was pretty sluggish. Your father wrote to me a few days ago, quite touched by the improvised birthday party in Patzig.l7] He even wrote which chorale was sung. | take it they weren't there long? What you write about the idea of holding devotions with Marial®! has been in my thoughts for a while. | must say, | don’t really understand how the elderly Mrs. von Kleistl?] went off on such a tangent; despite the great “sensation of spiritual encounter with you” (sorry!), isn’t she too vigorous and knowledgeable about life? You will be glad when these efforts to train you in the family’s ways come to an end, well-intentioned though they may be. In my case, my mother’s totally different attempts, through other people, to “change” Renate, to make her “‘say what she feels,” are getting me into a nervous state, especially in this letter-writing situation. It’s a combination of a lack of sensitivity, egoism, and trying to help. Mother doesn’t understand how a wife’s reticence toward everyone else, including an instinctive refusal to be drawn into mother-daughter gossip, can be such a cause of rejoicing for her husband. | keep trying to think what | could write my mother that would be fruitful, even to the point of starting a fight that would bear fruit. It’s so annoying not to be able to settle things face-to-face. In this present situation, a letter would perhaps be too deeply distressing. Is it really such a stupid, difficult thing, being a mother-in-law? It’s too bad that there is hardly any possibility for Renate to visit you. What should happen is that | should come, and we could go in the car to see you. It’s really touching for me, the way you are helping again to provide for Renate’s needs.l!°] Thank you so much. It reassures me a lot. If Maria knows as well, it 396 will be all right. Renate is just alone for the time being. It’s a pity | can’t help her get through this first period where her day consists of laundry and cooking from morning till night, and she has to struggle through everything by herself. | have never looked into handwriting analysis!''] and have been suspicious of it, perhaps out of fear that | couldn’t be detached enough. But now I'd be interested in hearing about it sometime. [6.] Hitler’s fifty-fifth birthday.

[7.] Karl Bonhoeffer’s seventy-sixth birthday was celebrated “early” in Patzig; see 2/128, p. 338; see also 2/126, ed. note 3, and 2/128, ed. note 5. [8.] 2/128, pp. 338-39. 19.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow.

[10.] [Providing additional food from Patzig.—]DG] [11.] Cf. 2/128, p. 339.

3/134 and 3/135 357 When is the egoism of one person offensive like the altruism of another (or even the same person)? Naive egoism can have an endearing sort of disarming quality. Being aware of it and affirming it can actually draw Christians together. In your family, is it the result of generations of upbringing based on insight into human nature? This recent death was news to me.!!2] I’m very sorry. | did in fact send you greetings a while ago.l!3] So shall | get them back?!41 | have been struck with how, among the comrades here who are Catholic, religion consists entirely of rules and commandments, and how deep-seated this remains despite all the things that eclipse it. It gives them their standard by which to make judgments. By the way, White Sundayl'?] is quite important to them; some have sent greeting cards and rosaries back home or to godchildren. So, may things go well for you, and keep up your courage about the dates. Your devoted Eberhard

135. To Eberhard Bethge!!! 397 April 22, 1944

Dear Eberhard, Today I heard from my parents again about how things are going for you. I’d always be happy to know a great deal morc, but it’s very reassuring to know that you are well. Papa was very pleased with your letter, and so was Maria with yours of April 5. Many thanks; it was a very good and kind thought on your part. When you write that this will be an important time for my serious work, and that you are looking forward to what I'll have to tell you later and to what I’ve written,!*! you mustn’t indulge in any illusions about me. I’ve certainly learned a great deal, but I don’t think I have changed very much. [12.] Mr. “Engel,” i.e., Sergeant Holzendorf (see 2/106, ed. note 7), whose address was used for a time for smuggling letters; see also 2/124, p. 331 (March 25: “The address I gave you recently is out of date”). [13.] This could have been Bethge’s letter asking Bonhoeffer to be his son’s godfather (see 3/148, p. 397). [14.] Cf. 3/140, p. 376 (“The letters... are all supposed to be returned to the sender”). [15.] [The Sunday after Easter, when German Catholic children traditionally received their First Communion, the girls dressed in white.—]DG] [1.] NL, A 80,161; handwritten; note in pencil by Bethge: “received end of June.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 275-77. [2.] This may refer to the page from 2/127, which was destroyed.

358 Letters and Papers from Prison There are people who change, and many who can hardly change at all. I don’t think I have ever changed much, except perhaps at the time of my first impressions abroad, and under the first conscious influence of Papa’s personality. It was then that a turning from the phraseological to the real ensued.'°! As a matter of fact, I don’t think you’ve really changed either. Self-development, of course, is a different matter. Neither of us has really experienced a break in his life. Of course, we have deliberately broken with a good deal, but that again is something quite different. Even these times in which we are now living don’t represent a break in the passive sense. When I was younger, I sometimes longed for something of the kind, but today I 398 — think differently about it. Continuity with one’s own past is actually a great gift.) Paul lets both 1 Tim. 1:13!°! and 2 Tim. 1:3a stand side by side.!”!

Often ’m amazed at how little, in contrast to almost all the others here, I wallow in past mistakes and so forth, thinking for instance that if I had done this or that differently, how much would have turned out otherwise today. That does not torment me at all. Everything seems to have taken its inevitable, necessary, and straightforward course, determined by a higher providence. Do you feel that way too? Lately P’ve often wondered why we lose our sensitivity to hardships, or say we do, after enduring them for a long while—how can that be explained? Thinking back to those weeks a year ago, I’m really struck by how differently I now see the same things. That this is a natural defense mechanism is not enough of an answer for me; I’m more inclined to consider it a clearer,

more sober estimate of our own limited possibilities and responsibilities, which enables the development of genuine love for our neighbor. As long as our imagination 1s aroused and whipped up, loving our neighbor remains something vague and generalized. Today I can take a calmer view of people,

[3.] [This phrase indicates Bonhoeffer’s firm rejection of “hollow phrases” and superficiality in engaging reality (Werklichkeit) in both his daily life and his theology.—]DG]. Cf. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, “Childhood and Home,” 22: “His [Karl Bonhoeffer’s] rejection of the hollow phrase may have made some of us at times tongue-tied and uneasy, but as a result we could not abide any clichés, gossip, platitudes or pomposity when we grew up. Dietrich was later grateful for this.” See also Leibholz-Bonhoeftter, Bonhoeffers, 10, and DB-ER, 15. [See also DB-ER, 202-3; R. Bethge, Bonhoeffers Familie, 12-19; and Hans Christoph von Hase, “Turning Away from the Phraseological to the Real,” DBWE 10:591—-604, as well as DBWE 10:4.—JDG]

[4.] Cf. 1/12, p. 74: “Continuity with the past and the future interrupted.” [See also DBWE 10:591.—JDG]

[5.] “[E]ven though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.” [6.] “Iam grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did.”

3/135 and 3/136 359 their predicaments, and needs, so I’m better able to help them. Instead [of] becoming less sensitive, I'd rather call it detachment; but of course it is always a job, each time, to change the one into the other. I don’t think we need reproach ourselves in such situations if after a time we no longer get so fired up and tense about things. Still, we must stay aware of the danger of not seeing the forest for the trees and keep our feelings alive as well as our heads clear. Do these thoughts make any sense to you?

Why is it that, without any reason that one can see, some days are so much harder to bear than others? Is it growing pains? Or times of testing? 399 Once they re gone again, the world suddenly looks quite different. The other day I heard the angel scene from Palestrina on the radio, and it made me think of Munich.!7! Even then, that was the only part'®! T especially liked. Someone here is a great “Palestrina fan” and can’t understand why it doesn’t mean more to me. He was thrilled that I did enjoy the angel scene, Please give my best regards to Christoph when you have a chance.!"! How is he turning out in the long run? After being unproductive for so long, [I] feel more creative now that spring is coming. I'll tell you more about it next time. Meanwhile, stay well and keep up your spirits. In spite of all, I’m still hoping for a joyful reunion soon! Yours ever, with all my heart, Dietrich

136. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! April 26, 1944 My dear Parents,

Since your last visit it will probably be a while again until I can talk with you, so I'd at least like to let you know by letter that Iam getting along well. This second spring that | am spending in this cell is very different from the first, a year ago. Back then all my impressions were fresh and vivid; deprivations and pleasures were more intense. Since then, what I'd never thought

possible has happened—I've gotten used to it, and the only question 1s whether I’ve become less sensitive, or more detached—each is probably

[7.] Pfitzner, Palestrina, act 1, scene 6, for three angel voices; cf. also 2/96, ed. note 4. [8.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [9.] Christoph Bethge. [1.] NZ, A 80,163; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 277-78.

360 Letters and Papers from Prison 400 true in different areas. The things toward which we become insensitive will soon be forgotten; they really don’t matter. On the other hand, things that we have worked out for ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, will never be forgotten, since they have changed from being powerful experiences to taking definite shape as clear insights, purposes, and plans, and as such will keep their meaning for our future life. It certainly makes a great difference being in prison for a year instead of a month; one gains not only interesting or strong impressions but a huge new dimension in one’s life. I believe, however, that there are certain inner preconditions for being able to assimilate this aspect of life safely. I think long prison sentences for very young people

are highly dangerous for their personal development. The onslaught of impressions is so violent that it is likely to sweep a great deal overboard. I’m so grateful to you that you have kept making everything easier for me with your regular visits, letters, and parcels. from the very first letter, my joy at

receiving each of them hasn't lessened any and still encourages me to use my time here to the full. also want to thank my brothers and sisters for all their letters—lI've just received very nice ones again from Ursel and KarlFriedrich.!*! Could you perhaps try to get me Ortega y Gasset’s new book, Das Wesen geschichtlicher Krisen (Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart-Berlin), and if possible also his previous one, Geschichle als System;\°! also Heinz Pfeffer’s Das britische Empire und die USA (Dinnhauptverlag 1944)?!4!—And Id like Ursel

please to get something for Dorothee’s birthday from me,!”! if possible. It’s her last birthday before her exams [Abitur], and there are surely books she wants. I hope you'll decide on another trip to the country house.!©! I'd be very pleased if you did. Hope we'll see each other again soon! Yours, with much love and gratitude, Dietrich

[2.] See 2/133 and 2/125. [3.] Ortega y Gasset, History as a System and Other Essays toward a Philosophy of History.

[4.| Edited by Karl-Heinz Pfeffer and Friedrich Sch6nemann. [5.] Dorothee Schleicher’s sixteenth birthday on May 4, 1944. [6.] Patzig [home of the Wedemeyer family—JDG].

3/136 and 3/137 361

137. To Eberhard Bethge'!!! 401 April 30, 1944

Dear Eberhard,

Another month has gone by—is the time rushing by for you the way it is for me here? I’m often surprised at this myself—and when will the month come when you come home to Renate, and I to Maria, and the two of us can meet again? The feeling that any day great events can shake the world and change all our personal circumstances 1s so strong in me that I'd like to write to you much more often, because we don’t know how long we still can, but most of all so as to share everything with each other as often and as long as possible. Actually, I’m firmly convinced that by the time you get this letter, the great decisions will be moving along on every front.!*! So in the coming weeks we shall have to be stouthearted, and that is what I wish you. We have to keep our wits about us so that nothing catches us off guard. In view of what is coming, I’m almost inclined to quote the biblical det... ,! and I feel something of the “longing” [Neugierde] of the angels in 1 Pet. 1:12,!4! to see how God will go about solving what seems beyond any solution. I think it has now come to the point where God will arise and accomplish something that we, despite our inner and outer involvement, can only take in with the greatest astonishment and awe. Somehow it will be made plain—for those with eyes to see—that Ps. 58:11!°! and Ps. 9:19-20'°! 402 are true; and we shall have to repeat Jer. 45:5!7! to ourselves every day. For

[1.] NL, A80,162; handwritten; note by Bethge: “arrived May 8,” (under the date line) “Sunday.” Previously published in LPP, 278-82.

[2.] In the south the Allies had begun to advance on Rome and would take the city on June 4, 1944. In mid-April the eastern front lay along the Odessa-Brest-Litovsk line, so that the Red Army’s invasion of Poland was foreseeable. | Bonhoeffer also had in mind the expectation that the resistance would soon make its move.—]DG] [3.] “It must come to pass,” a New Testament (1.e., Mark 8:31 par., 1 Cor. 15:25) eschatological expression to indicate something that must happen according to the will of God. On 6et, cf. also DBWE 4:84, ed. note 2, and 87, ed. note 10. [The phrase “[these things] must come to pass” is from Matt. 24:6 KJV. The NRSV translates the Greek as “this must take place.”—]DG] [4.] “Things into which angels long to look.” [In the German Bible the word in this passage is Neugierde, or “curiosity.”—J DG]

[5.] “People will say, ‘Surely there is a reward for the righteous; surely there is a God who judges on earth.” In Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible, “God who judges on earth” is underlined in pencil and written in pencil next to it “the crucified one!” Cf. the conclusion of the July 11, 1936, sermon on Ps. 58 in DBWE 14, 3/19. [6.] “Rise up, O Lorp! Do not let mortals prevail; let the nations be judged before you. Put them in fear, O Lorn; let the nations know that they are only human.” [‘7.] Cf. 2/115, ed. notes 24 and 25, and 3/145, ed. note 17.

362 Letters and Papers from Prison you, separated from Renate and your boy as you are, it’s even harder than it is for me to go through this, and I’ll especially be thinking of you, as Iam already doing now. How good it would be for us both, I feel, if we could live through this time together and stand by each other. But [it’s] probably even “better” that we can't, but rather that each of us has to go it alone. It’s hard for me not to be able to help you in any way—except by thinking of you. I really do, every morning and evening and when I read the Bible and often during the day too. Please don’t worry about me at all; I’m getting along uncommonly well; you d be surprised if you came to see me. People here keep saying to me— and I’m very flattered by it, as you can see—that I “radiate such peace” and that ’'m “always so cheerful”—so that if I occasionally experience myself as anything but, I suppose it’s deceptive (which I don’t really believe!).!°! {What might surprise or perhaps even worry you would be my theological thoughts and where they are leading, and here is where I really miss you very much. I don’t know anyone else with whom I can talk about them and arrive at some clarity. What keeps gnawing at me is the question, what is Christianity,'*! or who is Christ actually for us today?!!°! The age when we could tell people that with words—whcether with theological or with pious words—is past, as is the age of inwardness and of conscience, and that means 403 the age of religion altogether. We are approaching a completely religionless age; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as “religious” aren't really practicing that at all; they presumably mean something quite different by “religious.” But

our entire nineteen hundred years of Christian preaching and theology are built on the “religious a priori”!!! in human beings. “Christianity”

[8.] See the poem “Who Am I?” 3/173. [9.] After “Christianity,” “today” is crossed out. [10.] Cf. the 1933 Christology lecture in DBWE 12, 2/12, p. 302: “The question of ‘who’ is the question about transcendence.” [11.| Bonhoeffer’s doctoral supervisor at the university in Berlin, Reinhold Seeberg, defined the “religious a priori” (in his Christliche Dogmatik, 1:103) as “a purely formal, primeval endowment of the created spirit or ego that renders it capable of, and in need of, the direct awareness of the absolute Spirit"; and in his Grundrif der Dogmatth, 5: “All normal human beings possess this religious a priori, whether they are ‘religious’ or ‘irreligious.’” The concept as introduced into theology by Ernst Troeltsch (in his “Zur Frage des religidsen Apriori,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 2:754—68; ct. DBW11:150-53 and 161-63) had already been criticized by Bonhoeffer—clearly referring to Karl Barth’s distinction between “revelation” and “religion,” or “faith” and “religion” (see Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 229-70)—in Act and Being: “If we are to assume that the compelling ability to receive revelation and, by implication, to believe, is given with this a priori, we have already said too much. ... All that pertains to personal appropriation of the fact of Christ

3/137 363 9 < . . 3” . .

has always been a form (perhaps the true form)!!*! of “religion.” Yet if it becomes obvious one day that this “a priori” doesn’t exist, that it has been a historically conditioned and transitory form of human expression, then people really will become radically religionless—and I believe that this is already more or less the case (why, for example, doesn’t this war provoke a “religious” reaction like all the previous ones?)—what does that then mean for “Christianity”? The foundations are being pulled out from under all that “Christianity” has previously been for us, and the only people among whom we might end up in terms of “religion” are “the last of the knights”!!! or a few intellectually dishonest people. Are these supposed to be the chosen few? Are we supposed to fall all over precisely this dubious lot of people 404 in our zeal or disappointment or woe and try to peddle our wares to them?

Or should we jump on a few unfortunates in their hour of weakness and commit, so to speak, religious rape? If we are unwilling to do any of that, and if we eventually must judge even the Western form of Christianity to be only a preliminary stage of a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well? Is there such a thing as a religionless Christian?

If religion is only the garb in which Christianity is clothed!!!—and this garb has looked very different in different ages—what then 1s religionless Christianity? Barth, who is the only one to have begun thinking along these

is nota priori, but God’s contingent action on human beings” (DBWE 2:58; see the entire section on pp. 57-59). [12.] On “Christianity” as the “true” (form of) religion, see Barth, Church Dogmatics 1/2, § 17,3, p. 326: religion is not always “unfaith,” but “[t/here is a true religion: just as

there are justified sinners. ... If we abide strictly by that analogy... we need have no hesitation in saying that the Christian religion is the true religion.” [13.] [The “last knight” is probably a reference to Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg, who in German history and literature is often described as “the last knight,” a symbol of the lost age of chivalry and the medieval knights. Here Bonhoeffer is indicating that traditional “Christianity” and its representatives seem to belong to a lost era.—JDG] [14.] On religion as a “garb” or “clothes” (cf. Bonhoeffer’s letter of June 25, 1942, DBWE 16, 1/185, p. 329: “the religious clothes they wear make me so uncomfortable’), see also the difference between “husk and kernel,” “form and content,” as Adolf von Harnack has said in order to “communicate the essence”: “There are only two possibilities here: either the gospel is in all respects identical with its earliest form, in which case it came with its time and has departed with it; or else it contains something which, under different historical forms, is of permanent validity. The latter is the true view. The history of the Church shows us in its very commencement that ‘primitive Christianity’ had to disappear in order that ‘Christianity’ might remain; and in the same way in later ages one metamorphosis followed upon another” (Harnack, What Is Christianity? 13).

364 Letters and Papers from Prison lines,''®! nevertheless did not pursue these thoughts all the way, did not think them through,!!®! but ended up with a positivism of revelation,!'”! 405 which in the end essentially remained a restoration. For the working person or any person who is without religion, nothing decisive has been gained here. The questions to be answered would be: What does a church, a congregation, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life, mean in a religionless world? How do we talk about God—without religion, that is, without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, the inner life, and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we can no longer even “speak” the way we used to) in a “worldly” way about “God”? How do we go about being “religionlessworldly” Christians, how can we be éx-KAnota,!!8! those who are called out, without understanding ourselves religiously as privileged, but instead seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world? Christ would then no longer be the object of religion, but something else entirely, truly lord of the world. But what does that mean? In a religionless situation, what do ritual [Kultus|]

[15.] One of Bonhoefter’s carly discoveries (see DB-ER, 73-77) was Barth’s collection of lectures, The Word of God and the Word of Man, first published in German as Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie in 1924. “The similarity in wording to LPP is astounding” (DB-ER,

77): “There have often been frankly unreligious men who felt the whole importance and gravity of the question about God much more keenly, and expressed it much more poignantly, than the most deeply and zealously pious.” “Biblical piety is not really pious; one must rather characterize itas well-considered and definite refusal to regard anything as sacred.” God “is not in another world over against this one; he submerges all of this one in the other” (“Biblical Questions, Insights, and Vistas,” in The Word of God and the Word of Man, 56, 66, and 74. [The third of the Barth quotations is better translated as in DB-ER, 77: God “does not wish to be transcendent (Jenseits), separate from this world (Diesseits).”"—]DG|

[16.] On Tegel note 12 (NL, A 86) Bonhoeffer noted: “Barth. Revelation too is only religion; inconsistent.” [17.] This reproach, “positivism of revelation,” raised here for the first time against

Karl Barth (cf. also 3/139, p. 373, and 3/161, p. 429), is consistently preceded by an appreciation for Barth’s critique of religion (for example, 3/139, p. 373: “Barth was the first theologian ... to begin the critique of religion”). However, the remarks about “nonreligious interpretation” and “arcane discipline” show that “positivism of revelation” is a programmatic term indicating that in /zs critique of religion, Bonhoeffer draws other consequences, For the origin of the concept “positivism of revelation” and its significance as a demarcating formula in theology, see Krause, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Theologische Realenzyklopddie, 64n1; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 175-177, with reterence to DBWE 6:376-78; Pangritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 76-87; Wiustenberg, Theology of Life, 60-65.

[18.] “Those who are called out,” the church [Gemeinde]; see, for example, DBWE 4:156: “God’s kingdom still is found in suffering and in struggle. The small community of those called forth. . .”

3/137 365

9°

and prayer mean? Is this where the “arcane discipline” [Arkandisziplin],!'™!

or the difference (which you’ve heard about from me before) between the 406 penultimate and the ultimate,!*°! have new significance? I have to stop for today so this letter can go off right now. I’ll write more the day!?!! after tomorrow about this. I hope you understand more or less what I mean, and it’s not boring you. Good-bye for now! It’s not easy, always having to write without a response; you must forgive me if that makes it something ofa monologue. I’m really not reproaching you for not writing— you have too much else to do!!*?! Yours as ever, I think about you very much, Dietrich

I have a little more time to write after all. {The Pauline question of whether te pttop.7!""! is a condition for justification is today, in my opinion, the question of whether religion is a condition

[19.] Arcanwm (the “mysterious,” “hidden”); see 2 Cor. 12:4, dpprros, translated in the Vulgate Bible as arcanus (“things that are not to be told,” NRSV). [See the discussion of the translation of this phrase in previous English editions of PP and clsewhere in the eclitor’s introduction to this volume, p. 32. See also Kelly, Liberating Faith, 133-38; and Matthews, “Responsible Sharing."—JDG] Bonhoeffer first used arcanum in the context of the “confession of the church” in his lectures on “The Nature of the Church,” summer scmester 1932, DAW 11:285: “Confession belongs in worship as arcanum, ... The confession is not to be screamed loudly in a propagandistic manner; it must be preserved as the sacred good of the church-community.” The book Discipleship alludes to the “arcane discipline”; see DBWE 4:45 and ed. note 11: “What happened to the insights of the ancient church, which in the baptismal teaching watched so carefully over the boundary between the church and the world, over costly grace?” In the “Finkenwalde Cathechism,” Bonhoeffer assumes that in the third through seventh centuries, preparation for baptism took place in three stages; with the final stage began the “baptismal instruction according to the symbol that the Christian has not known until now” (DBW 14:548). Similarly, in the “Finkenwalde Homiletics” (DBW 14:526): “The arcane discipline emerged under Origen, (as) closed assemblies that would receive the sacraments, the confession of faith, and the Lord’s prayer. The arcane discipline (emerged) because of the derision of the world.” The phrase, coined in the seventeenth century, is used by Richard Rothe and others and thus belongs to the “inheritance from liberal theology” (4/186, p. 499) to which Bonhoeffer felt himself committed. On “arcane discipline,” see especially Pangritz’s monograph Dietrich Bonhoeffers Forderung einer Arkandisziplin; also DB-ER, 880-84; MeuB, “Arkandisziplin und Weltlichkeit bei Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” 70-92; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 200-202; Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 197-214; Abromeit, Das Geheimnis Christi,

150-72; Pangritz, “Aspekte der ‘Arkandisziplin.” [20.| On this, see DBWE 6:146-—218: “Ultimate and Penultimate Things.” [21.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [22.] End of writing in the margin. [23.] “Circumcision.” For Paul (see Gal. 6:15), “circumcision” is no longer a necessary condition for faith in salvation history. On making circumcision functionally equivalent

366 Letters and Papers from Prison for salvation. Freedom from TeptTopy is also freedom from religion. I often wonder why my “Christian instinct” frequently draws me more toward non-

407 religious people than toward the religious,'*! and I am sure it’s not with missionary intent; instead, ’'d almost call it a “brotherly” instinct. While I’m often reluctant to name the name of God to religious people—because somehow it doesn’t ring true for me there, and I feel a bit dishonest saying it (it’s especially bad when other people start talking in religious terminology; then I clam up almost completely and feel somehow uncomfortable and in a sweat)—yet on some occasions with nonreligious people I can speak God’s name quite calmly, as a matter of course. Religious people speak of God at a point where human knowledge is at an end (or sometimes when they’re too lazy to think further), or when human strength fails. Actually, it’s a deus ex machina!*"! that they’re always bringing on the scene, either to appear to solve insoluble problems or to provide strength when human powers fail, thus always exploiting human weakness or human limitations. Inevitably that lasts only until human beings become powerful enough to push the boundaries a bit further!*°! and God is no longer needed as deus ex machina. To me, talking about human boundaries has become a dubious proposition anyhow. (Is even death still really a boundary, since people today hardly fear it anymore, or sin, since people hardly comprehend it?) It always seems to me that we leave room for God only out of anxiety. I'd like to speak of God not at the boundaries but in the center,!*’! not in weakness

to religion, see Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 126: “The problem should be stated as follows:

Does the true claim of religion depend upon its being treated as a concrete factor in human life, forming a necessary preliminary to the emergence of a positive relationship between God and man?”; see also 129-31. [24.] See also Bonhoeffer’s letter of June 25, 1942, to Bethge, DBWE 16, 1/185, p. 329: “But I sense how an opposition to all that is ‘religious’ is growing in me. Often into an instinctive revulsion—which is surely not good either. | am not religious by nature. But I must constantly think of God, of Christ; authenticity, life, freedom, and mercy mean a great deal to me.” [25.| “The God from the machine.” In the ancient theater this was a figure who could be made to appear “suddenly” with the help of a mechanical device and to solve problems “supernaturally.” This common expression is also used by Reinhold Seeberg, Chiistliche Dogmatik, 2:314. Cf. DBWE 3:104, where Bonhoeffer changes it to “diaboli ex machina” (devils from the machine). [26.] Cf. 3/152, ed. note 6. [27.] Cf. also 3/152, p. 406 (“not only where we reach the limits of our possibilities but in the midst of life must God be recognized”; Jesus Christ “is the center of life”). On the words “boundary” (also “margin”) and “center,” see DBWI 3:86 et passim (also ClaBb, Der verzwelfelte Zugriff auf das Leben, 83-92, 201-20; and Bonhoeffer’s inaugural lecture of July

31, 1930, “The Anthropological Question in Contemporary Philosophy and Theology,” DBWE 10, 2/7. On this topic, see also Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 149-50; Plathow,

3/137 and 3/138 367 ; in; strength, R > thus a ]notCAL i guilt ; ibut: ini human / A life| ’and-human :a but in death and goodness. When I reach my limits, it seems to me better not to say anything 408 and to leave what can’t be solved unsolved. Belief in the resurrection 7s not the “solution” to the problem of death. God’s “beyond” is not what is beyond our cognition! Epistemological transcendence has nothing to do with God’s transcendence.?*! God is the beyond in the midst of our lives. The church stands not at the point where human powers fail, at the boundaries,'*9! but in the center of the village. That’s the way it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we don't read the New Testament nearly enough in the light of the Old. Iam thinking a great deal about what this religionless Christianity looks like, what form it takes, and I’ll be writing you more about it soon. Here perhaps we in particular, midway between East and West, will be given an important task. Now I really have to close. How good it would be [to] have a word from you sometime about all this. It would really mean a lot to me, more than you can probably suppose. By the way, do read Prov. 22:11-12 sometime.!! This bars the way to all escapism in the guise of picty.

Wishing you the very, very best, with all my heart yours, Dietrich

138. From Eberhard Bethge'!!! 409 May 5, 1944

Dear Dietrich, Your letter of April |1!7] reached me a few days ago; thanks very much for. .. .[°1 | also received a greeting from the daughter of... and was especially happy about

“Grenze und Mitte"; Schollmeyer, “Die Bedeutung von ‘“Grenze’ und ‘Begrenzung’’; Abromeit, Das Geheimnis Christi, 256-67.

[28.] The Kantian concept of transcendence, understood as “what is beyond our ability to know” (on Kant, see 3/170, p. 450), had already been rejected in Sanctorum Communio, Cf. DBWE 1:51: “Beyond the limit to epistemological knowledge there is a further limit to ethical-social knowledge, or acknowledgment.” See also DBWE 1:46—48; and Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 103-4, 174.

[29.] “At the boundaries” inserted later. [30.] Probably he actually meant Prov. 24:11-12: “If you hold back from rescuing those taken away to death, those who go staggering to the slaughter; if you say, “Look, we did not know this’—does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay all according to their deeds?” [1.] NZ, A 80,166; handwritten; from Rignano. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 283-84. [2.] 37132.

[3.] The end of this line (and part of the next sentence) has been torn away.

368 Letters and Papers from Prison that because it sounded very sensible. Meanwhile, I’m completely electrified by the hope of being able to bring you, so to speak, greetings in person in a few days’ time.!#] If only nothing happens to prevent it. That would be absolutely dreadful, since I’ve already raised hopes about it at home. But surely it will be all right. And then, shall the baptism really be without you? It’s such a pity that things have turned out this way again.&! Hopefully, I’ll at least get to see you. How I'd like to talk with you, for one thing, about the military chaplaincy question; it’s been going through my head these past few days.!®! | shall already have the half year’s “probation” time, so to speak, when | return from my leave.!/! | don’t imagine it would be easy, and perhaps it isn’t even objectively feasible. Only I'd like to find out more about it. I’ll discuss it with Justus. [1 Many thanks for your long letter. Where do you keep getting such excellent

stationery? Renate and | often worry about the shortage, but somehow we always manage to find a bit more. Do you have to listen to these radio broadcasts that stay on all day? Quite often | hear three all at once, and if I’m already feeling rather tired or under emotional pressure they torment me, like dreadful bodily pain or real nausea. Together with the daily stories in the newspapers, 410 which aren’t ashamed of any topic or picture, these broadcasts are all the nourishment that most people get. Everyone here has some nude pinups hanging above his bed, while | have pinned up, over my writing desk, a large picture of a little Italian donkey and next to it a calendar, where | often note quite interesting relationships between my subjective sense of time and objective time. It’s good having this desk job, since | don’t have every noncommissioned officer breathing down my neck, only the company sergeant major, who, since | stay on good terms with him, pays less and less attention as time goes on, and the major who behaves as though he is educated in these things.!”] q]We have relatively good living quarters. But the people whose house this is have now moved some one hundred meters away into one of the laborers’ houses, because they were afraid to stay so near the highway with the Stukas!!®

[4.] Special leave granted for the baptism of his son, Dietrich W. R. Bethge.

[5.] [A reference to the fact that Dietrich could not attend the Bethge wedding either.—J]DG]

[6.] Cf. 2/112, ed. note 19. |7.] The possibility, after six months’ “probation” at the front, to be assigned perhaps as a military chaplain; see 3/142, p. 380. [8.] Friedrich Justus Perels, who as legal advisor to the Confessing Church used his connections, until October 1944, “to procure UK classifications [which would release them from military duty—JDG|] for individual pastors” (Schreiber, /viedrich Justus Perels, 166).

[9.] Tilp. [10.] Dive bombers, Sturzkampfbombers.

3/138 369 continually tearing up another section of it and the single railway track that runs beside it.l''] Also, other low-flying aircraft keep turning up quite suddenly. In the town south of herel!2] | recently found Schumann’s Kleine Stiicke and Kinderszenenl'3] under the rubble, and sometimes | refresh my senses with them on the miserable piano here. Some of its keys (such as the A) don’t obey orders anymore, but | get enough of a sound that memory does the rest, and | keep on enthusiastically; still, only two or three times so far. It’s been quite a while since | saw anything more of this area, not to mention Rome, which is now almost completely out of the question. I’ve been reading some more of the Burckhardt.!!4! Incidentally, in reading Paul’s letters I’ve again been struck mightily by the apostle’s “self-confidence.” The Psalms and Paul. The

other day | received another issue of the mission paper;!'?] these reports, in which every journey, every morsel of food received, every person you encounter is stereotypically described as the answer to prayer, | find heavy going and really have trouble understanding them.

| was very much surprised by your analysis of your “getting older,’ seeing 411 things more objectively, and not having a keen sense of longing, in recent years.!'®! That hadn’t been clear to me, but it’s actually quite plausible. Can you say some-

thing about my situation, in which all my feelings and thoughts are now concentrated on the personal experience of marriage and love for Renate, while excitement about the church's affairs and devotion to its cause have, for want of new stimulation, stagnated somewhat? My conscious “missionary” drive, which in earlier years was perhaps more or less naive, has given way to a continual effort to grasp and understand things, people, and circumstances in a vaguely “human” way, if you can imagine what | mean. The other day Rainalter asked me to come for a walk, bring my Bible, and read to him from the Gospels and Epistles and other fine things, which we did. But | can’t record that as anything special, or tell it to you with great hopes and exclamations. It was “very nice” but matter of fact. How hard it is, by the way, to explain many of our circumstances and views from former times!

[11.] [These reasons may have been true, but German officers often forced the occupants of good houses to move out so that they could occupy them. Bethge may not have said this because of the censorship of his letters.—JDG] [12.] Velletri. [13.] Robert Schumann, Vier Kleine Stticke (Scherzo, Gigue, Romanze, Fughetta), op. 32 (1838-39); Kinderszenen, op. 15 (1838). [14.] Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. [15.] The Monatsblatt der Gofinerschen Missionsgesellschaft (Monthly Report of the Goss-

ner Mission Society), which had appeared from 1824 to 1941 under the title Die Biene auf dem Missionsfelde (The Bee on the Mission Field). [POT SEC .o/1lo2s ok:

370 Letters and Papers from Prison Unfortunately, | didn’t bring Das Neue Lied!'7! along, and indeed I’ve missed it.

Next time I'll pack it. You are not quite right about the tenth year, by the way. We first came together at the end of April 1935.['8! It’s really remarkable that such a new beginning was still possible. When shall we get home? Our major has a fabulous attitude. The other night he, the sergeant major, Rainalter, and | sat up in the orderlies’ room drinking wine until 2:00 a.m., and toward the end he talked about the end of the war, that it could only be positive. Otherwise we wouldn’t experience what would come later; we’d just get together somewhere, “dig in” like hedgehogs, and hold out until the last man falls; “wouldn’t we, Rainalter and Bethge?”’ That would be true soldiery, the highest degree of honor. | now expect to be home for Pentecost.

412 {]You ask about my quarters. We even have a bathroom, where we make a firel'?] now and then and really get clean; that’s a great amenity. We sleep on camp cots with mattresses and blankets—no sheets, of course. It’s all quite tolerable. I'd really look forward to the life of a military chaplain. What can | say? Monday evening, May 8

Your letter of April 30!°! has already come today, and I’m delighted with the many things that, | must say, are highly exciting. Some of them are expressed somewhat more naively and primitively in the questions | wrote above. It disturbs me that you seem to hear from me so seldom. | can no longer recall exactly when | wrote, but am quite certain that I’ve answered every letter more or less in detail and at length. Renate has just written in these words to me (about passing letters around): “But I’m always a bit worried, first of all about my grandparents, and if I’ve happily given them letters, I’m afraid that they don’t pass them on.”!?'! | had just made it clear to her once again that one needn’t be concerned about uncomfortable situations like having to repeat requests to pass

[17.] Ibid.

[18.] See 3/132, at ed. note 6. [Actually it is right: Bonhoeffer said, “We are beginning the tenth year of our friendship,” which begins when nine whole years have passed.—] DG] [19.] [To heat the water.—]DG]

[20 -ar 1S [21.] Bethge quoted this from memory. The passage in question (from Renate Bethge’s April 14, 1944, letter from Sakrow to Eberhard Bethge, received “Wednesday, April 26, 1944” in Rignano) is as follows: “Uncle Dietrich wrote that he wasn’t getting letters from you, which makes me wonder, could Wlergin] or M[aria] have forgotten any? Mail often takes a long time to reach him, unfortunately, but I can’t do much about it; my grandparents aren't always exactly happy when I give them a letter, and I don’t dare ask very often whether they have passed on the letters; they always say they have... . It would be good if Uncle Dietrich could tell you another address that works quicker.”

3/138 and 3/139 3/1 the letters along. So today | enclose without delay a letter for you that is quite old, long out of date.!?2] These last few days before | leave are getting on my nerves unbearably. First,

| fear that major events will interfere, !?3] and second, the bombing and strafing 413 attacks on our road have increased enormously, day and night. They rob me of all rest and composure. What would you think of the Daily Text for Ascension Day as the scripture for the baptismal service?!*4] | enjoyed the picture!*?! so much. Maria has written me another nice letter, but | don’t have a quiet moment to answer it properly. | do hope I'll get to see you. Yours as ever, most gratefully, Eberhard

139. To Eberhard Bethge!!! May 5, 1944

Dear Eberhard, Your Ieave should be due about now, so that you can get to know your son. I keep hoping my letter!*! will be forwarded to you and thus be out of date. But since everything is so uncertain nowadays—and long experience suggests that everything is more likely to stay the way it is than to change soon—I’1l write to you anyway. Christel visited me yesterday and told me that you are doing reasonably well and are managing at least to make Renate happy with a letter every day. It really is worthwhile having Renate stay in Sakrow so that at least you don’t have to worry about her during the air raids here. I’d like

to talk to Renate myself sometime, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to arrange it. ’m just happy that we were able to see each other in December.!!

[22.] Bethge tried to pass the letters he received from Albrecht Schénherr and other former members of the preachers’ seminary courses along to Bonhoeffer. [23.] [A possible reference to the anticipated attempt on Hitler’s life —]DG] [24.] May 18, 1944. Isa. 8:18: “See, I and the children whom the LorD has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lorp of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.” (Interpretive verse, | Pet. 3:22: Christ “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities and powers made subject to him.”)

[25.] Probably one of three photographs taken of Bonhoeffer in Tegel (Bethge, Bethge, and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, 1986 ed., 203, 217, 222). [1.] NZ, A 80,164; handwritten; note by Bethge: “received end of June.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 285-87, [2213/7 137.

[3.] Bethge was permitted to visit on December 23, 1943; see 2/94, ed. note 3.

O12 Letters and Papers from Prison 414 That was truly a good deed on the part of your father-in-law'*!—probably one of his best, since he doesn’t know how good it was. I wish so much for you that you can come soon, even though it’s depressing that we probably still won’t see each other. I’m doing fine personally, and so is my case, but the question of the date is still wide open.'”! But all good things come overnight,!°! so ’'m confidently waiting and hoping. In my previous letter I enclosed an address!’! that you can use if you like, but it isn’t necessary, I just wanted to let you know. A few more words about “religionlessness.” You probably remember Bultmann’s essay on “demythologizing the New Testament.”'! My opinion of it today would be that he went not “too far,” as most people thought, but rather not far enough. It’s not only “mythological” concepts like miracles, ascension, and so on (which in principle can’t be separated from concepts of God, faith, etc.!) that are problematic, but “religious” concepts as such. You can’t separate God from the miracles (as Bultmann thinks); instead, you must be able to interpret and proclaim them both “nonreligiously.” Bultmann’s approach is still basically liberal (that is, it cuts the gospel short), whereas I’m trying to think theologically. What then does it mean to “interpret religiously”? It means, in my opinion, to speak metaphysically, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, individualistically. Neither way is appropriate, either for 415 the biblical message or for people today. Hasn’t the individualistic question of saving our personal souls almost faded away for most of us? Isn’t it our impression that there are really more important things than this question (—perhaps not more important than this matier, but certainly more important than the question!?)? IT know it sounds outrageous to say that, but alter all, isn’t it fundamentally biblical? Does the question of saving one’s soul

[4.] Rudiger Schleicher, who arranged the permit for Bethge’s visit; see 2/89, ed. note 12, [5.] This refers to the date for the trial. Hearings had been held on May 3 and 4, 1944; Bonhoeffer had marked these days (Wednesday and Thursday) in his 1944 Daily Texts with “RKG” [Reichskriegsgericht, “Reich War Court"—JDG]. [6.| [I.e., “suddenly."°—]DG] [7.] The address of Sergeant Knobloch, a guard at the Tegel prison; see DB-ER, 848. [8.] Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology” (1941). See also Bonhoeffer’s letter of March 24, 1942, to Ernst Wolf, DBWE 16, 1/148, pp. 260-61: “I take great pleasure in the new Bultmann volume. The intellectual honesty of his work never ceases to impress me.” In view of protests from the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer adds: “This arrogance,

which flourishes here .. . is a real scandal for the Confessing Church.” See also 4/187, ed. note 24.

3/139 373 even come up in the Old Testament? Isn’t God’s righteousness and kingdom on earth the center of everything? And isn’t Rom. 3:24ff. the culmination

of the view that God alone is righteous,!¥! rather than an individualistic doctrine of salvation? What matters is not the beyond but this world, how it is created and preserved,!!! is given laws, reconciled, and renewed. What is beyond this world is meant, in the gospel, to be there for this world—not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystical, pietistic, ethical theology, but

in the biblical sense of the creation and the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Barth was the first theologian—to his great and lasting credit—to begin the critique of religion,!'!'!! but he then put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation that says, in effect, “like it or lump it.” Whether it’s the virgin birth, the Trinity, or anything else, all are equally significant and necessary parts of the whole, which must be swallowed whole or notat all. That’s not biblical. There are degrees of cognition!!*! and degrees of significance. That means an “arcane discipline”!!’! must be reestablished,

through which the mysteries of the Christian faith are sheltered against profanation.!'#! The positivism of revelation!!! is too easygoing, since inthe 416 end it sets up a law of faith and tears up what is—through Christ’s becoming

flesh!—a gilt for us. Now the church stands in the place of religion—that in itself is biblical—but the world is left to its own devices, as it were, to rely on itself. That is the error. At the moment Iam thinking about how the con-

cepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification should be reinterpreted in a “worldly” way—in the Old Testament sense and in the sense of John 1:14.!' Pll write you more about it.

[9.] See DBWE 6:147-48. [See also DBWE 4:255-56.—] DG] [10.] Cf. the “orders of preservation” in DBWE 3:139-49 and DBWE 6:173, ed. note 8.

[11.| Cf. 3/137, pp. 363-64, at ed. notes 15 and 17. [12.] See Harnack, “Stufen wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis,” 202-5. [13.] Cf. 3/137, ed. note 19. [Whereas in 3/137 the “arcane discipline” is related primarily to worship and prayer as a means of protecting Christian identity when engaged in “worldly” and “righteous” action—see 3/145, ed. note 25—here Bonhoeffer refers more specifically to its role as protection against the profanation of the “mysteries of Christian faith,” such as the doctrine of the Trinity. Such “mysteries of faith” are not for public consumption but are to be preserved within the life of the church through the “arcane discipline.”-—]DG]

[14.] Cf. the statement in DBWE 4:45: “Costly grace is grace as God’s holy treasure which must be protected from the world and which must not be thrown to the dogs.” The reference to Matt. 7:6 appears in DBW 14:550 in connection with the disciplina arcani in

the catechetical instruction of the early church: “Pearls should not be cast before the swine.”

[15.] See 3/137, ed. note 17. [16.] “The Word became flesh.”

374 Letters and Papers from Prison Forgive me for writing in German script;!'! normally I do that only when writing for my own use. Perhaps what I’ve written was more to clear my own

mind than for your benefit. I don’t really want to trouble you with problems that you presumably don’t have time to deal with; maybe they only torment you. But I can’t do otherwise than share my thoughts with you, simply because only in that way do I get them clear for myself. If that does not suit you at present, please say so. Tomorrow is Cantate Sunday,!'*! so I'll be thinking of you and enjoying many pleasant memories. My parents were just here and told me how nice and healthy your little

one is and how well the radiotherapy is clearing up the mark on his chin. I’ve arranged for Renate to get some extra food very soon, and hope it comes through as I’ve been promised. Good-bye! Be patient, as we are, and keep well! You're in my thoughts every day. Yours affectionately, Dietrich

417 140. To Eberhard Bethge''' May 6, 1944

Dear Eberhard,

It made me extraordinarily happy today that you thought of me on April 24'7] in such a nice and kind way. I don’t have anything else in particular to tell you today, just how good it is to hear back from you now and then. Thanks very much! I didn’t know there was any friction between your mother and Renate.!! If it’s really so, you must ask your mother emphatically to clear up whatever

the causes are. ... It could be that all the female members of our family aren't easy to have as daughters-in-law. But it is the business of parents-inlaw to recognize the strengths of their daughters-in-law, and actually it’s [17.] [The old form of German handwriting, using Gothic letters instead of the Latin alphabet, was still in use at this time and encouraged in the Third Reich as “German’; thereafter it was no longer taught.—]DG.| [18.] The fourth Sunday after Easter, named after Ps. 98:1: “Sing [to the LORD a new song].” [See Bonhoeffer’s sermon for this day in DBWE 13, 3/8.—JDG] [1.] NL, A 80,165; handwritten; note by Bethge: “received end of June.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 287-89. [2.] Note by Bethge: “Maria’s birthday April 23.” [3.] Cf. 3/134, p. 356.

3/139 and 3/140 315 always the wife’s exclusive love for her husband that causes trouble. Renate is so young that you can’t just leave a conflict like that up to her to solve. You will surely find the right word to say to your mother. Renate is too young to

be able to handle this with your mother properly. Pardon me for interfering, but I think you did ask for my advice.

More soon about handwriting analysis, since you’re interested.4/— Unfortunately, because of that death, your last letter didn’t get through to me.!°! Was it returned to you, and what was the date? Did the envelope have your return address on it? I'll write soon about “egoism”!°! in Christians (“selfless self-love”)!”!

and so forth. I think on that we are of one mind. Too much altruism is 418 oppressive and demands too much. “Egoism” can be less self-seeking, less demanding!"™!

I hope you are still getting all my letters, about every week or two? Enough for today! Farewell, dear Eberhard. Thanks for everything and keep well! ath a cet Yours, Dietrich

Cantate Sunday!"

Have just been listening to beautiful morning music, Reger, Hugo Distler; a good way to begin Sunday. Only it’s bizarre when announcements like “enemy air squadrons approaching .. .” break right into the music. The connection between the two isn’t that immediately obvious. Last night I was thinking again about what mothers-in-law are supposed to do. I don’t think it’s impossible, actually, that Mrs. von Kl[eist]—who has not always handled my relationship with Maria very well—did indeed,

[4.] Ibid., p. 356. [5.| [bid., p. 357, and 3/140, ed. note 18. [6.] 3/134, p. 357. [7.] This phrase is from Josef Pieper’s Four Cardinal Virtues, 149: “Can self-love be ‘selfless’? ... The purpose... inherent in self-love .. . is given only to selfless self-love, which seeks not itself blindly.” Cf. Bonhoeffer, Zettelnotizen, 56; Bonhoeffer’s letter of October 9, 1940, to Bethge, DBWE 16, 1/23, p. 78. “I believe that a great deal of the exhaustion and sterility in our ranks is rooted in the lack of ‘selfless self-love.’ Since this topic has

no place in the official Protestant ethic, we arrogantly disregard it and become work obsessed, to the detriment of the individual and of the whole. It belongs, however, to that humanum for which we are redeemed.” See also DBWE 6:125, ed. note 100; Feil, “Dietrich Bonhoeffers 6kumenische Ethik,” 770, ed. note 9. See also the variant “selfless sense of selfhood” in Holl, What Did Luther Understand by Religion? 86. [8.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [9.] End of writing in the margin. [10.] May 7, 1944.

[11.] [German composers noted for organ and church music.—]DG]

376 Letters and Papers from Prison together with my mother-in-law,!'?! suggest the idea of our having devotions together.!'*! She’s always imagining that Maria “isn’t up to” being my wife and needs me to introduce her to theology and what not. Actually, her'!4! knowledge of me is very one-sided. Anyway, that idea was shelved a long time ago. I’m certain that mothers-in-law are not meant to do any upbringing—what gives them the right? It’s her privilege to receive a grown-

up daughter or son, and she ought to see how they enrich the family and not criticize them. She can enjoy her children, be available when asked for help and counsel, but is free of any responsibility or educational role in their marriage; that’s actually a privilege. I think when a mother-in-law sees 419 that her child is really loved—and I must say again, the women in our family love their husbands with an intensity and exclusivity that is quite rare; this might in itself cause difficulties, but it’s a great thing (just think of Susi and Sabine, and Christel now too,!!°! each of whom has her own problem with her husband!)—she should just be glad and put everything else aside, especially any attempts to alter character! There aren’t many people who know how to appreciate reticence, but I think Papa and Mama could. Sirens are going off; Pll continue later. So, it was pretty heavy again,'!°! and I’m always glad to know that Renate is outside the city. Back to reticence: it all depends on what the person is keeping to herself, and also on whether there is one person with whom she can be completely open; in both respects, your mother really has every reason to be confident and glad. I think it’s banal to talk about mothers-in-law being jealous; it’s rather that there are two kinds of love, a mother’s and a wife’s, and that is the source of much misunderstanding. Furthermore, it’s much easier for sons-in-law than for daughters-in-law to get along peaceably with their mothers-in-law. Naomi and Ruth in the Bible!'”! are a unique example to the contrary. Another thing: letters sent to my deceased friend!'®! are all supposed to be returned to the sender. Was there a return address? Could you perhaps

[12.| |He is referring to his future mother-in-law.—] DG] [13.] Cf. 2/128, p. 338-39, and 3/134, p. 356. [14.] [Ruth von Kleist.—]DG] [15.] Susanne Drefi, Sabine Leibholz; “and Christel [von Dohnanyi] now too” added later. [16.| Note in 1944 Daily Texts: “Daytime alarm” (10:35 to 11:56 a.m.). In the Wehrmachtberichte, 3:100: “Especially within the city of Berlin, damage to dwellings, cultural facilities, plus human casualties.” [17.] As portrayed in the Old Testament book of Ruth. Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible has pencil marks beside Ruth 2:11-12. [18.] Refers to letters sent illegally via the address of Mr. “Engel,” who died January 27, 1944; cf. 2/106, ed. note 7, and 3/134, ed. note 12.

3/140 and 3/14] 377 write again, to the new address or home?!!9! I’d hate so much to miss even one letter. I’m almost sure you have the letter back by now. I'll also look into it here again. I don’t know Cardano at all.'*°! Is he available in German? You write so 420 casually that bad weather is welcome because of the air raids.'*!! From that I gather that it’s pretty unpleasant much of the rest of the time. But even so, it’s hard for me to get a picture of your situation in this regard. You are rather ught-lipped about it, so 'm right to draw conclusions. Of course ,you don’t want to worry Renate ... but you could tell me what it’s really like! Recently I was in the city again a few times,'**! and the result has been quite satisfactory. But since the question of the date is still unresolved, I am really losing interest in my case; I quite often forget about it for weeks on end. That's all for now. God keep you, and us all! Your devoted Dietrich How’s your Italian going? And what are your thoughts now about Dohrmann?!?”!

141. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge'!!! May 9, 1944

Dear Renate and Eberhard, Your hoped-for leave,!*! very soon, is joyous news for me too. If it really comes

true, that you will be together again in a few days—as with all such hopes, one must dampen one’s anticipation, right up to the last minute—and if you then have your child baptized, I’d like you not to allow my absence to cast the least shadow over your happiness, especially you, Eberhard. (m going 421 to try to write something for you, for the baptismal service,!’! and you know that all my thoughts will be with you there. It grieves me, of course, that the

[19.] “To the new address or home” inserted afterward. [20.| Cf. 3/134, ed. note 4. [21.] [See 3/134, p. 355.—JDG] [22.] Hearings in the Reich War Court on Wednesday, May 3, and Thursday, May 4, 1944; cf. 3/139, ed. note 5. [23.] See 2/112, ed. notes 19 (“military chaplain”) and 20. [1.] NL, A 80,167; handwritten. Previously published in LPP, 289-91. [2.] Special leave for the baptism of their son, Dietrich W. R. Bethge. [3.] “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism,” 3/145.

378 Letters and Papers from Prison unexpected has happened and once again I am unable to celebrate this day with you, but I’ve become quite reconciled to it. I believe nothing that happens to me is without meaning, and that it is all right for all of us, even though it goes against our wishes. As I see it, I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it. In the light of the great goal, all the things we have to give up, and the wishes denied, are not of much account. Nothing could be more undignified and wrong than to make a calamity of my present fate, precisely at such a rare moment of joy as you will have in these days. It would go entirely against my feelings and take away the confidence with which I regard my situation. As thankful as we are for all our personal joys, we mustn't for a moment lose sight of the great things that we're living for, and they should shed a special light, rather than gloom, on your days of happiness. I couldn't bear it if what is happening to me now were to cloud in the slightest way your few weeks of happiness, which have been hard enough to arrange. That indeed would be a calamity, but the other is not. My only concern is to help you, as much as I can, to keep these radiant spring days—I expect you'll also be celebrating your first wedding anniversary together—as bright as possible. Please don’t think for a moment that in doing so you would fail me in any way; far from it! And above all, please don’t imagine that I’m only bringing these words out with difficulty for your sake. Instead, they represent my most sincere wish, and I'd be truly pleased and delighted if you would fulfill it. {if we could manage to see cach other during these days, it would be wonderful, but please don’t worry unnecessarily about that either—l1 still

422 have vivid memories of December 23.'*! And please don’t give up a day just to bring me something. I know you would be glad to do it, but it would weigh on my mind. Of course, if your father could arrange for you to visit

me through the same channel he used in December,'! ?d be extremely grateful. Anyway, I know you'll be thinking of me every morning when you read the Daily Texts, as I do of you, and I’m very glad that now you'll be able to read from the Bible together again morning and evening. It will be important for you, not only in these coming days but in the future as well. And don’t let these coming days be clouded for you by the thought of how short they are and how soon you will have to say good-bye again. Don’t try

to do too much, let people come and see you instead of driving around everywhere, and take time to enjoy quietly every hour of the day as a great

[4.] Permission for Eberhard Bethge to visit; see 2/89, ed. note 11. [5.] Rtiidiger Schleicher had obtained permission to visit on December 23; see 2/89, ed. note 12, and 3/139, ed. note 4.

3/141 and 3/142 379 gift. It’s my personal opinion that the next few weeks will bring such great and surprising events that one truly doesn’t know at the beginning of your leave how things will be by the end.!°!As much as these events will affect our personal destinies, | do hope they won't rob you of the essential peace of your days together. How good that you can be together just at this time and share every decision. If something to eat arrives from Silesia in the next few days,'’! please have it yourselves, to make your days together more enjoyable! How I would have loved to baptize your little boy. But that isn’t the impor-

tant thing. Most of all, I wish that the day of baptism will help to assure you that your child’s life, and your own, are in safekeeping, so you can look to the future with confidence. Will you choose the text for the baptism yourselves? In case you're still looking for one, how about 2 Tim. 2:1, or Prov. 23:26 or 4:18'*! (I just discovered this last verse recently—and think it’s

beautiful)? 423 Now I don’t want to bother you with too long a letter right when you first

see each other again! I just wanted to send my good wishes and say how much I’m rejoicing with you. Be sure to play plenty of good music!

Wishing you every good thing imaginable, with all my heart, Your devoted Dietrich 142. To Eberhard Bethge!!! May 16, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I’ve just heard that you said you were expecting to arrive this morning.!*! You can't imagine how relieved and happy | am that you can be here just now.!8! Even I would almost be ready for once to speak of “providence” and

[6.] [Another possible reference to the anticipated coup.—]DG| [7.] From Mrs. Keller, the mother of a fellow prisoner, from her farm in Silesia. [8.| 2 Tim. 2:1: “You then, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Proy, 23:26: “My child, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.” Prov. 4:18:

“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.” All three verses are marked with pencil in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible, the last with a blunt pencil. [1.] NZ, A 80,168; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 292-93. [2.] Note in 1944 Daily Texts for Monday, May 15, 1944: “Eb[erhard] on leave.” [3.] The Allied offensive was pushing its way through central Italy; see Die Wehrmachtberichte, 3:103 (for May 14, 1944): “Fighting continued on the southern Italian front with rising intensity, especially in the area... south of Cassino.” Because of the decision of

380 Letters and Papers from Prison “prayers being answered,” and maybe you would too.'4! It would have been very hard for Renate if things had gone otherwise, and surely for you as well. Now that I have also received your letters today, at the same time as the news of your arrival—as a sort of greeting in advance, thanks very much—lI really find it much better that your superior must manage without you for a while. I would hardly have been up to the kind of situation you describe on that wine-drinking evening.'°! But under the influence of alcohol things often do look rather different from naked reality, and there is a facon de parler! among these people that often stands in astonishing contrast to their actual

424 behavior. I notice this during air raids here time and again, with mixed amusement and embarrassment. Anyhow, it’s much better that way! Today you're seeing your son for the first time! When will I finally get a picture of him?—and hopefully one of you with him as well! Take plenty of snapshots. My letter to greet you on your arrival must be there by now.!7! Even though the letter I got from you today has aroused a keen desire for another good talk with you, I’m so happy just to know you're here that all these personal wishes are overshadowed. I think it would be right for you to talk about the chaplaincy question!*! with someone here; the best would be with Dohrmann himself. Mama can arrange that easily, or possibly Deta Hase!/™! if she is in town. There are, of course, two sides to it, also with regard to possible developments,!'! and it would make a difference where you were stationed and with what sort of unit. I would think that nowadays you can preach the gospel quite [recly and that at least you would find attentive listeners. If 1t gets to that point, Pll write you in greater detail and would gladly also send you meditations for sermons.

I'd also have a good look into a transfer to the medical corps. Papa or perhaps Ursel could introduce you to the garrison doctor here, Dr. Kleeberger, for instance. Then you’d presumably have to take a training course in Guben. Now that you’ve passed your probation time at the front,!!! all

the U.S. Fifth Army to take Rome, the German positions near Velletri and Rignano were threatened. [4.] Cf. 3/138, p. 369.

Pooh 38 0.

[6.] “Way of speaking” (French). [7.] 3/141. [8.] See 2/112, ed. note 19. [9.] Margarete (Deta) von Hase, née Baroness von Funck, wife of General Paul von Hase, the city commander of Berlin. [10.] [The anticipated coup.—J DG] [11.] Cf. 3/138, ed. note 7.

3/142 and 3/143 381 this is much more feasible. How’s your health? Are you classed as “conditionally KV”!!*! or what?

What will seeing each other again be like for the first time after a long separation? It will surely take you only a few hours to get over the strangeness that every absence causes. What a lot you'll have to tell each other! You needn’t worry about running out of stationery, I think.!'*! Besides my stock of rough draft paper, I may have a possibility of getting some here.!'! But do let me know when you really run short. Your correspondence really = 425

mustn’t be limited in that way as well.!!5! I hope the package for Renate from Upper Silesia comes soon.!!®! | do not want you to bring me any of it; it’s for you to enjoy together. Since all I have to do here is to wait, I really don’t need much, and it’s one of the things that makes me most happy, to be able to offer you a little something, even from in here. Enjoy these coming days to the full, with all my good wishes. Love from your devoted Dietrich

I’m still going to write something for the baptism. How about Ps. 90:14l!7! as the text? I was also thinking of Isa. 8:18''®! but found it a bit too general.

143. To Ursula Schleicher!!! Dear Ursel,

Please give the enclosed to Eberhard and Renate. It’s a small token that I am thinking of them on the baptismal day.! It could be that someone will manage to come in the afternoon that day and bring you a present from me [12.| |The abbreviation for Kriegsverwendungsfahig, or “fit for wartime service.”-—]DG] [13.] [Cf. 3/138.—JDG]

[14.] Cf. 4/191, ed. note 1; in July and August, Bonhoeffer used stationery with a watermark indicating that it was “official government property.” [15.] This sentence written in the margin. [16.] Cf. 3/141, ed. note 7. [17.] “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” [18.] “See, and the children whom the Lorp has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the LorpD of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.” Cf. 4/138, ed. note 24.

[1.] Found in April 1994 in Ursula Schleicher’s papers (no archive number); handwritten in ink, 1 page; undated. Since Eberhard and Renate Bethge’s visit to Tegel (May 19) had not yet taken place at the time of this letter, the date is probably May 16, 17, or 18, 1944.

[2.] Baptism of Dietrich W. R. Bethge on May 21, 1944.

382 Letters and Papers from Prison 426 for my godson. It will be a nice, relatively young businessman'*! who would be happy if you'd invite him in for an hour. He can tell you a lot about me, and one can have a good conversation with him. He wants me to baptize his fourth child after my release, and he’s a good violinist. But please don't mention names of other people here. The whole thing is supposed to be a surprise, and I’m not yet sure if it will work out, getting the present. I wish you all a wonderful day. If it works out for me to see Eberhard, that would be marvelous.'! But he mustn’t spoil his few days of leave with applications and requests. I’m just happy to know that at this very time he’s here. Do discuss thoroughly the question of a chaplaincy or medical service!!! Best regards to Rudiger and to our parents. And thank you all so much for all the things you’re always doing for me. But—how much longer? Affectionately, Dietrich I almost forgot to wish you a happy birthday!!°! My wish for you is that Hans-

Walter and Eberhard can both come home soon for good, and that next year your whole family will be gathered again at your house, in peacetime.

427 144. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge'!'! May 18

Dear Eberhard and Renate,

I’ve wanted so much to write something for you for the baptismal day. It hasn’t turned out the way it should have. I’m only sending it to you to show how much | am thinking of you.'*! Thank you again for asking me to be godparent to your child and for naming him after me. My wish for you is that you will look back on this day of baptism especially happily, and that it helps you fill this brief time together—which hopefully will soon turn to uninterrupted togetherness!—with a substantial meaning that will last

[3.] Sergeant Helmut Linke, a Tegel prison guard. For more about him, see 3/146, p. 391 (“has his own plumbing business and is originally from Holland” and “a keen musician”). See Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 140. [4.] Permission to visit for May 19, 1944; see 3/146, ed. note 2. [5.] On this recommendation, see also 3/142, p. 380. [6.] May 21.

[1.] NZ, A 80,169; handwritten; date without year (1944). Previously published in EPP, 292.

[2.] “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism,” 3/145.

3/143—3/145 383 even through times of separation. Some memories torment us, and some strengthen us. This day will be one that gives strength. Who will baptize him? Who will be godparent? How will you celebrate? I hope to hear about all this soon, best of all from you yourselves. Please think of me without any regrets. Martin'’! has had nearly seven years of this! That is something else altogether. The twenty-first will be a day of rejoicing for me, too! How splendid that you got back exactly on your first wedding anniversary! Wishing you great joy and peace, Your devoted Dietrich

I just heard—after no longer thinking it possible—the marvelous news that

I'll see you here tomorrow. So I’m spending today getting ready for that hour. Who managed to arrange it? Whoever it was, I’m really very grateful.

145. Thoughts on the Day of Baptism 428 of Dietrich Wilhelm Riidiger Bethge!! Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of D. W. R. May 1944

You are the first of a new gene[ration in our family. Never mind if] your coming [confuses us a little about our generational re|lationships, as we sud[denly see ourselves moving ear]lier than expected into the second,

third, and fourth generation. It’s clear, nevertheless, that you are the eldest, you lead the procession of the next generation, and you will have the incomparable advantage of sharing a good part of your life with the third and fourth generations before you.'*! Your great-grandfather will be able to tell you about people he knew personally who were born in the

[3.] Martin Niemoller was in the Dachau concentration camp. [1.] NZ, A 80,173; handwritten in ink, 10 pages, from Tegel, May 1944. The manuscript has numerous individual words deciphered in pencil by Ridiger Schleicher, for the use of his secretary, Elisabeth Pasewald, who made a typed copy during the week after the baptism. This copy was the source for the text as published in Widerstand und Ergebung (1st ed., 1951), 196-208. Previously published in English in LPP, 294-300. During its concealment in the garden (see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 162), Bonhoeffer’s manuscript became illegible in several places. The present text relies on the one printed in Widerstand und Ergebung, which was checked again in the summer of 1990 by Bethge, who compared it with what remained of the original manuscript. [2.] Cf. 2/110, p. 290.

384 Letters and Papers from Prison eighteenth century; and some day, long after the year 2000, you will be the living bridge for your descendants to an oral tradition going back over 250 years—all that, of course, sub conditione Jacobea, “if the Lord wishes, we will live.”'“! So your birth is a particular occasion for us to reflect on how times change, and to try to discern the outlines of the future.

The three names you bear point to three houses with which your life is, and

[should] remain, inseparably linked. The house of your grandfather on your father’s side! was a village parsonage. Simplicity and health, a com429 munal and varied intellectual life, unpretentious enjoyment of the good things of life, in natural and un-self-conscious sharing with ordinary people and their work; a capacity for looking after oneself in practical matters and

a modesty founded on inner contentment; these are the enduring earthly values that found their home in the village parsonage and that you will find in your father. In all life’s circumstances they will give you a firm foundation for living together with others and for genuine accomplishment and inner happiness.

The cosmopolitan culture of the old middle-class [btrgerlich]! tradition represented by your mother’s home has created, in those who inherit il, a proud awareness of being called to high responsibility in public service,

intellectual achievement and leadership, and a deep-rooted obligation to be guardians of a great historical heritage and intellectual tradition. This will endow you, even before you are aware of it, with a way of thinking and acting that you can never lose without being untrue to yourself. It was a kind thought on your parents’ part to have you named alter a great-uncle, a pastor who is a good friend of your father’s; he is currently sharing the fate of many other good Germans and Protestant Christians, and so he has only been able to look on from afar as your parents married and you were born and baptized, but he has great confidence and joyful hopes for your future. He tries always to keep up the spirit—as he understands it—that is embodied in the home of his parents, your greatgrandparents. He considers it a good omen for your future that this was the house where your parents first met, and he hopes that one day you will be aware of and thankful for its spirit and draw upon the strength that it gives.

[3.] Jas. 4:15.

[4.] Wilhelm Bethge. [5.] [See 2/73, ed. note 22.—]DG]

3/145 385 The old village parsonage and the old middle-class'®! house belong to a world that will have vanished by the time you grow up. But the old spirit will survive the period of its misjudgment and its actual failure, and after a time of withdrawal, renewed inner reflection, probing, and healing will create new forms for itself. To be deeply rooted in the soil of the past makes life

harder, but also richer and more vigorous. There are fundamental truths 430 in human life to which it always returns sooner or later. We can’t hurry it; we have to be able to wait. “God seeks out what has gone by,” the Bible says (Eccl. 3:15)! In the coming years of upheaval, it will be the greatest of gifts to know that

you are safe in a good home. It will be a bulwark against all dangers from without and within. The time when children arrogantly broke away from their parents will be past. The home will draw children back to their parents’ care; it will be their refuge where they find counsel, calm, and clarity. You are fortunate in having parents who know from their own experience what a parental home can mean in stormy times. Amid the general impoverishment of spiritual life, you will find your parents’ home a treasury of spiritual values and a source of inspiration. Music, as your parents understand and practice

it, will bring you back from confusion to your clearest and purest self and perceptions, and from cares and sorrows to the underlying note of joy. Your parents’ ability to cope with life will lead you early [on to] help yourself with your own hands and not to despise any manual task. Your parents’ gift of gaining effortlessly the goodwill of others will bring you many [friendships and help when needed. The devotional life [Frommigkeit] of your home will not be noisy or wordy, but it will teach you to pray, to fear and love God above all, and to do the will of Jesus Christ gladly. “My child, keep your father’s commandment, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Bind them upon your heart always. ... When you walk, they will lead you; when you le down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you” (Prov. 6:20—22).!5! “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).

I would wish you could grow up in the country;!¥! but it will no longer be

the countryside where your father grew up. The big cities, where people 431

[6.] [Cf. ed. note 5.—JDG] [7.] On Eccl. 3:15b, see also 2/88, pp. 228-29.

[8.] Quoted by Bonhoeffer from memory, not exactly as in Bonhoeffer’s edition of Luther’s Bible.

[9.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s letter of January 29, 1940, to his parents from Sigurdshof (DBW 15, 1/174): “Indeed, I feel more and more that living in the countryside, particularly in

386 Letters and Papers from Prison expected everything life has to offer, every pleasure, where they swarmed together as if for a festival, have brought death and dying upon themselves with every imaginable horror, and women and children have become refugees fleeing these terrifying places. The age of big cities on our continent seems to be over. The Bible says Cain was the original founder of cities!!! Maybe there will still be some world-class metropolises, but their luster, seductive though it may be, will have something uncanny for Europeans, In any case.

qOn the other hand, the great migration out of the cities will change the countryside completely. The quiet and seclusion of country life has already been invaded by radio, cars, telephones, and the bureaucratic organization of almost all aspects of life. If millions of people who can’t let go of the pace and expectations of city life move to the country, if whole industries are moved to rural areas, the urbanization of the countryside will progress rapidly and change the whole basic structure of rural life. There are just as few villages like those of thirty years ago Ic{t as there are idyllic South Sea islands. People long for solitude and quiet, but they will have a hard time finding it. Nevertheless, in this time of change, they will gain from having a plot of land under their feet!!! from which to draw strength for a new, simpler, more natural and contented life of daily work and evening leisure. “There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment... if we have 432 food and clothing, we will be content with these” (1 Tim. 6:6-7).!'*! “Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that I need, or T shall be full, and deny you, and say ‘Who is the Lorb?’ or | shall be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my God” (Prov. 30:8).''S! “Flee from the midst of Babylon ... she could not be healed. Forsake her, and let each of us go to our own country” (Jer. 51:6ff.).4!

times like these, is much more humane than in the city. All the mass effects simply fall away here. The contrast between Berlin and this remote farm is now particularly great.” [10.] Gen. 4:17: “Cain... built a city”; in his Luther Bible, Bonhoeffer underlined “a

city” in ink. }

} [11.] Echoes of Antaeus; see, for example, DBWE 10:344, 376-78, 531; and DBWE 7:69.

[12.] Actually vv. 6 and 8, quoted from memory, not quite as in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible.

[13.] Quoted with slight inaccuracies from vv. 8b and 9. Bonhoeffer had marked vv. 7-9 in his Luther Bible with pencil in the margin. [14.] Quoted from the beginning of v. 6 and from v. 9.

3/145 387 We grew up with our parents’ and grandparents’ experience that each person can and must plan,!!°! develop, and shape his own life, that there is a life work on which one must decide, and that he can and must pursue this with all his might. But from our own experience we have learned that we cannot even plan for the next day, that what we have built up is destroyed overnight. Our lives, unlike our parents’ lives, have become formless or even fragmentary.'!©! Nevertheless, I can only say that I have not wanted to live in another

time than ours, even though it tramples on our outward happiness. More clearly than in other ages, we realize that the world 1s in God’s wrathful and

merciful hands. In Jeremiah’s words: “Thus says the Lorp: I am going to break down what I have built, and pluck up what I have planted... . And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them, for lam going to bring disaster upon all flesh, says the Lorb; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go” (chap. 45).'!7! If we come

through the wreckage of a lifetime’s acquired goods with our living souls intact, let us be satisfied with that. If the creation is being destroyed by its

very Creator, what right have we to grumble about the destruction of our 433 own work? It will be the task of our generation, not to “seek great things,” but to save and preserve our souls out of the chaos, and to realize that this is the only thing we can carry as “booty” out of the burning house. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). We shall have to bear our lives more than to shape them, to hope more than to plan, to hold out more than to stride ahead. But for you, the younger, newborn generation, we want to preserve that soul, which will empower you to plan and build up and give shape to a new and better life. We have lived too much in our thoughts; we believed that by considering all the options of an action in advance we could ensure it, so that it would proceed of its own accord. We learned too late that it is not the thought but readiness to take responsibility that is the mainspring of action. Your generation will relate thought and action in a new way. You will only think about what you have to answer for in action. For us thought was in many ways a luxury afforded to onlookers; for you it will be entirely subordinated to action. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21),!18!

[15.] See “After Ten Years,” section on “Present and Future,” p. 50. [16.] See 2/114, p. 301. [17.] Jer. 45:4-5. Cf. 2/54, p. 150, and ed. note 5. [18.] Cf. DBWE 4:179.

388 Letters and Papers from Prison For the greater part of our lives, pain was a stranger to us. Avoiding pain, as far as possible, was one of our subconscious guiding principles. Subtlety of feeling, intense awareness of one’s own pain and that of others, are both the strength and the weakness of our way of life. Your generation will begin early having to bear privations and pain and having your patience severely tested, so you will be tougher and more realistic. “It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth” (Lam. 3:27).

We believed we could make our way in life with reason and justice [Recht], and when both failed us, we no longer saw any way forward. We have also overestimated, time and again, the importance of reasonableness 434 and justice in influencing the course of history. You who are growing up in the midst of a world war, which 90 percent of humankind doesn’t want but for which they are giving their lives and goods, will learn from childhood on that this world is ruled by forces against which reason can do nothing. Thus your generation will deal with these powers more soberly and successfully. In our lives the “enemy” did not really exist. You know that you have enemies and friends, and what each means, enemy and friend, for your life. From childhood you will learn to fight your enemy in ways we never knew and to trust your [friend unconditionally. “Do not human beings have a hard service on earth?” (Job 7:1).''9! “Blessed be the Lorp, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; my rock and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge” (Ps. 144:1-2). “A true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin” (Prov. 18:24).

Are we moving toward an age of colossal organizations and collective insti-

tutions, or will the desire of innumerable people for small, manageable, personal relationships be satisfied? Does the one have to exclude the other? Isn't it conceivable that it is precisely the vast scale of world organizations that allow more room for life at the personal level? A similar question is whether we are moving toward a time when the fittest will be selected, that is, toward a society ruled by aristocracy, or toward a uniformity in all out ward and inward human living conditions. Although there has been a very

far-reaching equalization of material and spiritual!*°! living conditions among human beings, the sense of quality, cutting across all levels of today’s society in seeking the human values of Justice, achievement, and courage,

[19.] [Luther Bible literally: “Do not human beings always have to fight on earth?” —1pe.] [20.] [I.e., nonmaterial.—JDG]

3/14) 389 could create a new selection of people, to whom the right to provide strong leadership will be given. We can give up our privileges without a struggle, recognizing the justice of history. Events and circumstances may arise that

take precedence over our wishes and our rights. Then, not in embittered and barren pride, but consciously yielding to divine judgment,'*" we shall 435 prove ourselves worthy to survive by identifying ourselves generously and selflessly with the whole community and the suffering of our fellow human beings. “But any nation that will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land, says the Lorp, to till it and live there” (Jer. 27:11). “Seek the welfare of the city ...and pray to the LorD on its behalf” (Jer. 29:7). “Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath is past” (Isa. 26:20). “For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Ps. 30:5). You are being baptized today as a Christian. All those great and ancient

words of the Christian proclamation will be pronounced over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out, without your understanding any of it. But we too are being thrown back all the way to the beginnings of our understanding. What reconciliation and redemption mean, rebirth and Holy Spirit, love for one’s enemies, cross and resurrection, what it means to live in Christ and follow Christ, all that is so difficult and remote that we hardly dare speak of it anymore.'*?! In these words and actions handed down to us, we sense something totally new and revolutionary, but we cannot yet grasp it and express it. This is our own fault. Our church has been fighting during these years only for its self-preservation, as if that were an end in itself.*! It has become incapable of bringing the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and to the world. So the words we used before must lose their power, be silenced, and we can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew, out of that prayer and action. By the time you grow up, the 436 form of the church will have changed considerably. It is still being melted

and remolded, and every attempt to help it develop prematurely into a

[21.] Cf. Bishop George Bell’s recording of Bonhoeffer’s words in Sweden, end of May 1942, DBWE 16, 1/170, p. 300, looking toward the time after the war: “Christians do not wish to escape repentance, or chaos if God wills to bring it on us. We must take this judgment as Christians.” [22.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s letter to Ruth-Roberta Stahlberg, DBWE 16, 1/3. [23.] Cf. 4/187 (“Outline for a Book”), p. 500.

390 Letters and Papers from Prison powerful organization again will only delay its conversion [Umkehr] and purification. It is not for us to predict the day—but the day will come— when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new language, perhaps quite nonreligious language, but liberating and redeeming like Jesus’s language, so that people will be alarmed and yet overcome by its power—the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God’s kingdom is drawing near. “They shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for them” (Jer. 33:9).24 Until then the Christian cause will be a quiet and hidden one,'*°! but there will be people who pray and do justice and wait for God’s own time. May you be one of them, and may it be said of you one day: “The path of the righteous is like the ight of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Prov. 4:18),!?°!

146. To Eberhard and Renate Bethge''! Dear Eberhard and Renate, I cannot tell you how delighted I was by your visit,'*! and your bold decision that both of you should just come in together was splendid. If only

437 Ml[aetz] weren't such a pedant, perhaps it could have been even longer. But it was wonderful just the way it was. I was especially pleased to see you, dear Renate, looking so bright and cheerful—but no wonder; you must be

so happy to have Eberhard here right now. And I thought you, Eberhard, looked far better than usual, but this too is no wonder, when you have such a nice wife. It was marvelous to have a conversation with you again. I'd like to know whether there are any two people who can tell each other and understand as much as we can, in an hour and a half! That takes practice, and we’re now in the tenth year of it—that’s right, it is the tenth,! and I’m

[24.] V. 9b. The entire verse is strongly marked in pencil in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible.

[25.] [This resonates with Bonhoeffer’s earlier comments about the “arcane discipline” in 3/137 and 3/139.—JDG] [26.] Cf. 3/141, ed. note 8. [1.] NZ, A 80,170; handwritten; undated; note by Eberhard Bethge: “Tegel, May 19, 1944.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 301-2. [2.] Permit to visit on May 19, 1944, granted to Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, who allowed Eberhard and Renate Bethge to use it in their place (see Bonhoeffer’s remark below, “My parents would surely offer you the possibility again”). [3.] Cf. 3/132, p. 352, and 3/138, ed. note 18.

3/145 and 3/146 391 really proud of that. What you told me about your experiences in the last few weeks and days was very moving, though I’m in a hurry today and can’t respond in detail. I wish you above all a chance to rest here, outwardly and inwardly—you need it, after this hair-raising time. I was so sorry about the air raid just when you came;'"! I breathed a sign of relief and gratitude when I got your telephone message. Asking what things “mean” is often burdensome, but don’t you think it’s pretty important, after all, to know at least why all this is necessary and we have to put up with it?!°! Although the “what for” question has its problems; that is clearer for me since being here. The person bringing this letter!°! is also bringing my warmest wishes for the baptismal day and a check for a gift for my godchild, if not the gift itself. I’m very pleased that this is possible, and you will certainly have a good conversation with my kind messenger. Be sure to tell him plenty and have him take notes, so I get all the news. He will also be glad to tell you about me and my life here. I think it’s very nice of him to make this contact between us on this day. By the way, he is a keen musician. Maybe you can get something going together. (Sometime I’d like very much to see the “Schutz” that you 438 so enjoyed.)'’! He has his own plumbing business and is originally from Holland. So, I’m sure you will enjoy his visit and tell him lots! What hurts me most these days is not being able to help you properly

with all the things you have to think about. But Friedr[ich] Justus! will do everything as usual, and I think Wagner'®! is a very decisive man in this

area. Perhaps you can still ask about the medical corps. There must be a man to whom one could make a sensible inquiry about that. Would Zutt perhaps know someone?!!°! Tm asking everyone in the family please to help you as much as they can. In the end one never knows what is best for someone else. I’ve been eager all along for the day when you came home from the front for the first time, and I never doubted that you would come back the same person who went away, and there would be no change in the understanding

[4.] Entry in the 1944 Daily Texts tor Friday, May 19: “heavy daytime air raid” (1:36 to 2:40 p.m.). | )

[5.] “And we have to put up with it” inserted afterward. [6.] Sergeant Helmut Linke; cf. 3/143, ed. note 3, and Bethge and Gremmels, Life in

Pictures, cen tenary ed., 140. |

[7.] A composition by Heinrich Schtitz that was new to Eberhard and Renate Bethge, which they may have mentioned during their visit on May 19. [8.] Friedrich Justus Perels; cf. 3/138, ed. note 8. [9.] Horst Wagner, reporting legation officer in the Foreign Ministry. [10.] Jarg Zutt (Karl Bonhoeffer’s assistant for many years), who was director of the private Kuranstalten Westend, a neurological and psychiatric clinic.

392 Letters and Papers from Prison between us about everything. Now that this is a reality, I can’t describe how happy it makes me. Do you suppose we might be able to meet a second time, on the grounds

that today’s visit was interrupted by the air raid [warning] (M[aetz] certainly doesn’t remember how long it lasted; he was much too upset!)?!!!! My parents would surely offer you the possibility again. It would be so marvelous if that could work. We still have so much to talk over. That’s all for today. I had to write this very hastily in the sick bay—that’s why I sound a bit muddled. Once again, much love to everyone!!?! and good wishes to you, for your little boy and for a beautiful day! Affectionately your devoted Dietrich

439 What about District Military Chaplain Bunke in Spandau'!®! (brother of the lawyer in Kénigsberg),!!#! who knows me—could he perhaps help? He belongs to the Confessing Church. I think you will find well-disposed bosses almost anywhere, so you don't have to stay with the one you have now on that account. By the way, the goat cheese is really magnificent! I’m enormously pleased by the firm position you took about the Catholic

Cc é oO /

confessor.!!°!

How grand that you are doing the baptism yourself!!'°! I’d like to have a copy of the sermon!

[11.] Because he had taken responsibility for allowing Eberhard and Renate Bethge to use the visitors’ permit intended for Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer. [12.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [13.] Hermann Bunke, who as acting district chaplain for military district IIT (BerlinBrandenburg) could help with Bethge’s reassignment as a military chaplain or a transfer to the army medical corps. [14.] Dr. Adolf Bunke had participated in Bonhoeffer’s retreat on July 13-14, 1940, in Blostau, which was broken up by the Gestapo; see DBWE 16, 1/15, pp. 63, 66-68. [15.] Discussed during the visit on May 19; see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 142: “One day our people brought back a civilian they had taken prisoner. ... This prisoner had to wait, locked up in our cellar, where I brought him food during the day. In broken Italian and German we got into conversation. When I told him I was a Protestant pastor, he suddenly asked me to confess and absolve him. He wouldn’t give up even when I said I had no dispensation from the Catholic Church for doing so.” [16.] Baptism of Dietrich W. R. Bethge on May 21, 1944; see Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 140.

3/146 and 3/147 393 147. To Eberhard Bethge!!! May 20

Dear Eberhard,

This letter is written just to you again; whether you discuss any of it with Renate is, of course, up to you. Today I would like to try and respond to the question that seems to me the most important one for you at present. At one point you asked what it meant that all your thoughts are occupied with your love for Renate,'*! and the hard experiences of the last three weeks must have made that especially clear to you. To begin with, I must say that every- 440 thing you told me’! moved me so deeply that I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the day, and I had a restless night. I’m infinitely grateful to you for that. It was a confirmation of our friendship, and besides it’s rousing all my life forces and fighting spirit again, making me defiant and clear and hard. I also can't get rid of the feeling that there is a tension in you that you can’t escape entirely, and I'd like to make a brotherly attempt to help. Please receive it in this spirit!!! {When you are in love, you want to live, above all things, and you hate

everything that represents a threat to your life. You hate the memories of these last few weeks; you hate the blue sky that reminds you of them; you hate those planes, and so on. You want to live with Renate and be happy, as you have the right to be. And you have to live, for Renate’s sake and for little Dictrich’s (and even big Dictrich’s). You have no right to talk the way your chief did the other night;'°! on the contrary, that would be irresponsible on your part. You must sort that out with him quite calmly sometime. What is necessary goes without saying, but you could never follow that course just out of some personal emotion. However, there is a danger, in any passionate erotic love, that through it you may lose what I'd like to call the polyphony

[1.] NL, A 80,171; handwritten; date without year (1944). Previously published in LPP, 302-5. [2.] See 3/138, p. 369.

[3.] During the visit on May 19, 1944, Eberhard Bethge told about his trip (for his special leave for the baptism of Dietrich W. R. Bethge) from the Italian front to Berlin. The traffic routes and mountain passes of northern Italy were being attacked by Allied bombers to support their offensive begun on May 11, 1944, from their beachhead at Anzio-Nettuno; this had endangered and delayed Bethge’s journey. See Die Wehrmachtberichte, 3:102—6 (May 13-18, 1944).

[4.] This last phrase (“and I'd like to make a brotherly attempt to help. Please receive it in this spirit!”) was inserted later. [5.) See37138,-p- 370.

394 Letters and Papers from Prison of life.!°! What I mean is that God, the Eternal, wants to be loved with our whole heart, not to the detriment of earthly love or to diminish it, but as a 441 — sort of cantus firmus’! to which the other voices of life resound in counterpoint.'®! One of these contrapuntal themes, which keep their full independence but are still related to the cantus firmus, is earthly love. Even in the Bible there is the Song of Solomon, and you really can’t imagine a hotter, more sensual, and glowing love than the one spoken of here (cf. 7:6!).!9! It’s really good that this is in the Bible, contradicting all those who think being Christian is about tempering one’s passions (where is there any such tempering in the Old Testament?). Where the cantus firmus is clear and distinct, a counterpoint can develop as mightily as it wants. The two are “undivided and yet distinct,” as the Definition of Chalcedon!!! says, like the divine and human natures in Christ. Is that perhaps why we are so at home with polyphony in music, why it is important to us, because it is the musical image of this christological fact and thus also our vita christiana?|""| This idea came to me only after your visit yesterday. Do you understand what I mean? I wanted to ask you to let the cantus firmus be heard clearly in your being together; only then will it sound complete and full, and the counterpoint will always know that it is being carried and can’t get out of

442 tune or be cut adrift, while remaining itself and complete in itself. Only this polyphony gives your life wholeness, and you know that no disaster can befall you as long as the cantus firmus continues. Perhaps in these coming

[6.| Le., with many voices; for example, in music a composition in which several largely independent voices follow their own lines. On what follows, see also Benz, Die Stunde der deutschen Musik, 25-27. Bonhoeffer had requested this book (2/57, p. 155); sce also Dilthey, Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik, 198.

|7.| In a polyphonic composition, the primary, steady voice to which the other voices relate. [8.] An independent melodic line counter to the cantus firmus. [9.] “How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden!”

[10.] “Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge ... one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures without confusion [dovyxUTws], without change [atpéTTws], without division [ddLatpeTws], without separation [axwplotws]”; this was the doctrinal formulation adopted at the ecumenical Synod of Chalcedon in 451 on the relation of divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ (Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, 73). For Bonhoeffer on Chalcedon, see, for example, his 1933 Christology lecture in DBWE 12, 2/12, and his “Theological Letter for Christmas 1939,” DBW 15:541-42: “Nowhere else but in the person of Jesus Christ and through him are divinity and humanity united with each other, “undivided and yet unblended, inseparable yet untransformed.” See also Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 19, 47-48, 83-83, et passim; Abromeit, Das Geheim-

nis Christi, 190-212 et passim. [11.] “Christian lite.”

3/147 and 3/148 395 days you have together, but also in the days of separation that may follow, many things will be easier to bear. Please, Eberhard, don’t fear and hate the separation, if it should come again, and all its dangers, but have confidence in the cantus firmus. {I don’t know whether I[ have said this clearly; one seldom speaks of such things and one can!!?!

148. To Eberhard Bethge'!!! May 21, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I had just written the date of this letter, to be with you in my thoughts during these hours of preparation for the baptism and of the service itself,'*! and at that very moment the sirens began. Now I’m sitting in the sick bay, hoping that today at least you have been spared an air raid. What times these are! And what a baptism! What memories for years to come! What is important is to channel all these impressions, so to speak, the right way in one’s mind; then they will just make you more defiant, harder, clearer, and that is good. A baptismal day like this doesn’t allow for softer moods. When

in the middle of a threatening air raid God sends out the call, the gospel call to God’s kingdom through baptism, it’s remarkably clear what this kingdom is and secks. A kingdom stronger than war and danger, a kingdom of

power and might, a kingdom that is eternal terror and judgment for some 443 and eternal joy and righteousness for others. It is not a kingdom of the heart! but reigns over the earth and the whole world, not a passing but an eternal kingdom that builds its own highway and calls on people to prepare its way; a kingdom for which it is worth risking our lives. Now they've started shooting, but it doesn’t seem to be getting too bad today. How I'd like to hear you preach in a few hours’ time. Your sermons |12.| The rest of this sentence and the rest of the letter have been lost. [1.] NL, A 80,172; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 304-7. [2.] Baptism of Dietrich W. R. Bethge on Sunday, May 21, 1944. An entry in Bonhoeffer’s 1944 Daily Texts has been erased. Still legible: “Baptism .. . Linke” (for Sergeant Linke’s help as messenger, see 3/146, p. 391, and ed. note 6). A line above: “Ursel’s fortysecond birthday” (Ursula Schleicher, born May 21, 1902, turned forty-two years old the

day of her erandson’s baptism). | |

[3.] Allusion to the theology of Karl Heim. See his Der evangelische Glaube und das Denken der Gegenwart, 1:366-67 [the English translation of this text, God Transcendent: Foundation for a Christian Metaphysic, is abridged considerably—JDG], and The Nature of Protestantism, 51-54. On Heim, see also 3/161, ed. note 21.

396 Letters and Papers from Prison that ’ve heard—the last one was at Christmas—have always opened my eyes anew to the Bible and God’s word. I’m hoping very much to hear something

about this sermon"! and the rest!!°! ’'d also like to hear your liturgy. Of course, | would wish that you could listen to the sermon yourself, but for Renate and the family it’s certainly better this way. I can’t think of anyone else who could do it as it should be done. For you it is a sacrifice, on one hand, and after all that has gone before, a significant intellectual accomplishment, which I very much ad mire,!©! but, on the other hand, su rely also avery special joy. At eight this morning I heard, as a fine beginning for the day, a chorale prelude on “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan”;'”! I listened to it with thoughts of you and of my godchild! I hadn’t heard an organ for a long time, and its

sound was like a fortress in time of trouble.!*! ’m particularly sorry that your letter in which you asked me to be godfather got lost. | am sure you said some kind, comforting, and encouraging words that would have done me good, and I would have been, and am, very grateful. Do you suppose it might still turn up? Or would you write me a few words to replace it? I suppose you Il also have to make an after-dinner speech today and will mention me. I’d like to hear what you said. Especially because we so seldom say such

444 words to each other, one feels a hunger for them now and then. Do you understand that? Perhaps it’s stronger than usual here in this isolation; we used to take everything for granted, and actually we still do—even so! By the way, here the other day! did you find that “talking is harder” now than before?! I didn’t in the least; I’m just asking because you wrote something of the sort recently. Perhaps you were surprised at yesterday’s letter,!' which was meant to say something to you but, on the other hand, was so helpless itself. But isn’t

that the way it is? One is trying to help and is oneself the most in need of help. The part about the cantus firmus was actually written more for Renate’s sake than yours, that is, more for the sake of your concord with each other than as if 1 thought you didn’t already know all that well enough.

[4.] Bethge’s text for the baptismal sermon was Isa. 8:18, at Bonhoeffer’s suggestion; see 3/142, p. 381, and ed. note 18. [5.] This sentence written in the margin. [6.] “And after all that... admire” written in the margin. [7.] “Whatever God Ordains Is Right,” Lutheran Book of Worship, no. 446. [8.] This sentence is written in the margin. 19.| “Here the other day” inserted afterward; refers to the visit on May 19, 1944.

[10.] Cf. 3/154, p. 410. | [11.] See 3/147 with respect to the passage that follows.

3/148 397 The image of polyphony is still following me around. In feeling some sorrow today at not being able to be with you, I couldn’t help thinking that sorrow and joy, too, belong to the polyphony of the whole of life and can exist independently side by side. {The day before yesterday!!?! you said something about how perhaps my lot was better than I knew. Certainly, Eberhard, Iam in much less danger than you are, and in this respect I would give a great deal to be able to change places with you. That’s not just a manner of speaking; it automatically keeps entering into my prayers. I’ve already seen and experienced more of life than you have—except for one crucial experience that you have, which I still lack—but perhaps that’s precisely why I have already had more of “my fill of life” [lebenssatt]!'*! than you as yet. So the advantage you see In my situation is, from my viewpoint, relatively slight. Isn’t it rather the case that you are experiencing all sides of life, its happiness and its dangers,

and isn’t that better than having the breath of life choked off, so to speak, the way it is for me here? I’m certainly not asking for pity, and I don’t want to

trouble you about it. Instead, | do want you to be glad about what you have, 445 which is truly the polyphony of life (forgive me for riding my newfound hobbyhorsce!).

There's the all-clear signal. I’m glad for your sake. There are two wonder-

ful lilac bushes standing on my desk, brought to me by such a kind man. I’m looking at the photos you brought me of the baptismal candidate. I’ve also lit the big cigar and am enjoying it immensely—thanks very much!!! Whom does he look like? I think Renate and you! His forehead is definitely yours, the rest from Renate. I think he’s just splendid, and if he should take after me physically, I can only wish him my freedom from toothaches and headaches, my calf muscles and my sensitive gums (this last being, however, a mixed blessing). For other things he can do better elsewhere. I can’t tell

whether he has my mouth, as you say, since mine has never struck me as anything particular, so I don’t think of it as an advantage. For the rest, he is inheriting the best part of me, my name. I've always been satisfied with it, and as a boy I was even proud of it. Believe me, I shall always be a good godparent to him and always do whatever is in my power to help him. I don’t

think he could choose a better one! I’ve been thinking some more about where Renate could go. Of course, she would be even lonelier elsewhere,

[12.] On May 19, 1944.

[13.] Gen. 25:8: Abraham “died in a good old age, an old man and full of years.” |The German term lebenssatt also conveys the sense of having lived fully, having enough. —JDG]

[14.] This sentence written in the margin.

398 Letters and Papers from Prison and nearness to her mother is worth a great deal to her, even for a possible short notice,!!! The story you told me is still with me, very vividly.!!®! If only we could

experience all this together! 'd rather be there, together with you, than “safe” here, alone. But when I consider how many dangers you have been through in your life Gncluding the danger of what might have been the wrong marriage),'’! and how, up to the last few days, you have actually had 446 visible proofs of being protected and how good things have kept happen-

ing to you unexpectedly (your engagement and marriage rather sooner than the parents planned, being able to stay at home so long,!'*! your home leaves during the winter),'!9! my mind is at rest; I’m convinced that you are well taken care of in God’s plan. If your thoughts about the war nowadays are sometimes only of death, probably you are underestimating the many and various ways of God. The hour of our death is foreordained, and it will catch up with us everywhere, no matter where we turn. And we have to be prepared for it. But “he knows ten thousand ways to save us from death’s power. He gives us food and meat, a boon in famine’s hour.”°! Let’s not forget that. Sirens again. It’s now the twenty-second. Good that you are out there!" T’ve heard much about yesterday and am very happy about it. Maria liked your sermon very much;!**! even the brief sketch of it that I received made sense to me. And what fine hymns! You were thinking of me as well when you sang Schitz!!*9! Apparently you were in better voice than ever. Both of these are hymns I really love. You gave what I wrote a very honored place in the proceedings; I hadn’t intended it that way, but ’m happy if you were pleased

[15.] The fourth page of the letter, following “short notice,” has been lost. [16.] Bethge’s oral account during his visit; see 3/147, ed. note 3. [17.] This refers to an engagement of Bethge’s that was broken in 1935. [18.] Bethge’s work at the Gossner Mission was classified as essential for the war effort, or “UK” (unabkommlich), so that he was exempted from military service until summer 1943; see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 113-33, and de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 52-58. [19.| Bomb damage to one’s home, as happened several times to Bethge, entitled a soldier to request a home leave. [20.] This is from v. 5 of Paul Gerhardt’s hymn “Du meine Seele singe,” Evangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 302. [Translation here is from LPP, 306.—JDG] [21.] In Sakrow. [22.] His fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, wrote this next to a note in the 1944 Daily Texts for Monday, May 22, that she had permission to visit. [23.] “Eile mich, Gott, zu erretten” (Make haste, God, to save me) (see 2/88, ed. note 27) and “Ich liege und schlafe und erwache” (I lie down and sleep, I awaken).

3/148 399 with it. It must have been a strange experience for Papa to read that text.!*! I'd like to hear a bit more about that. I’m very glad that Per[els] and Mama are concerning themselves immediately with the Dohrmann business.'*°! Can’t Klaus do anything? Ifyou need 447 to be legalized for a chaplaincy, this would have to be done immediately. You couldn't very well ask for special consideration. The whole issue is different now from what it was five years ago, |? Still there are, of course, conditions that one could not accept. That would then be a sign from God not to pursue this path any further. For God alone protects you, nothing else. I’m sending you a letter to give Niebuhr,'*7! in case the need arises. We should also arrange a place to meet, in case it’s ever useful; I think we could always stay in touch, later, through N[iebuhr] and Uncle George.!**! Goodbye for today!"! Is there anything I can do for you and yours?—The pictures of the little boy are so delightful!—God protect us all! With all my heart, Your devoted Dietrich

How was the surprise visit?! Dear Eberhard,!°"! Here is the letter, which you can always use to identify yourself. It’s true, isn’t it, that you were with me when | visited there?!°*!

[24.] Karl Bonhoeffer read aloud Dietrich’s “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism” (3/145) at the baptismal service. [25.] Attempt to get Bethge reassigned as a military chaplain through military bishop Franz Dohrmann; on the requirements, see 3/160, ed. note 4. [26.| “Legalization” meant placing oneself under the jurisdiction of the consistories of the Reich church, which were controlled by the German Christians; it was therefore viewed as heretical [in the Confessing Church—JDG]. Bonhoeffer had rejected this without compromise in 1938 because it came at the cost of the Councils of Brethren governance of church; cf. DBWE 15, 2/5 (October 26, 1938; “Our path according to the testimony of Scripture”; DB-ER, 607-20, 692-95; Bauer, Predigtamt ohne Pfarramt? i2/.| pee ed. note 32. [28.] George Bell, bishop of Chichester. [29.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [30.] Sergeant Linke’s visit to the Schleicher home. The visit, announced in a letter of May 19, 1944 (3/146, p. 391), took place; see Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 140. [31.] NL, A 80,174; handwritten; note by Bethge: “to Di[c]k Jones and to R. Niebuhr.” Previously published in LPP, 307. On Dick Jones, see also Gaetano Latmiral’s letter of April 2, 1945, to Gerhard Leibholz, in “Die Begegnung.” [32.] Bonhoeffer had visited Niebuhr on April 3, 1939, in Sussex, England; Bethge had come with him to England; see 2/102, p. 267. Bonhoeffer’s letter of recommendation—in case Bethge should be taken prisoner by the Allies—has been lost.

YP

400 Letters and Papers from Prison (And it’s clear to you that it is addressed to Professor von Dietze in Freiburg?)*! I think you ought to be well and reliably introduced. He!**! is 448 avery kind, lively, and interesting man, a good friend of Paul Tillich’s, and his main area is ethics. So, I won't bother you with anything more today. It’s

one o'clock in the morning, and I’m waiting in sick bay for the air raid of which we just had a warning. Quousque tandem?!?! Good-bye for today! Affectionately yours, Dietrich May 22

149. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge'!! May 24

Dear Eberhard and Renate, I don’t know how to express my wishes to you for Pentecost except by using a word that I seldom speak. I wish you a blessed Pentecost, celebrated with

’ oifoS- )/

God and with prayer; a Pentecost in which you feel the touch of the Holy Spirit; a Pentecost that will be for you, in the coming weeks and months, a rocher de bronce'*! of memories. You need days you can look back on, not with

the pain of having been deprived, but as a source of strength from something that endures. I’ve been trying to write you a few words on the Daily Texts! some of them today during the air raids, so they are a bit sketchy and not as well thought through as they should have been. But perhaps you ll read them together in the mornings, so that, if need be, they compensate in a small way for a church service. Eberhard, does remembering Pentecost mornings in Finkenwalde still feel so good and significant for you

[33.] Gover address in case the letter should be discovered by the Gestapo. On Constantin von Dietze, see DB-ER, 775-76, and DBWE 16:361, 459-60. [34.] [Reinhold Niebuhr (see above).—]DG| [35.] Cicero, First Speech against Catiline, 1.1: “Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra” (When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience?),

[1.] NZ, A 80,175; handwritten; date without year (1944), Previously published in LPP, 307-8. [2.] [Literally a “rock of bronze” or “lode.” Its figurative meaning in English, derived from “lodestar,” would be “guiding principle."—]DG] [3.] “Devotional Aids for the Moravian Daily Texts,” Pentecost 1944 (DBWE 16, 3/4), for May 28 (Pentecost Sunday) Isa. 57:18 and Gal. 4:6; for May 29 (Pentecost Monday) [a holiday in Germany and other parts of Europe—JDG] Ps. 94:12-13a and Gal. 5:22-23a; for May 30 (Tuesday after Pentecost) Gen. 39:23 and 1 John 3:24.

3/148 and 3/149 401 too? For the rest, I wish you fine weather, much pleasure with little Dietrich,

and many nice and quiet hours and good music! 449 { If the air raids keep on like this, I don’t dare ask for another visit from you. I really understand very well your staying in Sakrow. You mustn’t think that by doing so you would be failing me in some way. It was so wonderful the other day,'! and just being able to write is a very great help. I’d just like to be kept informed about your business with Dohrmann.'*! But you really don’t have to meet with H.°! again just for my sake—that can be done by letter. It would only make me sorry that it took up your time. I keep looking at the baby pictures again and again, and it will be hard to part with them. I hope when I return them you'll send me some to replace them soon. Especially the one where he’s on his tummy, looking directly into the camera, I find so expressive: what a mixture of wonder, trust, and childish awe we see in the face of a newborn baby. Doesn't he actually have his “face” and expressions already to a surprising deerce for his age? I heard that you took many pictures at the baptism, and [IT] look forward to them. I’m now reading, with great interest, Weizsacker’s book on the “worldview of physics”!’! and hope to learn a good deal from it, even for my own work. If only we could share our thoughts. Earlier we used to read and discuss

things like this together—The latest news from Italy has stirred me up again.\*! All sorts of things may still happen in the next couple of weeks. We can’t ponder enough the last verse of the hymn you sang at the baptism.|! Farewell for now, have a good holiday, and don’t forget Your devoted Dietrich

[4.] On May 19, 1944, when Eberhard and Renate made use of a visit permit. 15.] See 3/148, ed. note 25. [6.] Johannes Hymmen as vice president of the Evangelical Church Consistory. [7.] Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, World View of Physics; cf. 1/28, ed. note 9, and 2/57, p. 155: “K. Friedrich mentioned a generally comprehensible physics book that he wanted to send me.” [8.] May 23-25, 1944, marked the Allied attack from the beachhead at Anzio-Nettuno, its advance to Cisterna, and the beginning of a general German retreat from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian Sea; see Wehrmachtberichte, 3:109 (May 24, 1944). [9.] Paul Gerhardt’s hymn “Ich singe dir mit Herz und Mund” (Lvangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 324; the English version [with fewer verses] is “Rejoice, My Heart, Be Glad and Sing,” Lutheran Hymnal, no, 535). V. 15 of the German reads: “Why are you wounded in your thoughts and grieving night and day? Take all your cares and cast them / on your Maker, yes, today.” V. 17 reads: “Nothing escapes the eye of God, our lives are in God’s hand; so what God does or lets be done will find a blessed end.” V. 18 reads: “So, leave it allin God’s good hands and make no protest heard, then you will know both peace and joy in all your days on earth.” Translations by Isabel Best.

402 Letters and Papers from Prison 450 150. To Eberhard Bethge!!! Dear Eberhard, Today it’s a week since you were here.'*! I wonder how you are spending the days together. I often think that for you it’s quite good—objectively—that I’m not there, so just you two can be together without any third party. How do things stand now with Dohrmann?'*! I'd really like to know! If you do

manage to come again, it would be best after four in the afternoon; then I can see to it that we are disturbed less. I would let you know the day; then you wouldn’t need to apply for it in advance. It would be wonderful if we could manage that. Since Maria won't be coming now for at least six weeks,'"! perhaps it could really be done. Probably there’s no chance of your going back to anything like the same circumstances.'°! How grateful Renate must be to be spared the anxiety of these days and weeks. I think it’s too bad you didn’t do any more drawings of the landscape down there. The one page I still remember vividly. You were born with a much greater variety of gifts than I and you keep discovering 451 new ones, whereas in my case there’s nothing more to discover. Actually, you are more talented than Iam in most things. You are undoubtedly more musical, besides being able to draw and knowing something about paintings, at both of which I’m a dead loss. You learned to ski and play tennis better than [in just a few weeks, although I'd been doing both for decades, not to mention technical and practical abilities—and all this in your case is talent, not training. In my case, on the other hand, it’s almost all due to my training, without which I'd be a pretty boring customer. If, however, both come together in your son, we can really expect great things.”

[1.] NZ A 80,176; handwritten; undated (May 26, 1944); note by Bethge, “Friday after Pentecost” (June 2, 1944; unlike Bethge’s notes on 3/151 and 3/152, this indicates the day of receipt). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 308-9. [2.] May 19, 1944.

[3.] See 3/148, ed. note 25. [4.] Entries in the 1944 Daily Texts for Thursday, May 25, and Tuesday, June 27: “Maria.” See Love Letters from Cell 92, 214: The “intervals between the couple’s letters were steadily lengthening, whereas Bonhoeffer’s correspondence with Eberhard Bethge .. . was entering its most frequent phase. ... There are many indications that she was going through an emotional crisis.” [5.]| Wehrmachtberichte, 3:110 (May 26, 1944): “In the combat zone around Cisterna, strong columns of enemy tanks have advanced northward. The heavy fighting has shifted to areas south and east of Velletri, where the struggle is bitter.” [6.] [Dietrich Bethge has subsequently become an accomplished musician in Britain. —JDG]

3/150 and 3/151 403 On your promotion:!”! funny as it may be on one hand, on the other it’s certainly also the recognition that you are always receiving naturally, which is nice, isn’t it?

On being a godparent: in the old books, a godparent often plays a special

role in a child’s life. Children growing up often long for understanding, kindness, and advice from other adults besides their parents. Godparents are those to whom the parents point their children for this purpose. The geodparent has the right to give good advice, whereas parents give orders. I myself did not have such a godparent . . .!°! but I can imagine that I’d have quite liked having one and could have done with his advice. You did not have one either, did you? But this is the way I see one of my future duties as eodfather. (My uncle Otto Bonhoeffer would have been well qualified for this, but we saw him too rarely.) | would think mainly of male godparents for boys and female ones for girls. {I'll ask Papa to get some Pervitin—or some Isophan!*!—for me, and for you as well. I’m writing to him myself. I hope very much to hear from you soon. All the very, very best! My love to you and Renate and your little one, Dietrich

151. To Eberhard Bethge!!! 452 May 27, 1944

Dear Eberhard, Thanks for the greeting from the two of you. But you know, such a short letter is as if someone whose visit one has awaited for a long time just opened

the door for a moment, stuck his head in with a friendly nod, and disappeared again. I think you ought to write me again, so I don’t feel out of place with my letters and questions. At least it would make things much easier for me. Do you understand that?

[7.] See Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 137 and 140. [He had been promoted to Obersoldat, or private second class.—JDG]

[8.] [Words omitted by the German editors.—]DG] [9.] [Forms of aspirin that probably also included caffeine.—]DG|] [1.] NL, A 80,177; handwritten; note by Bethge below the date: “Saturday before Pentecost.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 309-10.

404 Letters and Papers from Prison In case you can manage another visit, Thursday, June 1, after 4:00 p.m.,

or Sat[urday], June 3, after 1:30 p.m., would be times to consider.!?! [ll have them ask you. But some things are still easier to say in writing than in conversation, so please don’t put everything off until a visit, which is still an uncertain possibility.

It seems to me that someone should speak to Bunke.!*! What does Dohrmann himself say?'*! I know somebody who knows Senftleben."°! Per-

haps Hans von Haeften?!! or Walter DreB? The former you can just telephone and give my greetings. Just keep things moving, while enjoying as much leisure as you can! It’s an odd feeling to hear Velletri!”! mentioned in the news, surely for you especially! Did you get the thing about the cantus firmus and my questions and the meditations for Pentecost?!! Thanks very much again for your greeting, and all best wishes, Yours as ever, Dietrich

453 152. To Eberhard Bethge!!! May 29, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I hope that despite the air raids you both are enjoying to the full the peace and beauty of these warm, summery days of Pentecost. Inwardly, one learns gradually to put life-threatening things in proportion. Actually, “put in proportion” sounds too negative, too formal or artificial or stoic. One should more correctly say that we just take in these daily threats as part of the totality of our lives. I often notice hereabouts how few people there are who can

arbor many lings at theatsame time. When bombers they harbor manydiffere different things th ne time. When bomb come, me, the} [2.] Bonhoeffer knew the schedule of the prison personnel and thus was able to make precise suggestions. [3.] Hermann Bunke, acting military district chaplain for Berlin-Spandau; cf. 3/146, p. 392, and 3/160, p. 423. [4.] Military bishop Franz Dohrmann., [5.] Ministry councilor Dr. Otto Senftleben, Group Leader “S” (Seelsorge [pastoral ministry]) in the Army High Command General Headquarters. [6.] Hans-Bernd von Haeften. [7.] Wehrmachtberichte, 3:111 (May 27, 1944): “In Italy fighting yesterday was concentrated around Velletri”’; see also 3/150, ed. note 5. [8.] See 3/147 (for the reference to “cantus firmus”), the letters from Bonhoeffer that follow, and DBWE 16, 3/4 (the meditations on the Daily Texts). [1.] NL, A 80,178; handwritten; note by Bethge: “Pentecost Monday.” Previously published in LPP, 310-13.

3/151 and 3/152 405 are nothing but fear itself; when there’s something good to eat, nothing but greed itself; when they fail to get what they want, they become desperate; if something succeeds, that’s all they see. They are missing out on the fullness of life and on the wholeness of their own existence. Everything, whether objective or subjective, disintegrates into fragments. Christianity, on the other hand, puts us into many different dimensions of life at the same time; in a way we accommodate God and the whole world within us. We weep with those who weep at the same time as we rejoice with those who rejoice.”! We fear—(I’ve just been interrupted again by the siren,!*! so I’m sitting outdoors enjoying the sun)—for our lives, but at the same time we must think thoughts that are much more important to us than our lives. During an air raid, for example, as soon as we are turned in a direction other than worrying about our own safety, for example, by the task of spreading calm around us, the situation becomes completely different. Life isn’t pushed back into a single dimension, but is kept multidimensional, polyphonic. What a lib-

eration it is to be able to think and to hold on to these many dimensions of life in our thoughts. I’ve almost made it a rule here for myself, when people here are trembling during an air raid, always just to talk about how 454 much worse such an attack would be for smaller towns. One has to dislodge people from their one-track thinking—as it were, in “preparation for” or “enabling” faith, though in truth it is only faith itself that makes multidimensional life possible and so allows us to celebrate Pentecost even this year, In spite of air raids. At first | was a bit disconcerted and perhaps even saddened not to have a letter from anyone for Pentecost this year. Then I said to myself that per-

haps it’s a good sign, that no one is worried about me—but it’s simply a strange drive in human beings to want others—at least a litthe—to worry about them. Weizsacker’s book on the Weltbild der Physik'*! continues to preoccupy me

a great deal. It has again brought home to me quite clearly that we shouldn’t think of God as the stopgap [LickenbiiBer]'”! for the incompleteness of our

[2.] Rom. 12:15.

[3.] Daytime air raids from 12 noon to 12:35 and 12:48 to 1:55 p.m. [4.] See 3/149, ed. note 7.

[5.] The formulation “Faith ...as the stopgap where knowledge fails” is found in Friedrich Brunstad (Die Idee der Religion, 63, 108, et passim), referred to several times in Bonhoeffer’s Act and Being (DBWE 2:49—53 et passim). For the phrase “God as gap-filler” lor “stopgap,” as above—]DG], see Tillich, Religious Situation, 204, where he speaks of

“the radical separation of the territories of faith and knowledge and... the unconditional surrender of the field... to autonomous science,” which “made impossible the use of gaps in scientific knowledge for .. . introducing God as a gap-filler in the scientific

406 Letters and Papers from Prison knowledge, because then—as is objectively inevitable—when the boundaries of knowledge are pushed ever further, God too is pushed further away and thus is ever on the retreat.!©! We should find God in what we know, 455 not in what we don’t know; God wants to be grasped by us not in unsolved

-oI/

questions but in those that have been solved. This is true of the relation between God and scientific knowledge,!”! but it is also true of the universal human questions about death, suffering, and guilt. Today, even for these

questions, there are human answers that can completely disregard God. Human beings cope with these questions practically without God and have done so throughout the ages, and it is simply not true that only Christianity would have a solution to them. As for the idea of a “solution,” we would have to say that the Christian answers are Just as uncompelling (or just as compelling) as other possible solutions. Here too, God is not a stopgap. We must recognize God not only where we reach the limits of our possibilities. God wants to be recognized in the midst of our lives, in life and not only in

dying, in health and strength and not only in suffering, in action and not only in sin. ‘The ground for this lies in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. God is the center of life!*! and doesn’t just “turn up” when we have unsolved

description of the world” (referred to by Alberto Gallas in “Non santi ma uomini,” 282n40). Bonhoeffer had discussed Tillich’s book in his lectures on “The History of Twentieth-Century Systematic Theology” in the winter semester 1931-32; see DAWE 11, 2/3. Cf. DBWE 16, 3/5, p. 641: “It is a misuse when we make God a stopgap in our discomfort.” [6.] Cf Weizsacker, World View of Physics, 157: “For Kepler, the positive knowledge of science points to God, while for Newton it is just the gaps in this knowledge which have room for God, But such gaps are usually filled in in further development, and science cannot rest satisfied until they are filled in. Even if the hypotheses of Laplace had been false in some particulars, still every scientist must certainly set himself the goal of making the hypothesis ‘God’ superfluous in his field. God and the faded, half-religious concepts which have often been substituted for him in recent times, always designate, as scientific hypotheses for the explanation of particular facts, only incomplete points in science, and therefore with the advance of knowledge they find themselves in continuous and dishonourable retreat.” In his dogmatics seminar on Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion in summer 1933 (see I. Todt, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Hegel-Seminar, 18), Bonhoetter quoted Hegel, Begriff der Religion (vol. 12 of Sdmtliche Werke, ed. G. Lasson), 4—5: “The more the knowledge of

finite things has increased—and the increase is so great that the extension of the sciences has become almost boundless ...so much the more has the sphere of knowledge about God become contracted” (from the 1895 translation by Speirs and Sanderson, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 35).

[7.| Karl August von Hase, /Ideale und Irrttimer (Bonhoeffer’s great-grandfather’s “memories of youth,” which Bonhoeffer read in Tegel; see 1/30, ed. note 6, and 1/31, p. 111), 66: “If, after the first time, someone needs the good God to explain a natural phenomenon, one cannot talk to that person about scientific research.” [8.] See 3/137, pp. 366-67.

3/152 407 problems to be solved.'*! Seen from the center of life, certain questions fall away completely and likewise the answers to such questions (I’m thinking

of the judgment pronounced on Job’s friends!).!'°! In Christ there are no 456 “Christian problems.” Enough on this; I’ve just been interrupted again. May 30 in the evening I’m sitting up here in my cell, the house is quiet, a few birds are still singing outside, and there’s even a cuckoo calling in the distance. These long, warm

evenings, which I’m now experiencing here for the second time, exhaust me somehow. They make one long to be outdoors, and one could do crazy things if one weren't so “sensible.” Could one perhaps have become (00 sensible already? After such a long time of deliberately beating back every desire one has, two serious consequences might follow: either one is burned out inside, or things all build up until one day there’s a terrible explosion. Another conceivable consequence would be that one becomes truly selfless; IT myself know best that this is not the case with me. Perhaps you will say that one shouldn't beat back one’s desires, and you might be right. But look, this evening, for instance, I couldn't dare picture myself really sitting with Maria in your garden by the water and then talking with cach other on into the night, and so on, and so forth. That is simply self-torture, which hurts physically. So | escape into thinking, writing letters, being glad about your happiness, and—for my own protection—forbid myself my own desire. Paradoxical though it may sound, it would be more selfless if IT didn’t need to fear my desire but could give it free rein—but that’s very hard. Earlier in the sick bay I happened to hear “Solveig’s Song” on the radio.!"!!

It really moved me. To wait faithfully an entire lifetime—that is the tri- 457 umph over the hostility of space, that is, over separation, and time, that is,

[9.] Cf. DBWE 6:354 (“nota solution, but redemption [Erl6sing]”); Matt. 18:11 and its parallel Luke 19:10 (“For the Son of Man came to... save the lost”). [10.] Job 27:12b: “Why then have you become altogether vain?” [|The literal translation of the passage in the Luther Bible is “Why then do you bring up such useless things?”—JDG] On the judgment against Job’s friends, see Job 42:7: “After the Lorp had spoken these words to Job, the LorD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” Cf. 2/102, p. 266. [11.] Edvard Grieg, “Solveig’s Song” (Peer Gynt, suite no. 2, op. 55, no. 4): “The winter may pass, and the spring disappear, / The summer may fade, and the whole of the year, / But you will return and be mine, I know, / And [ll wait for you as I vowed long ago. / God keep you, where under the sun you may go, / If you kneel before him, his blessing bestow. / But sure I'll await you until you are here; / And if you’re in heaven, then we'll meet up there!” Translated by Isabel Best. See also Pangritz, Polyphonie des Lebens, 36-39.

408 Letters and Papers from Prison over transience. Don’t you think!!*! that such faithfulness alone makes one happy, and unfaithfulness unhappy? So, now I want to get some sleep, since the night will most likely be disturbed again. Farewell! Thinking of you very much, Yours, Dietrich

Maetz is away at present, and the man filling in for him isn’t very pleasant. From the standpoint of avoiding air raids and for other reasons, an after-

noon visit is better; the best would be Saturday aftlernoon]| (June 3). If that’s emmediately before you leave, however, I really do not want you to make

the long trip up here. In the afternoon you must ask at once to speak to the OvD (not the UvD)!'8!—it would be a sergeant or noncommissioned officer. If you don't have it approved by Saturday, perhaps Maaf could be asked to approve a continuation of the permit that was interrupted by an air-raid warning, because you have to return to the front. It’s just a purely technical question. It would mean telephoning Maa on Friday or on Saturday morning, so that things would work out for Saturday afternoon.

153. To Hans-Walter Schleicher!!!

June 2 Dear Hans Walter,

I heard from Eberhard that you are unexpectedly on leave. 'm very happy for you, and for all of you, that you can be together again for a week as in earlier years. So there are still pleasant surprises from time to time! It’s 458 really a very nice thought on your part to visit me despite the short time you have here. Of course, I'd be particularly glad to see you. But you know, without specific permission the most that is possible would be a very brief greeting, no time to tell each other anything, and I definitely wouldn't want you to make the long trip here for that; it’s not even certain that we'd see each other at all. And unfortunately they’re very stingy with the permissions. If I’d been able to see and talk with you, ['d have many things to ask you, probably most of all what you now think about the generation of young

[12.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [13.] [OvD is the abbreviation for Offizier vom Dienst, or officer on duty; UvD is the abbreviation for Unteroffizier vom Dienst, or subordinate officer on duty.—]DG] [1.] In possession of Hans-Walter Schleicher; see also NL, A 80,179; typewritten copy, date without year (1944). Previously published in LPP, 313-14.

3/192—3/154 409 people about your age, after the experiences you have had. Do you feel isolated and strange among them? Or on what basis do you find yourself part of them? Do your conversations go beyond the usual things soldiers talk about—which are probably the same in every time and every place on earth—and in what way? What interests do these people have—or if that word sounds too high-flown or intellectual, what matters to them? What do they want and wish for themselves? What do they believe, and what are the euideposts of their lives? Probably those to whom such questions apply have always been in a minority. But on the other hand, they’re the only ones who count for the future. Is it your experience that the way of living you learned at home is an advantage in living with other people, or is it the opposite, that it mainly gets you into difficulties? Do you have the feeling that perhaps in our homes we have attached too little or too much importance to certain things? In short, all such questions, which surely you ask yourself often, I would very much like to discuss with you. After all, the most important question for the future is how we are going to find a basis for living together with other people, what spiritual realities and rules we honor as the foundations for a meaningful human life. If you find a quiet hour (after your leave!) and feel so inclined, do write to me. I would like it very much. Renate can give you the correct address. If you then give me the field postal address of your unit, I'll write back to you. Enough for today. Enjoy your days off as much as you can! I often think of you and wish you the very, very best for the days to 459 come. My love to your parents and sisters, and to you yourself, from Your Uncle Dietrich 154. To Eberhard Bethge!!!

Dear Eberhard, The enclosed meditations”! are intended just for the two of you. But if you would rather not listen to “someone else’s” voice, don’t hesitate to put them aside. Your own thoughts will be of more help to Renate these days. Last time when you were leaving, you wrote at the time that you even read the

[1.] NZ, A 80,180; handwritten; undated (dated by Bethge as June 2, 1944). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 315-16. [2.] See DBWE 16, 3/4, pp. 629-33, Daily Text meditations for June 7 (Ps. 54:4; 1 Thess. 5:23) and June 8, 1944 (Ps. 34:19; 1 Pet. 3:9) with accompanying words. Cf. DBWE 16,

3/4, 633: “Dear Eberhard and Renate, these words ... are merely thrown together in haste. ... I take courage to send them to you because you, Eberhard, said that you both had been cheered by the Pentecost reflections.” Cf. 3/149, ed. note 3.

410 Letters and Papers from Prison Daily Texts on the train.'%! I was very glad to hear that then and now have remembered it again. I get a kick out of Mr. Linke!!! and the enthusiasm with which he keeps talking about you. What he especially admired was that you “didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear,” which is what he says everyone else does in such a situation. I said that was just what was good, that we didn’t need it. He was obviously very impressed in other ways as well. This kind of conversation is a new world to him, and I myself think that—very objectively—it’s rather rare. By the way, when you asked what I meant by “talking is harder”! now, I

460 had the feeling that you were keeping back something else that you really wanted to say. Is that true? Would you please tell Ursel that the sport trousers I have here aren’t the right ones? The white pair isn’t much use to me here. What I need are the light brown summer trousers. Those I’ve got here are ripping in all directions. Pll write to you in Italy about the Song of Solomon. I would in fact read it as a song about earthly love,'®! and that is probably the best “christological” interpretation. As for Eph. 5, Vll have to think about it some more.!”! On Bultmann, I hope you will find something there already, unless it has been

lost.4! Are you on such good terms with your colleague R[ainalter] that you could speak to him about the miracle of correspondence?™! I’m a little surprised you did. Thanks very much for all your help with my personal questions.'!°! When you simply say, “That’s not the way it is!” it does carry a lot of weight with me. But the proof will only come at the moment when all depends on what you said being right. That’s the difficulty. Apart from this purely personal

[3.] 2/96, p. 253 (“Just before saying good-bye, when Renate came into the train compartment with me, we looked up the text for today [January 9, 1944]”). [4.] As the noncommissioned officer on duty, Linke was in charge of the visit by Eberhard and Renate Bethge on May 19, 1944. |He would have been present, as required, during the conversation between them.—J]DG] [5.] See 3/148, p. 396. [6.] The letters that follow no longer refer to the Song of Solomon, on which Bonhoeffer had already commented in his letter of May 20, 1944, 3/147. [7.] In connection with the preceding statement, Eph. 5:22-33. Cf. Bonhoeffer’s comment on Eph. 5:30-32 in DBWE 3:101 “that in its deepest sense the community of husband and wife is destined to be the church”; see also DBW 14:440-42. [SA See 3/139. 905.7 2:

[9.] The illegal correspondence between Bonhoeffer and Bethge had to be kept a secret from all outsiders, for the protection of everyone involved. [10.] He was thinking about getting married right away in case of his release.

3/154 and 3/155 411 problem, which was originally quite unexpected for me, there are also the objective problems of having a child and of being able to feed one’s family. You would say the same applies to you. Yet it makes a difference whether the

facts have already been created, or one is only beginning to create them in a responsible way. That things are just “happening to me” is certainly the most comforting thing about it all, and an encouragement to faith—quite apart from the fact that | couldn't possibly conceive of them not happening to me! but in the end I am still the one who is responsible, and I’m not twenty-five-years old anymore. Therefore, I shouldn't, and couldn’t, simply 461 stumble into something. The way my present status is being dragged out is, of course, very questionable in many respects. But perhaps some day it will turn out to have been the right thing. Now I don’t want to plague you any longer with these issues. You have enough other things to think about. Only when | have heard from you again will I have some more to say to you about it. All my good wishes for these last few days, and please keep me up to date on developments in your affairs. Yours as ever, with all my heart, Dietrich The baptismal sermon!!! will follow tomorrow. Many thanks again!

155. From Eberhard Bethge!! June 3, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

The elation over that very special visit!?] has stayed with me for a long time. Afterward in the streetcar | thought of many more questions and comments, and now | have your previous letter and a new one as well.!3] What is missing is

[11.] He was returning Bethge’s sermon for the baptism of Dietrich Bethge on May 21, 1944 [which Bonhoeffer had borrowed—JDG] (see 3/148, ed. note 4).

[1.] NZ, A 80,181; handwritten; from Sakrow. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 316-18. [2.] Bethge’s illegal visit, made possible by a sudden telephone call from the Tegel prison, presumably took place as Bonhoeffer proposed (3/152, p. 408) on the afternoon of June 3, 1944.

[3.] The “previous” letter may be 3/150, the “new” one 3/154, possibly handed to Bethge during his June 3 visit.

412 Letters and Papers from Prison the one with the discussion on Bultmann.!4] You were really in form and present and encouraging, and the whole situation had something refreshing and cheering about it in every respect. It is indeed a good thing to value the technical details

462 of living together, to know about and manage them in an informed way. When | got home, first | ate supper with Justus,!°! his wife, and Renate, and then we all sat for a while with her grandparents (your parents) and with Karl-Friedrich, who is very warmhearted and always extremely interested in you.l¢! | told all of them about you and clarified a number of things. The latest word from Sab[ine] is her “congratulations to the great-grandmother”; otherwise there is the older message from G[ert]: “Can | do anything?”!”] The grandparents have now left for Patzig.[®] | hope they'll have fine, warm weather there. As for my affair, first of all Do[hring] has spoken with the gen[eral],!?! evidently with less than encouraging results. The regulations were against it. One must first have served as a soldier and then again in the parish ministry; then one could be called up as an army chaplain.l'°] But in fact, the need is pretty substantial, so he noted my name. The regulations may be changed, so he would keep me in mind. Do[hring], for his part, would keep reminding him. What isn’t clear to me yet is whether to wait for these regulations to be canceled. Justus mentioned the Church Min[istry]!''! as a possible difficulty that had not been considered so far, in case it should be asked. He said the ministry would be very unfriendly toward our cases. Tomorrow I’m still going to get some information on the technical procedure, through Bunke.!!2! It’s stupid that all this is so difficult and time consuming. Otherwise my departure would certainly be easier for Renate.

[4.] 3/139, letter of May 5, 1944; on Bultmann, see p. 372. [5.] Friedrich Justus Perels.

[6.] [On the relationship between Dietrich and his brother, see Bethge, “Nonreligious Scientist and the Confessing Theologian.”—]DG] [’7.] News from Bonhoeffer’s twin sister, Sabine, and her husband, Gerhard Leibholz, in Oxford, transmitted via Zurich by Erwin Sutz. [8.| Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer’s second visit to Ruth von Wedemeyer at her country home.

[9.] Contact between the cathedral chaplain, Bruno Dohring, and Major General Alfred Weidemann, head of the chaplaincy office of the Army High Command. [10.] Decree of February 8, 1940, by the Army High Command (quoted from Dieter Beese, in Seelsorger in Uniform, 62-63): “In the future the reserve civil servants corps of Protestant and Catholic military chaplains are to accept only clergymen who have... already proven themselves as soldiers at the front.” See 3/160, pp. 422-23. [11.] [The Ministry for Church Affairs, established by the National Socialist regime in order to control the affairs of the churches.—]DG] [12.] Acting military district chaplain Hermann Bunke, Berlin-Spandau (see 3/151, ed. note 3 et passim).

3/155 413 Thanks very much for the pharmacy items.!!3] Now | should be well provided with everything.

But | especially want to thank you for your parting words. It’s really always 463 you now who says something to me, instead of the other way around as it should be. These three weeks have been splendid beyond compare, and I’m glad to have had such a good conversation with you, in spite of all our fears to the contrary. It has given mea good “push forward” once again. Then I’m happy that we baptized our boy, and about how all that took place, and that you were able to contribute your words to it, so fully and so meaningfully. !'41 This evening on the way,|'?] | was telling Justus that you were studying the Bultmann problem extensively (without going into detail), and he immediately said that this has been settled, that Bult{mann] is a completely impossible man who should be excommunicated, one who denies,!!®! perhaps a philosopher, but who should not be allowed to be a teacher of theology.!!7] It’s remarkable how

this problem doesn’t bother people; they want definite, solid statements—in spite of everything. I’m eagerly looking forward to what you will still write to me. How do we Protestants escape the actual surrender of “ground” [Raum]|!®] from generation to generation, or along the line (to put it roughly) from Barth to Bultmann to Bonhoeffer, a surrender that has in fact made enormous progress over against the liberal period, despite all the fresh starts and restitutions? What attracted people to Barth, to the Conf[essing] Church? The feeling that

here [they would find] a certain bulwark of the truth—the “Old Testament prophetic,” the perception of a certain (compared to others) standing up for the oppressed. The reasons for all this were left undiscussed, understood as little as before, or quietly rejected, even deplored, as steps backward into dogmatism;

and anyone who ventured to leap into them soon became sterile. The other need of human beings today, besides the need for truth and compassion, which is at least equally as strong, especially for educated people, the need that today’s world otherwise ignores, for a space for rest and contemplation, to take refuge in quiet and acts of worship [gap in the text]!'7]

[13.] See 3/150, p. 403 (the reference to [sophan). [14.] Through the reading of Bonhoeffer’s “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of Dietrich Wilhelm Rudiger Bethge,” 3/145. See also 3/148, p. 395. [15.] [To Bonhoeffer’s parents.—]DG] [16.] [The faith.—JDG] [17.] See Schreiber, Friedrich Justus Perels, 164.

[18.] Cf. 3/177, ed. note 31. [Rawm can be translated as “room,” “space,” “sphere,” or “ground,” and is used in these different senses by Bonhoeffer in different contexts. The use of “ground” is appropriate here as Bethge is referring to the extent to which liberal Protestantism has “given ground” as a result of critical scholarship.—] DG] [19.] Incomplete, the rest of the page has been cut off.

414 Letters and Papers from Prison 464 everywhere to Catholicism, which was now increasingly proving itself to be a bulwark for the first need, besides its unsurpassable ritual offering. Here it doesn’t seem that all “ground” is being surrendered. Yet it does seem to me in Italy, both among my comrades and in the life of the Italian people as | experienced it there (as far as all that isn’t problematic for me), as though there, too, things are in fact crumbling. So how are we to concretely claim our “ground” in the world? What is the role of ritual, and what is the role of the prophetic? And ultimately, what importance does the Christ[ian] tradition in which we stand have? The “ideas” that people have of it, with which they should be nourished and have been nourished? But all that is precisely what you are thinking about. The way things are going in Italy now, | shall probably no longer be able

to reach even the northern[most] point.[2°] Then Ill have to try to find my people again. Somehow or other, things will work out. But it’s a pity that the chapl[aincy] effort seems to be put off indefinitely. [2!]

Where is Maria now that she won't be coming for such a long time?!??I | forgot to ask you. In the end | think that, in fact, you have no reason to worry, that it’s a matter of situation and of time. Besides, at the beginning everything regarding the other part gets so over!??] Did someone refuse to give you the Dostoyevsky?!*4] | can well imagine that you would like to read it. Being set free through one’s ability to think, and thus share in the multidimensionality of life,!?! also includes, essentially, a sense of meaning, of aims, of having things to accomplish; otherwise it’s the person who doesn't think who is to be envied. | wonder what you mean when you say that only faith truly makes it possible to live life multidim[ensionally]—You would need to bring out more precisely why the reason for recognizing “God in health and strength, and action” lies in the “revelation in Jes[us] Chr[ist]”; what does “center of life” mean here?/?¢

[20.] Of the previous front—Rignano, on the Via Flaminia. [21.] See ed. note 10, [22.| See 3/150, ed. note 4. [23.] Incomplete, rest of the page cut off here. [24.] See 3/177, ed. note 9. [29,| bee 5/152, p. 405. [26.| [Ibid —JDG ]. The rest of the letter has been lost. On the back of this page, Bonhoeffer made the following notes in relation to Bethge’s questions in this letter, 3/155, of June 3, 1944 (cf. DB-ER, 870); cf. 3/161 and 172.

3/155 and 3/156 415 Without God—Cath[olicism] Protest[antism] agree in rejecting! Not from 465 God. “Crisis![”] existential philos[ophy] psychotherapy

Barth, Bultmann; liberal] theology; Schlatter; Althaus; Tillich

“Sinners” not [the] righteous.!?7! Aristocratic Christianity??®!

156. To Eberhard Bethge!!!

Dear Eberhard, That was really something very special, didn’t you think?!?! I’m sorry that in the morning I had to do so much and you had to get ready in such a hurry, but you understand that I didn’t want to let this opportunity pass. .. .

The one question. ... To the contrary, [I] think... . to Ps. 37:3b.'5!... 466 will write to Justus!!! as well and. ... The sender of the [package is] a farmer

in Silesia, Mrs. Keller;'! send her a note of thanks for the [package, and

[27.| Mark 2:17b (and its parallels Matt. 9:13, Luke 5:32 ): “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Cf. DBWE 6:347: “Other times could preach: unless you have

become a sinner like this tax collector and this prostitute, you cannot know and find Christ. We must rather say: unless you have become a righteous person [ein Gerechter| like those who struggle and suffer for justice, truth, and humanity, you cannot know and find Christ.” Cf. also DBWE 6:349 (and ed. note 43). [28.] On this, see the section on the “sense of quality” in “After Ten Years” and the passage in the Tegel drama fragment on a discipline of keeping silent in the political sphere, DBWI 7:50: “What well-meaning person today can still utter the besmirched words freedom, brotherhood, or even the word Germany? ... Let us honor the highest values by silence for a while. Let us learn to do what is right without words for a while. Then, around the quiet sanctuary of the highest values a new nobility will form in our time.” On this topic, see also Rothuizen, Aristocratisch Christendom, 11-21, 375-76. [1.] NZ, A 80,183; handwritten; undated; note by Bethge: “Tegel, June 5, 1944.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 318. Due to weather damage while hidden in the garden, this letter contains illegible passages, especially in the middle section. [2.] Visit on June 3, 1944; see 3/155, ed. note 2. [3.] “So you will live in the land, and enjoy security.” [4.] Friedrich Justus Perels. [5.] See the mention in 3/141, ed. note 7.

416 Letters and Papers from Prison send] twenty marks sometime, or whatever amount you want, and ask her to send something again occasionally, when she has a surplus. She is glad to do it. You must write plainly, since her German isn’t very good. ‘This address is specially reserved for you! My best to both of you, and as always, many thanks for everything. Yours, Dietrich 157. To Eberhard Bethge'!!!

Dear Eberhard,

I feel like a silly kid, keeping from you that P’ve been trying my hand at poetry here from time to time. I’ve kept it a secret from everyone until now—even Maria, who would be the one it concerns most!—simply because I was embarrassed somchow and I didn’t know whether she might be more shocked than pleased. You are the only one whom I can be sure of telling

it to somewhat reasonably, and who I hope will pour cold water over my head if need be and tell me plainly to forget it. So I’m sending you a sample today,!*! first, because it {eels silly to me to have a secret from you, second, so you can have something to read on your journey that you didn't expect, and third, because the subject is on your mind at the moment, and it may express something similar to what you, too, are thinking when saying goodbye to Renate. {For me, this confrontation with the past, this attempt to hold on to it 467 and to get it back, and above all the fear of losing it, is almost the daily background music of my life here, which at times—especially after brief visits, which are always followed by long partings—becomes a theme with variations.'! Saying good-bye, the experience of the past, whether it’s yesterday or years ago—they soon run together—is something that is demanded of me repeatedly, and as you yourself wrote: “Once again the stress of saying good-bye. Remarkable how little one benefits from practice in this.”! In

[1.] NZ, A 80,157; handwritten; undated; note by Bethge: “Tegel June 5, 1944.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 319-20. [2.] The poem “The Past,” 3/158. [3.] Cf. 2/73, p. 181: “An essay on ‘the sense of time’ arose primarily out of the need to make my own past present to myself. ... Gratitude and repentance are what keep our past always present to us.” See also Bonhoeffer, Zeltelnotizen, 56. [4.] See 2/95, p. 249.

3/156 and 3/157 417 this attempt I’m sending you, everything depends on the last few lines. I think they turned out too short; what do you think? It was strange how the rhymes just came by themselves. ‘The whole thing was written at once, ina few hours, and hasn't been polished. Now, since Iam telling someone about it for the first time, I see that I can and must send it to Maria as well. Even though some of it will shock her, she must feel nevertheless what is meant. I’d be glad to hear a word from you about it. Perhaps in the future I shall repress such impulses in myself and spend my time more usefully. If you like, I can also send you another one to have a look at. Is the Dohrmann business”! now out of the question altogether? Of course, this is very much on my mind, but I can’t say it depresses me particularly. I have too strong a feeling that your paths are being directed from above, and that is better than anything we can undertake. Certainly one must try everything, but only to become more convinced of what God’s way is, and to be able to pray the Ninety-first Psalm more confidently.!®! But if there’s anything else I can do, let me know. From our conversation the other day, I saw again that no one can inter-

pret my thoughts better than you can. That’s always such a satisfying feel- 468 ing to me. How and where are you going to find your unit again, after the troops have been cleared out of Rome? May God keep you, wherever you may be.

Yours ever, with my deep gratitude, Dietrich

[5.]| Consideration of Eberhard Bethge’s reassignment as a military chaplain; see 3/160, ed. note 4. [6.] Cf. Ps. 91:11: “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”

418 Letters and Papers from Prison 158. Poem “The Past”!!!

The Past You left, beloved bliss and pain so hard to love. What shall I call your Life, Anguish, Ecstasy, my Heart, of my own self a part—the past?! The door slammed shut and locked, I hear your steps depart, resound, then slowly fade. What remains for me? Joy, torment, longing? I know just this: You left—and all is past. Do you feel how I reach for you now, how I clutch you as with claws, so tightly that it must hurt? How I wound your flesh 469 — till your blood oozes out,

just to be assured you are near, you bodily, earthly fullness of life?

[1.] NZ, A 67,1: (a) handwritten draft; pencil; 5 pages; notes by Bethge: “1. Poem” “Tegel”; (b) handwritten revision; ink; 6 pages; notes by Bethge: “Spring 1944,” “in letter of Junc 7, 1944” (erroneous dating; should read June 5, 1944), “Maria visiting permit [Sprecherlaubnis] May 22, 1944.” First published in Widerstand und Ergebung (1970) and reprinted in LPP, 320-23. A second version of the poem, with slight changes (cf. Love Lelters from Cell 92, 248-52), was sent to Maria von Wedemeyer with the following undated cover letter, presumably also in carly June 1944 (ibid., 252; translation slightly altered): “My dearest Maria, This is for you, and you alone. I hesitated to send it because | was afraid it might alarm you. It mustn't, nor will it, I think, if you sense what underlies it. The last six lines are what matters most; they prompted all the rest. I hold fast to them, and so do you! I can’t say any more today. Everything I would be able to say is in the attempted poem. If you don’t like it, tear it up, throw it away. But I didn’t want to conceal it from you. Yours, Dietrich.” For interpretations, see Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 48-51; Henkys, Gefdangnisgedichte, 79-80. [Cf. also Henkys, Gehetmnis der Freiheit, 93-109. Bonhoeffer first

told Bethge of his attempts at poetry, esp. “this confrontation with the past,” on June 5. See 3/157. On May 29 and 30 he wrote Maria thanking her for “everything that has come from you to me in the last few days” (Love Letters from Cell 92, 206), alluding to her visit and a letter from her (now lost). He then elaborated on his own past, including revealing comments on his first love (ibid., 208).—NL/]DG| [2.] [The German poem title, “Vergangenheit,” meaning “the past” or “time past,” along with the verb vergehen (to pass), the participial adjective vergangen (“past,” “gone,” or perhaps “lost”), the adjective noun das Vergangene, (“bygone things” or “that which is past”) recur throughout Bonhoeffer’s work. This poem’s structure is dependent on the rhymes, rhythms, and associative meanings created through Bonhoeffer’s use of words built from this root, linking the poem’s sensory immediacy with its reflection on time.—NL/J]JDG]

3/198 419 Do you sense my terrible longing for pain of my own? that I yearn to see my own blood just so that all will not fade away into the past? Life, what have you done to me? Why did you come? Why did you pass by? Past, when you flee from me— are you not still my past, my very own?

As the sun sinks ever faster over the sea as if drawn down into the darkness, so your image sinks down, down, down, no holding it back— into the sea of the past, and a few waves bury it.

Just as warm breath dissolves in cool morning air, so your image melts before me so lL no longer know

your face, your hands, your form. A smile, a look, a greeting appears to me, but then it crumbles, dissolves,

brings no comfort or closeness, is destroyed, belongs only to the past.

I want to inhale the fragrance of your being,!! absorb it, abicle in it, as heavy blossoms invite bees for a sip in summer’s heat and make them giddy; as privet berries make the hawk moth drunk at Night;—

but then a harsh gust comes and destroys fragrance and blossoms, 470 and I stand like a fool before what has disappeared, is past and gone.

[3.] [The original manuscript has “bosom” where DBW has “being.” Information provided by Ilse Todt.—NL/JDG]

420 Letters and Papers from Prison I feel as if red-hot tongs were tearing pieces out of my flesh, as you, my past life, hurry away. Frenzied defiance and rage beset me, I sling wild, useless questions into the void. Why, why, why? I keep asking. When my senses cannot hold you, life passing, life past, IT want to think and think again till I find what I have lost. But I feel how everything above me, around me, under me is smiling, enigmatic and unmoved at my most hopeless efforts to catch the wind, to recapture what is past. Evil enters my eye, my soul. I hate what I see, I hate what moves me, I hate all that lives and 1s lovely, that claims to compensate my loss. I want my life, | demand my own life back, my past, you.

You—suddenly tears fill my eyes,

perhaps under a veil of tears I'll regain your whole image, you yourself completely? But I shall not weep.

Tears help only the strong, they sicken the weak.

471 Weary, | arrive at evening, welcome the cot to lie down on, promising to let me forget when possessing escapes me. Night, snuff out what is burning, grant me complete oblivion, Be benevolent to me, Night, do your kind service, to you I entrust myself.

3/18 421 But Night is wise and mighty,

wiser than I and mightier than the day. What no earthly power can sway, where reason, senses, defiance, tears give way, Night pours over me from sheer abundance. Unharmed by hostile time, pure, free, and whole, you are brought to me in a dream, you, all that’s past; you, my life, you, yesterday’s day and yesterday’s hour. Your closeness awakens me in the dead of night and I’m terrified— have I lost you again? must I forever seek you in vain, you, my past, my own?!#! IT stretch out my hands and pray— and I discover:!! Your life’s most vital piece may be the past, a gift you may regain

through gratitude and rueful pain.!”! Grasp God’s forgiveness and goodness in the past, pray that God keep you this day and to the last.

[4.] [The original manuscript version in Houghton Library, Harvard University, sent by Bonhoeffer to Maria von Wedemeyer, adds a final meine (emphatic: “my own?”), which we retain here. Notes on this manuscript thanks to Martin Rumscheidt.—NL/JDG | [5.] [The German here is “und ich erfahre das Neue,” literally: “and I experience the new.” Cf. 3/162, p. 433.—JDG]

[6.] [The motif of “Dank und... Reue” (gratitude and regret) recurs in Bonhoeffer’s spring 1944 reply to Maria von Wedemeyer, in which he confesses he has wrestled with the idea (expressed by her in a lost letter) that the good things from the past avail us little once they're over, “but I’ve discovered that it’s dangerous and wrong. ... We mustn’t lose our past. It belongs to us and must remain a part of us, otherwise we grow discontented or depressed. We must continually bathe all that is past in a solution of gratitude and penitence; then we shall gain and preserve it. It is the past, granted, but it’s my past, and as such it will retain its immediacy if we are profoundly, unselfishly grateful for God's gifts and regretful for the perverse way in which we often vitiate them” (Love Letters from Cell 92, 229-30).—NL/JDG]

422 Letters and Papers from Prison 472 159. To Eberhard Bethge'!!! June 6, 1944

Dear Eberhard,

Just to experience this day!?! with you, and in some way with all of you together, I’m hurrying to write you this note. It wasn’t a surprise to me, but still, facts are entirely different from expectations. ‘The Daily Text and the interpretative verse’! call us all to the center of the gospel—“redemption”

is the word around which everything turns. In faith, during the coming weeks, and with great assurance to meet our common future, let us confidently commit your path and all our paths to God. Xdpts Kai eipyvn!!*! Yours, Dietrich 160. From Eberhard Bethge'!!! June 6, 1944

Dear Dietrich, Many thanks for your letter. The sermon!?] came with it, and | thank you especially for the two meditations,|?] which | have already read once for myself. Thank you very much for your helpful, brotherly words. The matter of Renate’s cooking facilities has, of course, been straightened out 473 much better than we had feared. The person doing it is being particularly nice to Renate in her situation. What | learned from Bunke: (1) A I[on]g questionnaire on personal details and past, the same as for officers, etc. (2) Based on that, an intelligence check is done for the General Command, which is also passed to the Gest[apo], recommendation from one’s local party leader, etc.; mostly very

[1.] NZ, A 80,185; handwritten; note by Bethge: “Normandy landing.” Previously published in LPP, 323. [2.] Wehrmachtberichte, 3:118 (June 6, 1944): “Special bulletin! The long-awaited attack by the British and North Americans on the northern French coast began last night.” [3.] Ps. 38:5[4]: “For my iniquities have gone over my head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.” Eph. 1:7: “In [Jesus Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” [4.] “Grace and peace,” the opening greeting in Paul’s letters; see, for example, Rom.

bef Cores: 2-Cor: 122: [1.] NZ, A 81,182; handwritten; from Sakrow. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 323-24. [2.] Bethge’s sermon for the baptism of his son [which Bonhoeffer had borrowed to read—J DG]; see 3/154, ed. note 11. [3.] Meditations on the Daily Texts; cf. 3/154, ed. note 2.

3/159 and 3/160 423 time-consuming. (3) A check with or inquiry to the army chap[lain] in charge in Italy; perhaps also here with the district military chap[lain] (B[unke]) or Dohrmann, who has to get the consent of the Ministry for Church Affairs; possibly about how to proceed, since B[unke] is open to discussion. (4) Check as to my knowledge and suitability by Dohrmann. (5) Assignment first to a field hospital unit, from there after a time possibly to one or more divisions. |! B[unke] thought it would be very difficult, however. No one [has been] appointed from his military district in the past one and a half years. The responsible general in the chaplaincy department is Weidemann./] Now the considerations and actions as to how to get over this first obstacle, Weidemann, will have to proceed here without me. Mr. Linke’s comment (no “saying what you want to hear’”)!6! is odd and sur-

prising. Mrs. von Kleist!”] wrote today how happy she was to hear that the grandparents let me use their permission to visit: “How heartrending it must have been for you both.” Of course, it was “heartrending,’ but even so, our hearts being moved wasn’t in the forefront. Instead, we were in fine spirits, focused, and very quickly in medias res. But that’s also because you aren't easily offended, so to speak, and don’t whine about having your “role” acknowledged.

The Bultmann letter is still missing.!8! | can rely on comrade Rfainalter], to 474 the extent that | tell him anything.!7] Today things began in the west.l!°] | wasn’t expecting it yet, but I’m glad that you finally won a bet. | heard here from the wife of one of my comrades that the Velletri people all managed to meet up on the twenty-fourth, in good shape, at the northern place.l''] By now they will have moved on. And | must look around.

|[4.] Messerschmidt, “Zur Seelsorgepolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” 75-76: “The clergy

in question were appointed by the military bishops in charge, by agreement with the civilian church authorities and with the permission of the “Gruppe Seelsorge’ [pastoral care group]. ... Before that, church-political and intelligence checks were carried out, in which the military departments involved and the Ministry for Church Affairs increasingly brought in, or heeded, the party and Gestapo offices.” On the appointment process, see also Beese, Seelsorger in Uniform, 55-68.

[5.] Major General Weidemann, head of the chaplaincy office of the Army High Command. See 3/155, ed. note 9. [6.] See 3/154, p. 410. [7.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow.

[8.] 3/139; on Bultmann, see p. 372. [9.] See 3/154, p. 410 (“that you could speak to him about the miracle of correspondence”). [10.] The Allied landings in Normandy; see 3/159, ed. note 2. [11.] Rignano.

424 Letters and Papers from Prison Hope | get to it. With my very, very best wishes and thanks, and keep up your spirits.

Yours, Eberhard

Wednesday night. Many thanks for the letter!'4] that | found here at the parents’,!'3] as well as the one for Justus;!'4! he'll get it tomorrow. I’m on my way tomorrow morning. Yours, Eberhard

161. To Eberhard Bethge'! |!

June 8, 1944

Dear Eberhard, During these first hours while youre sitting on the train, going farther away from us hour by hour, my thoughts are accompanying you, and maybe this letter will get to your new destination about the same time you do. I was

especially glad to get another letter from you!! this morning. It puts my mind at rest that you were as glad of our time together as I was, since I was

475 already concerned about having robbed you of that entire afternoon. What kind of incomprehensible regulation about the millitary] chap[laincy] business is this?!*! We shall pursue the matter very thoroughly, and you can be quite sure that we won’t miss any possibility. Otherwise, In many ways, you must have left with a lighter heart than you had feared at first. We had put off seeing each other again from Christmas to Easter to Pentecost, and one holiday after another passed by. But the next holiday will certainly belong to us; [no longer have any doubt about that.

{Nice that you got to see Karl Friedrich.'*! He wrote me such a good letter again. For Klaus it must be difficult to find a way to get started, after such a long time.!! T know that it’s really not from any lack of warmheart[12.] 3/156. [13.] [The Schleichers.—]DG} [14.] Friedrich Justus Perels; see 3/156, p. 415.

[1.] NZ, A 81,186; handwritten; note by Bethge: “Thursday.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 324-29, [2.] 3/155. [S:):566 3/4155; p.4 12;

[4.] Ibid.

[5.] Klaus Bonhoeffer was avoiding all written or spoken communications—especially so close to the overthrow attempt of July 20, 1944, in which he was involved—that might draw attention to him, so he did not contact his brother in Tegel either.

3/160 and 3/161 425 edness... . Klaus inherited Mama’s tendency to complicate things and her natural urge to help, along with Papa’s uncommonly wise caution, but without Mama’s uninhibited energy and Papa’s focus on that which is within reach. I think that he himself must suffer some from this. There’s hardly anything more stimulating than a conversation with him, and I can hardly imagine a more big-hearted, generous, and noble character than his, but for the simple and necessary decisions in life, he’s not the man. ... You see, there are always reasons not to do something; the question is whether you do it in spite of them.!©! If you only want to do things that have every reason in their favor, you'll end up never doing anything, or else it won't be necessary any longer, since others will have taken over for you. Yet every real deed is one that no one else can do, only you yourself. It’s clear to me, however, that I need first to give this speech to myself; you know best how often I have

trouble making up my mind about petty things. I must have inherited this, by the way, from my grandfather Bonhoeffer.!”|

I was very happy about the greetings from Sabine and G.'*! (I hadn’t 476 heard about either of them! Why do people always forget to tell me important things? I had asked about them often enough.) You ask so many important questions about the thoughts that have preoccupied me lately! that ’d be glad if I could answer them myself. It’s all

still at a very early stage, and as usual I’m guided more by my instinct for responding to questions that may arise than being already clear about them. I'll try to describe my position from a historical angle. The movement toward human autonomy (by which I mean discovery of the laws by which the world lives and manages its affairs in science, in society and government, in art, ethics, and religion), which began around the thirteenth century (I don’t want to get involved in disputing exactly when), has reached a certain

completeness in our age.!!®! Human beings have learned to manage all important issues by themselves, without recourse to “Working hypothesis:

[6.] Cf. “After Ten Years,” p. 41; DBWE 6:312-20, 323, et passim.

[7.] Friedrich Bonhoeffer. [8.] Sabine and Gerhard Leibholz in Oxford; see 3/155, p. 412. 19.) See 3/155, p. 413. [10.| This passage in the letter is the first evidence of Bonhoeffer’s intense study of Wilhelm Dilthey’s book Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Ref-

ormation; see also 2/119, p. 317. On this passage in the present letter, see Weltanschauung und Analyse, 90ff. On the relation between Bonhoeffer and Dilthey, see esp. Feil, “Der Einflu®B Wilhelm Diltheys auf Dietrich Bonhoeffers “Widerstand und Ergebung,’” as well as Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 178-85; Gremmels, “Mtindigkeit,” 360-66; Wustenberg, Theology of Life, 104-12; Gallas, “Bonhoeffer lettore di Dilthey.”

426 Letters and Papers from Prison God.”!!!) In questions of science or art, as well as in ethical questions, this has become a matter of course,!!! so that hardly anyone dares rock the boat anymore. But in the last hundred years or so, this has also become increas477 ingly true of religious questions; it’s becoming evident that everything gets along without “God” and does so just as well as before. As in the scientific domain, so in human affairs generally, “God” is being pushed further and further out of our life, losing ground.'!*! The historical views of both Catholics and Protestants agree that this development must be seen as the great falling-away from God, from Christ, and the more they lay claim to God and Christ in opposing this, and play them off against it, the more this development considers itself anti-Christian. The world, now that it has become conscious of itself and the laws of its existence, 1s sure of itself in a way that it 1s

becoming uncanny for us. Failures, things going wrong, can’t shake the world’s confidence in the necessity of its course and its development; such things are accepted with fortitude and sobriety as part of the bargain, and even an event like this war is no exception. In very different forms the Christian apologetic is now moving against this self-confidence. It is trying to

persuade this world that has come of age!™! that it cannot live without

[11.] On the origin of the expression “Working hypothesis: God,” see Mauthner, Der Atheismus und seine Geschichte im Abendland, 3:440; Weizsacker, World View of Physics, 156:

“Laplace ... answered the question where in his system there was still room for God: ‘I do not need this hypothesis.” The “working hypothesis” of a “liberated reason [befreile ralio|,” the success of which Bonhoeffer ascribes in his l¢thics (DBWE 6:116) to the “incomparable rise of technology,” leads to the loss of meaning of “God as a working hypothesis”

for the “discovery of the laws according to which the world lives” (see Bonhocffer’s text above). See Weizsacker, World View of Physics, 157: “Stall every scientist must certainly set himself the goal of making the hypothesis ‘God’ superfluous in his field.” [12.] Crossed out: “up to a point.” [13.] See 3/152, ed. note 6. [14.] This concept (including its variations such as “coming of age” or “maturity”), which appears “suddenly” in this letter (Bethge, Ohnmacht und Miindigheit, 67), was influenced in its content by the reading of Dilthey’s Weltanschawung und Analyse, which on p. 90 reads: “When the theological-metaphysical system ... had been shaken .. . in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries... the real needs of society gave rise in the seventeenth century, on the new ground of a science [Wissenschaft] come of age... to a scientific system of knowledge providing generally valid principles for the conduct of life and leadership of the society.” Or: “From the rebellion in the Netherlands to the French Revolution .. . [the “system of knowledge” that was formulating itself “as natural theology and laws of nature”] was among the forces at work in all major historical changes. ‘Much admired and much reviled,’ it is nevertheless the greatest expression in religion, law, and government of the human spirit now come of age” (author’s emphasis). [Translation by Isabel Best.—]DG] For Bonhoeffer’s earlier use of the concept “come of age,” see DBWE 12, 2/9, p. 280 (lecture on “The Fuhrer and the Individual in the Younger Generation”); DBWE 6:120, 398; DBWE 16, 2/6, p. 494.

3/161 427 “God” as its guardian. Even after we have capitulated on all worldly matters,

there still remain the so-called ultimate questions—death, guilt—which 478 only “God” can answer, and for which people need God and the church and the pastor. So in a way we live off these so-called ultimate human questions. But what happens if some day they no longer exist as such, or if they are being answered “without God”? Here is where the secularized offshoots of

Christian theology come in, that is, the existential philosophers and the psychotherapists,''®! to prove to secure, contented ,and happy human beings that they are in reality miserable and desperate and just don’t want to admit that they are in a perilous situation, unbeknown to themselves, from which only existentialism or psychotherapy can rescue them. Where there is health, strength, security, and simplicity, these experts scent sweet fruit on which they can gnaw or lay their corrupting eggs. ‘They set about to drive people to inner despair, and then they have a game they can win. This is secularized methodism.'!°! And whom does it reach? a small number of

intellectuals, of degenerates, those who consider themselves most important in the world and therefore enjoy being preoccupied with themselves. A simple man who spends his daily life with work and family, and certainly also with various stupid affairs, won’t be affected. He has neither time nor inclination to be concerned with his existential despair, or to see his perhaps modest share of happiness as having “perilous,” “worrisome,”!!”7! or “disastrous” aspects. I consider the attack by Christian apologetics on the world’s coming of age as, first of all, pointless, second, ignoble, and, third, unchristian. Pointless—because it appears to me like trying to put a person who has become an adult back into puberty, that is, to make people dependent on a lot of things on which they in fact no longer depend, to shove them into problems that in fact are no longer problems for them. Ignoble— 479 because an attempt is being made here to exploit people’s weaknesses for alien purposes to which they have not consented freely.''®! Unchristian— because it confuses Christ with a particular stage of human religiousness, namely, with a human law. More about this later, but first a few more words

[15.] Cf. 3/155, p. 415, where Bonhoeffer notes: “‘Crisis!["] existential philos[ophy] psychotherapy.” On his judgment of psychotherapy, see 2/86, ed. note 18. |16.] See 2/112, ed. note 14. |[Bonhoeffer’s use of the term “methodist” here refers

to a form of pietism that he rejected, not the Methodist Church. See also ed. note 20 below.—]DG]

[17.] Cf. Heidegger, Being and Time, 225-73: “Care as the Being of Dasein.” On Heidegger, see Bonhoeffer’s inaugural lecture, “The Anthropological Question in Contemporary Philosophy and Theology,” DBWE 10, 2/7. [18.] Replaces: “Ignoble—because it is exploitation of a person’s weakness for someone else’s purposes.”

428 Letters and Papers from Prison about the historical situation. The question is Christ and the world that has come of age. The weakness of liberal theology was that it allowed the world the right to assign to Christ his place within it; that it accepted, in the dispute between church and world, the—relatively mild—peace terms dictated by the world. Its strength was that it did not try to turn back the course of

history and really took up the battle (Troeltsch!),!'%! even though this ended in its defeat. Defeat was followed by capitulation and the attempt ata completely new beginning, based on “regaining awareness” of its own foundations in the Bible and the Reformation. Heim sought, along pietist-meth-

odist lines, to convince individuals that they were confronted with the alternatives “despair or Jesus.”'?°! He was winning “hearts.”!?!! Althaus (continuing the modern positivist line in a strongly confessional direction) 480 tried to regain from the world some room for Lutheran doctrine (ministry) and Lutheran ritual, otherwise leaving the world to its own devices.!*7! Tillich undertook the religious interpretation of the development of the world itsel{—against its will—giving it its form through religion. That was very brave, but the world threw him out of the saddle and galloped on by itself.

He too thought he understood the world better than it did itself, but the world felt totally misunderstood and rejected such an insinuation. (The world does need to be understood in a better way than it does itself! but not “religiously,” the way the religious socialists want to do.)'*°! Barth was the

[19.] On this judgment, see passages on Ernst Troeltsch in Bonhoeffer’s lectures on “The History of Systematic Theology in the Twentieth Century,” winter semester 1931— 32, DBW 11:150-53, 160-62, 172-75, esp. 192: “(Last chapter of Troeltsch’s Social Teaching) The proletarian masses speak a very different language from the one from Nazareth who brings the gospel under sunny skies. But he must be there, but where and how? Here is the dilemma for Troeltsch and Naumann’s question. But their merit was to pose the question in this way. | They represent| the high point and the turning point of theology at the turn of the century.” [20.] Only in Karl Heim’s Glaube und Denken (vol. 1 of Der evangelische Glauben und das

Denken der Gegenwart), published in 1931—which Bonhoeffer discussed in 1932 (DBWE 12, 2/5)—does the alternative “God or despair” appear (Heim, Glaube und Denken, 320; cf. also 307-19), which Bonhoeffer quoted (DBWE 12, 2/5, p. 252). On his critique of Karl Heim, see also Bonhoeffer’s December 25, 1932, letter to Helmut R6Bler, DBWE 12, | Far yh 8 Be oP

[21.] See 3/148, ed. note 3. Cf. DBWE 4:286: Bonhoeffer speaks of “the indwelling of Jesus Christ in our hearts”; the difference between this and Heim becomes clear when the quotation is carried further: “The life of Jesus Christ here on earth has not yet concluded. Christ continues to live it in the lives of his followers.” [22.] Althaus, “Luther und die Politik,” 24-25: “Christendom has neither a political program nor any right to oversee or censure political life in the name of Jesus and the Gospel. ... The constitution of love in the kingdom of God lies in another dimension from any possible political order.” “In reality, politics follows its own rules and necessities.”

3/16l 429 first to recognize the error of all these attempts (which were basically all still sailing in the wake of liberal theology, without intending to do so) in that they all aim to save some room for religion in the world or over against the world. He led the God of Jesus Christ forward to battle against religion,!*4! mvetpa against odp€.'*°! This remains his greatest merit (the second edition of The Epistle to the Romans, despite all the neo-Kantian eggshells!). 26] Through his later Dogmatics he has put the church in a position to carry this distinction in principle all the way through. It was not in his ethics that

he eventually failed, as is often said—his ethical observations, so farasthey 481 exist, are as important as his dogmatic ones—but in the nonreligious interpretation of theological concepts he gave no concrete guidance,'?’! either in dogmatics or ethics. Here he reaches his limit, and that 1s why his theology of revelation has become positivist, a “positivism of revelation,” as I call it.'*5! To a great extent the Confessing Church now has forgotten all about Barth’s approach and lapsed [rom positivism into conservative restoration,

29! Tts significance is that it holds fast to the great concepts of Christian theology, but it appears to be exhausting itself gradually in the process. Certainly these concepts contain the elements of genuine prophecy (which include the claim to the truth as well as mercy, as you mentioned)! and of genuine ritual, and only to that extent does the message of the Confessing Church get attention, a hearing—and rejection. But both’! remain unde-

[23.] For Bonhoeffer’s critique of Paul Tillich, see DBWE 1:239, 273. On the relation between Bonhoeffer and Tillich, see among others Benktson, Christus und die Religion, 93-146. DB-ER, 857-58: “All Bonhoeffer knew of Tillich was what had been published before the Nazi period. It was this he had in mind when he argued for or against Tillich.” [24.] Barth, Epistle to the Romans (“The Frontier of Religion,” 229-40, and “The Meaning of Religion,” 240-57). [25.| “Spirit” against “flesh.” See Barth's interpretation of Rom. 8:3—9 in Epistle to the Romans, 275-85, tor example, p. 284: “In time, it has been decided that we are all in the flesh. In eternity, it has already been decided that we are all in the Spirit. We are rejected in the flesh, but elected in the Spirit.” On the opposition of “flesh” and “spirit,” see 2/88, p. 231; DBWE 4:158-59, 266-67; DBWE 5:34-35, 38-39, et passim. [26.] Comment in parentheses added in the margin. Cf. Karl Barth’s self-criticism in Credo, 185: “At the time my whole desire was really to elucidate Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. That was done partly by means of a strange incrustation of Kantian-Platonic conceptions.” See also DBWE 10, 2/17, pp. 472-73. |27.| “Concrete” inserted afterward. [28.] See 3/137, p. 364, and ed. note 17, [29.]| On Tegel note 4 (NL, A 86) on Rev. 2:1ff., Bonhoeffer noted the comparison “Ephesus = BK [Confessing Church]. Work, discipline, but the love you had at first!” Rev. 2:4, underlined in pencil in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible: “But I have this against you [the congregation in Ephesus], that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” [30.] See 3/155, pp. 413-14.

450 Letters and Papers from Prison veloped, remote, because they lack interpretation. Those who, like, for example, P. Schttz'’*! or the Oxford! or Berneuchen*! movements, who 482 long “life,” backward Oforg“movement” . se ; ’ ”and ecys a are a gdangerous ‘ 10 yreactionaries, iin S, c TAD looking, because they want to go back before the beginnings of revelation theology and seek “religious” renewal. They haven't understood the problem at all, so their talk is completely beside the point. They have no future whatsoever (except possibly the Oxford people, if only they weren’t so lacking in biblical substance). As for Bultmann, he seems to have sensed Barth's limitation somehow, but misunderstands it in the sense of liberal theology, and thus falls into typical liberal! reductionism (the “mythological” ele-

ments in Christianity are taken out, thus reducing Christianity to its “essence”).°! My view, however, is that the full content, including the

5 5 , } 5)

“mythological” concepts, must remain—the New Testament is not a mythological dressing up of a universal truth, but this mythology (resurrection and so forth) is the thing itself!—but that these concepts must now be interpreted in a way that does not make religion the condition for faith (cf. the TeptToun”! in Paul!). Only then, in my opinion, is liberal theology overcome (which still determines even!**! Barth, if only in a negative way), but

[31.] [Le., prophecy and worship.—]DG] [32.] On Bonhoeffer’s reservations about the theology of Paul Schtitz, see Love Letters from Cell 92, 154 (letter of February 18, 1944), and DB-ER, 844. [33.] A religious community movement centering on the four absolutes of “purity,” “truth,” “love,” and “unselfishness.” For Bonhoeffer’s position on the Oxford Group movement, see the “Finkenwalde Tlomiletics,” DBW 14:513-17, “Parish evangelism [Volksmission]”; Bonhoeffer’s letter of September 24, 1936, to Erwin Sutz, DBW 14, 25657; DB-ER, 470-71.

[34.| A church reform movement begun in 1922 (see Das Berneuchener Buch, 1926) that aimed to form the church on the basis of “life” rather than “doctrine,” in the unity of martyria (witness), leitourgia (worship), and diakonia (service). See Stahlin, Via vitae, 370. For Bonhoeffer’s critique of the Berneuchen movement, see DBW 14:506, ed. note 102: “The word (of God) alone makes us unpardonable, not music and symbols (Berneuchen).” The Berneuchen movement held its conferences from 1928 to 1930 in Patzig. Its decisive influence on Maria von Wedemeyer is documented in Love Letters from Cell 92

(for example, pp. 190, 262-64), and “this caused a bottleneck in the relations between Dietrich and Maria” (ibid., 315, in Eberhard Bethge’s afterword); see also Mayer, Bekennende Kirche und Berneuchener Bewegung.

[35.] “Typical liberal” inserted afterward. [36.] [The attempt to describe the “essence” of Christianity was typical of liberal theology at the time. See, for example, Harnack’s What Is Christianity? the German title of which refers explicitly to “essence” (Wesen). Bultmann wrote the introduction to the new edition (1950) of Harnack’s lectures.—]DG] [37.] “Circumcision”; see 3/137, ed. note 23. [38.] “Even” inserted afterward.

3/16l 431 at the same time the question it asks is really taken up and answered (which is not the case with the Confessing Church’s positivism of revelation!). The fact that the world has come of age is no longer an occasion for polemics and apologetics, but is now actually better understood than it understands itself, namely, from the gospel and from Christ.

Now to your question of whether the church has any “ground” left to stand on, or whether it is losing it altogether,!*’! and the other question, whether Jesus himself used the human “predicament” as a point of contact,"! so that “methodism,” criticized above, is in the right. June 9 Pll stop here and write more tomorrow. I need to get a letter off to Maria as well.4" Many thanks for your letter of June 6,'*7! right before you left. Ursel, whom I saw for a few minutes yesterday, has already mentioned the name of Weidem[ann];!43! T was able to tell her that he is well known to 483 Sack,'""! whom Justus!!*! knows well. Justus left me a message this morning that he believes the outcome will be favorable.°! So I hope that all hindrances will be overcome. The conditions that remain are easy to fulfill, and since you're Ridiger’s!"! son-in-law, the location will be no problem either. As for Dohrm[ann]’s interview on your suitability, you needn't be afraid. When!**! you say that you were a sem[inary] inspector and were working on a doctorate with Wolf,'49! he’ll avoid delving into a lot of questions. Bunke is certainly well disposed, and surely Dohrm|[ann] as well. So, it should work out.

[39.] 3/155, pp. 413-14. [40.] See 3/155, p. 415. [41.] Not extant. [42.] 3/160. [43.| Major General Weidemann. This concerned the possibility of a military chaplaincy assignment for Eberhard Bethge; for details, see 3/160, p. 422-23. [44.] The attorney Alfons Sack. [45.] Friedrich Justus Perels. [46.] [Possibly a reference to the conspiracy.—] DG] [47.] Rudiger Schleicher. [48.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [49.] They were considering whether Bethge’s work on the Psalms for Ernst Wolf in

Halle could become a dissertation. Bethge was inspector of studies for the collective pastorates in Grob-Schlonwitz and Sigurdshof (there was work done there on Ps. 119 in 1939-40; see DBWE 15, 3/9). See Bonhoeffer’s question about Bethge’s “dissertation for his doctorate” in 2/73, p. 187, and ed. note 51.

432 Letters and Papers from Prison The Bultmann letter was sent to Italy several weeks ago (shortly before you left there). So I think it is waiting for you there.!°°!—Linke probably meant, with his comment," that he clearly found you “someone one can talk to” without sentimentality or sniveling. By the way, if we're talking about “roles,” yours is without doubt much harder, and I was very glad to see you go off to meet the future so cheerfully and bravely. In short, it was grand for

both of us to be together, and I can’t imagine that this will ever change in the years ahead. It’s a real asset, one that may have taken time and effort to acquire, but how well we have been rewarded for what we have invested in it.

That’s all. All the very, very best! Thinking of you with devotion and gratitude, Yours as ever, Dietrich

484 162. From Eberhard Bethge!|! On the train, June 8, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

| was very surprised and excited to get your letter with the poem enclosed.!?] Fatherl3] seems to have forgotten it and gave it to me last night when | was practically already in bed. | read it right then (everything was sealed), and now in the train I’ve read the verses several times. | wonder if it was only because | think | know you so well, in many situations and many of your thoughts, that it was so exciting and moving for me to read them. | don’t really think so. Anyone reading it would most likely hardly believe that it was by someone who almost never writes poetry; they would think it was the fruit of long practice and work. But of course, you have been very much concerned with language and expression before now. | recognize here your compact style, its terseness and succinctness, clarity of statement, together with very fine, vivid imagery. What will Maria probably have to say about it? The ending, whether others might find it too short, as you yourself fear? For me, the general themes, that is, the experience of our being together, your letters, and so forth, are immediately fully present. And yet | wouldn’t know how to express it more beautifully. | did

[50.| 3/139, received by Bethge in Italy after his return there from Berlin; see 3/168, p. 445. [51.] See 3/160, p. 423.

[1.] NZ, A 81,187; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 330. [2.] 3/157, with the enclosed poem “The Past,” 3/158. [3.] Rudiger Schleicher.

3/161 and 3/162 433 consider whether you ought to find a more “conciliatory” title when you give it to her. Or, put differently, don’t send her just this by itself, or just things in this tenor. You express yourself so compellingly and vividly here that it could make her feel (and she cannot read it “objectively’) that this alone is who you are in your situation there. It is who you are, certainly, but you are also living, feeling, and thinking in other dimensions as well, and also very vividly. You'll see what | mean, won't you? It could be too hard on her to make yourself known only in this way. And such poetry as this has a more personal effect than anything else. I’d be very happy to read more, and new ones. I’ve read this one several times. Shall | mention a few details? When | read it again, however,

| myself am in doubt again about what | thought | had noticed, and as a whole 485 it affects me strongly and compellingly. I’m grateful to you for sending it to me. The fourth line reminds me of a book title, of a not very serious novel probably, which has been advertised lately.!4] Probably you won't have seen it. Might the sentences “till your blood [da dein Blut] ...” be said in a more restrained way? In the third stanzal>! it seems to me that perhaps the phrase “(it) dissolves” [lést sich auf] isn’t quite new enough, after the image above of “crumbling,” since you otherwise keep finding new expressions. | thought at first that the line “before what has disappeared, is past and gone” [vor dem Entschwundenen, Vergangenen] [would be] phonetically better turned around (“is past, disappeared’’). But you want always to end with “past.” Could you just say “slung” instead of “| sling” [schleudre ich]? For me it isn’t completely clear why you wrote “at my most hopeless efforts” [Uber mein hoffnungsloses Mih’n]. The paragraph about the night is especially beautiful. Is the “but” in “But the night is wise [Aber die Nacht] ...” an archaic “but”? The only thing | don’t quite like is “and | experience the new” [und ich erfahre das Neue], (just) the expression “the new.” l®! Forgive me for behaving like a schoolteacher, but you did ask me to comment on it. | really wish | could express to you how much the whole thing surprised and impressed me. Line for line. For your closest relatives and others close to you, there’s likely to be an embarrassed reaction or, in any case, great sensitivity to something created by a relative. My immediate reaction was great joy and admiration, and it brought to life for me again, compellingly and convincingly, what you have otherwise touched on in your letters. Maria should be very happy with it, despite any pain. Of course, it is not easy, but it has a simplicity, nothing

[4.] Hildegard Eder’s novel Line Tiir fiel ins Schlof appeared in Berlin and Vienna in 1944.

[5.] [Actually the fifth stanza.—JDG] [6.] [This is the literal translation of that line in Bonhoeffer’s poem; the new translation in this volume reads: “And I discover." —JDG]

434 Letters and Papers from Prison superfluous. When | read it, strangely enough, | picture you sitting at the grand piano, playing. Is this kind of musicality so strong in these verses?!/] I’m going to leave the train in Munich and get a pass to break my journey there, because in Munich at TheresienstraBel®! they’re most likely to know our 486 new position, through radio contact and so on. Maybe they’ll also give me an identity card to cover all eventualities, so that | don’t get whisked off.!?! Evening

I’m actually lying between white sheets once more in the Europaischer Hof hotel, living off your connections again.l!°] The same sister is still at the reception desk and had a couch made up for me, as the hotel is overcrowded. Friday morning

This morning | was still able to reach Renate by telephone and heard that all was going well. Another letter has come—a pity it arrived one day too late. Now I shall have to wait longer for it. Do you suppose it’s the one with the part about Bultmann?!!!] Saturday Although | still don’t yet know when I’m leaving or where I’m going, I'll finish this

letter now anyway. Yesterday | sat together with Ninne,!'4] and today I'll see Sepp’s wifel!3] again and will later hear whether those at TheresienstraBe know yet where | am to go. So now I’m existing between my two current existences, sending off my thoughts, in different degrees of warmth, in both directions. To you, very very warm greetings! Thinking of you as always, Yours, Eberhard

[7.] The last two sentences inserted later. [8.] Military Department for the Foreign Office/ Military Intelligence units in Italy. 9.) Cf. 3/168, p. 443 (“the dangerous cliffs of the mustering points”). [10.] See 2/96, ed. note 36. [11.] See 3/161, ed. note 50. [12.] Countess Christine Kalckreuth, Bonhoeffer’s aunt, whose Munich apartment was registered as his official address with the police from 1940 until his arrest.

[13.] Marie Muller, wife of Josef Muller. The latter, like Hans and Christine von Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer, had been arrested on April 5, 1943. He had been acquitted at his trial by the War Court in March 1944, but nevertheless remained in prison.

3/162 and 3/163 435

163. From Eberhard Bethge!!! 487 June 16, 1944, Friday

Dear Dietrich, | must just quickly send you another greeting, before | finally leave the country. After being spoiled recently, I’m greatly missing hearing anything from you for so long. The attempt of that office you know about!2! to find my unit took an amazingly long time.!?! In fact, they didn’t find out anything, and now | have to try some other way—and keep hoping—to reach my destination. But despite not seeing further than one day at a time, these days have really been splendid. The best of all was that Renate could come, with the help of her parents and Barbel.[#] And thanks to you, the Europaischer Hofl?! was very forthcoming and generous with everything we needed. This time saying good-bye was all the more wretched because I’ve had to come back to the room and wait almost the whole day. It will be a mercy to be on a moving train in an overstuffed compartment. And this evening, in addition, the Armed Forces High Command report came about attacks on England with the high-explosive devices.!®] One can’t imagine yet what these are like—what

immediate effects, what comes afterward. The fear—will all of you become affected by some of this as well?

Ninne K[alckreuth]!7] was lovely. We went together to see her again. She has some quite independent, original ways of expressing herself and also a certain charm. In your honor | invited her to dinner, paid for and using coupons.|®! Sepp’s wifel?] was also very nice to us when we went up there, out of curiosity, for fifteen minutes.

[1.] NZ, A 81,188; handwritten; from Munich. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 331. i2,| See 5/1602, eda: note 8. [3.] From June 8 to 16, 1944. [4.] Barbel von Dohnanyi and the Schleichers, who were looking after the baby for her. 15.| See.3/ 162, p.:-434:

[6.| Wehrmachtberichte, 3:128 (June 16, 1944): “Southern England and the London metropolitan area were bombarded last night and this morning with a new type of explosive device of the heaviest caliber.” The so-called vengeance weapon V-1 [the abbreviation for Vergeltungswaffe; this was the first guided missile—JDG] was used for the first time on June 14, 1944. [7.| Countess Christine Kalckreuth; see 3/162, ed. note 12. [8.] [Food rationing coupons.—]DG] [9.] Marie Muller; see 3/162, ed. note 13.

436 Letters and Papers from Prison 488 What about you? You must be following whatever you can hear, with great suspense. When | arrive, | hope it won't be too long to get my mail. Thinking of you as ever with very best regards, Yours, Eberhard

164. Notes I, Tegel, end of June 1944!!!

Aphrodite—the embrace of nature. The yearning in the world.!?! Human and animal!”! Hermes—the guide, lord of pathways (“Hermae’”).'*! Spirit of the night,”! night is mother of all secrets,'°! nothing far and nothing near!”! World of Hermes'®! not a heroic world,'*! merriment, god of highwaymen and thieves, smiling, roguishness, luck, playing pranks!!®!

[1.] NZ, A 86,21; handwritten in pencil; 2 pages (handwritten copy by Bethge attached); from Tegel. Previously published in LPP, 331-32. The notes from late June 1944 (including 3/165) consist of references and quotes that Bonhoeffer recorded while reading Otto, /lomeric Gods. See 3/166, p. 440: “At the moment I’m reading the quite outstanding book by W. F. Otto, the classical philologist at Konigsberg, on the gods of [ancient] Greece.” Cf. Hedinger, “Christus und die Gétter Griechenlands.” [Page numbers of all citations are from Otto’s Homeric Gods, but the translation or revision of all passages is by Isabel Best.—]DG] [2.] “But her [Aphrodite's] essential meaning does not point to the marriage relationship, and she has never been, like Hera, a goddess of marriage. She is the source of that almighty yearning that all the world forgets for the sake of the individual person” (Otto, Homeric Gods, 96; trans. altered). [3.] “But what is all that compared with her revelation in the life of animals and human beings!” (ibid., 95; trans. altered).

[4.| On Hermes as “one who accompanies” and “lord of pathways” (ibid., 114-15; trans. altered), see Otto, Homeric Gods, 111-17. [“Hermae” refers here to pillars that were surmounted by a bust of the Greek god Hermes, and which acted as street signposts, as in ancient Athens.—]DG] [5.] “And Hermes is really a spirit of the night” (ibid., 115 et passim; trans. altered). [6.] The night “is of course the mother of all mystery” (ibid., 119; trans. altered),

[7.| “Anyone who watches alone by night in an open field, or wanders over silent paths, experiences a different world from that of the daytime. Nearness vanishes, and with it also distance. Everything is both far away and near at the same time” (ibid., 118; trans. altered). [8.| “World of Hermes” inserted afterward. [9.] “The world of Hermes is not at all a heroic world” (ibid., 122; trans. altered). [10.] These words are taken from Otto, Homeric Gods, 122-24.

3/163 and 3/164 437 “God”—is not a perceivable unity!!! 489 “Hades”—that which has been!!*!

“the human being”—not an animal!!! Dionysus—not Homeric!"*!

“He who has thought the deepest thoughts, loves what is most alive” H6lderlin on Socrates/Alcibiades!!>! Human form—animal form unspiritual, monstrous, unbounded!!®! against the ideas of worry, unquenchable yearning and lust for death. Against the tendency toward the supernaturalas hubris.''”! Therefore “instead of a symbol of the absolute, instead of monstrosity that confounds the senses, the perfect human form.”|'®|

[11.] Bonhoeffer first wrote “unity perceivable.” See Otto, Homeric Gods, 282. |According to Otto, the gods are independent of one another and unfathomable.—] DG] [12.] “Phe shade of a dead person in Hades below, who can no longer do anything, no longer even has awareness, wandering aimlessly and idly through the eternal night, is the shape of that which belongs to what has been. ...So here, for the first time in the world, that which has been, the past, has become an idea” (ibid., 143; trans. altered). [13.] See ed. note 16. [14.] “In Homer’s world of the living there are no maenads, and one looks in vain for any role for Dionysus” (Otto, Homeric Gods, 154; trans. altered). Writing on the back of the paper begins with the next line. [15.] Holderlin’s poem, “Sokrates und Alcibiades,” 260, as cited in Otto, Homeric Gods, 159-60. [Socrates, the epitome of a deep thinker, and his friend Alcibiades, a flamboyant but unreliable politician suspected of mutilating Hermae in Athens. See Grant, Classical Greeks, 300-301.—JDG]

[16.] “The revelation in animal form still testifies to an unspiritual... divinity and to monstrous, unbounded emotions. ... The human form, on the other hand, proclaims a divine nature that becomes perfect in spirit” (Otto, Homeric Gods, 165; trans. altered). [17.] The word “hubris” (“pride” or “arrogance”) is underlined twice. [18.] “It is as though it [the Greek image of divinity] were protesting, in the name of

nature and spirit, against the ideas of anguish, of restless yearnings and a longing for death; indeed, as though it threw the accusation back at its opponent and declared that it would combat, in the tendency toward the supernatural, precisely that which is all too human, there being no defect more human than that of pride that refuses to be guided by nature. ...So instead of an image of monstrosity that confounds the senses, or a symbol of the absolute, the perfect human form stands before us” (Otto, Homeric Gods, 166; trans. altered).

438 Letters and Papers from Prison 490 Guilt and freedom, not the humility that takes all the guilt upon oneself, but the other sort that knows oneself not to be the only cause of what has happened.!!! 165. Notes II, Tegel, end of June 1944!" “Ye gods, to meet again, then, is also a god!” (Helen and Menelaus)!*!

The divine not in absolutes, but rather in the natural human form.!!

“Theomorphism, not anthropomorphism” (Goethe)!

491 No self-revelation by the gods. Apollo reveals “what is right,” but not himself!

[19.] “There is no idea here that a human being does not have to bear the consequences of wrongdoing. To the contrary, they come upon him or her so implacably that it terrifies us.... What has happened must have its consequences. No remorse, no humbling oneself before God can avert these effects. But in return remorse loses its most poisonous barbs. ... It does not mean that the wrong loses any of its dubious qualities, any more than its effects. But there is no feeling of being a wretch. The perpetrator has not the sort of humility that loads all the guilt onto his or her own will, but rather the sort that refuses to acknowledge oneself as the only cause of what has happened. So one can stand tall and proud, even at one’s downfall” (Otto, Homeric Gods, 175; trans. altered).

[1.] NZ, 86,22; handwritten in pencil; 1 page (as well as a handwritten copy by Bethge); see also 3/164, ed. note 1, Previously published in LPP, 332. [2.] Quoted from Otto, Homeric Gods, 217 (Euripides, Helen, 560); see also 3/172, p. 455. [In Euripides’ Trojan Women, Menelaus, king of Sparta, goes to bring back Helen, whose elopement with Paris had caused the war. See Grant, Classical Greeks, 123.—JDG] [3.] “While they |other peoples] look for the divine in the perfection of human capabilities, as absolute power, wisdom, righteousness, or love, it was portrayed to the Greeks in the human being’s natural form itself” (Otto, Homeric Gods, 236; trans. altered). [4.] “The goal and the purpose of the Greeks... is to make the human divine, not to make divinity human. This is theomorphism, not anthropomorphism!” (ibid., 236; trans. altered). Quote from Goethe, Myrons Kuh, 12. [5.] “Zeus, through whom Apollo gives oracles, reveals the right, but never himself” (Otto, Homeric Gods, 237; trans. altered).

3/164—3/166 439 166. To Eberhard Bethge!!! June 21

Dear Eberhard, Many thanks for your last letter from Munich before your departure.!*! T can imagine that coming back to that empty room would be wrenching. But then again, it was unexpected bliss that you'! had a few more days together. It must have made you very happy that everyone just naturally volunteered to make it possible for you! Now you're off somewhere looking for your unit, and I hope that when you get there, some good letters will be there to greet you—that is, assuming that your field mailing address hasn't changed. Today I actually just want to send you greetings. I don’t dare enclose the ongoing theological discussion or any poems, because I don’t know whether this address will stuill reach you. As soon as I find out, more will be coming. I’m very grateful to you for your judgment and criticism of the poem.!*! Confronted by these newborn children of mine, I feel rather at a loss and without any yardstick. I think you are right in all your criticisms. But ’'m in some despair over finding anything to replace the line “And I experience the new”! that won’t disrupt the whole structure of the closing lines. But something may still come to mind. This morning we had the nastiest of all the air raids so far.!°! For several hours my room was so dark from the cloud of smoke that hung over the city 492 that I would almost have switched on the light.!”! T have already heard that everything is all right at home. Renate is still in Sakrow with the baby, most likely, and could do any shopping she needed in Potsdam. Nothing has ever happened there yet. ’m not pleased that my parents are just now coming

[1.] NL, A 81,189; handwritten; date without year (1944). Previously published in EPP, 332-33. [2.] 3/163. [3.] Eberhard and Renate Bethge. [4.] “The Past” (3/158). See 3/162, pp. 432-34.

[5.] [This is a literal translation of Bonhoeffer’s German; the line of the poem as translated in this volume, however, is “And I discover.” See 3/162, ed. note 6, and 3/158.—JDG] [6.] From 9:24 to 11:13 a.m. [7.] [Prisoners had no access to a light switch; see 2/131, p. 346.—JDG]

440) Letters and Papers from Prison back. They ought also to move to S[akrow] for the time being. Regarding the deployment of our new weapon, I am very confident and calm.!®! Having to spend these beautiful, long summer days here for a second time is rather hard for me sometimes, but one just can’t choose where one

has to be. So one must find the way again and again through the petty, annoying thoughts to the great thoughts that give one strength. At the moment I’m reading the quite outstanding book by W. F. Otto, the classical philologist at Konigsberg, on “the gods of [ancient] Greece.” As he says at the end, it’s about this “world of faith that arose from the riches

and depth of existence rather than from its cares and longings.”! Gan you understand that this formulation, and the exposition that goes with it, have something I find very attractive, and that I am—horribile dictu!!'°!—less

offended by gods who are so portrayed than by certain forms of Christianity? that I almost believe I could claim these gods for Christ? For my current theological thinking, this book is very valuable. By the way, there’s a good deal about Cardano in Dilthey.!!!! Farewell for today! 1 await news of your whereabouts daily and am always with you in my thoughts.

Yours with all my heart, Dietrich

[8.] See the “report about high-explosive devices over England” mentioned by Bethge, 3/163, p. 435; it refers to the first V-1 rocket attacks and the hopes reported in the official propaganda (which described them as “miracle weapons”) for a turning point in the war. [However, it is equally possible that Bonhoeffer is here referring to the planned coup.—]DG] [9.] Otto, Homeric Gods, 287; trans. altered. [10.] Literally, “horrible to say.” Day Dilthey, Weltanschawung und Analyse, 429-31. See also 3/134, ed. note 4, and 3/140, ed. note 20.

3/166 and 3/167 44] 167. Poem “Fortune and Calamity”!!! 493 Fortune and Calamity Fortune and calamity'?! that rush to strike us and overwhelm,!! are at first barely distinguishable like heat and frost to the fingertips’ sudden touch. Like meteors hurled from far above the earth,"4! brilliant and threatening, they steer their course over our heads. Victims stand dumbstruck before the rubble of their lusterless, everyday existence.

Grand and sublime, destroying, conquering, fortune and calamity,

[1.] NZ, A 67,2; handwritten draft; pencil; 3 pages; revision in ink; 3 pages. First published in Bethge, Auf dem Wege zur Freiheit, 10-11; reprinted in LPP, 334-35. For interpretations see Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 52-56; esp. Henkys, Gefdngnisgedichte, 24-26, 28-29, 31. [See also esp. Henkys, Geheimnis der lretheit, 110-20.—NL/JDG] On the “immediate background” (Henkys, Gefangnisgedichte, 28) to the poem, see DBWE 16, 3/4, pp. 628-29, Bonhocffer’s commentary on the Daily Text for May 30, 1944 (Pentecost Tuesday), Gen. 39:23: “The Lorb was with Joseph; and whatever he did, the LORD made it prosper” (Luther: “Dazu gab der Herr Gltick”); see also DBWE 7:175. [2.] [|The German title “Gluck und Ungluck” presents a challenge to the translator. In the contexts in which these two concepts occur in Bonhoeffer’s prison writings, Glick can mean fortune, blessing, happiness, bliss, prospering of one’s endeavors, success; Unghick can mean unhappiness, catastrophe, disaster or calamity, misfortune, an accident, a failed endeavor. With the title “Success and Failure” translator Edwin Robertson (Voices in the Night, 40-41) alluded to the imminent coup of July 20. Bonhoeffer’s meaning is broader and also more cosmic than “joy and sadness,” the title in LPP. “Fortune and Calamity” resonates with Bonhoeffer’s use of the concepts in his other poems. See also his letter to Bethge (2/183) and DBWE 7:163 and 165, where Bonhoeffer mentions the “great movements and ideas” that have brought disaster [Ungliick] to humanity, with no concern for human happiness [Glick]|.—NL/JDG] [3.] [Bonhoeffer’s reading of Otto’s Homeric Gods is evident in his imitation of classical style in this poem. Otto quotes Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Das Gluck” (Happiness) in the book (Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 117-18; cf. 3/164 and 165.—NL/JDG] [4.] [Three forms of the adjective tiberirdisch (above the earth) occur in this poem. The word is translated differently each time it occurs to mirror the poem’s movement toward the final lines.—NL/]DG]

442 Letters and Papers from Prison invited and uninvited, make ceremonious entry into shattered people's lives, adorning and robing those they visit with solemnity and blessing. Fortune is full of horror, calamity full of sweetness. Inseparably both, the one and the other,

494 seem to issue from the eternal. Great and terrible are both. People from far and near come running to see and gape half envious, half shuddering at enormity, where powers above the earth, blessing and destroying, appear in a confusing, forever entangled earthly drama. What is fortune? What calamity? Only time divides them. When the unfathomable thrill of sudden event turns to tiresome, tortuous duration, when the day’s endlessly dragging hour finally unveils to us calamity’s true form, then most people turn away, disillusioned and bored, weary of the monotony of calamity’s familiar tune.

This is the hour of faithfulness, the hour of mother and lover, the hour of friend and brother. Faithfulness transfigures all calamity and quietly envelops it in gentle, celestial resplendence.

3/167 and 6/168 443

168. From Eberhard Bethge' |! 495 “Il Balcone,” Montevettolini (Pistoia), June 26, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

By now | hope you will have heard that my trip went very well, with the stopover and finally my arrival at my unit’s location. The pass they finally gave me in Munich carried me much faster than usual past the dangerous cliffs of the mustering points!?! in Verona and Bologna. So | only spent one day in Verona and

joined a most outstanding tour of the city with a corporal as guide. I’ve never experienced anything as good by way of an introduction. He showed us a great deal, and we learned something about it as well. It felt like peacetime, and tired though | was, | was quite happy to be along. In Bologna, | must say, things were rather disorganized, and | spent a night on a bare tiled floor without any covers over me. Then the next day turned out very well; all the moisture heaven had saved up for some time just kept pouring down. So | could safely hitchhike in the daytime and reached my new location in glorious Tuscany (see above) without seeing a single plane.?] When | got here, they said we’d be moving further north

very soon, but we're still here. | was immediately plunged into the complete mess the files were in, so much that I’ve had no time to think about anything until today. But now I’m more or less through it. My outfit’s retreat must in fact have been pretty chaotic and awful. But they did all get safely through the traps with all their vehicles intact. It all happened so fast that the field hospitals in Rome and Civitacastellana (the one near us) had to be surrendered to the enemy, and only the very light casualties were sent along on foot. Here for the moment it’s much quieter and more pleasant [than] the last months in Rignano. We're a long way from the highway, so we see the planes, especially mornings and evenings, always 496 from more of a distance. Of course, there’s some anxiety about how we shall get over the passes when we have to move again. They are being fully illuminated and under constant surveillance. This town is high up, with a castle (Castell di Medici, now Borghese, with nice, educated people and children) and a church, and has a pleasant climate. | have a good office facing north, that is, it’s fine in this heat. It’s only unpleasant when one has to drive a car somewhere in the daytime. Then

one has to have a buddy ride on the fender to keep watch. The first morning

[1.] NZ, A 81,191; handwritten, (erroneously dated “June 24” in NZ and “June 27” in LPP, 337), Excerpt previously published in LPP, 337-39.

[2.] See 3/162, p. 434 (“identity card”). [The mustering points near the front reflected the attempts to induce all possible German personnel into the depleted ranks of foot soldiers.—]DG] [3.] [Alhed planes regularly strafed German soldiers and convoys moving along the roads.—JDG]

44-4 Letters and Papers from Prison after getting here, | was surprised by a “parade,” which is unusual. The reason: another fellow and | were being promoted to corporal. That means [50 lire for ten days’ pay instead of 125. Among the reasons given was how cleverly we got ourselves back to our unit. And this, after having had ideas already in Munich. |41 I’m probably playing along too well.

| was glad to get here though, because the day in Munich after Renate left and the next two days on the road were anything but pleasant. Here | was welcomed right away by one letter after another from you to make it all worthwhile. Some from before my leave, April 22 and May 5 and 6,4! some from afterward, June 6 and 8.l°] This last one with very, very good, detailed theological definitions of your thoughts on “religionlessness.” I'll try now to respond at least to some of it, to show you how pleased and excited | felt! But first | must say again, about my leave, that for me it was really a great success overall and is still a source of joy and “consolation”: the days with Renate, who really understood excellently how not to spoil even one hour that we had by tormenting herself and so on ahead of time; the hours with you, which we also enjoyed without wasting any of the time. You both really teach me how to “enjoy” everything; that’s probably part of the wisdom of your family. And there were your kind letters, which helped

straighten me out (the restlessness and apprehension that, after my experi497 ences, wouldn’t go away during the first days are really only a memory now and have no more power); and there was the baptism, and my boy. | feel—forgive me—as if I’d just had a very, very fine and choice meal, but without the feeling of being full and not wanting any more.

In your letter of the sixth you referred to the matter of Renate and my mother.!7] You are surely right that it is important there to support Renate completely. We didn’t talk about it during my leave, but I’m considering writing a letter to Mother about it sometime. And | thank you for speaking clearly to me

and making me so certain about it. | agree with you completely; perhaps | just didn’t dare be clear that this was really the only correct view. You were speaking in the previous letter about the continuity with one’s own past, and that we hadn’t experienced a break with it.[®] But to the members of my extended family, it must obviously seem that my life has two halves, and what looks to me like development, they see as a change. For me personally there are many matters of taste, of opinions, of the conduct of my life, which have changed

[4.] [Bethge had considered not finding his unit.—]DG] [5.] Letters 3/135, 139, and 140. [6.] 3/159 and 161. [7.] 3/140, pp. 375-76. [8.] 3/135, pp. 357-58.

3/168 445 very much, of which Renate, for example, couldn’t have the least idea; I’d say she doesn’t quite believe me. What happened was this: out of the numerous opportunities immediately before me that at first, in the absence of any strong outside guidance | unthinkingly tried here and there and then dropped again, one day the

choice settled on some of them. Why? | can hardly claim to have consciously made good decisions by calculating the advantages or disadvantages, or morality or immorality, of any path. It’s almost as though, to put it rather frivolously, you got lucky; it just turned out all right that time. I’m sorry | completely missed asking you about your novel and the short piece you were writing for me.l?] And I'd so much like to see them!

The letter with your exposition of Bultmann that you mentioned is surely the one of May 5,!!°] which | found waiting here, so it isn’t lost. Would you be willing for me to pass along these paragraphs of this letter, and especially 498 the longer one,!''] to people like Albrecht Sch[6nherr], W[infried] Maechler, [ Wolf-]Dieter Zimmermann? Let me know. | find everything much more clearly expressed here that you have said to me previously, and the way you have placed it within the history of dogma is highly interesting. | find this sentence on exis-

tential philosophy wonderful: “Where there is health, strength, security, and simplicity, these experts scent sweet fruit on which they can gnaw or lay their corrupting eggs.” l'2] | must read the letter again, several more times, and am looking forward very much to the continuation you have promised, on the nonreligious interpretation of the great Christian concepts. Now the great events are going forward from day to day,!'] and one enjoys every day that is spent more or less quietly, looking forward to news from home. I’ve been disturbed quite a bit while writing this letter but want to send it off anyway, SO you won't have to wait so long for news. Keep up your spirits, and my very best to you— Yours, Eberhard

[9.] Novel in DBWE 7:71-182; 2/101, p. 263, mentions the “short literary piece”; see Bonhoeffer’s reply of July 8, 1944, 3/172, p. 457. [10.] 3/139. [11.] 3/161. [June 8, 1944.—JDG] [12.] 3/161, p. 427. [13.] The Allied landings in Normandy; see 3/159, ed. notes | and 2.

446 Letters and Papers from Prison 169. To Eberhard Bethge!!!

June 27, 1944

Dear Eberhard, Maria has just been here;'*! I heard from her that the last news of you came

from Verona, and there has been nothing more from you since then. So, since I don’t know whether and when any mail is reaching you, I’m writing to you at the old postal address. But I would rather wait, before going on with the theological topic, until I have news of you. The same goes 499 for the poems, especially the latest, a fairly long poem about my impressions here;'*! they’re really more suited to an evening together than to a long journey through the post. What you must have been going through in the past week, on your journey. Don’t imagine for a moment that one gets used to your absence, with all that it implies; one puts up with it but doesn't get used to it. By the way, as soon as she was back from Patzig, Mama

got in touch with Dohring.! They seem quite optimistic about it. T know D[ohring] as a very active man who doesn’t let himself be put off with mere

words. In earlier days I didn’t like him at all—I only knew him from his scrmons—but when I visited him once in 1937—he too was a university lecturer [Privatdozent]—1 had quite a good impression, and we got on very well. So I think he will really make every effort in this matter. In the last two weeks I’ve received many fine things from Margret,!>! including a case of cigars. I was very touched and have no idea why I’m entitled to all this. She and her children also need to keep in good health, and Fritz'®! surely hasn’t become an ascetic with regard to smoking! Every such sign of being remembered [eels especially good to us in prison here. At present I’m writing o an exposition of the first three commandments.” I’m finding the first one especially difficult. The usual interpretation of

[1.] NZ, A 81,190; note by Bethge: “received July 7, 1944.” Previously published in LEP oo0=o1k

[2.] See the letter to Maria von Wedemeyer, also written on June 27, 1944, Love Letters to Cell 92, 215-18. [3.] “Night Voices” (3/175).

[4.| This refers to attempts to help Bethge find a position as a military chaplain; see 3/161, p. 424. [5.] Margret Onnasch, Bethge’s sister. [6.] Friedrich Onnasch [the younger, who was a member of Bonhoeffer’s first Finkenwalde group—JDG].

[7.] See DBWE 16, 3/5, pp. 633-44. [In the Lutheran numbering of the Ten Commandments, the first concerns idolatry, whereas in the Reformed this is the second commandment.—JDG]

3/169 447 idolatry as “wealth, lust, and pride” doesn’t seem at all biblical to me. That is moralizing. Idols are to be worshipped, and idolatry presupposes that people still worship something. But we don’t worship anything anymore, not even idols. In that respect we’re really nihilists.'®!

A bit more on what we were thinking about the Old Testament.!9! OT faith differs from other oriental religions in not being a religion of redemp- — 500 tion. But Christianity is always characterized as a religion of redemption. Isn't there a cardinal error here, through which Christ is separated from the OT and interpreted in the sense of redemption myths? To the objection that redemption has a crucial importance in the OT as well (out of Egypt and later out of Babylon, cf. Deutero-Isaiah), the reply is that this is redemption within history, that is, this sede of the bounds of death, whereas everywhere else the aim of all the other myths of redemption is precisely to overcome death’s boundary. Israel is redeemed out of Egypt so that it may live before God, as God’s people on earth. The redemption myths look for eternity outside of history beyond death. Sheol!!! and Hades are not metaphysical constructs but rather images that present “what has been” on earth!!! as still existing, but perceived in the present only in shadowy form.!!?! Tt is said to be decisive that in Christianity the hope of the resurrection is proclaimed, and that in this way a genuine religion of redemption has come into being. Now the emphasis is on that which is beyond death’s boundary. And precisely here is where I see the error and the danger. Redemption now means being redeemed out of sorrows, hardships, anxieties, and longings, out of sin and death,!!*! in a better life beyond. But should this really be the essence of the proclamation of Christ in the Gospels and Paul? I dispute this. The Christian hope of resurrection is different from the mythological in that it refers people to their life on earth!!! in a wholly new way, and more sharply than the OT. Unlike believers in the redemption myths, Christians do not have an ultimate escape route out of

[8.| DBWE 16, 3/5, p. 638: “We are now accustomed to saying our gods are money, sensuality, honor, other people, ourselves. ... None of those things mentioned here is what the First Commandment actually refers to when it speaks of ‘other gods.” For us the world is stripped of idols, we no longer worship anything. ... If we still have an idol, it is perhaps nothingness, extinction, meaninglessness.” [9.] See 3/139, p. 372 (“Does the question of saving one’s soul even come up in the Old Testament?”) et passim. [10.] “Kingdom of the dead,” “underworld”; cf. Gen. 37:35; Isa. 38:18; Jonah 2:3. [11.] “On earth” inserted later. [12.] See 3/164, p. 437: “‘Hades’—that which has been.” [13.] “Out of sin and death” inserted afterward. [14.] Beginning of writing in the margin.

448 Letters and Papers from Prison their earthly tasks and difficulties into eternity. Like Christ!!?! (“My God... 501 why have you forsaken me?”),!!®! they have to drink the cup of earthly life

to the last drop, and only when they do this is the Crucified and Risen One with them, and they are crucified and resurrected with Christ.!!7! This-worldliness must not be abolished ahead of its time; on this, NT and

OT are united. Redemption myths arise from the human experience of boundaries. But Christ takes hold of human beings in the midst of their lives.

You see, I always come round to the same sort of thoughts. Now I have to substantiate them in detail out of the NT. That will follow somewhat later. This is enough for today! Farewell, Eberhard, God keep you every day!

5 soa I I

In faithfulness and gratitude as always, Your Dietrich

I’m reading in the newspaper about tropical heat in Italy. You poor fellow! Makes me think of August 1936.'!®! Ps. 121:6!!19!

170. To Eberhard Bethge!|! June 30, 1944

Dear Eberhard,

Today was a hot summer day here, and I could only in part enjoy the sun because I could imagine how miserable it must be making you. Most likely

youre stuck somewhere in dust and sweat, tired and perhaps with no chance of washing or cooling off. I can imagine that sometimes you begin to hate the sun. And yet, you know, | should really like to feel the full force of it again, burning on one’s skin and gradually making one’s whole body

glow, so that one knows again that one is a corporeal being. I'd like to 502. get tired by the sun instead of by books and thinking. I'd like to have it awaken my animal existence, in the sense not that debases one’s human[15.] See esp. DBWE 4:281-88, esp. 287: “We are to be like Christ because we have been already shaped into the image of Christ.” See also DBWE 6:150: “The content of the Christian message .. . is that we should be like Christ himself. No method leads to this end, only faith.” [16.] Mark 15:34. [17.] Cf. Rom. 6:3—5.

[18.] The trip Bonhoeffer and Bethge made together to Italy, August 25-September 13, 1936 (see 2/86, ed. note 6). [19.] “Phe sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.” [1.] NZ, A 81,192; handwritten. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 339-42.

3/169 and 3/170 449 ity but that delivers one from the peevishness and artificiality of a merely intellectual [geistig]'*! existence and makes a person purer and happier.

I'd like, just for once, not just to see the sun and sip at it a little, but to experience it bodily. The romantic enthusiasm for the sun, which only gets intoxicated over sunrises and sunsets, has no idea of the power and reality

of the sun but knows it only as a picture. It can never grasp why the sun was worshipped as a god; for that you need to experience not only its light and colors, but also its heat. The hot countries, from the Mediterranean to India to Central America, have really been essentially the intellectually creative countries. The colder countries have lived and been nourished by the intellectual [geistig] creativity of others, and their own original contribution, technology, basically serves the material needs of life and not the life of the spirit. Could this be the reason why we keep being drawn to the hot countries? And could such a thought perhaps reconcile one to the discomforts of the heat? But probably all that makes no difference to you right now, and you just long to get out of that hell to Grunewald and a Berliner WeiBe.!! I remember very well how, in June 1923, I longed to be away from Italy'*! and could only breathe freely again on a hike in the Black Forest when it rained all day. And I wasn’t fighting a war then—there was nothing to do but enjoy.! | also remember how, in August 1936, you were horrified at the very idea of going on to Naples.!°! How are you holding up now, just physically? In those days one simply couldn't do without an “espresso,” and Klaus, to my youthful annoyance, threw away a lot of money on this. We also took a coach even for the shortest distances and ate countless granitas and cassatas'"| during the day. I’ve just had the most welcome news, that you have written from the old — 503 address, from which | conclude that you got back to your former unit. You can't imagine how relieved | am—relatively relieved, at any rate—and I’m also very glad for Renate’s sake. You know, back when your first son was expected, people here were looking a bit concerned at times—I noticed it [2.| [The German gevstig, from der Geist, may be translated as “spirit,” “mind,” or “intellect,” all of which are included in the phrase “life in the spirit.” As used here by Bonhoeffer, geistig is best understood as “intellectual.” When, elsewhere, Bonhoeffer has in mind something specifically “spiritual,” that is, as derived from the Holy Spirit, der Heilige Geist, he uses geistlich. See DBWE 1:14.—]DG]

[3.] [Literally a “Berlin White,” a popular light beer or ale.-—]DG] [4.] From April to June 1924 [not 1923], Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer took a trip to Italy, staying in Rome, Sicily, and North Africa; see DB-ER, 56-63, and Bonhoeffer’s diary of the “Italian journey” in DBWE 9, 1/57, pp. 82-109. [5.] [That is, enjoy Italy—JDG] [6.] During the trip by Bonhoeffer and Bethge to Italy; see 3/169, ed. note 18. [7.] Italian ice-cream specialties.

450 Letters and Papers from Prison in my parent’s faces when they first told me about it in July—but how good this is now for Renate, and for you too.

A few hours ago Uncle Paull! announced that he was coming here to inquire personally about my welfare. It is extremely funny to see everyone flapping around and—with a few notable exceptions—outdoing one another in undignified behavior. It’s embarrassing, but some of them just have to; that’s the way they are. Now [ll try to continue with the theological topics from where I stopped recently. My starting point was that God is being increasingly pushed out of a world come of age, from the realm of our knowledge and life and, since Kant, has only occupied the ground beyond the world of experience.'?! On the one hand, theology has resisted this development with apologetics and taken up arms—in vain—against Darwinism and so on; on the other hand, it has resigned itself to the way things have gone and allowed God to function only as deus ex machina!!! in the so-called ultimate questions, that is, God becomes the answer to life’s questions, a solution to life’s needs and conflicts. So if anyone gives no evidence of such problems or refuses to lose self-control or be pitied over these things, then this person is really closed to talking about God; or else the man without such questions and so forth

must have it proven to him that in truth he is up to his neck in such queslions, needs, or conflicts, without admitting it or knowing it. If we succeed here—and existential philosophy and psychotherapy!" have worked out 504 some very ingenious methods in this respect—then this man is open for God, and methodism!!*! can celebrate its triumphs. But if people cannot successfully be made to regard their happiness as disastrous, their health as sickness, and their vitality as an object of despair, then the theologians are at their wits’ end. The person being dealt with either is a stubborn sinner of the most malignant kind or is living an existence of “bourgeois self satisfaction,”!!*! and the one is as far from salvation as the other. You see, this is the attitude that Iam contending against. When Jesus made sinners whole, they were real sinners, but Jesus didn’t begin by making every person into a sinner. He called people from their sin, not into it. Certainly the

[8.] Major General Paul von Hase, city commander of Berlin, a cousin of Paula Bonhoefter. 19.] See 3/161, also with reference to what follows. [10.] [See 3/173, ed. note 25.—JDG] [11.] See Bonhoeffer’s notes, 3/155, p. 415; cf. also 3/161, ed. note 15. [12.] See 3/161, ed. note 16. [13.] Cf. DBWE 6:349 (“bourgeois self-satisfaction’).

3/170 451 encounter with Jesus turned all human values upside down. This is what happened at Paul’s conversion, but his encounter with Jesus preceded the recognition of his sins. Certainly Jesus accepted people living on the margins of human society, prostitutes, and tax collectors,''*! but certainly not only them, because he wanted to accept all humankind. Never did Jesus question anyone’s health and strength or good fortune as such or regard it as rotten fruit; otherwise why would he have made sick people well or given strength back to the weak? Jesus claims all of human life, in all its manifestations, for himself and for the kingdom of God. Of course, I have to be interrupted right at this point! Let me just quickly

state, once again, the issue that concerns me: the claim [Inanspruchnahme]!!°! of Jesus Christ on the world that has come of age.!!°! I can’t write any more today; otherwise the letter will be left here another — 505 week, which I don’t want. So, to be continued!

U[ncle] Paul was here, had me brought downstairs immediately, and stayed—Mactz and Maal were there—more than five hours! He had four bottles of sparkling wine served up, probably the only time in the annals of this place, and behaved in a way more generous and kind than I would ever have expected of him. He no doubt wanted to make it ostentatiously clear

what his attitude is toward me and what he expects of that timid pedant M[aetz]. | was impressed with this independence, which would probably be unthinkable in civilian life. He also left us with a delightful story: At St. Privat, a wounded sergeant called out loudly: “Iam wounded; long live the king!” ‘To which General von Lowenfeld, also wounded, retorted: “Quiet, Sergeant, no noise here while dying!”!'’!—I’m curious to see what effect this entire visit will have here, that is, on people’s judgments. Well, good-bye for now and forgive me for breaking off this letter, but I think you'd rather have it than none at all. Il hope we shall be together again in early autumn!

[14.] See DBWE 6:150 (“marginal characters”) with ed. note 15, and DBWE 6:347 (referring to Matt. 21:31: tax collectors and prostitutes), [15.] [The German word /nanspruchnahme carries the sense of both being addressed and claimed.—]DG] |16.| See Bonhoefter, Zettelnotizen, 125 (Bonhoeffer’s characterization of Christian ethics as “liberation and claiming of the world and humankind through Christ, the Reconciler, Creator, Redeemer and Lord”) and the beginning of the Lithics manuscript, which Bonhoeffer was writing shortly before his imprisonment in the Tegel military prison, as cited in DBWE 6:388: “The commandment of God revealed in Jesus Christ embraces in

its unity... [and its] claim [Inanspruchnahme] ...on human beings and the world.” [17.] Julius Ludwig Wilhelm von Loewenfeld during the campaign in France, 1870-71.

452 Letters and Papers from Prison Thinking of you with gratitude and praying for you faithfully every day Yours, with all my heart, Dietrich July 1 Seven years ago today we were at Martin’s together!!!®!

506 171. Notes, Tegel, July 1944!!! 1. Truth and interpretation of Scripture. testim[onium] spiritus sancti?!*! Principle [Pp]? sui ipsius interpres?'*! External authority?!*! 2. Conscience, the voice of the general and the necessary. But consent, commission, recognition by another person is more convincing than a good!>! conscience. 3. To what extent!®! can Christ have a claim on human decision making?

[18.] On the day of Martin Niemdller’s arrest (July 1, 1937) at his Dahlem parsonage on CecilienstraBbe 61; see DB-I-R, 579-81.

[1.] NZ, A 86,17; handwritten in purple pencil (point 7 is written in ink); 14 pages; undated (July 1944); also handwritten copy by Bethge. Previously published in LPP, 343. [2.] “Testimonium spiritus sancti [internum or arcunum]”: The “witness of the Holy Spirit [in us],” which demonstrates to the believing person that Scripture is the word of God. The doctrine of autopistie (sel{-testimony) of Scripture, which goes back to Luther (c.g., WA 30/2:688, 2-4) and was developed notably by Calvin (/nstitutes 1.7.4-5), was first encountered by Bonhoeffer in the final phase of his studies when reading Barth; sce DBWE 9, 2/15, pp. 436-38 (“Notes on Karl Barth’s Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf”).

[3.] “Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres” (The Holy Scripture interprets itself). Hermeneutical principle found in Luther (Assertio omniwm articulorum M. Lutheri per bullam Leonis X. novissimam damnatorum [1520], WA 7:98:40—99, 2): “Nolo omnium doctior iactari, sed solam scripturam regnare, nec eam meo spiritu aut ullorum hominum inter-

pretari, sed per seipsam et suo spiritu intelligi volo” (I do not want to be praised as the one more learned than all of them; rather I want Scripture alone to reign. Nor do I want it to be interpreted through my spirit or that of any human beings, but I want it to be understood through itself and its own spirit); ibid., 97, 23: “ut sit ipsa per sese rectissima, facillima, apertissima sui ipsius interpres” (and that it [scriptura] be through itself the most accurate, most straightforward, most comprehensible interpreter of itself), Cf. DBW 14:489,

[4.] Among the lestimonia externa (external signs) authenticating the Scripture as the word of God, Lutheran orthodoxy recognizes among others the testimony to the Bible of the early church and the martyrs; see Ratschow, Lutherische Dogmatik zwischen Reformation und Aufkldrung, vol. 1, 88 7-8, pp. 98-116. [5.] “Good” inserted later. [6.] [Or “in what way.”—]DG]

3/170 and 3/171 453

7 . ate ™°* _

4. A confession of faith expresses not what someone else!’! “must” believe but what one believes oneself.!®:

(Episcopius at the Synod of Dort for the Arminians)!! Dilthey 102!!! 507 5. Concept of tolerance.!!! 6. People go to God in their distress People go to God in God’s distress!!! 7. Ina conversation something new can always happen. Why so stupid? I don’t know anything. I wait and always disappointment I’m waiting for God. 8. When I read poems by poets!!!

[7.] “Someone else” replaces “one.” [8.] See 4/187, p. 502 (“Outline for a Book”): “What do we really believe? . .. What must | believe?”

(9.] The Synod of Dort (the Dordrecht national synod of the Reformed Ghurch in the Netherlands, 1618-19) ended the dispute with the followers of Jacobus Arminius (“Arminians”), whose definition of the relation between predestination and human [reedom deviated from that of Calvin. [Simon Episcopius became a leading theologian of the Remonstrant movement in Holland, which followed Arminius’s teaching. See Bangs, Arminius, 350-67.—JDG]| On the “Canons of Dort of 1619,” see Seeberg, History of Doctrines, 421-26; H. E. Weber, Reformation, Orthodoxie und Rationalismus, 2:30—93 [as well as Schall, Creeds of Christendom, 3:550-80—]DG],.

[10.] Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 102: “And Episcopius, who represented the

Arminians at the Synod of Dort, spoke the important words: ‘If we look at the earliest traditions of the Church, those who established symbols, spiritual canons, creeds, and confessions of faith had no other aim and intention than to bear witness, not to what one must believe, but rather to what they themselves believed.”

[11.] Since, for the Arminians, confessions of Christian faith were among the things “not necessary” (non necessaria) for faith or salvation, they called on the Christian state government to practice lolerance. See also the Heptaplomeres, written as a conversation by Jean Bodin and quoted by Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 150: “The conversation between these persons has a melancholy feel at first, one of longing for peace. One can almost hear in the distance round about the clanking of weapons, condemnations to death, and theological quarreling.” In the final conversation “not only is the doctrine of tolerance proclaimed, but there is a call for concord among all religions. ... Singing the hymn ‘How pleasant it is when brothers live side by side in harmony’... the dialogue partners take leave of each other.” Ps. 133:1: (“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” [older translations had “brothers” instead of “kindred”— JDG]) is quoted by Bonhoeffer at the beginning of Life Together, DBWE 5:27. [12.] See the poem “Christians and Heathens” (3/174); Bonhoeffer used the same paper for 3/171 and 3/174. [13.] This line is on the back of the page.

454 Letters and Papers from Prison 508 172. To Eberhard Bethge!!! July 8

Dear Eberhard, If I could assume that you are still in such a cheerful and contented frame of mind as it seemed from your most recent greeting,’! then I would truly be very happy. Many thanks for it. That you’re managing not to be disturbed by memories, but rather to enjoy them, is a great thing, and I'd be happy if I could always succeed in that. What strange and unexpectedly good things have been happening to you again in the last few weeks; first Munich, then Verona, then that rainy day, and finally the recognition of your good luck as especially merited. You’re moving up™! fearfully fast; 11 surely never catch up; I wouldn’t even have been able to keep in step with you. Seriously, it’s clear that you have a particular gift of making yourself useful and agreeable to people. I congratulate you on that! You say that your family would consider something like this as a break in your life.'"! T don’t believe that any more than you do. When I first came to know you, there were at most a few eggshells to brush off; otherwise everything was already in place and complete. That was my impression even the first time we met, when you were telling me about Wittenberg.) Besides, I have learned from you to see so Many things in a new way that I think I have hardly changed any less than you have. There was a “preestablished harmony”!®! in our meeting! I wrote you a letter recently with a highly theoretical philosophy about the heat.'”! In the last few days I’ve been having a concrete bodily experience of it. ’m sitting here as if baking in an oven, wearing only a shirt that 909 ~ Tonce brought you from Sweden and a pair of gym shorts (—did somebody make off with some shirts of yours somehow? you'll surely get them back!),

[1.] NZ, A 81,193; handwritten; date without year (1944). Previously published in LPP, 343-47. [2.] 3/168. [As always, “greeting” is a code word for illegal correspondence,—] DG] [3.] Promotion to corporal. [4.] 3/168, pp. 444-45. [5.] Cf. Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 83-87; and Andersen, Bethge, and Vibrans, So ist es gewesen, 105 and 108. |Bethge and several other candidates for ordination were expelled from the seminary in Wittenberg in October 1934 after they had indicated their

allegiance to the Confessing Church. See de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 12-13.— JDG| [6.] “Preestablished harmony,” a philosophical concept first used by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1696; colloquially it referred to the order of the universe firmly established by God. [7.] 3/170.

BATZ 455 and the only reason I don’t presume to suffer is that I can imagine how awful this heat must be for you now, and how frivolous my last letter must have seemed to you. So now I'L try and wring a few ideas out of my sweating

brain and write them to you. Who knows, perhaps it won't have to be very many more times, and we’ll see each other again sooner than we suspect.!*! I recently read Euripides’ fine and notable words, in a scene of reunion after a long separation: “Ye gods, to meet again, then, is a god!”"! Now a few more thoughts on our topic. To present the biblical side of the matter needs more lucid thinking and concentration than I have today. Wait a few more days until it’s cooler. I haven't forgotten either that I owe you something about interpreting biblical concepts nonreligiously. But for today, here are some preliminary remarks. {God’s being pushed out of the world, away from public human existence, has led to an attempt to hang on to God at least in the realm of the “personal,” the “inner life,” the “private” sphere. And since each person has a “private” sphere somewhere, this became the easiest point of attack. What used to be the servants’ secrets!!?!—to put it crudely—that is, the intimate

areas of life (from prayer to sexuality)—became the hunting ground of modern pastors. In this way they resemble (even though their intentions are entirely different) the most evil of the tabloid journalists—remember the Wahrheit and the Glocke?!'!!—who made public the intimate lives of prominent people. The intention of such journalism was societal, financial, and political blackmail; in the other case it’s religious blackmail. Sorry, but — 510 I can’t put it more sparingly. From a sociological viewpoint this is a revolution from below, a rebellion of the inferior. Just as the mean-spirited can only deal with eminent people when they can imagine them “in the bathtub” or in other embarrassing situations, it’s the same here. ‘There is a sort of evil satisfaction in knowing that every person has failings and weak spots. In my contact with the “outcasts” of society, the “pariahs,” I have noticed repeatedly that the dominant motive in their judgment of other people 1s mistrust.'!*) Everything a person of high repute does, even the most selfless

[8.] Reference to the coming coup attempt on July 20. [9.] Euripides, Helen, 560, quoted in Otto, Homeric Gods, 217; see also 3/165, ed. note 2. [10.| Adolf von Harnack demanded that a “first-rate” biographer abstain “profoundly from vulgar valet’s spying” (Uber die Sicherheit und die Grenzen geschichtlicher Erkenntnis, 23). See also Staats, Adolf von Harnack im Leben Dietrich Bonhoeffers, 119, ed. note 79.

[11.] Die Wahrheit was published 1937 to 1938 in Berlin; Glocke: Sozialistische Halbmonatzeitschrift was published from 1915/16 to 1925 in Munich. [Both were German tabloids.—]DG] [12.] On the social categorization of “mistrust,” see DBWE 7:63, 65-66.

456 Letters and Papers from Prison deed, is suspect from the outset. Such “outcasts,” by the way, are found at all levels of society. In a flower garden they are only grubbing around for the dung on which the flowers grow. The less a person is connected to others, the more likely he will fall prey to this attitude. Among the clergy there is

also a disconnectedness that we call being “holier-than-thou” [pfaffisch], that sort of prying into the sins of others in order to catch them out. It’s as if you wouldn't know a fine house until you have found cobwebs in the remotest cellar, or you could appreciate a good play only after you saw how the actors behave behind the scenes. The same trend is found in novels of the last fifty years, which only think they have portrayed their characters honestly if they depict them in the marriage bed, and in movies, which have to have scenes of people undressing. To be clothed, veiled, pure, and chaste is considered a he, a disguise, impure from the outset, which only gives proof of one’s own impurity. This mistrust and suspicion as the basic attitude toward other people is the rebellion of the inferior. From a theological viewpoint the error is twofold: first, thinking one can only address people as sinners after having spied out their weaknesses and meanness; second, thinking that the essential nature of a person consists of his innermost, intimate depths and background, and calling this the person’s “inner life.” 511 And precisely these most secret human places are to be the domain of God! {lo the first assumption one must say that human beings are sinners, but that is a long way from saying they are mean. To put it tritely, does it make Goethe or Napoleon a sinner to say that they weren’t always [aithful husbands? It is not the sins of weakness but rather the sins of strength that matter. There is no need to go spying around. Nowhere does the Bible do this. (Strong sins: with a genius, hubris;!!*! for peasants, breaking the natural order (is the Decalogue perhaps a peasant ethic’); the bourgeoisie [Buarger],''*! steering shy of free responsibility. Is that right?) { lo the second assumption: the Bible does not know the distinction that we make between the outward and the inward life. How could it, actually? It is always concerned with the av0pwios TéA€etos, the whole human being,|!”! even in the Sermon on the Mount, where the Decalogue is extended into the “innermost” interior.!!®! The notion that a good “character” could take the

[13.] “Pride,” “arrogance.” [14.] | Birger, normally “citizen,” but where juxtaposed with “peasants,” “bourgeoisie” is an appropriate translation. See 3/145, ed. note 5.—JDG| [15.] See 2/106, ed. note 16. [16.] See Matt. 5:17-48. V. 48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” TéAetot (“whole person,” “complete,” “fulfilled”). Cf. 2/106, p. 278.

BATZ 457 place of all human goodness is completely unbiblical. The discovery of the so-called inner life dates from the Renaissance (probably from Petrarch).|!7! The “heart” in the biblical sense is not the inner life but rather the whole person before God. Since human beings live as much from their “outer” to their “inner” selves as from their “inner” to their “outer” selves, the assumption that one can only understand the essence of a human being by knowing his most intimate psychological depths and background is completely erroneous. What lam driving at is that God should not be smuggled in somewhere, in the very last, secret place that 1s left. Instead, one must simply recognize that the world and humankind have come of age. One must not find fault with people in their worldliness but rather confront them with God where they are strongest. One must give up the “holier-than-thou” ploys and not regard psychotherapy or existential philosophy as scouts prepar-

ing the way for God. The intrusive manner of all these methods is far too 512 unaristocratic!'®! for the Word of God to be allied with them. The Word of God does not ally itself with this rebellion of mistrust, this rebellion from below. Instead, it reigns. So, now would be the time to speak concretely about the worldly interpretation of biblical concepts. But it’s just too hot today! If you want to decide on your own to send excerpts from my letters to Albrecht!!! and the others,'*°! of course you can do so. J myself would not do so yet, because you are the only one with whom I venture to think aloud like this, hoping it will clarify my thoughts. But do as you like.

The novel is bogged down, and the little piece intended for you isn’t completely finished either®'!—January to March was such an unproductive time for me. I’m enclosing two poems.!?*! | have a long one about this

[17.] Cf. Dilthey’s sketch of Petrarch in Weltanschauwung und Analyse, 20: “so he could grasp the idea of wanting to be a full, whole human being”; ibid., 417: “The idea that had first been attained in Italy spread through the other countries; in connection with it, the

great poetry emerged, with its power to express the inner life, as... practiced... since Petrarch.” [18.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s notes at the end of 3/155, p. 415: “existential philos[ophy] psychotherapy ... aristocratic Christianity?” [19.] Albrecht Schonherr. [20.] See 3/168, p. 445. [21.] The novel was DBWE 7:71-182. From the short literary essay for Bethge, only three rejected statements on a manuscript page have been preserved, Tegel note 12 (NL, A 86); see DBWE 7:236.

[22.] “Who Am I?” (3/173); “Christians and Heathens” (3/174).

458 Letters and Papers from Prison place!**! that I’d rather show you when you're here; I think it’s not too bad. Perhaps I'll send it by itself sometime.!?#! I’m so glad you're stationed far away from the highway and that you've got a north-facing room and the countryside is so beautiful where you are.

Soon we shall be thinking a great deal about our trip together in the summer of 40, my last sermons!!?°!

Farewell for now, and many thanks for every thought and greeting that comes my way. Don’t give yourself too much trouble over them! I know how hard it is for you at present. But it does make me very happy to hear from you. God keep you, dear Eberhard, and bring you back to us safe and sound, and soon! Affectionately yours, Dietrich

913. ~ By the way, it would be very nice if you didn’t throw away my theological letters but, since they are surely a burden for you to keep there, send them

off to Renate from time to time. I might perhaps like to read them again later for my work. One writes some things in a more uninhibited and lively way In a letter than in a book, and in a conversation through letters I often have better ideas than when I’m writing for myself. But it’s not important!— Incidentally, Mr. H. Linke, Berlin-Friedrichshagen, Wilhelmstr. 58 would be olad of a greeting from you from time to time.!7°! July 9

That’s all for now. I think we’ll be seeing each other again soon!!! All the very, very best until then! Yours, Dietrich

[23.] “Night Voices” (3/175).

[24.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [25.] The memories of parish visitations in east Prussia during 1940 (see DB-ER, 696-98); this is a hint at Hitler’s “Wolf's Lair” headquarters in east Prussia and thereby at the coup to be attempted on July 20. [26.] Cover address for the correspondence. [27.] See ed. note 25.

D/172 Gnd 3/173 459 173. Poem “Who Am I?”!!! Who Am I?

Who am I? They often tell me I step out from my cell calm and cheerful and poised, like a squire from his manor. Who am I? They often tell me I speak with my guards freely, friendly and clear, as though I were the one in charge.

Who am I? They also tell me 514 I bear days of calamity serenely, smiling and proud, like one accustomed to victory.!?! Am I really what others say of me? Or am | only what | know of myself? Restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird, struggling for life breath, as if I were being strangled, starving for colors, for flowers, for birdsong, thirsting for kind words, human closeness,

[1.] NZ, A 67,3; handwritten in ink; 2 pages; note by Bethge: “enclosed in letter of July 1944” (see 3/172). First published in Das Zeugnis eines Boten, 44; reprinted in LPP, 34748. An additional two-page handwritten copy, intended for Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, is not listed in NL. Both copies are identical except for the additional line in the middle section of the version intended for his parents: “shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult.” On the question of the theme “Who Am I?” cf. Bonhoeffer’s sermon on October 21, 1928, DAWE 10, 3/13. For interpretations of the poem, see Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 57-60; Henkys, Gefdngnisgedichte, 9, 29-31, 34; Sdlle, Death by Bread Alone, 111-18. [See esp. also Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 120-33. This translation is adapted from the version by Lisa E. Dahill and Martin Rumscheidt, in Bonhoeffer, Who Am [?—NL/]DG] [2.] See 2/86, p. 221 (“IT often wonder who I really am”); cf. also DBWE 7:46, and Zettelnotizen, 145 (NL, A '75,122): “The confession, admission statement, ‘who, how, what Iam.’ The mask. ‘Do I know who Iam? Am I the one I wish to be?’ ‘Say who you are.” See also the Christology lecture from the summer semester of 1933, DBWE 12, 2/12, p. 302: “The question of the ‘who’ is the question about transcendence. The question of the ‘how’ is the question about immanence.”

460 Letters and Papers from Prison shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult,!! tossed about, waiting for great things to happen,|#! helplessly fearing for friends so far away, too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work, weary and ready to take my leave of it all? Who am I? This one or the other? Am I this one today and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? Before others a hypocrite and in my own eyes a pitiful, whimpering weakling? Or is what remains in me like a defeated army, Fleeing in disarray from victory already won? Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am,'*! thou knowest me; O God, Iam thine!!®!

515 174. Poem “Christians and Heathens”!!! Christians and Heathens 1. People go to God when they’re in need, plead for help, pray for blessing and bread, for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death. So do they all, all of them, Christians and heathens.

[3.] Additional line in the version intended for Bonhoeffer’s parents. See ed. note 1. [4.] Cf. the allusion in the accompanying letter 3/172, ed. note 25, to the anticipated coup attempt of July 20, 1944. [5.] See 2/86, p. 221: “In short, one knows less about oneself than ever and is no longer interested in it, weary with psychology and thoroughly averse to any analysis of the soul.” [6.] |The German familiar Du used in prayer occurs in all contexts when Bonhoeffer’s lyrical first person addresses God. Only in this poem have we used the older English familiar forms “thou” and “thine” to mirror Bonhoeffer’s shift from free verse to a final rhymed couplet.—NL/JDG|] [1.] NL, A 67,4; handwritten draft; pencil; 1 page; untitled, no verse numbers; revised version; ink; 1 page; enclosed with letter of July 8, 1944 (3/172). First published in Das Zeugnis eines Boten, 43; reprinted in LPP, 348-49. For interpretations, see Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 66-69; esp. Henkys, Gefangnisgedichte, 57-65, 76-78, including the facsimile between pp. 64 and 65 of the first draft in German script and revision in roman script. [See also Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 134-50.—NL/JDG] The central motif of the

3/173 and 3/174 461 2. People go to God when God’s in need, find God poor, reviled, without shelter or bread, see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death. Christians stand by God in God’s own pain.!*!

3. God goes to all people in their need, 516 fills body and soul with God’s own bread, goes for Christians and heathens to Calvary’s death and forgives them both.

poem—“People go to God when they're in need / People go to God when God’s in need”; see 3/171, point 6—structures the first draft as well: “People go to God when they’re in need / pray [billen| for help, for blessing [Glick] and bread, / for salvation [Lrloswng] from guilt [Schuld|] [replaces “sin” (Stinde)|], from pain [replaces “suffering” (Lezden)|

and death, They all do so, [added:] all of them, Christians and heathens [//eiden].” | Bonhocffer’s use of /eiden (heathens, pagans, nonbclicvers) presents challenges to the English translator because it is difficult to decide whom Bonhoeffer primarily has in mind: Nazi neo-pagans, people of other faiths, or secular humanists. “Heathen” has been chosen both because it is close to Heiden in sound and meter, and because it seems more inclusive, indicating the wide embrace of God’s mercy and forgiveness.—NL./ JDG]| The next line of the draft is preceded by a space, then: “People go to God when God’s in need, / and find God poor, reviled [geschmaht], without shelter [Obdach] or bread |replaces: “see God poor, scorned (verachtet), without home (Haus) or bread”] / ldeleted: “find God” “watch with God in God’s own weakness” “watch and stand with God in”] see God devoured [verschlungen] by sin [Siinde] [replaces: “suffering” (Leiden)],

agony [Pein] [replaces: “sin”] and death. / Christians seek [deleted: “God”| recognize lerkennen| [marginal addition:] grasp their salvation lergreifen ihr Heil] in God’s own suffering |Lezden| / God goes to all people in their need / |deleted: “gives them” fills body and soul with God’s own bread / goes for Christians and heathens to Calvary’s death [replaces: “grants forgiveness of sins, saves from eternal death (schenkt Vergebung der Schuld, erlost vom ewigen Tod)| / Christians and heathens / and forgives both.” |[Henkys

argues persuasively that the successive changes Bonhoeffer made to his initial draft render the text more “worldly” (Geheimnis der Fretheit, 143) and more “singable.” See Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 144—50.—NL/]J DG]

[2.] Cf. John 19:25: “Standing near the cross of Jesus” and the tradition of the motif “stare tuxta crucem” in liturgical poetry, particularly tangible in the medieval sequence “Stabat mater dolorosa” as well as in Paul Gerhardt’s hymn “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden” (Evangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 85; English translation is “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” Lutheran Hymnal, no. 172), v. 6: “T want to stand here by you"; see Henkys, Gefdngnisgedichte, 63. [See also Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 140-—41.—NL/JDG] (Cf. v. 3 (“Suffer-

ing”), 4/191, “Stations on the Way to Freedom”; and Bonhoeffer’s letter of July 21, 4/178, p. 486: “then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the suffering of God in the world. Then one stays awake with Christ in Gethsemane.”-—NL/]JDG]

462 Letters and Papers from Prison 175. Poem “Night Voices”!!! Night Voices

Stretched out on my cot I stare at the gray wall. Outside, a summer evening that knows me not sings and descends over the land. Quietly'*! the day’s tide ebbs on an eternal shore. Sleep a while!

Gather strength in body and soul, head and hand! Outside,!! nations, houses, spirits, and hearts are in flames.|4J Unul the blood red night is past

5I

and your!®! day breaks, stand fast!

517 = Night and silence. I listen. Only steps and shouts of the guards, muffled laughter of lovers across distant yards. Is that all you hear, lazy sleeper? I hear the shivering and wavering of my own soul. Nothing more? I hear, I hear, like voices, like cries,

[1.] NZ, A 67,5; handwritten draft; pencil; 11 pages; untitled; quotation marks only used to indicate dialogue at “We the old, we the young”; note by Bethge: “brought in June *45 by Knobloch’; revision; ink; 11 pages (on 6 sheets); titled. First published in Das Zeugnis eines Boten, 37-42; previously published in LPP, 349-56. For interpretations of the poem, see Hampe, Von guten Machten, 53-56; esp. Henkys, Gefdngnisgedichte, 34-42, 35: The forty groups of poetic lines, “partly irregular configurations,” “partly tightly struc-

tured strophes,” together form “large units, poems within the poem.” The “narrative moment and the rapidly changing forms” are characteristic of a “rhapsody”; the “choruslike verses in their opposition to the recitative quality of the first-person voice” is reminiscent of an “oratorio.” [See also esp. Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 151-79.—NL/JDG] [2.] Draft has “slowly and quietly.” [3.| Draft has “As nations... *; revision substitutes “Outside” for “For” (denn). [4.] Parenthetical insertion (intended for deletion): “Sleep a little, / gather strength, rage, and courage, / [line deleted: “for true word and righteous deed” / waste no effort on trumpery and trifles.” [5.] Underscored in the draft to indicate that “you” means God.

J/ 17) 463 like screams for planks to hold on to of companions in suffering” lying awake, dreaming, voiceless thoughts in the night. I hear restless creaking of cots, I hear chains.

I hear sleepless men tossing and turning, for freedom and deeds of outrage they're yearning. When sleep then visits them toward morning, it’s of children and wives they’re dreamily murmuring.'! I hear half-grown lads’ happy whispering as in their innocent'®! dreams they feast. I hear them tugging at their covers hiding from hideous nightmare’s beast.

I hear old men sighing and faintly breathing, quictly for their great Journey preparing. Justice and injustice they've seen come and go; now it’s the immortal, eternal they long to know. Night and silence. Only the guards’ steps and shouts. Do you hear the quaking, bursting, crashing in the silent building when hundreds stir and fan their hearts’ embers into flames?

Mute is their chorus, 518

wide open my ear: “We the old, we the young, we the sons'®! of every tongue,

[6.] Draft has inserted phrase above the line: “|[companions in the] struggle.” [7.] Draft has this strophe (“I hear how...” to “as they dream”) following the next one. | These three four-line stanzas are four- and five-foot lines in the original, each rhymed aabb.—NL/]DG] [8.] [German kindlich; cf. DBWE 7:149: “Hans is way too innocent”; the ensuing nightmare scene in the novel fragment recalls the next line of the poem.—NL/J]DG] [9.] Draft has insert above the line: “men.”

464 Letters and Papers from Prison we the strong, we the weak, we the watchful, we who sleep, we the rich and we the poor, all alike in calamity’s hour, we the bad, we the good, wheresoever we have stood, we whose blood was often shed, we witnesses of the dead, we the defiant and we the resigned, we the innocent and we the maligned, tormented by long loneliness in heart and mind, Brother, searching and calling are we! Brother, can you hear me?” Twelve cold, thin clangs from the clock tower awaken me. No resonance or warmth in them!!®! to shelter or cover me!!! Vicious barking dogs at midnight terrify me. Pathetic pealing of bells separates a poor Yesterday from poor Today. Whether one day turns to another,

bringing nothing new, no reason to bother hoping for better, but that it, too, will end— What Is it to me?

I want to see the turning of the times, when the night sky is bright with signs,!!*!

[10.] “In their voice” replaces “no fullness” in the draft. [11.] [Bonhoeffer uses the same verb, bergen (shelter), in its past tense form, geborgen in the final verse of “By Powers of Good” (4/200). Here he contrasts the warmth and safety of those powers that cover (decken) one, and the terror (schrecken) of barking dogs and cold clanging of the bells. Cf. Bonhoeffer’s final letter to Maria von Wedemeyer, Love Letters to Cell 92, 228-29.—NL/]DG]

[12.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s description of the bombardments of November 27, 1943 (2/79): “these marker flares that the command aircraft sends down.” See 2 Pet. 3:10-13: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. ... But... we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home’; similarly, Isa. 65:17; 66:22; Rey. 21:1.

afi 7) 465 new bells among the nations chime 519 and ring on and on. I am waiting for that midnight!!*! In whose terrible splendor and light the wicked dissolve in fear and the good remain, rejoicing.

Villain, spite!!! step into light, be judged aright. Betrayal, deceit, wicked deed, atone with speed. People, don’t cower, for sacred power works judgment this hour.

Rejoice and declare to a new race everywhere justice shall be fair! Heaven, restore earth’s children once more to beauty, peace as before. Earth, thrive with glee, humankind, become free, be free! Suddenly!!®! T sat up

as if from sinking ship I'd sighted land,

[13.] [Allusion to vy. 1 of the Philipp Nicolai hymn “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (Evangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 147; the English is “Sleepers, Awake,” Lutheran Hymnal, no. 609). See Henkys, Gehetmnis der Fretheit, 165-67.—NL/]DG]

[14.] [Henkys (Geheimnis der Fretheit, 168) notes the omission of a comma after the word Bosewicht (villain) in DBW8, leading to a misreading. This is the first in a series of six imperatives that form the turning point of the poem.—NL/JDG] [15.] “Suddenly” is an addition in the draft.

466 Letters and Papers from Prison as if there were something to grasp with my hand, as if I saw golden fruit ripening.

520 But wherever I look, touch, or grasp there is only darkness’s impenetrable mass. I sink into musing. I sink into the depths of darkness. You, Night, full of wanton abusing, make yourself known! Why do you gnaw at our patience, our own? Deep, long silence—not a word; then I hear Night bending toward me to be heard: Iam not dark, dark is guilt alone!

Guilt! I hear shuddering and shaking, a murmur, a lament arising, I hear men in spirit raging. In a wild din of countless voices, a voiceless chorus reaches the ear of God:

“Harassed and hunted by humans, rendered defenseless and accused; bearers of unbearable burdens, it is we who now accuse.

“We accuse those who thrust us into sin, who made us share their guilt, who made us witnesses to injustice— so they could despise the partners in their crime. “They made us look on heinous acts to entangle us in the snarl of guilt, then we were muzzled and became the silent dog,!'®!

[16.] |[Bonhoeffer’s phrase stummer Hund isa German proverbial expression implying passive complicity with corruption; cf. Luther Bible, Isa. 56:10: “Israel’s sentinels are blind,

they are without knowledge; they are all silent dogs that cannot bark.” With thanks to Henkys.—NL/JDG]

3/17) 467 “We learned to tell cheap lies, to go along with obvious wrongdoing. When violence was heaped on the defenseless, !!! we looked away.

“And what set our hearts aflame D2 | we kept silent and unnamed. We quenched our burning blood and stamped out our sense of shame. “What once joined humankind in sacred bonds was shredded and defaced. Betrayed were friendship and faithfulness,!!*! rueful tears the target of scorn.!!9! “We the offspring of devout generations, once the defenders of justice and truth, became despisers of God and humanity,!?"! as Hell looked on, laughing. “Yet, though now robbed of freedom and honor, before humankind proudly we raise our heads. And when we are slandered maliciously, before humankind we acquit ourselves: ‘Free!’ “Calm and firm we stand man against man, as the accused, we now accuse.

[17.] Cf. DBWE 6:139: the church “has become guilty of the lives of the weakest and most defenseless brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.” See also “After Ten Years,” p. 49, ed. note 30. [18.] [Cf 3/167, “Fortune and Calamity”: “this is the hour of faithfulness,” p. 441; also 4/196, “The Friend”: “a faithful bond of friendship,” p. 529, and “the faithful helper,” p. 530; cf. 4/197, “The Death of Moses,” v. 24: “not one was left of just and faithful station,” p. 534.—NL/JDG] [19.] [Cf. the motifs of tears and ruefulness in 3/158, “The Past,” pp. 420, 421; cf. also 4/197, “The Death of Moses.”-—NL/JDG] [20.] See the section “Are We Still of Any Use?” in “After Ten Years,” p. 52.

468 Letters and Papers from Prison “Only before thee, Fathomer of all Being, before thee we are sinners.?! “Afraid of suffering and lacking good deeds, we have betrayed you before humankind. “We saw the Lie raise its head and failed to pay homage to Truth. “We saw others in direst need and our own death was all we feared.

522. “We come before you in manliness to you our sin we will confess.

“When these times’ turmoil, Lord, is past, grant that we may prove steadfast. “After going far astray may we see the break of clay! “Grant that we may ever strive to forge ways’??! where your Word may thrive. “Unul you wipe away our guilt, keep us?°! patient, keep us stilled. “Silently we'll prepare our way until you summon a new day. “Till you calm the storm and flood?#! and your will works wondrous deed.

[21.] DBWE 6:282-83: “Those who act out of free responsibility are justified before others by dire necessity [German: Not]; before themselves they are acquitted by their conscience, but before God they hope only for grace.” [22.| Cf. DBWE 6:161: “Preparing the way [Wegbereitung] for the word” et passim. [23.] Draft has “we are.” [24.] Cf. Mark 4:35-41 par.

DB) 1d? 469 “Brother, until the night will flee, pray for me!”!?5!

First morning light creeps through my window, pale and gray Gentle breeze blows across my brow, mild summer day. Summer day! is all I say, Beautiful summer day! What might come to me this day? Now I hear hasty, hesitant steps outside. Near me they suddenly stop. I turn cold and hot. I know, oh, I know!

A low voice reads something, brusque and cold.'*°! 523 Compose yourself, Brother, soon it will be finished,” soon! soon! Courageous and proud are your steps I now hear.

No longer mindful of the moment that’s near, you see future times coming clear. I go with you, Brother, to that place and I hear your last word: “Brother, when the sunlight I no longer sce, do live for me!”

Stretched out on my cot I stare at the gray wall.

|25.| Deleted in the draft: “Reflected by the whitewashed wall |Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 17536], | see first rays of red morning sky. / I hear in the corridors hasty and hesitant footsteps.” [26.] Gaetano Latmiral, letter of September 11, 1979, to the German editor: “On Friday evenings, after forty days (confirmation of sentence) the prisoners who were sentenced to death were transferred to Plotzensee and were beheaded there. ... Sometimes several persons were taken ata time. The members of the military who were sentenced to death ... were fettered.” [Many of Latmiral’s recollections are included in “Die Begeg-

nung”.—]DG]

[27.] [Cf John 19:30. Hearing a fellow inmate being taken to his death, Bonhoeffer’s narrator thinks of Jesus’s last words from the cross, “Itis finished,” and calls out to assure the brother he will be vicariously present with him in death._—NL/JDG]

470 Letters and Papers from Prison Outside, a summer morning that is not yet mine!?®!

rises rejoicing over the land. Brothers, until our day breaks after the long night, we will stand fast!!*9!

176. From Eberhard Bethge'!!! July 8, 1944

Dear Dietrich, | received your letter of June 27/4] yesterday, and from it | assume that another, previous onel3] must still be on its way to me. Perhaps you already have mine 524 (about the poem) written on the train?!4] You should also have one sent from our location further south.!! But I'll wait until the postal services get sorted out a bit more. In any case, this is the first letter I’ve received apart from the ones that were already waiting when | arrived.!®] Our move up here to the northern slope of the Apennines went well. It was quite an adventure for me, as | had to transport an old 1921 Fiat car; after many tire-patchings, in the end | simply drove it on the two back rims, which caused merriment all along the way. At any rate, | crossed over the dreaded pass!7! all right. That was important. We only travel at night in such cases. But they like to illuminate such bottlenecks completely and bomb us. And then in the Apennines the partisans are now tremendously active. A few days ago, ten kilometers from here, near where the events of 107718! took

[28.| Draft (marginal note): “that may not be ours.” [29.] [This final line (which grammatically could also mean “let us stand fast”) is best understood as a vow, showing strong resolve in contrast to the self-admonishment using the imperative of the same verb in the first stanza: “stand fast!” See Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 177.—NL/JDG]

[1.] NL, A 81,194; handwritten; from San Polo d’Enza, Reggio Emilia. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 356-57. [2.] 3/169. [3.] 3/166. [4.] 3/162 (see Bethge’s comments on the poem “The Past” on pp. 432-33). [5.] 3/168. [6.] See 3/168, with ed. notes 5 and 6. [7.] The Futa Pass. [8.] After Henry [IV was excommunicated by [Pope] Gregory VII, on January 28, 1077,

the German king submitted himself to the pope at Canossa Castle. See Bonhoeffer’s

3/175 and 3/176 471 place, they killed a war court judge. They occupy entire villages, set up headquarters, requisition, take over fortified positions (which are intended for our troops later), and up to now have been hard to catch. With regard to planes it’s better now, since there is no main road nearby. A few days ago, however, they did destroy a small bridge over our dried-up river valley here. But we constantly see mushrooms of smoke over the Po floodplain, showing that there’s rather heavy action there. The seizure of the very well-kept and cultured home that we are now occupying (in the breezy mountain heights, with a bathroom!), the people being thrown out and our men prowling through all their chests, larders, and cupboards, was the most revolting thing I’ve experienced lately. | had never before been part of things when our troops went to new depths, behaving like the lowest of soldiers [Soldateska]. Greed for anticipated pleasures makes them nervous; they're only waiting for those poor people to give them the slightest excuse for righteous anger and self-justification, and then there’s no holding them back. The officers sniff around for “intelligence reasons,” the sergeants, to provide the troops with 525 everything “necessary, and the enlisted men themselves beat all. Together they swarm and sprawl around the carved tables and in the cushions and drink the cellar dry. And there you stand. Two days ago we had a glorious experience early in the morning. After a rain-

storm overnight, the range of the Alps suddenly stood out completely clearly before us, 100-150 km away. To the left, in the northwest, we could make out quite clearly the Monte Rosa group, and beyond it the Finsterhorn cluster; in all we could see 200-250 km as the crow flies, in the red morning sun. | never would have thought it possible. But now | must thank you, first of all, very much for your good letter.!”! | was almost expecting some news, but nothing has been working right anymore. | hope you won't keep the poems for that long evening together, !!°] although in another sense you may be right. | really think it is very kind that your parents immediately got in touch again with Dohring.!''] I’m anxiously waiting to see how that will work out. People here are rather shocked and troubled by the way things are developing, but overall remain optimistic. As soon as one hole in the front has been plugged, other holes open up.

letter of July 16, 1944, 3/177, p. 473. On Canossa, see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 140-43. [9.] 3/169. [10.] See 3/169, p. 446 (refers to the poem “Night Voices,” 3/175). [11.] See 3/169, p. 446.

472 Letters and Papers from Prison What does “worshipping” idols mean?l'2] That something is still sacrosanct to many people and can't be discussed, is that something other than “worshipping” it? Otherwise, what you're describing is probably true for a great many people as well as for our families. Are you now coming to new insights about the absence of an afterlife in the Old Testament; the fourth commandment; the way to describe our future condition; further, more about our difficulty in relating to everything eschatological? lt makes great sense to me that it is unbiblical to regard eschatology as a means of evasion. What about the hymns and attitude of Paul Gerhardt, the Thirty Years’ War?

526 Please don’t be put off from writing your thoughts to me, even when you don’t get very long replies back. | await each letter more eagerly. All the best to you, especially courage not to give in to sadness and hopelessness.

Yours as ever, Eberhard

(I keep having lots of technical stuff to do nowadays.) What’s the latest about Albertz? Inge Zippel mentioned that he had disappeared again.l'?] She wrote that Gottfried Beckmann was spared meeting his fate in the Crimea!'4] because he was on leave. Fleischhack has also written; he and Gollwitzer are together. Whatl!?] about the “apolitical character” of the NT?'6 Staemmler got three years. |!7] Sunday morning: because of your letter, I’m reading today’s Epistle and Gospel with my senses more awake.!!®!

[12.| The following passage is in direct response to Bonhoeffer’s theological reflections in his letter of June 27, 1944, 3/169, pp. 446-47. [13.] Martin Albertz was arrested on June 14, 1944, by the Gestapo. [14.] Wehrmachtberichte, 3:100-103 (May 8-14, 1944): In April 1944 the Crimean peninsula was liberated by Russian troops; Sebastopol fell on May 12, 1944. [15.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [16.] Cf. the key word “eschatology” above in Bethge’s letter, and in Bonhoeffer’s text “State and Church” (probably written in 1941 following contact with Barth), DBWE 16, 2/10, pp. 503-4 (and ed. note 9): “In the New Testament the ‘polis’ is an eschatological concept.” (Cf. Karl Barth, Community, State and Church, 122: “The city [polis] of Christians should not be sought in the ‘present age’ but in that ‘which is to come’; not on earth but in heaven.”) [17.] After being “re-arrested” in the autumn of 1943 “for telling a political joke,” on April 13, 1944, Wolfgang Staemmler was “sentenced to three years in prison” (Meier, Der evangelische Kirchenkampf, 3:324).

[18.] Fifth Sunday after Trinity: Epistle: 1 Cor. 1:18-25; Gospel: Luke 5:1-11.

3/176 and 3/177 473 177. To Eberhard Bethge!!! July 16

Dear Eberhard, I heard from my parents yesterday that you have moved again. I hope to get = 527 word soon as to what kind of quarters you now have. The historical atmosphere sounds attractive, anyhow.'*! Even ten years ago we would hardly have understood that the symbols of the bishop’s crosier and ring, as claimed by both the emperor and the pope, could lead to conflicts in world politics.!!

Weren't they really adiaphora?! We have had to learn again through our own experience that they were not! Whether Henry [V’s going to Canossa should be understood as sincere or as diplomatic, the mental image that Furopeans have of Henry in January 1077 is indelible and unforgettable. It has more effect than the Concordat of Worms in 1122, which formally concluded the matter in the same sense.!*! We learned in school to see all these great disputes as a misfortune for Europe. The truth is that they were the source of the intellectual [geistige]'°! freedom that has made Europe great. I don’t have much to report. I heard on the radio recently, as I had sev-

eral times already, scenes from operas by Carl Orff (Carmina Burana\’! among others), which | found delightfully fresh, clear, and cheerful. He also made orchestral versions of Monteverdi.'*! Have you listened to any of his work? I also heard a Handel concerto grosso and was astonished once again, in the slow movement (like the largo), by his ability to offer comfort so broadly and directly, in a way we would never dare to do anymore. | think

Handel is much more concerned about his listeners and the effect of his music on them than Bach. That must be why he sometimes comes across

[1.| NZ, A 81,195; handwritten; date without year (1944), Excerpt previously published in LPP, 357-63,

[2.] Due to the Allied advance, Bethge’s military unit had been transferred to the northern slope of the Apennines, near Canossa; see 3/176, p. 470-71. [3.] Cf. DBWE 6:109-13.

[4.] “Matters of indifference” that are “neither commanded nor forbidden by God,” Formula of Concord, Art. X/2 (Book of Concord, 611).

[5.] The Concordat of Worms of 1122 settled through compromise the so-called inves-

titure quarrel between the emperor and the pope (over which of them was entitled to appoint bishops). [6.] [See 3/170, ed. note 2.—JDG] [7.] Carl Orff’s 1936 composition, Carmina Burana, Cantiones Profanae. [8.] This sentence added in the margin. Orff made operatic versions of Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Ballo dell’ ngrate, and Lamento d’Arianna, as Orpheus (1924), Tanz der Sproden

(1925), and Klage der Ariadne (1925), which appeared together as Lamenti: Trittico teatrale in 1958.

474 Letters and Papers from Prison as something of a facade. Handel intends something with his music; Bach doesn’t. Do you find that so?

528 I’m reading the Totenhaus'! with great interest and am impressed by the sympathy, devoid of any moralizing, that people outside show toward the inmates. Would this lack of moralizing, which comes from religious-

ness, perhaps be an essential characteristic of this people, and would it help explain more recent events? Otherwise, I’m writing, including poetry, as much as I have the strength for it. ’ve probably told you that I’m now often able to work!!! in the evenings, as we used to do. Of course, this is very important and agreeable to me. But that’s about all I have to tell about myself. Everything appears to be going normally at home; that is, Hans!!! is not well at all; I’m really very sorry about that. Sometimes [ think if he had had a good pastor visit him at the right time, perhaps things wouldn't have gone so dreadfully for him, also physically. [am very glad that Klaus is in such good spirits!!!*! He was so depressed for quite some time. Well, I think that all his worries will soon be over; I very much hope so, for his own and the whole family’s sake. H[ans] Walter!!*! has been promoted to sergeant! | am now having my books sent from Patzig to Friedrichsbrunn. I often think of Grandmother Kleist these days; she has so much trouble getting around.!!#! Maybe we'll celebrate our wedding in Friedrichsbrunn!

529 Under the new restrictions Maria can no longer travel either. Perhaps it’s a good thing for her, but for me it’s a pity. The last time I saw her,!'®! she [9.] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Memoziren aus einem Tolenhaus (Memoirs from the House of the

Dead). See also 4/179, ed. note 8. [10.] [This was a Bonhoeffer family code for listening to the BBC (cf. 2/86, ed. note 12), but it is hard to believe that Bonhoeffer could have done this in prison.—]DG]. [11.] Hans von Dohnanyi, in order to prevent a major hearing in his trial from being held before the upcoming coup d état, deliberately infected himself in May 1944 with scarlet fever and diphtheria. The pathogenic material was provided by Professor Jurg Zutt and smuggled into the Buch military prison hospital by Christine von Dohnanyi.

The secret message (literary estate of Hans von Dohnanyi, NL Dohnanyi 18/22, BA Berlin-Lichterfelde, undated): “red paper and stain on the mug... = infected!” The illness caused severe paralysis of the extremities, and Dohnanyi was moved to military quarantine in Potsdam. See DB-ER, 809-10; Chowaniec, Der “Fall Dohnanyi,” 74; W. Meyer, Unternehmen Sieben, 409.

[12.] This refers to good progress in preparations for the coup. DB-LR, 826: “The conspiracy had reached its goal.” [13.] Hans-Walter Schleicher. [14.] After the recapture of Minsk on July 3, 1944, and the advance into Poland, the

Russian army was expected soon to reach east Pomerania (the location of Ruth von Kleist’s residence, Klein-Krossin) and the Neumark (the location of Ruth von Wedemeyer’s residence at Patzig). [15.] According to Bonhoeffer’s 1944 Daily Texts, on Tuesday June 27; see 3/169, ed. note 2.

3/177 475 was unfortunately rather depressed; I can understand that, but I think she shouldn't be. She has a tendency anyway to get cocooned in herself, and as a result she expects too much from being on her own. It’s time we were able to be together. If you should be approached about preaching in the foreseeable future, I should take first such texts as Pss. 62:2; 119:94a; 42:6; Jer. 31:3; Isa. 41:10; 43:1; Matt. 28:20b!'®! and confine myself to a few fundamental and simple thoughts. One has to live in a congregation for a while to understand how “Christ is formed” in it (Gal. 4:19),!'7! and that would be especially true for a congregation such as you would have. If I can be of any help to you, I'd be very glad to do so.

Now for a few more thoughts on our topic. ’m just working gradually toward the nonreligious interpretation of biblical concepts. lam more able to see what needs to be done than how I can actually do it. Historically there is just one major development leading to the world’s autonomy.'!®! In 530 theology it was Lord Herbert of Cherbury who first asserted that reason 1s sufficient for religious understanding.!'! In moral philosophy Montaigne

[16.] Ps. 62:21]: “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation”; 119:94a (inserted afterward): “Iam yours; save me” (strongly marked in pencil in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible); 42:6|5]: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquicted within me?” Jer. 31:3: “Phe Lorpd appeared to me from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore [ have continued my faithfulness to you’; Isa. 41:10: “Do not fear, for Iam with you, do not be afraid, for [am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand”; 43:1: “But now thus says the Lorp, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for | have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine”; Matt. 28:20b: “And remember, [am with you always, to the end of the age.” [17.] “My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” Cf. the definition of Gleichgestaltung, also formulated with Gal. 4:19 in mind, in Kthics (DBWE 6:93): It takes place “only by being drawn into the form of Jesus Christ. ... This does not happen as we strive ‘to become like Jesus,’ ... but as the form of Jesus Christ himself so works on us that it molds us, conforming our form to Christ’s own.” [18.] See Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 246-96 (“Autonomy in thinking, constructive rationalism and pantheistic monism according to their connection in the seventeenth century’). On “the world’s autonomy” and the following passage of the letter, see Bonhoeffer’s description of the historical development to the “level of purely autonomous culture” in his lectures on “The History of Twentieth-Century Systematic Theology, from winter semester 1931-32 (DBW 11:185-86). Bonhoeffer uses “autonomy” or “autonomous” in his early writings primarily to indicate a historical era (DBW 14:400: “emancipation of autonomous reason” as a hallmark of “rationalism”) or as a criterion of theological self-distinction (“Finkenwalde Catechesis,” DBW 14:546: “Instead of ethical autonomy: the cross and forgiveness”); see also DBWE 2:31, 79. [19.] Bonhoeffer quotes Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 249 (referring to Herbert of Cherbury, De veritate: “The very investigation of the human capacity for moral and

476 Letters and Papers from Prison and Bodin substitute rules for life for the commandments.'*"! In political philosophy Macchiavelli!?!! separates politics from general morality and founds the doctrine of reason of state.'**! Later H. Grotius, very different from Macchiavelli in content, but following the same trend toward the autonomy of human society, sets up his natural law as an international law, which is valid etsi deus non daretur, “as if there were no God.”%! Finally,

religious cognition is introduced by a thorough proof of the sufficiency of reason.” From Dilthey, p. 248: Among the religious “truths of reason,” which Herbert of Cherbury “first made the basis of the autonomy of religious consciousness in Christian Europe” (De veritate, 210-15), those counted as “notiones communes” to all religions are “Esse supremum

aliqod numen” (“There is one supreme divine Being”) and “Supremum istud numen debere coli” (“This supreme divine Being is to be worshipped”). See below, in ed. note 23, the discussion of Hugo Grotius. [Translation (incl. Latin from the German) by Isabel Best.—JDG]

[20.] On Montaigne, see Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 36-39, 260-61: “The

trend toward an autonomous morality” is continued in France “by Montaigne and Bodin.” On Bodin, see Dilthey, 145-53, 274-75. [21.| [Bonhoeffer spelled Machiavelli incorrectly as Macchiavelli.—JDG| [22.] On Machiavelli, see Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 24-36 ct passim; 27-28: Machiavelli “did not believe that the moral governance of life could be achieved through the church in Italy.” Machiavelli’s guiding perspective was “looking at all human affairs exclusively from the viewpoint of reason of state.” Cf. Bonhoeffer’s assessment in Ethics of the notion of necessitad in Machiavelli’s doctrine of the state in 1942 (DBWE 6:273). [23.] Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 280: “As if there were no God,’ the statutes of natural law would have their own independent general validity.” Dilthey is referring to Grotius, De ture belli ac pacts libri tres (Three Books on the Law of War and Peace) | (1625), Prolegomena (Introduction) S11, 31: “Et haec quidem quae iam diximus, locum

(aliquem) haberent ctiamsi daremus, quod sinc summo scelere dari nequit, non esse Deum, aut non curari ab co negotia humana” (Those things that we already mentioned have (some) ground, even if we were to concede—what cannot be granted without the greatest impiety—that God does not exist or that he does not care for human affairs). That the emergence ofa “law of reason” presupposes the “abdication of the otherworldly Creator” is a characteristic “of the law of reason that for the older generation (Althusius, Grotius) had no validity at all” (Franz Wieacker, Privatrechtsgeschichte der Neuzeit, 147). See

the continuation of the quotation from Grotius: “Both reason and the uninterrupted tradition have planted the opposite concept in us. ... Consequently, God is the Master Workman, the one to whom we owe our existence and everything we have, and whom we have to obey unfailingly.” On the previous history and interpretation of the phrase etsz deus non daretur, or ettamsi daremus . . . non esse deum, already used earlier by Bonhoeffer in DBWE 5:115: “The psychologist views me as if there were no God,” see, among others, Wieacker, Privatrechtsgeschichte, 147-48; St. Leger, The etiamsi daremus of Hugo Grotius; Holzel, Grundlagen des Rechts- und Staatsdenkens ber Hugo Grotius, 15-48; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1830-83, and Antithetik, 83. Reinhold Seeberg, in Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4:1, 324, cites Martin Luther: The worldly authorities should do their duty “als were keyn Gott da” [as if there were no God]. An opposing formulation is proposed by Adolf von Harnack, “Was hat die Historie an fester Erkenntnis zur Deutung des Weltgeschehens zu bieten?” 192: “There is no doubt—humankind works in history ‘as if God existed,’ as if

3/177 477

. . . . . QD / -

the philosophical closing line: on one hand, the deism'**! of Descartes: 531 the world is a mechanism that keeps running by itself without God's inter-

vention;°! on the other hand, Spinoza’s pantheism:°! God is nature.!?7! 532 Kant is basically a deist; Fichte and Hegel are pantheists. In every case the autonomy of human beings and the world is the goal of thought. (In the natural sciences this obviously begins with Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano

9Q . - - - . - . ~

Bruno and their—“heretical”—doctrine of the infinity of the universe

[der Welt].'°°! The cosmos of antiquity is finite, as is the created world of medieval thought. An infinite universe—however it 1s conceived—is selfsubsisting, “etsi deus non daretur.” However, modern physics now doubts that the universe is infinite, yet without falling back to the earlier notions

humankind, being descended from a higher origin, had to recover it by working toward it as a goal.” [24.] Gawlick, Artikel Deismus, 44-45: “deism” (or “deist”), from the seventeenth cen-

tury the “self-designation of those who wanted to be neither atheists nor adherents of an inherited revealed faith,” comprises a “profession of faith in natural religion,” expressed, among other ways, in the idea of God as a “perfect builder... who no longer needed to

intervene in the functioning of the world machine.” On the origin of the concept, see Feil, Die Deisten als Gegner der Trinitdt. [See also A. C. McGittert, Protestant Thought before Kant.—JDG]

[25.] Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 283: “The deist doctrine of a universe that exists and can be constructed independently of its master builder was founded by Descartes with his concept of the world machine.” For Dilthey on Descartes, see further Wellanschauung und Analyse, 348-59 et passim.

[26.] Pantheism (from Tay, “all,” “the whole,” and Ge6s, “God”: doctrine originating around 1700 according to which there is “no divine being distinct from matter and this constructed world,” so that “Nature itself, i.c., the totality of things, [is] the only and the highest God” (nullum dari Numen a materia & compage mundi hujus distinctum, ipsamque naturam, sive rerum Universitatem, unicum esse & supremum Deum), John Toland (1709), cited in Schréder, “Pantheismus,” 59. [27.] Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse, 463, says that “Spinoza’s fundamental teaching” is that of an “infinite and perfect natural world, not distinct from God.” On the formula deus sive natura, cf. Spinoza, Ethics, pt. 4, foreword, 188: “that eternal and infinite Being whom we call God or Nature.” For Dilthey on Spinoza, see also Weltanschauung und Analyse, 93, 284-89, 342-44, et passim. [28.] Since Dilthey only mentions Nicholas of Cusa in passing (see, e.g., Weltanschauung und Analyse, 324-25) and presents Giordano Bruno mainly biographically (297-311), cf. here the final chapter of Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker’s World View of Physics, “The Infinity of the World” (136-82), which deals with Nicholas of Cusa (145-51 and 155-56)

and Bruno (155): “The next great proponent of the infinite world, Giordano Bruno— though he still admits conceptually the difference of God and the world—actually speaks only about the world. It is in the world that the glory of infinity now falls—that glory which was unknown to antiquity and, in the Middle Ages, was reserved to God.” On the doctrine of the infinity of the universe, see Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia 1.8; 2.8 and 11-12: Giordano Bruno, Uber das Unendliche, das Universum und die Welten, 1st Dialogue (33-56).

478 Letters and Papers from Prison of its finitude.)!°*! As a working hypothesis for morality, politics, and the natural sciences, God has been overcome and done away with, but also as a 533 working hypothesis for philosophy and religion (Feuerbach!).'"! It is a matter of intellectual integrity to drop this working hypothesis, or eliminate it as far as possible. An edifying scientist, physician, and so forth is a hybrid. So where is any room left for God? Ask those who are anxious, and since they don’t have an answer, they condemn the entire development that has brought them to this impasse. I have already written to you about the vari-

ous escape routes out of this space that has become too narrow.! What could be added to that is the salto mortale’*! back to the Middle Ages. But the medieval principle is heteronomy, in the form of clericalism. ‘The return to that is only a counsel of despair, a sacrifice made only®*! at the cost of intellectual integrity. It’s a dream, to the tune of “Oh, if only I knew the road back, the long road to childhood’s land!”'§+! There is no such way—at least not by willfully throwing away one’s inner integrity, but only in the sense of Matt. 18:3,'°°! that is, through repentance, through ultimate honesty! And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world— “etsi deus non daretur.” And this is precisely what we do recognize—before God! God himself’°! compels us to recognize it. Thus our coming of age leads us to a truer recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as those who manage their lives without God. The

ACK, oO c hi c i 3 Le is 11) WaY—a c

[29.| This last sentence was written in the margin. Cf. the section on “the present critique of the idea of infinity” in Weizsacker, World View of Physics, 164-75.

[30.] “(Feuerbach!)” inserted afterward, On Feuerbach, sce Bonhoefter’s lectures on “The History of Twentieth-Century Systematic Theology” in winter semester 1931-32, DBW 11:148—49: “Feuerbach’s two questions for religion: 1. According to the truth of its precepts (illusion); 2. According to its congruence with real life. Essentially unreplied to by theology, therefore socialism [arises].” [31.] See 3/161 and 3/170. On the concept of “space” (Raum) and Bonhoeffer’s rejection of thinking in terms of “realms,” see DBWE 4:225-50; DBW 14:422-26 et passim; DBWE 6:57—64 et passim; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 132-33, 146-47.

[32.] [“Death-defying leap.”—J DG]

[33.] “Only” inserted afterward. [34.| Johannes Brahms, Heimweh (Homesickness) II (op. 63, Lieder und Gesdnge): “Oh,

if only I knew the road back, The dear road to childhood’s land! ... And nothing to search for, nothing to watch for, only dreams, light and mild; / Not to feel the passing of time, to be again a child! to be again a child! / Oh, just show me the road back, the dear road to childhood’s land! / In vain I search for happiness, around me a waste of shore and sand!” Translation here by Isabel Best. [35.] “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” [36.] “Himself” inserted afterward.

INET 479 same God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34!).!°7! The same God who makes us to live in the world without the working hypothesis — 534 of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God, and with God, we live without God.'°*! God consents to be pushed out of the world and onto the cross; God is weak and powerless in the world and in precisely this way, and only so, is at our side and helps us. Matt. 8:17!°9! makes it quite

clear that Christ helps us not by virtue of his omnipotence but rather by virtue of his weakness and suffering! This is the crucial distinction between

Christianity and all religions. Human religiosity directs people in need to the power of God in the world, God as deus ex machina.'*"! The Bible directs people toward the powerlessness and the suffering of God;'*" only the suffering God can help. To this extent, one may say that the previously described development toward the world’s coming of age, which has cleared the way by eliminating a false notion of God, frees us to see the God of the = 535

[37.] “At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” Parentheses inserted later. Cf. Martin Luther (WA 5:602, 25-28, Operationes in Psalmos, 1519-21): “Ubi velut con-

tradicens sibi sese derelictum a deo clamat et tamen deum suum vocat ac per hoc non derelictum sese confitetur. Nemo enim dicit ad deum “Deus meus’ qui omnino derelictus est” (Where he seems to cry out as if to contradict himself, that he had been deserted by God and yet names God and thereby confesses that he is not deserted. For no one says to God “my God” who has been utterly deserted). [38.] In his 1932-33 lectures on “Creation and Fall,” Bonhoeffer had affirmed that the human being who has fallen away from God must “live before God without the life that comes from God” (DBWE 3:142). The formula “Before God, and with God, we live without God,” defining Bonhoeffer’s new understanding of God’s absence as a mode of God's presence, was anticipated in Bonhoeffer’s work in an Ethics manuscript written shortly before his arrest in 1943: “The cross of reconciliation sets us free to live before God in the midst of the godless world” (DBWE 6:400). See below in this letter, p. 482: “The world come of age is more god-less, and thus perhaps just because of that closer to God than the world not yet come of age.”

[39.] Matt. 8:17, referring to Isa. 53:4: “This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” Both passages were mentioned by Bonhoeffer in his lecture on pastoral care at Finkenwalde, DAW 14:580: “Matt. 8:17, cf. Isa. 53[:4]!” See also DBWE 4:214-15 and ed. notes 6 and 7.

[40.] See 3/137, ed. note 25. [41.] See Bonhoeffer’s May 21, 1942, letter to the Leibholz family, DBWE 16, 1/165, p. 284: “So it is good to learn early enough that suffering and God is not a contradiction but rather a necessary unity; for me the idea that God himself is suffering has always been one of the most convincing teachings of Christianity.” Cf., for example, Luther, Thesis XXI, Heidelberg Disputation (1518): “At Deum non inveniri nisi in passionibus et cruce, iam dictum est” [“God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said,” LW 31:52]. Cf. also Bonhoeffer’s poem “Christians and Heathens,” 3/174: “People go to God when they're in need” and “Christians stand by God in God’s own pain.”

480 Letters and Papers from Prison Bible, who gains'**! ground and power in the world by being powerless. This will probably be the starting point for our “worldly interpretation.” July 18

Do you suppose that some letters have been lost due to the raids on Munich?!4%! Did you get the one with the two poems?! It was sent right at that time and contained some more preliminary discussion on the theological topic. The poem “Christians and Heathens” includes a thought that you will recognize here. “Christians stand by God in God’s own pain”—that distinguishes Christians from heathens. “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” Jesus asks in Gethsemane.'*°! That is the opposite of everything

a religious person expects from God. The human being is called upon to share in God’s suffering at the hands of a godless world. Thus we must really live in that godless world and not try to cover up or transfigure its godlessness somehow with religion. Our lives must be “worldly,” so that we can share precisely so in God’s suffering; our lives are allowed to be “worldly,” that is, we are delivered from false religious obligations and inhibitions. Being a Christian does not mean being religious in a certain way,

making oneself into something or other (a sinner, penitent,!'®! or saint) according to some method or other. Instead it means being human, not a certain type of human being, but the human being Christ creates in us. It is nota religious act that makes someone a Christian, but rather sharing in God’s suffering in the worldly life.“7! That is “uetdvora,”\"*! not thinking first of one’s own needs, questions, sins, and fears but allowing oneself to 536 be pulled into walking the path that Jesus walks, into the messianic event, in which Isa. 539! is now?! being fulfilled! Hence “believe in the good

[42.| “Gains” inserted afterward over “has,” but without crossing it out. [43.] Wehrmachtberichte, 3:166 (July 17, 1944): “Groups of North American bombers have attacked several towns in south and southwest Germany. ... Especially in Munich... some of the damage and losses have been severe.” [44.] 3/172, with the poems “Who Am I?” (3/173) and “Christians and Heathens” (3/174) [45.] Matt. 26:40b. [46.| “Penitent” inserted afterward. [47.] See ed. note 67. [48.] “Conversion,” “turning around,” or “repentance.” [49.] Isa. 53:4—5: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” V. 4 is quoted in Matt. 8:17 (see ed. note 39). In Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible, Isa. 53 “(Ep[istle] for Good Friday)” is marked with pencil, including underlining in v. la “Who has believed what we have heard?” (in German the

If Ad | 481 news”! and, in John, the reference to the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”?! (by the way, A. Jeremias asserted recently that “lamb” in Aramaic can also be translated as “servant.”?! That’s really fine, in view of Isa. 53!). This being pulled along into the—messianic—suffering of God in Jesus Christ happens in the NT in various ways: when the disciples are called to follow him,’* in table fellowship with sinners,”: through “conversions” in the narrower sense of the word (Zacchaeus),!°°! through the action of the woman “who was a sinner” (done without any confession of sin taking place) in Luke 7,7! through the healing of the sick (see above Matt. 8:17), through receiving the children.*! The shepherds'°"! stand [at] the manger just as do the wise men from the East, not as “converted sinners,” but simply because they are drawn to the manger (by 537 the star)! just as they are. The centurion at Capernaum, who makes no

. . : : s : +e)

confession of sin at all, is held up as an example of faith!®!! (cf. Jairus).!°*!

text literally reads: “But who believes our preaching?”) and a line in the margin beside v. 7 (“he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter”). Cf. DBW 14, 2? /3.6, Bonhoefter’s outline for a sermon on Isa, 53. [50.] “Now” inserted afterward. This present aspect, the “now” in which Isa. 53 is fulfilled in the present moment, is noteworthy because until then Bonhoeffer had always seen the suffering of God’s servant as accomplished on the cross of Golgotha; see Bonhoeffer’s letter of April 8, 1936, to Rudiger Schleicher, DAW 14:146: “This however is the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament (Isa. 53!) ...: the Scripture, that is, the Old Testament, is fulfilled in the cross of Jesus.” Similarly, Bonhoeffer’s 1936 outline for a lecture on confirmation instruction, DBW 14:808; cl. DBWE 5:101. See also Bethge, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews,” 84-85. [51.] Mark 1:15b; cf. Bonhoeffer’s underlining of “who has believed” in Isa, 53:1, see ed. note 49. [In Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible: “who believes."—]DG| [52.] John 1:29; the Luther Bible refers the reader to Isa. 53 (see ed. note 49). [53.] Article by Joachim Jeremias on auvos, apr, apviov, 339: The phrase encountered in John 1:29, 36,6 auvosg Tov Oeotv (Lamb of God), “gives us a highly singular genitive combination that can be explained only in light of the Aramaic. In Aramaic the word xw7u has the twofold significance of a. lamb and b. boy or servant.” For the connection with Isa. 53:7, see Jeremias, “apvos, apr, apviov,” 339, [The text gives an incorrect initial for Jeremias; it should be not “A.” but *J.°—]DG] [54.] Cf. DBWE 4:57-76.

[55.] Cf. Matt. 9:11b (“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”) et passim. [56.] Luke 19:1-8. [57.] Luke 7:37-38 and 44-46. [58.] Mark 10:14-16. [59.| Luke 2:15-16. [60.] Matt. 2:1-12 (“star” in v. 2b [and 9-10—JDG]). [61.] Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10. [62.] Matt. 9:18-19, 23-26; Mark 5:22-24, 35-43; Luke 8:41-42, 49-56.

482 Letters and Papers from Prison The rich young man is “loved” by Jesus.!°*! The courtier in Acts 8,!°4! Cornelius (Acts 10), are anything but persons in desperate straits. Nathanael is “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” (John 1:47), and finally there are Joseph of Arimathea!®°! and the women at the tomb.'°°! The one thing they all have in common is their sharing in the suffering of God in Christ. That

is their “faith.” There is nothing about a religious method; the “religious act’ is always something partial, whereas “faith” is something whole and involves one’s whole life. Jesus calls not to a new religion but to life.!°7! But what is this life like? this life of participating in God’s powerlessness in the

world? I'll write about this next time, I hope. For today I'll just say this: if one wants to speak of God “nonreligiously,” then one must speak in sucha way that the godlessness'°*! of the world is not covered up in any way, but rather precisely to uncover it and surprise the world by letting light shine on it. [he world come of age is more god-less and perhaps just because of that closer to God than the world not yet come of age.!©9! Forgive me, this is all still put terribly clumsily and badly; I’m very aware of this. But perhaps

you are Just the one to help me again to clarify and simplify it, if only by my being able to tell you about it, and to hear you, as it were, keep asking and answering me! The address now is H. Linke, Berlin-Friedrichshagen, Wilhelmstrabe 538 587°! Pm very glad you have already got over the mountain passes. We’re getting up at 1:30 a.m. almost every night here.!“!! This is a bad time and rather hinders intellectual work. I hope to hear from you soon, and send you all my good wishes, thinking of you always with gratitude. Yours as ever, Dietrich

[63.] Mark 10:21; in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him” is underlined in pencil. Cf. DBWE 4:72. [64.] Acts 8:26—40.

[65.] Mark 15:42-46 (v. 43: “a respected member of the council”); Matt. 27:57—60; Luke 23:50—-53; John 19:38.

[66.] Matt. 27:61; Mark 15:47; 16:1; Luke 23:55-56.

[67.] Cf., in Bonhoeffer’s last period of work on his Ethics before his arrest, DBWE 6:370 (learn to live with others’). |See also Ethics 6:250: “Jesus Christ is life itself."-—]DG]

[68.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [69.] Cf. DBWE 6:124: “promising godlessness.” On theological appreciation for modern atheism, see Vogel, “Die christliche Solidaritat mit dem Gottlosen” [and Rahner, “Atheism’—]DG].

[70.] Cover address for the illegal prison correspondence; see 3/172, ed. note 26. [71.] Air raids on Berlin on July 16, 1944, from 1:18 to 1:48 a.m. and on July 18 from 1:27 to 2:10 a.m.

PART 4 After the Failure July 1944-February 1945

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178. To Eberhard Bethge!!! 541 July 21! Dear Eberhard,

This short greeting is all I want to send you today. I think you must be so often present in spirit with us here that you will be glad for every sign of life, even if our theological discussion takes a breather for a while. ‘To be sure, theological thoughts do preoccupy me incessantly, but then there are hours, too, when one is content with the ongoing processes of life and faith without reflecting on them. Then the Daily Texts simply make you happy, as I found especially to be the case with yesterday’s'*! and today’s,'#! for example. And then returning to the beautiful Paul Gerhardt hymns makes one glad to have them in the repertoire."”! {| In the last few years I have come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus‘®! but simply a human being, in the same way that Jesus was

a human being—in contrast, perhaps, to John the Baptist. 1 do not mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the bustling, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness that shows discipline and includes the ever-present knowledge of death and resurrection. I think Luther lived in this kind of this-worldliness. I remember a conversation I had thirteen years ago in America with a young French pastor.!|7! We had simply asked ourselves what we really wanted to do with our lives.

[1.] NZ, 81,196; handwritten; no year (1944); annotation by Bethge: “Friday.” Previ-

ously published in LPP, 369-70. [When Bonhoeffer’s papers were transferred to the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Bethge kept this letter in his possession. He regarded it as his favorite of all the letters he received from Bonhoeffer. It was discovered in his study after his death. See de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 85.—J]DG] [2.] Written on the day after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944. [3.] The Daily Text for Thursday, July 20, was Ps. 20:8 in Luther’s Bible, which is v. 7 in the NRSV: “Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lorp our God”; and Rom. 8:31: “If God is for us, who is against us?” [4.] The readings for Friday, July 21, 1944, were Ps. 23:1: “The Lorp is my shepherd, I shall not want”; and John 10:14: “Iam the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.” [5.] [See Henkys, “Paul Gerhardt, Gottfried Arnold und die ‘guten Machte.’”—JDG] [6.] “Religious person.” [7.] Jean Lasserre; see DB-ER, 152-54, 389-92; Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 49, 80, 83. [See also the editor’s introduction to DBWE 10:26-27, 40-41.—JDG]

485

486 Letters and Papers from Prison And he said, I want to become a saint (—and [ think it’s possible that he did become one). This impressed me very much at the time. Nevertheless, 542 I disagreed with him, saying something like: I want to learn to have faith. For a long time I did not understand the depth of this antithesis. I thought I myself could learn to have faith by trying to live something like a saintly life. I suppose I wrote Discipleship at the end of this path. Today I clearly see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by it.!®! Later on I discovered, and am still discovering to this day, that one only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life. If one has completely renounced making

something of oneself—whether it be a saint!’! or a converted sinner or a church leader (a so-called priestly figure!), a just or an unjust person, a sick or a healthy person—then one throws oneself completely into the arms of God, and this is what I call this-worldliness: living fully in the midst of life’s

tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences, and perplexities— then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the sulfering of God in the world. Then one stays awake with Christ in Gethsemane. WO! And I think this is faith; this is wetdvora.!!! And this is how one becomes a human being, a Christian. (Cf. Jer. 45!)!'*! How should one become arrogant over successes or shaken by one’s failures when one shares in God’s suffering in the life of this world? You understand what I mean even when I put it so briefly. lam grateful that I have been allowed this insight, and I

know that it is only on the path that I have finally taken that I was able to learn this. So Tam thinking gratefully and with peace of mind about past as well as present things. Perhaps you are surprised at such a personal letter. But when I feel like saying such things sometimes, who else should I say them to? Perhaps the time will come when I can speak to Maria this way, too; I do very much hope so. But | cannot put that burden on her yet.

543 May God lead us kindly through these times, but above all, may God lead us to himself. Your greeting made me especially happy,'!*! and lam glad that it isn’t too hot for all of you there. Many more letters from me must still be on their way [8.] [See the editors’ afterword to Discipleship, DBWE 6:307-9.—JDG] 19.] Bonhoeffer, Zettelnotizen, 33: “Marx: It is easy to be a saint if you don’t want to be

a human being” (Bonhoeffer was quoting from Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism, 90). [10.] Cf. Matt. 26:40: “Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not stay awake with me one hour?’” [11.] “Turning around,” “repentance.” [12.] Jer. 45:4—-5, cited frequently by Bonhoeffer. See 2/54, ed. note 5; 2/115, ed. note 24: 3/145, ed. note 17; see also DBWE 5:37, ed. note 13. [13.] 3/176,

4/178 and 4/179 487 to you.!!#! Didn’t we travel just about the same route together in 1936!'°! as youre traveling now? Be well, stay healthy, and don't let go of your hope that we will all see one another again soon. In faithfulness and gratitude, thinking always of you, Yours,

Dietrich 179. To Eberhard Bethge'! |! July 25, 1944

Dear Eberhard, I like to write to you as often as possible now because I think you, too, are always glad to have some news. There’s nothing particular to report about me personally, and the same for the family, as far as T know. T had a letter'?! from Maria yesterday in which she writes that she is now going to Oberbehme in Westphalia to her father’s sister, Frau von Laer,! since her mother is sending her little brother and sister there from Patzig. I find that very sensible, especially since Maria was no doubt somewhat overstressed in Bavaria. I have thought, too, whether that might be something for Renate. Though I don’t know how she gets along with Maria, perhaps she could make herself very useful by giving piano lessons. On the other hand, staying close to her parents and her whole circle of acquaintances in Berlin means a lot to her too. But if you do feel like it, please simply write to Maria. Surely there will be so many children there that litle Dietrich'*! would certainly be well 544 taken care of there. Aunt Elisabeth will probably visit my parents soon."!

[14.] [The literal translation is “Many greetings from me are still coming to you.” This may have been Bonhoeffer’s way of avoiding any reference to letters.—] DG] [15.] On his trip to Italy with Bethge; see 3/169, ed. note 18. [1.] NZ, A 81,197; handwritten; Bethge noted beside the date of the letter: “Tuesday.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 372-73. [2.| Not extant. [3.] See Love Letters from Cell 92, 221-22.

[4.] Dietrich Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s godson. [5.] This is a coded message: Elisabeth von Hase, Paula Bonhoeffer’s sister, will give up her residence in Breslau in view of the approaches on the eastern front. The Russian offensive advanced rapidly on June 22, 1944; see Die Wehrmachtberichte, 3:170-75 (July 91-95, 1944).

488 Letters and Papers from Prison It was our area’s turn again the last few nights.!°! When the bombs are howling, I always think how trifling this is compared to what you are experiencing out there. It really sends me into a rage the way some people here make a pathetic fuss in such situations and how little they consider how others are faring. Here it is always a matter of just a few minutes of danger, after all. [wonder how Jochen Kanitz is doing now. I recall he was stationed on the central front [Mittelfront].!”! I have now finished reading Memoiren aus dem Totenhaus.'®! Tt is so full of

good and wise things. I am still preoccupied with the claim—which with him is certainly no cliché—that no person can live without hope, and that people who have really lost all hope often become wild and evil.!¥! This leaves open the question whether hope in this case equals illusion. Certainly the significance of illusion for life is not to be underestimated, but for the Christian I think the only important thing is to have well-founded hope. And if even illusion has sufficient power in people's lives to make life go on, how great, then, is the power that an absolutely grounded hope has for life,

545 and how invincible such a life is. “Christ, our Hope”"!’!—this formula of Paul’s is the strength of our life. They have just come to take me out to walk. No matter—I will finish this letter so it will go out today. Farewell! I think of you every day with gratitude and in faithfulness! God keep you and Renate and your boy and all of us! As ever, Yours,

Dietrich

[6.] Heavy air-raid attacks on July 24 (12:55-1:40 a.m.) and 25, 1944 (1:39-2:19 a.m.). [7.] [I.e., in Russia. —JDG] [8.] Dostoyevsky’s Memoirs from the House of the Dead; see 3/177, ed. note 9. [9.] Dostoyevsky, Memoirs from the House of the Dead: “he Bible-reading man who had

lurched at the major with a brick while in a drunken stupor, about whose arrest you have already heard, was surely also one of those desperate human beings who have lost every glimmer of hope, and who, since one cannot live without hope, had found a way out in that voluntary, almost artificially created martyrdom. ... Who knows what psychological process had gone on within him; no human being can exist without a purpose and without striving. A person who no longer has a purpose or hope is often transformed from that vacuum into a monster... . But the goal of all prison inmates was freedom.” [From the 2001 Oxford University Press translation, pp. 305-6. Trans. altered by Nancy Lukens.—JDG] TOs 2 Tim, Teh.

4/179 and 4/180 489 180. To Eberhard Bethge!!!

Dear Eberhard,

Just a brief greeting and thanks for yours of the sixteenth.'*! I’m glad that you don’t have to suffer too much from the heat. It has turned almost cool here. 'm sure it is also an emotional relief to have a lot to do; at least it would seem so to me. Your formulation of our theological theme is very clear and simple. The question how there can be a “natural” piety is at the same time the question

about “unconscious Christianity”!! that preoccupies me more and more. The Lutheran dogmatists distinguished a fides directa from a fides reflexa.'*!

They related that to the so-called faith of the infant at baptism.'°! Twonder 546 if we are not here addressing a very wide-reaching problem. More about that, hopefully, soon. Things are unchanged with the family. By the way, you can safely go on

S 3/ /bd/ o° .o

writing as before.!°! Everyone is happy to receive greetings. Did you get the y0ems (3)?"7! Enough for today. Accept my many faithful greetings and sta well. ‘Take care that you don’t get malaria with all the mosquitoes!

[1.] NZ, A 81,198; handwritten; no date; annotation by Bethge: “postmarked July 27, 1944.” Previously published in LPP, 373. [2.] Not extant.

[3.] On the term “unconscious Christians,” see R. Rothe, “Zur Orientierung tiber die gegenwartige Aufgabe der deutsch-evangelischen Kirche,” 67. See especially Rade, Unbewuftes Christentum, 4: “Unconscious Christianity is a Christianity one does not know one has.” On this concept in Bonhoeffer, see DBWE 6:170, ed. note 111; DBWE 7:106, 225,

ed, note 134. See also Kelly, ““Unconscious Christianity’ and the ‘Anonymous Christian” land Nancy Lukens, “Narratives of Creative Displacement”—]DG]. [4.| DBWE 2:158: “Classical Protestant dogmatics spoke of fides directa |direct faith] to describe the act of faith which, even though completed within a person's consciousness, could not be reflected upon in it [i.e., that consciousness],” as opposed to the fides reflexa (faith mediated by reflection). See DBWE 2:157-61, cf. the similar description in DBWE 4:153: “But the faith out of which Iam praying precludes such reflecting”; see also DBWE 16, 2/14, p. 562. On this fundamental distinction in Bonhoeffer’s thinking (also actus directus and actus reflectus), see especially Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 9-10, 28-29, et passim. [5.] See, for example, Schmid, Die Dogmatik der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 304n14; also DBWE 2:159, ed. note 30; see also Bonhoeffer’s theological opinion paper on the question of baptism (1942) in DBWE 16, 2/14, pp. 561-66, esp. 561-62; also Gerhard Ludwig Muller, Bonhoeffers Theologie der Sakramente, 174-93. [6.] [L-e., sending letters via the same trustworthy guard.—J]DG|

[‘7.] Poems that cannot be included in this reference are 3/158, “The Past,” which Bethge had already acknowledged on June 8, 1944 (see 3/162), and—because of the dating—‘“Night Voices,” 3/175 (see Henkys, Gefdingnisgedichte, 34), as well as “Stations

on the Way to Freedom,” 4/191, ed. note 1. Thus the reference here is to “Fortune and

490 Letters and Papers from Prison Wishing you all the best, as always, Yours faithfully, Dietrich

181. Notes I, Tegel, July-August 1944!!!

The expulsion of God from the world is the discrediting of religion Living without God But what if'?! Christianity were not a religion at all? worldly’! nonreligious! interpretation of Christian concepts. 547 Christianity arises out of the encounter with a concrete human being: Jesus. Experience of transcendence educated people? Breakdown of Christian ethics.

No social!”! ethics. Confessional matters.

“I believe only what | see.” God—nota relig. . . .!°!

Return to M.A.!7!

Calamity” (3/167), “Who Am I>” (3/173), and “Christians and Heathens” (3/174). Ina letter of August 10, 1944, Bonhoeffer deals with Bethge’s response (in a letter that has been lost) to the latter two letters: see 4/188. [1.] NZ, A 86,19; handwritten in ink; 1 page; undated; annotation by Bethge: “Tegel”; cf. handwritten copy by Bethge. Previously published in LPP, 379-80. These notes—see 3/137, pp. 362-65, regarding their themes—contain key ideas and phrasing for the outline for a book (4/187), which Bonhoeffer sent to Bethge on August 3, 1944; cf. 4/186, p. 498.

[2.] Before “what if” the abbreviation “Chr|istianity]” is crossed out. [3.] Before “worldly” the word “in” is crossed out. [4.] “Nonreligious” is a later insertion above the line. [5.] “Social” is crossed out; deletion later canceled by three dots below the line. [6.] One word illegible, perhaps “relationship.” (See p. 501: “Our relationship to God is not a ‘religious’ one.”) [7.] Middle Ages. Bonhoeffer drew a box around this line. Cf. p. 478 (“salto mortale back to the Middle Ages”).

4/180-4/183 49] 182. Notes II, Tegel, July-August 1944!!!

Unconscious Christianity:!*! Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.! Matt. 25.(4)

Not knowing what to pray.!*! Motto: Jesus said to him:!©! “What do you want me to do for you?”!!

183. To Eberhard Bethge'!!! 548 July 28

Dear Eberhard, I have not yet thanked you for the nice little photo, which was quite amusing for me with its Italian arrangement. Funny—so is there an Italian and also a German way even for taking photos? And the strangest thing of all is that this can be the case with such an ordinary picture. But do have one of your comrades take a picture of you sometime that shows all of you, and in a nature setting. Of course, it makes sense that you fellows work wearing shirts only.

You think that the Bible does not say much about health, happiness [Glick], strength [Kraft], and so on.*! I have thought that over again very carefully.'5! ’m sure it is not true of the OT in any case. The mediating theological concept in the OT between God and the happiness [Gluck],

[1.] NZ, A 86,20; handwritten in ink; 1 page; undated; cf. handwritten copy added by Bethge. Previously published in LPP, 380. [2.] See 4/180, ed. note 3. [3.] Matt. 6:3: “But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Cf. DBWE 4:151 et passim. [4.] In the Luther Bible, Matt. 6:3 (see previous note) contains a cross-reference to Matt. 25:37-40. [5.] Rom. 8:26b: “for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” [6.] “Jesus said to him” added later. [7.] Mark 10:51.

[1.] NZ, A 81,199; handwritten; undated (1944). Previously published in LPP, 374-75. [2.] Cf. in Bonhoeffer’s letter of June 30, 1944, 3/170, pp. 450-51. The end of a letter from Bethge in which he deals with this was lost; see 3/155, ed. note 19.

[3.] [Bonhoeffer’s reflections about the concept of happiness at this time are also evident in the novel he wrote in prison. See DBWE 7:175.—]DG]

492 Letters and Papers from Prison and so forth,'*! of human beings is that of blessing, as far as I can see, |! Certainly in the OT, for instance among the patriarchs, the focus is not on happiness but on God’s blessing, which itself encompasses all earthly good. This blessing is the addressing and claiming of earthly life for God, and it contains all [God’s] promises. To regard the OT blessing as superseded by the NT would once again resemble the customary, overspiritualized! view of the NT. But do you think it is an accident that the subject of sickness and death comes up in the context of the misuse of!”! the Lord’s Supper (“the cup of blessing...” 1 Cor. 10:16! 1 Cor. 11:30), or that Jesus restores people’s health, or that when Jesus’s disciples are with him they “lack nothing”?!8! Now, should one oppose the cross with the OT blessing? That is what Kierkegaard did.'"! This turns the cross and/or suffering into a prin549 ciple, and this is precisely what gives rise to an unhealthy methodism!!”! that denies suffering its quality of contingency within divine providence. Incidentally, the person who receives blessing in the OT must also suffer much (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph), but this never (as little as in the NT) leads to making happiness and suffering, blessing and the cross, mutually

[4.] [Cf. 3/167, the poem “Fortune and Calamity,” written in June 1944.—JDG] [5.] [Another translation of the German Glick besides “blessing” (Segen) is relevant to this reflection, namely, “prospering”; cf. Joseph in prison, where “the LORD was with him; and whatever he did, the LoRD made it prosper” (Gen, 39:23). Cf. Bonhoetfer’s meditation on this text in DBWE 16, 3/4, p. 628. We are grateful to Jurgen Henkys for making this connection.—]DG] [6.| [This translates Bonhoeffer’s vergeistigt, an unusually negative use of the root word Geist (mind, spirit), Cf. Bonhoeffer’s reflection on Gerhardt’s verse “Ich bring alles wieder” in 2/88, pp. 229-31, with his distinction between Vergeistigung, which he associates with oap€, “flesh,” and Wiederbringung, which is katvy) KTioLs, new creation by the Holy Spirit.—]DG] |7.| “Misuse of” added later. [8.] Luke 22:35 (“did you lack anything?”); cf. DBWE 4:168. [9.] The Kierkegaard Research Center in Copenhagen could not document a direct opposition of “Old Testament Blessing” and “Cross” in Kierkegaard’s works (letter of October 20, 1996, to the German DBW editor). However, Bonhoeffer’s statement in the above paragraph that the OT is concerned with “God’s blessing, which itself encompasses all earthly good” does contradict Kierkegaard insofar as he argues (Christian Discourses, 120): “All earthly and worldly goods are in themselves selfish, invidious, the possession of them, being invidious or envious, must of necessity make others poorer; what I have, another cannot have; the more I have, the less another has.” The editors are grateful to Magdalena L. Frettloh for Kierkegaard references. [10.] On Bonhoeffer’s rejection of “methodism,” see 2/112, ed. note 14.

4/183 493 exclusive.!'! In this respect the difference between OT and NT may consist solely in the fact that in the OT the blessing also includes the cross and in the NT the cross also includes the blessing. To change the subject completely: not only action but suffering, too, isa way to freedom. In suffering, liberation consists in being allowed to let the matter out of one’s own hands into the hands of God. In this sense death is the epitome of human freedom.'!?! Whether the human deed is a matter

of faith depends on whether people understand their own suffering as a continuation of their action, as a consummation of freedom. I find this very important and very comforting. I am well. There is also nothing new to report from the family. Hans is completely laid up with the paralysis from his diphtheria.!'!*! But people seem to be confident. Farewell, keep up your good spirits, as we are doing, and join us in looking forward already to a fine reunion! Warmest greetings. Yours faithfully, Dietrich Neues Lied, no. 370, v. 3.4,!14!

[11.| Cf. DBWE 6:127: “the blessings of suffering,” and the “Devotional Aids for the Moravian Daily Texts” for June 8, 1944, on Ps, 34:20 (“The just must suffer much”) and 1 Pet. 3:9 (“that you might inherit a blessing”), DBWI 16, 3/4, pp. 631-32. [12.] See the poem “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” 4/191. [13.] See 3/177, ed. note 11. [14.] The hymn cited here is Paul Gerhardt’s “Herr, der du vormals has dein Land mit Gnaden angeblicket” (“Lord, who hast looked upon thy land with grace”), Fvangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 383. V. 3 reads: “O, that I may soon hear the Word / o’er all the Earth resounding / that news of Peace shall now be heard / wherever Christians dwell! O may God grant us / an end to war, an end to weapons’ din / and to all misery!” V. 4 reads: “O may this evil time / to better days give way / that we in our great woe / might not despair for aye. / Yet to those who bow in fear / God’s help and grace are ever near.” Translation by Nancy Lukens. [Lin Neues Lied (1932) was a German Protestant youth hymnal conceived by Otto Riethmuller, later director of youth work for the Confessing Church. The second edition (1933) was used daily at Finkenwalde (Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 51-52).—JDG]

494 Letters and Papers from Prison 550 184. Miscellaneous Notes!!! A Few Thoughts on Miscellaneous Topics

Giordano Bruno: “The sight of a friend can cause a strange shudder, since no enemy can have such terrifying qualities as a friend”!?!—Do you understand this? Iam trying to but really do not understand it after all. Does the “terrifying” refer to the danger of betrayal that is simultaneously inherent in every intimate human relationship (Judas?)?!! Spinoza: Affects are never overcome by reason but only by stronger affects."4!

551 It is the advantage and the essence of the strong that they are able to pose the great decisive questions and take clear positions on them. The weak must always decide between alternatives that are not their own.

Presumably'®! we are made in such a way that perfection is boring to us; I do not know whether that was always the case. But I have no other way to explain the fact that Raphael!®! remains as distant and indifferent to me

[1.] NZ, A 67,7; handwritten in ink; 2 pages; undated. Previously published in LPP, 375-76. [2.| Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen, 341 (Bonhoeller does not cite source): “Bruno once said that the sight of a friend could cause a strange shudder, since no enemy could have such terrible qualities as a friend.” [3.] Mark 14:43-45 (the kiss of Judas); cf. Bonhoeffer’s 1937 sermon in DBW 14:97798 on the parallel with Matt. 26:47-50. [4.] Dilthey, Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen, 429 (Bonhoeffer does not cite

source): “Spinoza’s very important statement that it is the strength of an affect, not its moral value, that decides what wins out in the antagonisms of affects, is formulated by Vives and explained by the image of a civil struggle in which no one listens to the better person, but everyone listens to the more powerful. Thus the strongest affect subdues to itself the whole realm of the soul.” Cf. also Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen, 262.

See Spinoza, Ethics, 191: “No affect can be restrained unless by a stronger and contrary affect.” Cf. Vives, “De anima et vita,” bk. 3. Cf. also Weltanschauung und Analyse des Men-

schen, 449: “Thus Bacon here comes quite close to Spinoza’s assertion that an affect can only ever be overcome by another affect.” Bacon, Advancement of Learning, 327-28: “How

the affections are to be... soothed and laid... and how far one passion might regulate another, and how they employ each other's assistance to conquer some one, after the manner of hunters and fowlers, who take beast with beast, and bird with bird: which man, perhaps, without such assistance, could not so easily do.” [5.] “Presumably” added later. [6.] [The Italian painter.—JDG]

4/184 495 as Dante’s paradise.'’! Likewise, neither eternal ice nor eternal blue sky appeals to me. I seek “perfection” in what is human, living, earthly, that 1s, neither in the Apollonian nor in the Dionysian or Faustian.!*! It seems Iam for the more moderate climate in every direction.

August 3!9!

That which is beyond [das Jenseitige] consists not of things infinitely distant but of things closest at hand.!!®!

Ultimate seriousness 1s never without a dose of humor.

The essential thing about chastity 1s not a renunciation of pleasure but an all-encompassing orientation of life toward a goal.!'!'!! Where there is no such orientation, chastity inevitably deteriorates into the ridiculous. Chaste living is the prerequisite for clear and superior thoughts.

On the way to freedom death is the greatest of feasts.!!*!

Please forgive these demanding pearls of wisdom! They are fragments of — 552 conversations that never took place and as such they belong to you. When

one is forced to exist only in one’s own thoughts, as Iam, one gets the most stupid thoughts, such as committing one’s miscellaneous thoughts to writing!

[7.] Dante, The Divine Comedy, pt. 3: Paradise.

[8.] See 2/124, ed. note 15, on the “Apollonian” and “Dionysian”; see ed. note 18 on the “Faustian.” [9.] Cf. Bethge’s dating of the “Outline for a Book,” 4/187 (see ed. note 1) as “August 3.” [10.] See p. 501: “The neighbor [der Nachste] is the transcendent.” [11.] See “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” 4/191, p. 512: “Chaste be your spirit and body, subject to yourself completely, / in obedience seeking the goal that is set for your spirit. / Only through discipline does one learn the secret of freedom.” [12.] See “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” 4/191; cf. 4/183, p. 493.

496 Letters and Papers from Prison 185. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge!|! July 30, 1944

Dear Eberhard, On this quiet, early Sunday morning that we have here on the veranda in Sakrow, where our great-grandson is pleasantly wriggling and babbling in his playpen, happy and rosy cheeked, we want to send you warm greetings and tell you that your offspring is developing very nicely and is a delight to us with his engaging

temperament, and that Renate is also well. You are no doubt getting regular reports about how the rest of the family is doing. | was able to see Hansl?! last week.|?] He is in a pitiful state as a result of the dreadful paralysis from his diphtheria. It has improved somewhat in his face and the roof of his mouth, but it has progressed further to his arms, legs, and torso, making him almost immobile. To be sure, one can expect everything to turn out all right, but it is nevertheless a 553 terrible burden and a test of patience for him and for Christel. Dietrich is in good health; we hope to speak with him in the next few days. No doubt he suffers greatly from his seclusion in these times when so much is happening and finds it hard to concentrate on Dilthey, whom he is now studying for his Ethics. Of course, our thoughts are often with you and your comrades in Italy, and in other ways as well, we feel strongly connected with you because of the move-

ment of the fronts in the east and the west. | hope the V-I will soon bring us peace before winter arrives.!4] As for me, | do think there will be a cease-fire before this year is out, but | can’t say that my prophecies have always turned out to be correct. | hope this year will bring us together again. How things will turn out exactly is something we cannot imagine today. Will we have such lovely family celebrations as we did in recent years? But perhaps you will surprise us even before that with an unexpected leave, and we will then celebrate that, insofar as the times still permit.

[1.] NZ, A 81,201; handwritten; from Sakrow; notation by Bethge: “answered.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 376-78. [2.] Hans von Dohnanyi. [3.] DB-ER, 809: “On July 21, 1944, Dohnanyi’s case fell entirely into the hands of the Gestapo. ... Dohnanyi’s isolation in quarantine gave even the Gestapo difficulties. Karl Bonhoeffer was allowed to visit his son-in-law once again in his capacity as a medical specialist” [trans. altered]. On August 22, 1944, Hans von Dohnanyi was removed from the military quarantine unit in Potsdam by police commissioner Franz Xaver Sonderegger and transported to the sick bay at Sachsenhausen concentration camp; see also Chowaniec, Der “Fall Dohnanyt,” 105-6; Meyer, Unternehmen Sieben, 450ff. [See also Smid, Hans von Dohnanyi, Christine Bonhoeffer—]DG]

[4.] An ironic allusion to the “final victory” (E:ndsieg) the Nazis were hoping for through use of the V-1, the “miracle weapon” (Wunderwaffe); see 3/163, ed. note 6.

4/185 497 Great-Grandmal?! wants to write something, too. So | will close and save everything else for the time when we can speak in person. Stay well, and may God protect you. Great-Grandfather Dear Eberhard,

| must thank you for a very affectionate letter, which made me very happy. | have been dearly wanting to reply for quite a while already, but since the day is always over too quickly, half the things one wants to do remain undone, and with you at least | tell myself that you surely hear lots of news from Renate and are kept up to date. Everything was moving along quite well, but now Perels thinks it has become much more difficult, in fact, probably hopeless. In any case, it would have been a great exception.!°] But you never know what good something may do. We have seen that, haven’t we, with our two.!”7] Humankind proposes,

and God disposes. One sees this more and more clearly now, and yet we go 554 on thinking and thinking how to do everything in the best and most intelligent way. The same with the various young families and their children. The women don’t know how they should divide themselves between their children and their husbands. Is it right to leave the children in Friedrichsbrunn!®! or Stawedder,!?] or is it better now for the families to stay together again in Berlin or Leipzig? These are the kinds of questions that are very much on our minds. We recently brought Dietrich patience cards!!'°! It is a hard time for the two of them.!!!] | hope everything will not last that much longer now and God grants that we keep our chins up. When you come home, you will be thrilled with your splendid boy. My thoughts are often with you. God be with you. Your Grandma

[5.] [Bonhoeffer’s parents were the great-grandparents of the Bethges’ son, Dietrich. —JDG]

[6.] A reference to the attempt to get Bethge a position as a military chaplain. [7.] Ten days after the failed coup attempt of July 20, 1944, there had not yet been any changes in the circumstances of Hans von Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer. This led the family to hope that their early arrest could save them in the end, since no proof of a connection with the conspiracy had yet been discovered. [8.] Family vacation home in the eastern Harz Mountains. [9.] Since spring 1944 (until June 1945), this village was the evacuation site of Klaus Bonhoeffer’s family, near Haffkrug in Schleswig-Holstein. [10.) [A card game played by an individual, usually called patience in England and solitaire in North America.—]DG] [11.] [I.e., Dietrich and Maria.—]DG]

498 Letters and Papers from Prison 186. To Eberhard Bethge'!!! August 3

Dear Eberhard, Today your and Renate’s child turns six months old! By the time he begins to talk, you will be home. How good that you know where you will belong when you return. It is certainly better to wait for something definite than for something indefinite. Maria will go back to the Red Cross again, I think, 555 ~~ when her foot is healed.'*! Who knows where we will see each other again. Sometimes I think I have put too much of a burden on her. But who could have known? And if I had had my way, my situation would long since be

otherwise.!?! But you mustn't think that T feel any bitterness about this. I myself am sometimes surprised how “collected” (or should I rather say “apathetic’?) Lam. I wonder if you all are going to be moving soon again, and if so, where? T would love to know whether you’ve read my poems.'#! The very long poem (in rhyme), “Night Voices in T[egel],” you must read sometime later.!°! ’'ve enclosed here an outline for a book.!®! I don’t know if you can get anything out of it, but I do think you will understand roughly what I mean. I hope that I can maintain the calm and strength it will take to write this work. The church must get out of its stagnation. We must also get back out into the fresh air of intellectual discourse with the world.!7! We also have to risk saying controversial things, if that will stir up discussion of the important issues in life. As a “modern” theologian who has nevertheless

[1.] NZ, A 81,200; handwritten; no year (1944). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 378-79. [2.] Maria von Wedemeyer ended her job as tutor in Bundorf (Mainfranken) in Sep-

tember 1944. Since she was not reassigned to the Red Cross and her mother’s plan to have her daughter stay with Friederike von Laer on the Oberbehme estate (see 4/179) could not be realized, Maria lived in the Bonhoeffer home, at Bonhoeffer’s request, from October 1944 until January 1945 to “help the parents out” (Love Letters from Cell 92, 261-62) and as an “office assistant” to Karl Bonhoeffer (4/188); see also Love Letters from Cell 92, 203-04. [3.] A reminder of the December 17, 1943, trial date, which, to Bonhoeffer’s disap-

pointment, his family did not allow to happen, based on the advice of friends and relatives (including Karl Sack and Paul von Hase); see 2/88, ed. note 43. [4.] See 4/180, p. 489: “Did you get the poems (3)?” [5.] See also Bonhoeffer’s comment on “Night Voices” (3/175) in 3/172, p. 457: “I have a long one about this place that I'd rather show you when you're here.” [6.] 4/187. [7.] Cf. Rothe (quote from Troeltsch, “Richard Rothe,” 23-24): “To be pious out in the open air—that is what counts now.” See also 4/187 (“This is why even in the Confessing Ghurch the breezes are blowing less than freely”), and DBWE 6:115: (“A fresh wind of

bright intelligence. ... Intellectual honesty in all things, including questions of faith”).

4/186 and 4/187 499 inherited the legacy of liberal theology, I feel responsible to address these questions. There are probably not many among the younger generation who combine these two elements. How I need your help! But if we do have to be deprived of clarifying conversation, at least we are not deprived of prayer, which alone allows us to begin and do this kind of work. I read about “tropical heat” in Italy. Is it really horrible? How will you 556 celebrate your birthday? Do you still remember our evening of ice cream in Florence on August 28, 1936?!*! You got no present at all from me at the time, as far as I recall, because we didn’t have any money. By the way, did you get to see San Gimigniano this time? And do you remember that you refused to take that detour back then, also because of the heat? Or don’t you want to admit that even today? Or do you think my memory deceives me that badly? Nothing new in my family. I am always happy when!*! I can report that. Farewell! When you have finished Cicerone,'!°! you will then be a fabulous tour guide!!! through Italy. ’'m already looking forward to that! All the very best, every day and always! God keep you! Faithfully yours, Dietrich

My work on the first three commandments!!*! seems to have proved acceptable, which pleases me. Please do write to Friedrichshagen, WilhelmstraBe 58, Herr Linke.!!5!

187. Outline for a Book!!!

1 would like to write an essay—not more than one hundred pages in length—with three chapters: 1. Taking Stock of Christianity;!*! 2. What is Christian faith, really? 3. Conclusions. [8.] Bethge’s birthday during their trip to Italy together in 1936 (see DB-LR, 554-55). [9.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [10.) Burckhardt, Der Cicerone: Kine Anleitung zum Genuf der Kunstwerke Italiens.

[11.] Italian tour guides are jokingly referred to as “Cicerone” because of their eloquence, a reference to the orator Cicero; cf. ed. note 10. [12.] See DBWE 16, 3/5, pp. 633-44; see also 3/169, ed. note 7. [13.] See also 3/172, ed. note 26; 3/177, ed. note 70. [1.] NZ, A 81,201; handwritten (Latin script, few corrections, some later additions) in ink; 4 pages; undated; annotation by Bethge: “August 3, [1944]"; untitled (cf. 4/186: “outline for a book”). Previously published in LPP, 380-83. [2.] On this “taking stock” (Bestandsaufnahme, as in 4/193, ct. Bonhoeffer, Zettelnotizen, 46: “Taking stock of the Christian faith and life (problems with ... a ‘taking stock’).”

500 Letters and Papers from Prison {In the first chapter I would describe

557 {(a) The coming of age of the human being (as indicated earlier).'! Safeguarding human life against “accidents,” “blows of fate”; if it is impossible to eliminate them, then at least the reduction of danger. ‘The “insurance industry” as a Western phenomenon (to be sure, it depends on accidents, but its purpose is to make them less painful); its goal is to be independent of nature. Nature used to be conquered by the soul;'*! with us it is conquered

through technological organization of all kinds. What is unmediated for us, what is given, is no longer nature but organization. But with this protection from the menace of nature, a new threat to life is created in turn, namely, through organization itself. Now the power of the soul is lacking! The question is: What will protect us from the menace of organization? The human being is thrown back on his own resources. He has learned to cope with everything except himself. He can insure himself against everything but other human beings. In the end it all comes down to the human being. {(b) The religionlessness of the human being come of age. “God” as working hypothesis, as stopgap for our embarrassments, has become superfluous (as indicated previously).!°!

{(c) The Protestant church: pietism as“!a final attempt to preserve Protestant Christianity as religion; Lutheran orthodoxy, the attempt to save the church as an institution of salvation;!”! Confessing Church: revelation theology; adds pot Tov oTd!*! standing against the world; with regard to it, an “objective” interest in Christianity. The arts, the sciences in search of their origin.!! Generally in the Confessing Church: Standing up for the “cause” of the church, and so on, but little personal faith in Christ. “Jesus” disap558 pears from view. Sociologically: no impact on the broader masses; a matter for the lower and upper-middle classes. Heavily burdened by difficult, traditional ideas. Decisive: Church defending itself. No risk taking for others. {(d) Morals of the people. Sexual morality as example.

[3.] See 3/161, pp. 425-26 and ed. note 14. [4.] [“Soul” (Seele) implies both intellectual powers and emotional resources.—]DG] [5.] See 3/152, pp. 405-7, with ed. notes 5 and 7; 3/161, pp. 425-26, with ed. note 11. [6.] After “as” the word “religion” is crossed out. [7.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s lecture at the preacher’s seminary in Finkenwalde, winter 193536: “Visible Church in the New Testament,” DBW 14:431: “Where God’s word and God’s deed are so torn asunder as is the case in orthodoxy, the church must become a religious institution and there is then no defense left against the pietistic, total dissolution of the concept of church.”

[8.] See 2/124, ed. note 28. [9.] See DBWE 6:340 (science, art”); 341 (“return to the origin”); and 132.

4/187 501 { Chapter 2:

{(a) Worldliness and God. {(b) Who is God? Not primarily a general belief in God’s omnipotence,

and so on. That is not a genuine experience of God but just a prolongation of a piece of the world. Encounter with Jesus Christ. Experience that here there is a reversal of all human existence, in the very fact that Jesus only!!9! “is there for others.”!!" Jesus’s!!*! “being-for-others” is the experience of transcendence! Only through this liberation from self, through this “being-for-others” unto death, do omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence come into being. Faith is!!*! participating in this being of Jesus. (Becoming human [Menschwerdung], cross, resurrection.) Our relationship to God is no “religious” relationship to some highest, most powerful,

and best being imaginable—that is no genuine transcendence. Instead, our relationship to God is a new life in “being there for others,” through participation in the being of Jesus. The transcendent is not the infinite, unattainable!'"! tasks, but the neighbor within reach!"! in any given situation.!!©! God in human form! Not as in oriental religions in animal forms

as the monstrous, the chaotic, the remote, the terrifying, but also not in 559 the conceptual forms of the absolute, the metaphysical,!'”! the infinite, and so on, either, nor again the Greek god—human form of the “God-human form [Gott-Menschgestalt] of the human being in itself.”'"!*! But rather “the

human being for others”! therefore the Crucified One. The human being living out of the transcendent.

[10.] “Only” added later. [11.] The phrase “for others” in connection with “only” (see preceding note) is found already in Luther (WA 7:64, 15-17 [editor’s emphasis], Tractatus de libertate Christiana,

1520): “Non enim homo sibi vivit soli in corpore isto mortali ad operandum in eo, sed et omnibus hominibus in terra, immo solum aliis vivit et non sibi” (“For human beings do not live for themselves in this, their mortal body, to operate in it, but for all people on earth; indeed, they live only for others and not for themselves,” in “The Freedom of a Christian” (1520), LW 31:364, trans. altered). [See also DBWI 6:400.—]DG] Further references to the history of the expression “to be there for others” are found in W. DreB, “Religidses Denken und christliche Verktindigung in der Theologie Dietrich Bonhoetfers,” 60-61, n. 6. [12.] “Jesus’s” added later. {13.| After “is” the word “not” is crossed out.

{14.] “Unattainable” added later. [15.] “Within reach” added later.

[16.| See 4/181, p. 490: “Christianity arises out of the encounter with a concrete human being: Jesus. Experience of transcendence.” [17.] “Metaphysical” added later. [18.] Concerning this passage, in which Bonhoeffer articulates his understanding of Otto’s book The Homeric Gods, see 3/164, ed. notes 3, 16, and 18.

502 Letters and Papers from Prison {(c) Hence the interpretation of biblical concepts on this principle. (Creation, fall, reconciliation, repentance, faith, vita nova,!'*! last things.)

{(d) Cultus.!?°! (Details to follow later, in particular on cultus and

cc a’ en religion”!)

{(e) What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that our lives

depend on it? The problem of the Apostles’ Creed [Apostolikum]??! What must | believe? wrong question. Outdated controversies,'*?! especially the interconfessional ones; the differences between Lutheran and Reformed (and to some extent Roman Catholic) are no longer real. Of course, they can be revived with passion at any time, but they are no longer convincing. There is no proof for this. One must simply be bold enough to start from this. The only thing we can prove is that the Christian-biblical!**! faith does not live or depend on such differences. Barth and the Confessing Church have encouraged people to entrench themselves again and again behind the notion of the “faith of the Church” rather than asking and stating hon560 — estly what they really believe. This is why even in the Confessing Church the breezes are blowing less than freely.'**! Saying that it depends not on me but on the church can be a cheap clerical [pfaffisch]'*>! excuse and is always

[19.| Latin for “new life.” “New Life in Paul” was the theme of Bonhoeffer’s New Testament lecture at the Finkenwalde preacher’s seminary in the summer of 1936; see DBWE 14, 2/15.

[20.] [The German Kultus is usually translated as “cult” but is also related to ritual.— JDG] Bethge had raised the question of cultus; see 3/155, pp. 413-14. [21.] Apostles’ Creed (symbolum apostolorum or apostolicum): allusion to the so-called Apostles’ Creed debate [Apostolikumstreit] of 1892, in which Adolf von Harnack had argued (/n Sachen des Apostolikums, col. 768) “for replacing, or using, in addition to the Apostles’ Creed, a short confession that would more clearly and confidently articulate

the understanding of the gospel gained in the Reformation and the time since, and that would at the same time remove the objectionable features that this symbol presents in its current wording to many serious and honest Christians, laypeople and clergy.” See also the position Bonhoeffer takes in his lecture “The Nature of the Church,” summer semester 1932, DBW 11:283-84 (from student notes): “Bonhoeffer’s [critique of] the Apostles’ Creed: Questions of liberalism (and of Harnack) [remain] open, [that] is yet to be resolved. Confession is a matter of our true standing before God! ... The Word itself must be true! Not only the meaning!” [22.] On this and the following, see DBWE 16, 1/27, p. 84. [23.| “Biblical” added later. [24.] Cf. 4/186, ed. note 7. Concerning the lack of “breezes blowing . . . freely” in the Confessing Ghurch, see the attempts by Hans Asmussen and the general conference of Confessing Church pastors in Berlin to excommunicate Rudolf Bultmann because of his Alpirsbach lecture on demythologizing the Bible; cf. Bonhoeffer’s protest, among other places, in his March 24, 1942, letter to Ernst Wolf (DBWE 16, 1/148, pp. 260-61). [25.] “Clerical” added later [p/affisch, a contemptuous term, referring to clergy; it also carries the sense of “sanctimonious” or “holier-than-thou"—]DG].

4/187 503 perceived that way outside the church. It is the same with the dialectical claim that I do not have my faith at my disposal and therefore cannot simply state what I believe. All these thoughts, justifiable though they might be in their place, do not absolve us from being honest with ourselves. We cannot, like the Roman Catholics, simply identify ourselves with the church. (Incidentally, this is probably the source of the common opinion that Catholics are insincere.) Well, then, what do we really believe? Answer: see (b), (c), and (d). TChapter 3:

(Conclusions: The church is church only when it is there for others. As a first step it must give away all its property to those in need.'7°! The clergy must live solely on the freewill offerings of the congregations and perhaps be engaged in some secular vocation [Beruf].4”! The church must participate in the worldly tasks of life in the community—not dominating but helping and serving. It must tell people in every calling [Beruf] what a life with Christ is, what it means “to be there for others.” In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism!**! as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.!*"! It will have to see that it does not underestimate the significance of the human!*”! “example” (which

has its origin in the humanity of Jesus'*!! and is so important in Paul’s 561

[26.] Cf. Bonhoefter’s interpretation of Matt. 19:21 in DBWE 4:73, where the challenge of voluntary poverty is called only an “ intermediate link” between the rich young man’s previous life and discipleship. [27.| |Berufcan mean “career,” but Berufung means a “calling” or “vocation.” Following Luther, for Bonhoeffer every occupation is a God-given task, not just the call to the ministry.—]DG] [28.] “And illusionism” added later. [29.] In this series “trust,” “steadfastness,” “patience,” and “modesty” were added later. 130.| “Human” added later. [31.] This phrasing goes back to Augustine’s pairing of the concepts donwm [or sacramentum| et exemplum (gift and example), in De trinitate 4.3, quoted by Bonhoeffer in his seminar paper on the Holy Spirit in Luther, DBWE 9, 2/10, p. 338, ed. note 54: “Ita Christus nobis proponitur ut donum seu sacramentum et exemplum” (Thus Christ is presented as a gift or a sacrament and an example for us to see). In Luther’s pairing of the two concepts, the donum is the precondition for the exemplum (WA 10/1/1:11, 12-15: “Ein klein Unterricht, was man in den Evangeliis suchen und gewarten soll” (“A short instruction on what one should seek and expect in the Gospels,” 1522): “The chief message and basis of the gospel is that you accept Christ and recognize him asa gift and present given to you by God and your very own, before you grasp him as the example.” Cf. Bonhoeffer in this regard, DBWE 4:287: “Only because we bear Christ’s image already can Christ be

504 Letters and Papers from Prison ritings!):/82! ¢} hurch’s word eai and j I |conwritings!);'°-! the church’s word gains weight andfreight power not through cepts but by example.!°*! (I will write in more detail later about “example” in the NI—we have almost entirely lost track of this thought). Further: revision of the question of “confession” (Apostolikum); revision of apologetics; revision of the preparation for and practice of ministry. All this is put very roughly and only outlined. But Iam eager to attempt for once to express certain things simply and clearly that we otherwise like to avoid dealing with. Whether I shall succeed is another matter, especially without the benefit of our conversations. I hope that in doing so I can be of some service for the future of the church. 562 188. To Eberhard Bethge!!! August 10

Dear Eberhard,

That was really quite an incomparable surprise'*!—your first attempt at creative writing'’! and so well done; indeed, well done doesn’t even begin to say it. It is simply quite outstanding. And this skill at telling a story simply obliges you from now on to continue in the same direction. I really do not mean this as cheap encouragement but simply because I find the thing so good. | must admit that I was reminded of Stifter, and you know what that means in my case! Iam really very happy, and I think you should send it to Renate on your own birthday. Every day’s delay in her receiving it would

the ‘example’ whom we follow.” Cf. also DBW 11:298 with ed. note 412; DBW 12, 2/12, pp. 308-10; DBWE 16:621-22. See also Christoph Zimmermann-Wolf, “Ein anderes Verstandnis von *Vorbild.” [32.] See Bonhoeffer’s writings on Paul’s pastoral letters from summer 1938, DBW 15:307 and 316. [33.] DBW 14:430: “It is not the religious formula, the dogma, that constitutes the church, but the practical doing of what is commanded.” Cf. in this context Luther’s sentence (“Praelectio in psalmum 45,” WA 40/2:595, 11; 1532): “Difficile est, deo credere sine exemplo” (It is difficult to believe in God without an example). [1.] NZ, A 81,203; handwritten; no year (1944). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 383-84, [2.] [The rest of the paragraph of Bonhoeffer’s response to Bethge’s creative writing, from here to the paragraph beginning “By the way,” was omitted by Bethge in previous editions of LPP._—]DG|]

[3.] Written by Bethge in July-August 1944 in Italy: “Der Namensgrossvater” (The Namesake Grandfather) (on the occasion of Renate Bethge’s nineteenth birthday on October 26, 1944, for Dietrich Wilhelm Rudiger Bethge). Published as “Der Vater” (referring to Wilhelm Bethge), in Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 24-33.

4/187 and 4/188 505 be a pity. So I am sending it to you by return mail even though I would prefer to hold on to it, but just now I do not keep anything here. You know I always had the feeling you could pull off something like this, but this I didn’t expect. By comparison my own literary attempts are silly bungling. When one’s heart, head, and language become one as they do with you, then something good comes of it. You really should publish it. But you can do this later along with other things. Thank you so much; it was a real joy! By the way, you can do whatever you think best with my things (poems,

etc.).!! Of course, the only thing one has to keep in mind is that they mustn't get into the wrong hands. I think your corrections are good (“contemptible” can be omitted; “stand by God” probably came from thinking of the cross).!°!

I can understand that you no longer find your memories “nourishing.”!®! 563 But the power of memories returns again and again through the power of gratitude. It is in just such times as these that one should strive for sufficient calm to be thankful in prayer. Above all, one must not let oneself be consumed by matters of the moment, but must nurture within oneself the calmness that comes from great thoughts and measure all things by them. The fact that few people can do this is the hardest thing to live with in dealing with others. What so deeply perverts and degrades human dignity is not wickedness but human weakness. It is only out of very profound compassion that one can bear this. Yet all the while, God is in charge. I’m now working on the three chapters I wrote you about.!”! It is just as you say, that “the recognition” of something is the most exciting thing in the world, and this is why Iam quite riveted by my work now. I often think of you in your “loneliness” and am so glad that you have now found a sideline that claims your full attention. Couldn't you add a few words about the death of your father? It is certainly difficult, but surely it should be done. And then just keep on writing, about Gerhard,'*! about

[4.] See Bethge’s inquiry of June 26, 1944, 3/168, p. 445. [5.] Bethge’s comments on Bonhoeffer’s poems “Who Am I?” (3/173) (mentioning the word verdchtlich, “pitiful”) and “Christians and Heathens” (3/174) (mentioning stehen bei Gott, “stand by God”) are in a letter that was lost—possibly the one accompanying his text “Der Namensgrossvater’; cf. 4/180, ed. note 7.

[6.] Reference to a letter from Bethge that was lost (see previous note), as in the following paragraphs (Lrkennen, “recognition,” and Linsamkeit, “loneliness”). Cf. 4/195, p. 524 (“nourished”). (7.) 4/187 (“Outline for a Book”), and cover letter, 4/186. [8.] Gerhard Vibrans; see the text titled “Gerhard,” written 1944-45 in Berlin in the Lehrter StraBbe prison, in Bethge, In Zilz gab es keine Juden, 63-71.

506 Letters and Papers from Prison Magdeburg,'*! about your student years, music, travels!!!°! Until that point you can remain more or less objective and impersonal. What came later!!! must be kept for another time? Farewell for today. I feel sorry for Grandmother.'!*! But I hope it isn’t bad. Maria is coming to stay with my parents indefinitely and to work as receptionist.!'*! ’'m very happy about this!—Now let’s continue to be of good cheer and persevere patiently;!'!! | hope we will 564 be together again to celebrate Renate’s birthday.!!®! God keep you and all of us every day and give us strong faith! AS ever,

Yours faithfully, Dietrich

189. To Eberhard Bethge!!! August 11

Dear Eberhard, Iam so unable to get over my excitement about your short literary piece!?! that I have to write again right away. Amazingly, you have managed to wrest this work from your solitude in the past few weeks. Reading these few pages so packed with content was the most joyous surprise I have had in a long time. I had always felt that something would happen with you someday with respect to productive work, and now I am experiencing the joy that you also may have perhaps already experienced, the joy of seeing a friend succeed at a piece of work. Perhaps you'll say that this is just a little piece of occasional writing.'! That may be true, but Iam quite certain that it is very [9.] Bethge attended the humanist gymnasium (secondary school) Monastery of Our Dear Lady in Magdeburg as a boarder beginning at age ten, from 1920 to 1929; see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 51-61.

[10.] “Music, travels” added later. [11.] [Bonhoeffer is referring here to the period after their own friendship began.— JDG!)

[12.] Maria von Wedemeyer’s grandmother Ruth von Kleist-Retzow in Klein-Krossin was in immediate danger because of the advancing Russian troops, which had reached the borders of east Prussia at the end of July 1944. [13.] See 4/186, ed. note 2. [14.)] Here Bonhoeffer begins to write in the margin. [15.] October 26. [1.] NL, A 81,204; no date (1944). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 384-85. [2.] See 4/188, ed. note 3. [3.] [Bonhoeffer’s term Gelegenheitsarbeit describes a genre of creative writing in German culture, typically not seen as belonging to “high culture."—]DG]

4/188 and 4/189 507 much more, that it is a beginning, a breakthrough, that will be and must be followed now by many good things. This is exactly the kind of writing and narrative that I long for and that I consider promising for the future. There are many writers today writing about rural village life, but they tend to lay it on too thick, or they are pseudoromantic or self-consciously austere (as in Die Fischer von Lissau).! But who describes it with such simplicity, authenticity, modesty—and I might even say piety—as you have done in these few pages? And what strength is communicated, precisely because it is all so unpretentious. Only in Gotthelf, Keller, and Stifter have I seen anything like this.!! You say that you had to wrestle hard over simplicity;!” I can believe that. Simplicity is an achievement of the human spirit, one of — 565 the greatest. I think you have found the form most suited to you—narrative, first person—and the right subject matter—what you yourself have experienced, seen, observed, been through, felt,!7! thought. Your gift of seeing secms to me the most important thing, yet it is precisely how and what you see. It [is] not that intrusive, curious sort of seeing that analyzes and forces itself upon everything, but a clear, open, and yet reverent seeing. 7his kind of seeing, which—from a theoretical point of view—I myself am striving for in theological questions, is now leading you to artistic representation, and

I think that perhaps here lies our strongest intellectual-spiritual kinship. With me it is a seeing with the intellect; you see with your eyes and all your senses. But our ways of seeing are clearly connected—or perhaps it is the most important fruit of long spiritual companionship. In short—kcep writing, much and often! | never would have thought that you could produce something so stylistically polished in one fell swoop! You will bring great joy to Renate and the entire family. But you mustn’t wait so long now before sending it to her. Incidentally, there is a good bit of meditative work hiding in these few pages.

[4.] “Phe Fishermen of Lissau,” by Willy Kramp. [Kramp was active in the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer met him in east Prussia in the summer of 1940. See DBWE 16:53, 64.—]DG]

[5.] [This appreciation of Bethge’s writing, omitted in previous editions of LPP, reflects Bonhoeffer’s aesthetics seen in the choice of literature he read in prison, his creative writing, and allusions to literary language, style, and themes, and the ability to see things differently. See especially DBWE 7:71, 178, ed. notes 1 and 2, and 232; see also DB-ER, 845; Nancy Lukens, “Narratives of Creative Displacement”; as well as de Gruchy, Christianity, Art and Transformation, 143—45,—]DG] [6.] Possibly in the lost cover letter; see 4/188, ed. note 5. ['7.] “Felt” added later.

508 Letters and Papers from Prison You may get a letter in the near future from one or two Italian officers who are friends of mine. Professor Latmiral'*! in particular is a very fine, cultured man; if it happened to work out for the two of you to meet, it would be a great joy for you and for him;'”! he speaks good German. But Gilli,!!°! too, is a very nice fellow. In any case, you can call on them anytime. Allis well with the family. When do I get the photos from the baptism?!!!

566 Anda recent picture of little Dietrich? It is really incomprehensible that Oster acted according to 1 Sam. 31:4.!'*! T still remember how it was he who was interested in your mission work!!*! one summer evening at our house and wouldn't stop asking about it although you really didn’t feel much like it at all. You do know G[isevius] too, don’t you?! "*! Because of!!! the new travel restrictions, my parents will probably not be traveling after all, which I am very sorry about. Mama is not at all well; she has fainting spells. | promise you really will get the shirts back later. But for the time being I am in fact glad to have them,!!°! What should I give you for your birthday? I’ve been thinking about that a great deal already. Till then, all the best, and above all, keep your spirits up! As ever, Faithfully yours, Dietrich

[8.] Gaetano Latmiral. Arrested after the cease-fire between Italy and the Allies (September 3, 1943) as a member of an Italian military commission, prisoner of war until 1944 in Tegel prison. See DB-ER, 849-51; Bethge, Bethge, and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, 222; “Die Begegnung” (commemorative booklet for Latmiral). [9.] “And for him” added later. [10.] Mario Gilli was a captain in the Italian air force, as was Gaetano Latmiral. A member of an Italian military commission, he was also imprisoned at Tegel. [11.] See Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 140. [12.] “So Saul took his own sword and fell upon it.” Reference to the rumor Bonhoeffer had heard that General Oster had taken his own life. [13.] See Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 113-34. [From September 1940 until his call up to the military, Bethge had worked for the Gossner Mission in Berlin.—]DG] [14.) Hans Bernd Gisevius. [In August 1940 a meeting was held at Bonhoeffer’s parents’ home between Hans Oster, Gisevius, Hans von Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer, and Bethge to provisionally arrange Bethge’s work for the conspiracy. See DB-:R, 698. Bonhoeffer is here suggesting to Bethge how he should interpret the meeting in case he was arrested and interrogated.—]DG] [15.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [16.] Cf. 3/172, p. 454.

4/189 and 4/190 509 190. To Eberhard Bethgel!! August 14

Dear Eberhard,

This birthday"! will be the first that you will celebrate entirely by mail; I imagine letters are en route to you by various means in these days and will hopefully reach you close to the right time. And perhaps you will write letters home during a quiet hour on your birthday. Epistula non erubescit'?!— and then sometimes more is learned from letters than from what people say — 567 to each other at an ordinary birthday gathering. So you will see from the letters you receive how many people are fond of you and share in your life and feel connected to you. There is hardly anything that can make one feel happier than to sense that one can be something for other people. And it’s a matter not of numbers at all, but of the intensity. Indeed, the most important things in life are human relationships; even the modern “high achiever” [Icistungsmensch] cannot change that; but neither can the “demigods”"! or the lunatics, who know nothing about human relationships. God allows himself to be served by us in all that is human. Everything else comes very close to hubris. To be sure, an excessive cultivation of human relationships and of meaning something to one another, such as I have now occasionally sensed in the letters of Gabriele von Bulow-Humboldt,”! can also lead to a cult of the human that is disproportionate to reality. In contrast to that, what I mean here is simply that people are more important to us In life than everything else. ‘That certainly does not mean that the world of material things and practical achievements is of less value. But what is the most beautiful book or picture or house or estate compared to my wile, my parents, my friend? Yet the only person who can speak this way is one who has really found human companionship in life. For many today, people are nothing more than part of the world of things. The reason for this is that they simply lack the experience of the human. We must be very glad that we have been given the gift of this experience in rich measure. And a birthday

[1.] NZ, A 81,205; handwritten; no date (1944). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 386-87. [2.] August 28,1944, Eberhard Bethge’s thirty-fifth birthday. [3.] “A letter does not blush”; Cicero, Letters to Friends 5.12.1. [4.] A coded characterization for leading National Socialists. DBWE 7:167: “Demigods have no friends, only tools which they use or discard according to whim.” [5.| Gabriele von Bulow (daughter of Wilhelm von Humboldt), Lin Lebensbild aus den Familienpapieren Wilhelm von Humboldts und seiner Kinder. See also Love Letters from Cell 92,

220-21.

510 Letters and Papers from Prison is just the right day to rejoice about this together'®! and to become aware of it with gratitude. You are turning thirty-five now. When I met you, you were twenty-five. During these ten years your “apprenticeship years” [Lehrjahre] have gradually come to a conclusion, and now you are beginning your cre568 ative activity. I anticipate much from this, and I mean not quantitatively but qualitatively. Your short narrative about “the father”!“! makes it quite clear that you do not settle for anything less than setting the highest standards for yourself and then doing justice to them. The heading should read simply “The Grandfather’; I find the other not entirely clear. It sounds as if he were the grandfather “in name only.” Or what do you think?!! { I have often observed that much depends on the demands one makes of oneself. Some people spoil their own chances In life by settling for mediocrity and thus perhaps achieving things more quickly simply by having fewer obstacles to overcome. I felt one of the strongest educational values [Erzichungsfaktoren] used in our family to train the spirit was that we were given so many obstacles to overcome (in relation to objectivity, clarity, naturalness, tact, simplicity, etc.), before we could express ourselves. I think you sensed that at our house, too, at first. Sometimes it takes a long time to clear such a hurdle, and I suppose we may occasionally think that success would have come more easily and much cheaper’! by evading these obstacles. However, it is clear from this latest work of yours that you did not avoid the obstacles but waited until you had really overcome them. Once we have worked something out for ourselves, we can never go back beyond that point again. That might be uncomfortable for others and also for ourselves sometimes, but, well, such are the discomforts of character formation [Bildung].!'"! Tam happy to have experienced with you the last phase of your “apprenticeship years” just up to the threshold, which, in your case, coincides so strangely with your physically becoming a father, and I know that I have been quite incredibly enriched by that experience. Now, for your new year of life I wish you—once you have returned to your family and to your calling—a really great task and responsibility and at the same time sufficient calm to be able to write something very good from time to time. My 569 — wish for myself is that our intellectual [geistig] exchange continue to enable

[6.] “Together” added later. [’7.] See 4/188, ed. note 2. [8.] From “The heading” to “Or what do you think?” added in the margin. [9.] “Much cheaper” added later. [10.] [Bildung: the formation of character through upbringing and education.—]DG]

4/190 511 us to let our thoughts develop, find expression and clarification. And even more importantly, I wish that we might continue to have in each other the person we can trust unreservedly, without limit.!!!! The Daily Texts for the twenty-eighth are beautiful. When | think of you the morning of that day, I will hold fast to them. The question “Is the Lord’s hand ...?” Num. 11:23!'*! might bring to mind some unfulfilled wishes and hopes. But on the other hand, 2 Cor. 1:20 holds true:'!*! God does not fulfill all our wishes but does keep all his promises. This means God remains Lord of the earth, preserves the church, renews our faith again and again, never gives us more than we can bear to endure,!!4#! makes us rejoice in his presence and help, hears our prayers and leads us on the best and straightest path to God. By doing all these things unfailingly, God elicits our praise. My wish for you is that you and Renate—I hope to write to her for the twentyeighth—might see these things more and more as one. Unfortunately, I’ve been interrupted so often in writing this letter that it isn’t as calm or detailed as I intended. But you know how much I am thinking of you and that | am with you with nothing but the best wishes. What shall I give you for your birthday? Would you like the icon that I once brought back from Sofia?!!®! Or is there something else you might like? Incidentally, the interpretation of 1 Sam. 31!'°! doesn’t seem right after all. Perhaps you can keep my letters somewhere out of the way.!!7! Nothing new from the family. Now let us go forward into the future in patience and confidence. God bless and keep you and all of us! Your faithful and grateful friend, Dietrich

[11.] See Bonhoeffer’s poem “The Friend,” 4/196. [12.] The Daily Text for August 28, 1944 (Eberhard Bethge’s birthday) was Num. 11:23: “Is the Lorp’s power limited?” [13.] The interpretation of the Daily Text for August 28, 1944 (Scripture reference added later in the letter): “For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God.” [14.] This wording occurs also in the “Morning Prayer,” 2/76, ed. note 10. [15.] Bonhoeffer participated in the conference of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches (September 15-20, 1933); see DB-ER, 311-18. [16.] See 4/189, ed. note 12. [17.] This sentence added afterward above the line. Bonhoeffer is urging Bethge to hide the correspondence.

ag Ie Letters and Papers from Prison 570 191. Poem “ Stations on the Way to Freedom”! |! Stations on the Way to Freedom Discipline If you set out to seek freedom, then you must learn above all things discipline of your soul and your senses, lest your desires and then your limbs perchance should lead you now hither, now yon. 571 Chaste be your spirit and body, subject to yourself completely, in obedience seeking the goal that is set for your spirit. Only through discipline does one learn the secret of freedom.

[1.] NZ, A 67,6; handwritten draft in pencil, 2 pages; revised copy in ink, 3 pages; also draft notes that sketch the theme of the poem (handwritten, pencil, 1 page: “Stations on the Way to Freedom / Discipline 1, Learn to control yourself / Action 2. Learn to act. Reach for the real, not / hover over the possible / Suffering 3. Learn to suffer—put in another’s hands. / Death 4. Learn how to die. Highest of feasts on the way to freedom. / |. lest your desires divert you, lest your limbs lead you / hither and yon. Chastity. Inertia / Discipline / 2. Do and dare what is right. / What freedom is, you will only learn beyond death”). First published in Bethge, Auf dem Wege zur Freiheit, 16-17; previously published in LPP, 370-71. Regarding the dating of the poem, see Bethge’s letter of October 17, 1972, to Altenahr (in Altenahr, “Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gedicht,” 308): “In any case, the arrangement in Wderstand und Lrgebung, where |the poem]! immediately follows the letter of July 21 [1944, 4/178], is incorrect. Back then [in 1951] we probably put it there in an attempt to make it clear to people, finally, from what sort of context the poem arose. But in terms of the history of its composition, this poem does not belong on this page.” In the present volume the poem has been placed chronologically, which does not alter the fact of its contextual relationship with the events of July 20, 1944. According to the postscript to the poem, “Stations on the Way to Freedom” was a birthday gift to Bethge. It must have been enclosed with the first birthday letter of August 14, 1944 (4/190), since only after Bethge had responded to the birthday poem (4/195, pp. 523-24) did he report having received the second birthday letter (4/195, p. 525): “And just now the beautiful meditation on the Daily Texts [for August 28, 1944—]DG] has arrived” (this meditation was 4/192). A comparison of the paper used for these letters, conducted by Bethge in 1972, yielded the following (Altenahr, ibid., 308): “The letters of July 21, July 25, July 28, and August 3... are written on stationery with no watermarks (Temming Gluckstadt / Normal 4 / official stock). On August 14, August 21, and August 23, Bonhoeffer wrote on poor-quality draft paper with no watermarks. It was on the latter, poor-quality paper that the revised version of the poem received by Bethge was also written.” On the interpretation of the poem, see Altenahr, “Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gedicht”; Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 70-73; Henkys, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefangnisgedichte, 9, 31, 51 [see also Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 13O-—204—NL/]JDG]; Schonherr, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” 400-410; H. Muller, “Stationen auf dem Wege zur Freiheit,” 145-65.

4/191 513 Action Not always doing and daring what’s random, but seeking the right thing, Hover not over the possible, but boldly reach for the real.!*! Not in escaping to thought, in action alone is found freedom. Dare to quit anxious faltering and enter the storm of events, carried alone by your faith and by God’s good commandments, then true freedom will come and embrace your spirit, rejoicing.!*!

Suffering Wondrous transformation. Your hands, strong and active, are fettered. Powerless, alone, you see that an end is put to your action. Yet now you breathe a sigh of relief and lay what is righteous calmly and fearlessly into a mightier hand," contented.!! Just for one blissful moment you could feel the sweet touch of freedom, Then you gave it to God, that God might perfect it in glory.!®!

[2.] On “reality” and “possibility” in Bonhoeffer’s thought, see Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 30-32. Cf. Baumgarten, Politik und Moral (Bonhocefter’s copy signed by Rudiger [Schleicher] “For Dietrich, with Love, Yours, Rtidiger, 1942”), 152: “It is the morality

of politics to grasp the real conscientiously in order to take hold of the possible with heart and will, to be on guard against all ideologies and illusions, and to take small steps forward within the limits of carthly life.” [3.] Note at end of line: “(turn!),” i.e., continue reading on reverse side. [Cf. “a sum-

mer morning / that is not yet mine / rises rejoicing” (3/175, “Night Voices,” p. 470). —NL/JDG]

[4.] See 4/183. “To change the subject completely: not only action but suffering, too, is a way to freedom. In suffering, liberation consists in being allowed to let the matter out of one’s own hands into the hands of God. In this sense death is the epitome of human freedom. Whether the human deed is a matter of faith depends on whether people understand their own suffering as a continuation of their action, as a consummation of freedom.”

[5.] Cf. Paul Gerhardt’s hymn “Gib dich zufrieden und sei stille,” Hvangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 371. [The German “Gibst dich zufrieden” (lit. “and are content”) is an allusion to the first line of Gerhardt’s hymn (“Be contented... in the God of your life”).—NL/ JDG] [6.] [The draft of these two lines reads, literally: “then God took it (freedom) back into his own hand in order to complete it.” Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 198, emphasizes both Bonhoeffer’s work on the metric quality of the lines and the major shift in meaning to focus on the moment of free responsibility. In that moment of freedom in the penultimate realm, those called to endure suffering put back into God’s hands their actions in the struggle for justice, and they do so for the sake of ultimate freedom.—NL/JDG]

514 Letters and Papers from Prison Death Come now, highest of feasts on the way to freedom eternal,!! Death, lay down your ponderous chains and earthen enclosures"! 572 walls that deceive our souls and fetter our mortal bodies, that we might at last behold what here we are hindered from seeing. Freedom, long have we sought you through discipline, action, and suffering. Dying, now we discern in the countenance of God your own face.

Dear Eberhard! I wrote these lines in a few hours tonight. They are quite rough, yet they will perhaps give you some pleasure, being something of my own as a birthday gift!!! Warmest wishes! Yours, Dietrich

This morning I see that I must completely restructure the stanzas again. Sull, may they be on their way to you in this rough form. After all, 'm no poct!!!0

192. To Eberhard Bethge'!!!

Dear Eberhard, A week from today is your birthday. I looked at the Daily Texts!*! again and meditated for a while on them. I think everything depends on the words “in Him.”'! Everything we may with some good reason expect or beg of God is to be found in Jesus Christ. What we imagine a God could and should do— [7.] 4/184; cf. also 4/183: “In this sense death is the epitome of human freedom.” [8.] This line, which lacks a metric foot in the final DBW version, is metrically complete in the first draft: “beschwerliche irdische Ketten” (ponderous earthly chains). [9.] [*“Something of my own” translates the German etwas eigenes; see Bethge’s response, 4/195, p. 523: “You can’t give anything more personal as a gift than a poem” using the comparative form of e7gen, to mean “more true to your self.” Cf. Henkys on the birthday poems to Bethge, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 209. —NL/JDG] [10.] Penciled note by Bethge: “probably written July 26.” This note could have served

as evidence against dating the poem August 14, 1944; however, “unfortunately Bethge no longer knows [1972] when he wrote this note” (Altenahr, “Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gedicht,” 309).

[1.] NZ, A 81,206; handwritten undated manuscript, dated by Bethge as “Aug. 21” (1944); annotation by Bethge: “arrived Aug. 29.” Previously published in LPP, 391-92. [2.] For August 28, 1944; see 4/190, p. 511. [3.] See 4/190, ed. note 12. The interpretative text Daily Text for August 28, 1944, was 2 Cor. 1:20: “For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’” [The use of the capital

4/19] and 4/192 515 the God of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with all that. We must immerse ourselves again and again, for a long time and quite calmly, in Jesus’s life, his sayings, actions, suffering, and dying in order to recognize what God — 573 promises and fulfills. What is certain is that we may always live aware that God is near and present with us and that this life is an utterly new life for us; that there is nothing that is impossible for us anymore because there 1s nothing that is impossible for God; that no earthly power can touch us without God’s will, and that danger and urgent need can only drive us closer to God. What is certain is that we have no claim on anything but may ask for everything; what is certain is that in suffering lies hidden the source of our joy, in dying the source of our life; what is certain is that in all this we stand within a community that carries us. To all this, God has said Yes and Amen in Jesus.'*! This Yes and Amen is the solid ground upon which we stand.'°! Again and again in these turbulent times, we lose sight of why life is really worth living. We think that our own life has meaning because this or that other person exists. In truth, however, it is like this: If the earth was deemed worthy to bear the human being Jesus Christ, if a human being like Jesus lived, then and only then does our life as human beings have meaning. Had Jesus not lived, then our life would be meaningless, despite all the other people we know, respect, and love. Perhaps we sometimes lose sight of the meaning and purpose of our calling. But can’t one express that in the simplest form? The unbiblical concept of “meaning,” after all, is only one translation of what the Bible calls “promise.”!”! I sense how inadequate these words are to accomplish what they would like, namely, to reassure you and make you happy and secure in your loneliness. Surely this lonely birthday does not have to be a lost day if it becomes an occasion once again for you to lay the clear foundation you want for the rest of your life. It’s often been a great help to me in the evening to think of all the people whose prayers I can count on, from the children to the grown-ups. I think I owe a debt of gratitude for God’s protection in my life to the prayers of others known and unknown. Something else: often the NT says, “be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13; Eph. 6:10; 574 2 Tim. 2:1; 1 John 2:14). Isn’t human weakness (stupidity,!7! immaturity, forgetfulness, cowardice, vanity, corruptibility, vulnerability to temptations,

/—in “Ihm”—is rare in Bonhoeffer, hence the use of the capital Hin the translation of the text.—]DG] [4.] See 2 Cor. 1:20. On the Yes of God spoken in Jesus Christ, cf. DBWE 6:85, 91, 268. [5.] Cf. “After Ten Years,” ed. note 2. [6.] [See H. E. Todt, “Meaning and Promise.”-—]DG] [7.] See the section “Stupidity” in “After Ten Years.”

516 Letters and Papers from Prison etc.) a greater danger than wickedness? Christ makes human beings!*! not only “good” but also strong. Sins of weakness"! are truly human sins; willful sins are diabolical!!! (and thus also “strong”!). I must think about this some more. Farewell; stay healthy and confident. I hope we will be together again to celebrate Renate’s birthday.!!" I thank you for everything and am thinking of you.

Faithfully yours, Dietrich 193. To Eberhard Bethge!!!

the 23rd Dear Eberhard, It always gives me indescribably great joy to receive your greetings. It was especially wonderful to sense the calm that your last note"! conveyed. The

thought that you are creating illustrations for the memoir of your childhood is such good news that I’m really sorry that Renate can’t share in it. I think you should at least grant her the pleasure of anticipating it! It’s also very good to know that it is relatively quiet where you are now. The quotation about 1077!°! is really nice.

575 So you are going to the trouble of collecting excerpts from my very tentative thoughts. | think that if and when you pass them along, you will think about everything that needs attention, won't you? This seems especially necessary now in the case of Aunt Ruth."! She doesn’t always notice what is going on clearly. ‘These thoughts all date back about three to four years ago!!! Otherwise you can imagine how happy I am that you are preoccupying yourself with them. How indispensable an objective exchange about all

[8.] Beginning of writing in the margin. [9.] [Cf DBW 15, 2/2, ed. note 32.—JDG] [10.] (Cf. DBWE 4:52.—]DG]

[11.] October 26.

[1.] NZ, A 81,207; handwritten; no month (August), no year (1944). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 392-94, [2.] Not extant. [3.] Regarding this date (Canossa), see p. 3/177, p. 473. [4.| Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. [5.] It was agreed that if these excerpts were to fall into the hands of the Gestapo, both parties would claim, if interrogated, that the thoughts were from the time of Bonhoeffer’s visitation trips (June to August 1940; see DB-ER, 696-99) or his stay at Ettal

4/192 and 4/193 517 these problems would be now, to clarify things. Ifand when it comes to that, it will be one of the great days of my life.

I, too, think the poem about “Fortune and Calamity”! isn’t bad. But isn’t it a little too contemplative!”! and too literary?

I hope you've received my enthusiastic affirmation of your story about the father'*! in the meantime? My impression remains unchanged, by the way.

As far as I’m concerned, you can go ahead and show Rainalter™! the other products as well if you want to talk about them. Of course, he doesn’t know me. It would be best of all if he held on to all these things. Renate will have written you that in the meantime Hans has been put up in the infirmary!!! in Brother Scharf’s congregation.!'!!! T am very sorry, for his and for Christel’s sakes, but perhaps it has the advantage that he will receive treatment sooner.

Please do not trouble yourself with anxious thoughts or worries about 576 me, but don’t forget to pray for me, which I’m certain you do not forget! I am so certain of God’s hand and guidance that I hope I may be kept in such certainty always. You must never doubt that Iam thankfully and cheerfully going along the path on which I am being led. My past life is filled to the brim with God’s goodness, and the forgiving love of the Crucified One covers my guilt. 1am most thankful for the people I have come to know well, and I only wish that they may never have to grieve over me, but that they, too, may only be thankful for the certainty of God’s goodness and forgiveness. Forgive me for writing this for once. Please don’t let it grieve or upset you fora moment, but really only let it make you glad. But I did want to have

(late 1940 to early 1941; see DB-ER, 718). Beginning in May 1944, Bonhoeffer often omitted the year when dating his letters, [6.] 3/167. [7.] [In 1923, Bonhoeffer had expressed a dislike for “contemplative lyrics” (Gedankenlyrik); see DBWE Y, 2/2, p. 214.—JDG]

[8.] See 4/188, pp. 504-5, and 4/189, pp. 506-7, [9.] Bonhoeffer initially had reservations concerning keeping the correspondence a secret (3/154, p. 409); Bethge assuaged them (3/160, p. 423: “I can rely on comrade R{ainalter]|”).

[10.] “In the infirmary” added later. [11.] On the previous day (August 22, 1944), police commissioner Franz Sonderegger had brought Hans von Dohnanyi from the Potsdam quarantine unit to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, which was located in the parish district of Pastor Kurt Scharf.

This made regular contact between Hans and Christine von Dohnanyi very difficult. Hans von Dohnanyi, who was almost completely paralyzed as a result of his diphtheria infection, was interrogated there twice a week. Cf. Chowaniec, Der “Fall Dohnanyi,” 102-14. [See also 4/185, ed. note 3.—]JDG]

518 Letters and Papers from Prison said it sometime, and I wouldn't know whom I could really trust to hear such words with nothing but joy except for you.

Did you get the poem about freedom?!!*! It’s very unfinished, but the subject moves me deeply.

I’m now working on the chapter called “A Stock-Taking of Christianity”;!°! unfortunately I sense that my productivity has gradually grown dependent on smoking; luckily enough in this regard I’m well supplied from an amazing array of sources, so that work is coming along, more or less. Sometimes I am horrified by my sentences, especially in the first, critical part. So 'm looking forward to writing positive things. But it has all been so little discussed that it often comes out too clumsily. Oh, well, it can’t be printed now anyway.!'! And later on it will have to go through the “treat-

ment facility” for purification [die Klaranlage]!!!°! Sending it is difficult since in my opinion it is hardly legible (strangely, when I am first producing

a draft I have to write German script, and then there are the editorial corrections!). We'll see, maybe [Il copy it over again. Maria was here today, so fresh and at the same time as steadfast and calm as seldom before. [am so fortunate to hope that she will be my wife someday. I spoke about Renate, too, and think it’s important if she can move now. She will take care of everything else.

tT You ask how the shorter and the large work fit together.!!®! I guess the best way to describe them is that the shorter piece is in a certain sense a prologue to the larger work and, in part, anticipates It. Incidentally, H[ans vy. Dohnanyi] and O[ster] are interested in your mission work;!!’! I had nothing to do with this.!'>! This has never been spoken

[12.] 4/191. [13.] Cf. 4/187, pp. 499-500. [14.] [Quite apart from the difficulty of publishing anything from prison, Bonhoeffer had been forbidden “every activity as a writer” by the authorities in March 1941. DBWE 16, 1/100, p. 182.—]DG] [15.] An affectionate reference to the practice of long conversation with Bethge; see

2/88. [16.] The “shorter” work is what Bonhoeffer drafted as 4/187: (“not over 100 pages”). The “large work” alludes to Bonhoeffer’s Lthics. Work on the book—in anticipation of the rebuilding of Europe after the overthrow of the National Socialist regime—had continued in prison. Cf, 4/185 (Bonhoeffer was “now studying” Dilthey “for his Ethics”). [17.] An agreed-upon coded message in the event of new interrogations, which might now also involve Bethge because of his UK classification by the Abwehr (Military Intelligence Office) in 1942 (as for Bonhoeffer on January 14, 1941; cf. DB-L:R, 700). “Mission work” refers to Bethge’s ties to India through his position with the Gossner Mission. See Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 113-34, 148. [18.] “I had nothing to do with this” added later.

4/193 and 4/194 519 about before. Essentially our relationship concerns church music and theological reflection; otherwise Renate was the great source of attraction. Feel free to write to Fehrbellin.!'! Now I wish from all my heart that you may continue to have plenty of external as well as inner tranquility. May God keep you and all of us and grant us a speedy and joyous reunion! In gratitude and loyalty and thinking of you with daily prayers, Yours, D

194. From Eberhard Bethge' |! August 24, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

Actually | do write to you much more often than | manage to get words down on paper.l#] | tell you so much and discuss many things with you in my mind. So it will, for instance, amuse you to hear that I’ve now gotten around to playing chess in earnest, that is, | am beginning to like playing on my own initiative 578 because it fascinates me. Last year Renate managed to begin playing with me, and now there are a few comrades who enjoy it, but who beat you mercilessly without even letting you notice what’s happening, which is, perhaps, also a form of education. | thought this would amuse you. So you see, I’ve even managed to accomplish this in my life.

Then | thought again about what Mother may regard as a break in my life.[?!

The fact is that she made the great mistake of suppressing or remaining unconscious of any recognition or support of my sometimes playful, sometimes serious attempts at music and other things (for whatever stupid moralistic reasons of upbringing). That automatically drove me to look beyond the family for

the forum of understanding and praise and so on that | needed. The growing

[19.] Indication of an intermediary's address for conveying illegal correspondence. [This refers to Gtinther Harder, regional pastor in Fehrbellin. See DB-ER, 14, 52-53, and 274n5; Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 196-97.—]DG] [1.] NZ, A 81,208; handwritten; from San Polo d’Enza. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 394.

[2.] [The passages from here to the end of the paragraph, as well as the following two paragraphs of reflection about his family, the role of friendships in the Confessing Church and with Bonhoeffer, and his appreciation of Bonhoeffer’s responses to his creative efforts, were omitted in LPP.—JDG] [3.] See 3/168, p. 444.

520 Letters and Papers from Prison shrub (or tree) seeks its clump of earth in order to keep growing. So after Zitz disappeared, the experience of the Vibrans family!*! was decisive at first. Their home was always alive with drawing, music, piety, and such. That nourished me for years. Besides this, there was B. Riemer!?] and his home. Later, there was the Confessing Church with all the friendships and human connections that came with it. And then finally, you provided the liberating, fresh air that was needed for many things to continue to grow and mature. | now regard it as a decisive mistake of Mother, or rather as a very important factor in family leadership, to find the right forum within the family to create and maintain all the activities of the children. On a different level, this was most likely the mistake Mother Dohnanyil®! made by pushing all her son’s positive activities before other forums,

making false claims under the pretense of supposedly strict standards of child raising. Then it was too late for complaints. | guess this is what | have always said

jokingly to Mother—that she is not proud enough of her children. She is sad 579 about something that should make her happy. The incredible work and worry involved in bringing us up made her blind to all the things she thought were unnecessary in the lives of her children. Of course, all this does not amount to a profound conflict; it just pokes its head out now and then. Yes, and then | have both your reflections on my “Poem’’!’! and already your birthday greeting.!®] But | will save that till the actual day. Of course, | was very happy that you liked my poem. | had been longing for some comment from you. Now it’s here and almost more extensive than the thing itself. | have no doubt that you are quite capable of pointing out errors to me if you think it necessary. But | also trust you to know when an encouraging word of criticism is appropriate and useful and thus to be somewhat magnanimously generous. But | don’t want to make you angry, because it really did make me enormously happy, and for me you are the forum that makes all other judgments insignificant. That is, Renate agrees very much with you, since I’ve noticed great similarity in matters of taste between the two of you. So now | have sent it off today.!?! It’s handwritten in quarto format with a few little corrections added; at the end | also added four sentences about Father’s death,!!9] and to conclude the whole piece,

[4.] On Vibrans, see Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 63-71; see also the collection of Vibrans’s correspondence, Andersen, Bethge, and Vibrans, So ist es gewesen. [5.] On Bernhard Riemer, see Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 51-63. [6.] Elsa von Dohnanyi. [7.] 4/188; see 4/193, p. 517. [8.] 4/190 with the enclosed poem “Stations on the Way to Freedom” (4/191). [9.] Bethge had mailed his memoir of his father, Wilhelm Bethge, to Renate Bethge. [10.] See Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 33: “My father went straight from his pulpit to his last, brief sickbed. He had scarcely managed to finish the Sunday sermon. He died

on October 23, 1923, at the age of fifty-three after an appendectomy in the Genthin

4/194 a yal | put the verse from Sir. 40:28.!''] Here and there you can see nine little drawings in color of Zitz and Kade, and on the front cover a map of Zitz and Kade, sort of in the style of Rudolph Koch’s maps of Germany or Palestine.!!4] | had 580 great, great fun drawing (in pencil, somewhat colored); then wrapped it in nice brown paper, which | decorated a bit myself, and sent it off today, and | am eager to hear what Renate will say. The reason and driving force behind finishing this project was the fact that, when | wondered what to give her for her birthday, | felt the need to tell her this story and to share this part of my life. You must be cautious with your expectations and judgments so as not to inhibit me with what is “expected.” But you are right; | mustn't fall back into old youthful errors but must be self-reliant and even a bit self-confident. Well, well! | have not yet had any response from my mother, to whom | also sent it. It must affect her strangely, after all. My brothers and sister will be happy when they see it. Now back to your letters. By the way, I’m now especially enjoying reading Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and, thanks to your thoughts about happiness [Glick] and blessing [Segen],!'?] reading them with newly awakened senses. And this makes the whole composite seem more comprehensible. Prov. 25:21'4] is strange indeed, and in fact quite comforting. Job has been difficult for me again on the whole. But isn’t Eccl. 5:1—2!'9] wonderful, correctly translated?'6! Your joy at finding “‘a friend succeed at a piece of work”!'7! truly warms me.

But this shows how important it is for people like us to be very much at one with our material so that there is little consciousness of other intentions as we

hospital. I was fourteen years old. At that moment I vowed to [follow in his footsteps as a preacher. Later there were times when I regretted that, because it excluded the freedom to experiment. But I did not allow myself to withdraw from that. Our father was buried in the shadow of the church tower at Zitz.” These sentences are apparently those added at Bonhoeffer’s request (4/188: “Couldn't you add a few words about the death of your father?”). [11.] [NRSV 40:27.—JDG] “The fear of the Lord is like a garden of blessing, and covers a person better than any glory.” [12.| Maps designed by the graphic artist Rudolph Koch from Offenbach, Germany, were very popular at this time. [13.] 4/183, pp. 491-92. [14.] “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” [15.] [Eecl. 5:2-3 in the NRSV.—JDG] “Never be rash with your mouth, nor let your

heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few. For dreams come with many cares, and a fool’s voice with many words.”

[16.] From “ Ecclesiastes” to this point is a later addition; “correctly translated?” confirms Bonhoeffer’s warning to watch what one says. The Zurich Bible translates verse 2 [3]: “For as dreams come with much business, so foolish sayings from much talk.” [17.] 4/189, p. 506.

522 Letters and Papers from Prison work. Perhaps it is a good thing that | wasn’t able to tell you about this or show it to you while | was working on it. But then again, | could hardly do otherwise 581 than to present it to you as soon as | could. (As | write, I’m smoking your pipe with pleasure; it’s got a crack already, but that doesn’t matter.) What surprises me the most is that you have so little criticism of my style. | do try very hard, but | simply cannot get any distance to judge the outcome. It’s different with the harmless drawings, which are, after all, nothing special as far as talent goes; above all, they lack practice, which is undoubtedly very important. But | have fun doing them and put much less effort into them. After all, the word is much closer to the person and more painfully revealing than, say, a few lines drawn in a certain perspective. I’m actually quite insecure in my sense of color. Another factor in the background of this whole project was the thought that, given the uncertain state of things, there is the need to tell the story to my loved ones while | can still do so. You write about the great thoughts that one must not allow oneself to be robbed of by matters of the moment.!!®! That is exactly what torments me once one is over the shock, wondering who at home will keep it up and talk about it. It’s also a matter of justified pride. The letters you mentioned aren't here yet. I’m also still waiting anxiously for the photos from the baptism. | haven’t seen a single one yet. Apparently it’s all very difficult now. | well remember the evening conversations we used to have in the garden at your house and how | used to resist.l!7] The concerns about your mother are really very worrisome.!?°] How can she ever get relief? By now Maria should be there. A very nice letter from your father to me recently closed with the greeting “God protect you.” [?!]

582 | wonder what more you have been thinking about “unconscious Christianity”?(?7] That is so very important.

[18.] 4/188, p. 505.

[19.] This is an agreed-upon code for a potential statement in case of arrest and interrogation, on the subject of connections to the Military Intelligence Office in August 1940: see 4/189, ed. note 13, and 4/193. [20.|] See 4/189 (“Mama... has fainting spells”). [21.] Bethge is quoting from memory. The letter from Karl Bonhoeffer ended with “IT commend you to God [sei Gott befohlen]” (4/185). To understand the significance of such wording, see Christine von Dohnanyi's letter of April 25, 1943, from the Charlottenburg women’s prison to her children Barbara, Klaus, and Christoph (in Bethge and Bethge, Last Letters of Resistance, 56): “We have, you know, never spoken much with each other about religious things. Not everyone can speak about these things.” [22.] See 4/180, ed. note 3; 4/182.

4/194 and 4/195 523 Please do give L[inke]!?3] warm greetings and thanks from me as well. So much for today. Many fond greetings to you. Yours, Eberhard

195. From Eberhard Bethge!!! August 26, 1944

Dear Dietrich,

I'd like to begin already today to answer your birthday greetings,!4] to thank you very much for your thoughts and for making the event a fine one for me. I'll have plenty more to write afterward./?] You can’t give anything more personal as a gift than a poem,|*#] and you could hardly give me greater joy. | think there can scarcely be a greater form of baring one’s soul, opening oneself up, revealing one’s true self, in an intimacy unattainable in any other way than in a poem. And | think it is the form, because the inner life, tamed and bound within this form, becomes visible. Unbound baring of the soul is unchaste and arouses fear or even disgust in the recipient. But in this bound form, the baring of the soul seems to me to represent the height of friendship and understanding. So to be the recipient of it gives great pleasure and excitement. It is longer lasting, more resonant, and even farther reaching in effect, it seems to me, than a letter. Many thanks! | have no idea yet what you think you need to rearrange or change about the structure.|°! | find the language very polished. It’s splendid how, in such verses, you awaken whole complexes of common insights, experiences, and convictions. 583 Behind each one | sense how completely we understand each other. | would like to know how “exciting” and stimulating it is for a reader who doesn't have a cupboard full of the same well-known complexes of ideas at their disposal as we do. In any case, for me your lines are real “fruits” that are now ready to drop after growing for a long time. They are that to such a large degree because the human

[23.] Bethge had met Linke, one of the guards at Tegel, when he visited Bonhoeffer on May 19, 1944; see 3/154, 3/160. [1.] NZ, A 81,209; handwritten; from San Polo d’Enza. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 395-96. [2.] 4/190. [3.] This sentence is a later addition; “afterward” refers to after August 28, Bethge’s actual birthday. [4.] “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” 4/191. [5.] See the accompanying lines to 4/191: “This morning I see that I must completely restructure the stanzas again.”

524 Letters and Papers from Prison relationship you write about!®] preceded them and now exists, irreplaceable, and can be surpassed by few earthly goods. Because you have all this intimate knowl-

edge of my person and are interested in my well-being, my outspoken views about my father!’] probably stirred you up a bit and provoked you to strong words about it. You will see and feel more in all this than anyone else! The ideas of your first three verses ring utterly true to me in every word and every phrase. The thought of the last verse, one that you expressed already the other day, came as a surprise and is still hard for me to follow.!®! In any case, it’s not as familiar to me as the preceding ones. Many, many thanks. Your letter is a real birthday letter—detailed, calm, with words of friendship, and therefore a true joy. Last year it was different. Now here we sit, each having our thoughts, and it’s not in vain. It’s a rather peculiar thing to accept your gifts.(?7] You know that | love your fine possessions and also this icon dearly; they

make me feel at home, and they are part of my everyday surroundings (even now), especially the pictures. But every time you, in your present situation, give even more generously than before, in striving to give great joy despite the limitations, something in me protests that perhaps too much is being taken apart, and | would like to postpone it until the time of our new freedom and reunion. 584 Perhaps it’s stupid, but | feel a tug of resistance every time you think of us so generously. Of course, it’s certain that it would look very beautiful hanging on my wall, and you would love seeing it when you come to visit, being reminded of the rooms in Finkenwalde, SchlOnwitz, Sigurdshof, and Berlin. So you see, I’ve already half accepted it after all and proudly see myself getting richer and richer.

Getting the lettersl'9] is really nice. Father!!'] .. . [writes]: “Keep your glorious, cheerful good courage and good sense and your faith in the good in the world, which ultimately, of course, must win the upper hand again and keep hold of it.” | think you really sum up the essence of my situation:!'2! In my vocation my achievements have, so to speak, “nourished” me thus far. There are a few things |! am happy about, but nothing really important yet, nothing complete. But one thing | have really gained, and that is intensive human relationships—not in the “cult of the human” but in mutual understanding and parallel reactions, activities, tasks, and longings. And these are strangely indestructible; on the contrary, they

[6.] See 4/190, p. 509. [7.] See 4/188, ed. note 3. [8.] See 4/183, p. 493: “In this sense death is the epitome [Kronung] of human freedom.” 19.| See 4/190, p.5H: [10.] For his thirty-fifth birthday. [11.] Rudiger Schleicher. [12.] The following refers to Bonhoeffer’s letters 4/190 [and 4/188.—]DG]

4/195 529 are the only things that have increased and “improved” through these last few years. | hope very much that a time will still come to accomplish the things you are wishing for.

Please keep writing me such nice, interesting, and warm letters. | thank you very, very much. Yours, Eberhard August 291!3]

Yesterday | had leisure to read through all the mail, and it was a fine day with much time to write to Renate. But then last night until early this morning there was street fighting between partisans and fascists in the town below here.!'4] We take all kinds of security measures. They’re getting busier now. But we are fine. Warm greetings and many thanks, Yours, Eberhard

Winfried Maechler writes me for my birthday. He’s been in a military hospital 585 with an infected right hand since July and through this [has] so far been saved from the worst action in France. And just now the beautiful meditation on the Daily Textsl'?] has arrived. Thank you so much for that. | guess it is necessary for you to serve me in this essential way on such a day by trying to express what we

so seldom speak about these days. It has become tangibly necessary again for one person to hold devotions for the other. Thank you so much. Margretl'®] asks you to send her a word of greeting, in order to pass it along to donors as the occasion arises.!'7] Margret writes: “Aunt Ruthl!8] is fit as a fiddle again in her mind, like two years ago. Fritzl'?] visited her recently.”

[13.] Beginning of writing in the margins. [14.] The partisans were supporters of Marshall Pietro Badoglio, who had signed the cease-fire between Italy and the Allies on September 3, 1943; the “fascists” were supporters of the former dictator Benito Mussolini. [Mussolini was arrested on July 25, 1943.—]DG]

[15.] 4/192. [16.] Margret Onnasch, Eberhard Bethge’s sister. [17.] As a thank-you for people who donated ration cards to families of the incarcerated. [18.] Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. [19.] Friedrich Onnasch, Margret’s husband.

526 Letters and Papers from Prison 196. Poem “The Friend”!!!

The Friend Not from heavy soil,!?!

where blood and race and oath!! reign in hallowed might, where earth itself 586 avenges, protects, and guards the primal, sacred orders,""! against madness and hubris— not from the heavy soil of earth, but from the heart’s free choosing and from the spirit’s free longing, needing no oath nor legal sanction, is the friend given to the friend.

Beside the field of nourishing grain, reverently plowed and tilled by human hands,

[1.] NZ, A 67,8. The folder contains two handwritten drafts of the beginning of the poem, cach 1 page, in pencil, and a typescript (based on the lost revised version) by Bethge (spring/summer 1945), no title, 3 pages; in addition [in another folder], Tegel note 16 (NL, A 86) (handwritten, pencil, 2 pages). First published in Bethge, Auf dem Wege zur [retheit, 18-21; previously published in LPP, 388-91. Whereas the first birthday poem, “Stations on the Way to Freedom” (4/191), was in Bethge’s hands on August 26, 1944 (see 4/195, p. 523), this second birthday poem was written in Tegel immediately before Eberhard’s birthday; cf. p. 530: “[On] August 28, in the morning.” On the interpretation of the poem, see Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 74-77; Koch, “Der Freund’; Rothuizen, “Kornblume und Ahrenfeld”; Henkys, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefangnisgedichte, 9, 31, 68-69; Bethge, Friendship and Resistance, 98-103. [See also Henkys, Geheimnis der Frethett, 205-25 et passim.—NL/JDG]. [2.] The typescript shows the handwritten addition of the words der Erde (of earth) after the typed word Boden (soil) by Bethge. This addition corresponds to the first line of the poem in both existing original drafts. [3.] [A possible allusion to the National Socialist “blood and soil” ideology and the oath of ultimate loyalty to Hitler (Henkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 216-18). Bethge maintains it refers instead to Bonhoeffer’s reading of Otto’s Homeric Gods and to his work on the place of friendship in the divine mandates (cf. 2/94, pp. 247-48). We have assumed that Bonhoeffer had all these elements in mind.—NL/]DG] [4.] [|Cf. DBWE 3:139 (“None of these orders... has in itself any eternal character”); DBWE 6:389 (the term “order” [Ordnung| must be guarded against the danger of understanding “all existing orders per se” as divinely sanctioned). Nevertheless, what can be termed “order” (Ordnung) or “mandate” (Mandat) may be divinely authorized. See also DBWE 16, 2/10, pp. 502-5.—NL/JDG]

4/196 527 where people sacrifice the sweat of their labor and, if need be, their bodies’ blood, beside the field of daily bread, people, also, after all, do let the lovely cornflower bloom. No one planted it, no one watered it. Vulnerable, it grows freely and in cheerful confidence that it will be allowed to live its life under the wide sky. Beside what’s necessary,” things formed from weighty, earthy stuff, beside marriage, labor, and the sword,|®! what’s [ree, too, strives to live

and grow sunward. Beauty is not in ripe fruit alone, but in blossoms, too. Whether the blossom only serves the fruit,

or the fruit the blossom— 587

who can say? Yet both are given to us.

Rarest, most precious blossom— springing from the freedom of the daring, trusting spirit!”! at play

[5.] Here Bonhoeffer is affirming a comment by Bethge in which he quotes Rudiger Schleicher about friendship lacking the argument of “necessity”; see letter of January 2, 1944, 2/94, p. 248. [Bethge had complained that while marriage partners and family were considered “necessarily” entitled to prison visits, friends were not; Bonhoeffer affirms here that friendship exists in a sphere of freedom separate from those of marriage, work, or the other “mandates."-—NL/JDG] [6.| Three of Bonhoeffer’s so-called four mandates; cf. DBWE 6:296 (marriage, work, government), 68 (the fourth mandate: church), 388 (where “culture” stands for “work ig See also 3/102. Tegel note 16 (NL, A 86) (see ed. note 1) contains the comment [among others]: “Honorable (replaces “The necessary”) bonds of marriage, of the sword, work— protection and honor among human beings—freedom. Does one pull up the cornflower? Does one not leave the cornflower in place next to the fertile wheat? Does one pull it up because it is not necessary for life?” [7.] [Cf. de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit—NL/|DG]

528 Letters and Papers from Prison in a blessed moment!?!— This is what the friend is to the friend. Playmates at first on the spirit’s long journeys into wondrous, faraway realms,|”! which, veiled in the morning sun, gleam like gold, toward which in noonday heat the wispy clouds drift along in the blue sky, which, in the excitement of night, by lamplight beckon the seeker like hidden, secret treasures.

Then, when the spirit moves the human heart and mind with lofty, bold, and cheerful!!®! thoughts, when made to face the world, vision unclouded and hands unbound— when the spirit then brings forth action, —by which each person stands or falls alone— when, from action,!!!! strong and sound the work grows that gives a man’s life substance and meaning,|!*!

[8.] [“Blessed” here renders the German gliicklich; see 3/167, ed. note 2.—NL/JDG] [9.] [“Realms” translates Reiche, the word for both “empires,” e.g., the “Third Reich,”

and the realms and kingdoms of fairy tales and legends loved by young children and storytellers. —NL/]DG.] [10.] [German: heiter (Latin hilaritas); the quality of lightheartedness, which Bonhoeffer found essential to every great and free intellectual achievement (cf. 2/101, p. 263).—NL/ JDG!]

[11.] [Cf. 4/191, “Stations on the Way to Freedom”: “in action alone is found freedom.”—NL/JDG]

[12.] [Until this point in the poem, Bonhoeffer has used the gender-inclusive noun Mensch (human being); this is the only occurrence of the gender-exclusive Mann, hence “a man’s life,” which reflects the fact that the poem was composed as a birthday gift to Bethge.—NL/JDG].

4/196 D2d then the active, productive, lonely human being longs for friendship’s understanding spirit. Like a clear, fresh wellspring

where the spirit cleanses itself from the day’s dust, 588 where it cools itself after blazing heat and steels itself in the hour of fatigue— Like a fortress, where the spirit returns after confusion and danger, finding refuge, comfort, and strength, such is the friend to the friend. And the spirit wants to trust, to confide without condition. Sickened by the worms that feed in the shadow of goodness on cnvy, suspicion, and spying sickened by the hissing of poisoned serpents’ tongues,!!*! that fear, hate, and scorn the secret of free thought,!!#! and heart's integrity— the spirit longs to cast off all pretending and reveal itself fully to a close and trusted spirit and freely forge a faithful bond of friendship. The spirit wants to affirm without envy, wants to acknowledge, to thank, to rejoice and find strength in the other. Yet to rigorous standard and stern judgment, too, [13.] [I.e., spreading deadly rumors about innocent people.—NL /JDG] [14.] [Likely allusion to the freedom song “Die Gedanken sind frei” (Thoughts Are Free) popularized during the democratic movements of the 1830s and 1840s, banned during the Nazi era.—NL/]JDG]

530 Letters and Papers from Prison it willingly submits.

Neither commands nor compelling alien laws nor doctrines, but counsel, the good and earnest kind that sets one free, does the mature man!!*! seek from the faithfulness of a friend.

589 Far or near in fortune or calamity!!©!—

each knows in the other the faithful helper toward freedom and humanity.!!7! August 28, in the morning!!®!

When the sirens howled their midnight cue,!!"! Long and silent were my thoughts of you, how you might be, old times when you were here, and wishing you homecoming this new year. After a long silence, at half past one comes the signal that the danger is done. I took this as a friendly sign from on high that all dangers are quietly passing you by.

[15.] [See ed. note 12 above.—NL/]JDG] [16.] [“Gluck oder Unglutck”; cf. 3/167, “Fortune and Calamity."-—NL/JDG] [17.] Tegel note 16 (NL, A 86) contains the comment: “In the years of youth the friend

is [considered] a god; in maturity one seeks not gods but human beings.” [See 2/122, p. 324: the “youth” (der Heranwachsende), the “man” (der Mann).—NL/JDG] The notes end with “Saying good-bye to my friend—Sad, not wildly painful.” [18.] These lines (on the actual birthday of Eberhard Bethge) were enclosed with the poem on a loose sheet of paper; since the first publication they have been printed as a postscript. [19.] [Sirens sounded during nightly Allied bombing raids over German cities (1943—-

45), signaling that everyone (including prisoners) must report to air-raid shelters. The “long silence” and the all-clear signal indicate that no bombs fell that night. See the many references in the letters, e.g., 2/79, p. 200.—NL/]JDG]

4/196 and 4/197 531 197. Poem “The Death of Moses”!!! 590 The Death of Moses Deut. 34:1: “And the Lorb showed him the whole land.” I

[1] On the mountain peak where few have trod!?! stands the prophet Moses, man of God.!°! [1.] NZ, A 67,9; no handwritten manuscript; a “contemporary transcript” of five pages is cited in an endnote on GS 4:634 to the published text in that volume (see below); additional later notation by Bethge: “received on September 29, 1944, in San Polo d’Enza.” First publications: Das Zeugnis eines Bolen, 45-46 (excerpts); Bethge, Auf dem Wege zur Fretheit, 22-28; reprinted in GS 4: Auslegungen-Predigten, 613-20, and PAM 2:483-90. The poem was most likely written after the Zossen files were discovered on September 20, 1944 (DB-ER, 899 and 1007, ed. note 220), which “exposed the extent of Bonhoeffer’s involvementin the attempted coup. From this point on, he had to assume his end was very near” (Dudzus, “Wer ist Jesus Christus fttr uns heute?” 89-90). The revised copy of the poem intended for Bethge was lost. The copy referred to in the DBW & edition is a typescript with characters identical to those of the typescript of the “Jonah” poem (cf. 4/199, ed. note 1). Thus the German edition reproduced both poems from typescripts produced by Maria von Wedemeyer. This is confirmed in the case of “The Death of Moses” by the use of capital letters in cases of personal pronouns of address in prayer (YOU, HE, HIM), which the German DBW editors considered “characteristic of the Wedemeyers”; there is no parallel for such usage in all the poems in Bonhocffer’s handwriting that contain pronouns of address. [The DBWE8 edition, unlike DBW8, follows the text in Bonhoeffer’s original handwriting that was recently found in Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller’s literary estate, which is the original version on which her typescript is based. This text was [irst printed in Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 227-32. The ninety couplets of the poem “The Death of Moses” are grouped by Henkys, based on access to Bonhoeffer’s manuscript, into five sections headed under Roman numerals (Geheimnis der I'retheit, 226). There is also one significant change in wording; see couplet 27, ed. note 14 below. The DBWE editorial notes document only a few of the many biblical resonances. Because of the numerous references to verse citations, the DAWE editors have also numbered them; these numbers are not in the original typescript or in DBW.—NL/JDG] For interpretations of the poem, see Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 78-81; Schlingensiepen, “Der Tod des Lehrers”; Dudzus, “Wer ist Jesus Christus,” 89-91; and esp. Henkys, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefangnisgedichte, 42-51 et passim. [Cf. also especially Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 226-50.—NL/JDGI]. [2.] [“The Death of Moses” was not included in previous editions of LPP. Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 33-34, includes a version with thirteen of the ninety original couplets; Robertson's Voices in the Night is an adaptation taking liberties with the form, language, and theology of the original. A highly abridged version (thirty-two of ninety couplets), translated by N. Lukens with modifications by Geffrey B. Kelly, appeared in Kelly and Nelson, Testament to Freedom, 518-20. The translation here renders the complete poem, modified and structured into five sections in accordance with the original manuscript (see ed. note 1).—NL/JDG]

[3.] [This translation follows, as far as possible, Bonhoeffer’s scheme of rhymed couplets of five trochaic feet per line (alternating stressed and unstressed syllables).

532 Letters and Papers from Prison [2] Steady is his gaze and tired his hand; he surveys the sacred promised land. [3] That he might for Moses’s death provide, God appears now by his servant’s side,

591 [4] shows, from heights where humankind is dumb, what is promised for the years to come; [5] spreads before the tired wanderer’s feet homeland, which he may yet mutely greet,

[6] offer blessing! with his dying breath,!! and, in peace, may then encounter death. [7] “You shall glimpse salvation from afar, but your foot shall not itself cross o’er!”\®! [8] And the old man’s eyes survey—survey distant things, as at the break of day,

[9] shaped to cup of sacrifice from clay by God’s hand, now Moses bows to pray: I]

[10] “Thus you keep your promise that I heard; never have you broken, Lord, your word.

Bonhoeffer has both masculine and feminine line endings, but these are not rigidly maintained in translation.—NL/JDG] [4.] Deut. 33:1: “This is the blessing with which Moses, the man of God, blessed the Israelites before his death.” [5.] Num. 27:12-13, marked in pencil in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible: “The Lorp said to Moses, ‘Go up this mountain of the Abarim range, and see the land that I have given to the Israelites. When you have seen it, you also shall be gathered to your people, as your brother Aaron was.” Bonhoeffer had interpreted the parallel passage, Deut. 32:49, ina 1930 sermon (DBWE 10, 3/24, p. 586: “Ascend the mountain and die”). Cf. the end of scene | in Bonhoeffer’s Tegel drama fragment, DBWE 7:37,

[6.] God’s words of mercy and punishment are found in Num. 20:12; Deut. 1:37; 32:49—52; and 34:4.

4/197 533 [11] Whether you sent grace or godly wrath— they have ever met us on our path. [12] You did rescue us from slavery’s chains,!”!

in your gentle arms did soothe our pains, [13] through the desert and the deep sea’s tide wondrously before us you did stride;!*!

[14] you did bear with patience never failing 592 people’s cries and muttering'”! and wailing. [15] Not by kindness could they be inclined to be led, faith’s glorious way to find,

[16] tolerated greed, idolatry,!'” though the bread of grace their food could be. [17] So your wrath wrought in your people hence deepest wounds through snakes and pestilence.!!!! [18] ‘Those who were to be the promised heirs rose in mutiny, and ruin was theirs.!!?!

[19] In the midst of their long pilgrimage, they were snatched away by you in rage. [20] One thing only did you want to see: confidence and trust to set them free.

[7.] Exod. 1:11, for example. [8.] Exod. 13:18, 21; 14:21-22. [9.] Exod. 16:7-8, for example. Cf. DBW 14:649 regarding Num. 21:4—9 (“muttering of the people of Israel after returning to Egypt”). [10.] Exod. 32:1-8 (the golden calf), marked by Bonhoeffer in pencil throughout his Luther Bible. [11.] Num. 14:37; 17:14 (“the men... died by a plague”); Num. 21:6 (“Then the Lorp sent poisonous serpents among the people”). [See also Num. 16:49 (“Those who died by plague were fourteen thousand seven hundred”).—JDG] [12.] Num. 16 (the Korahites).

534 Letters and Papers from Prison [21] But all those who gave to you their pledge saw your hand at work at Red Sea’s edge,!!!

[22] all of them have turned their hearts away; on their bodies desert sand must stay. [23] Those whom you had led to their salvation stoked rebellion, to your consternation. [24] Of the once so blessed generation, not one was left of just and faithful station. [25] After all the elders passed away, once their sons and daughters saw the day,

593: [26] then, when young ones, just as had the old, scorned your word and even cid you scold, [27] Lord, you know, a sudden word of rage did escape my mouth in my old age.!!#!

[28] Doubting thoughts, impatience I did feel, certainty of faith began to reel!!! [29] You forgave me. Still, I burn with shame, faithless, facing you, the faithful Name.!!°!

[13.] Exod. 13:18.

[14.] Cf. Ps. 106:32-33. Bethge noted in GS 4:615 that this line is incomplete. [The original manuscript, translated here, has a full five-foot line (cf. Henkys, Gehetmnis der Freiheit, 228); Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller’s typescript (the basis for DBW8) substitutes an em dash for the words des Unmuts (of rage, indignation) in the original manuscript. —NL/JDG] [15.] Num. 20:12: “But the LorpD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I shall give them’” [trans. altered to conform to the text in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible—NL/JDG]. V. 13 (pencil mark alongside the word “quarreled” in the Luther Bible): “These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the LorpD, and by which he showed his holiness.” Regarding “quarreling” with the Lord, see also Num. 27:14; Deut. 32:51; Ps. 81:7. [16.] [Cf Exod. 13:21-22.—NL/]DG]

4/197 535 [30] Your own countenance,!!”! so near and bright, to the rueful!!®! one is painful light. [31] Your great anger, your grief as you mourn dig into my flesh, a deadly thorn.

[32] lam damned before your holy Word, though to preach it I by you was stirred. [33] Those who ate the tasteless fruits of doubt, from God's table they shall be left out.

[34] Only faith untainted drinks the wine grown upon the holy land’s full vine. TIT! !9!

[35] O Lord, your chastening I cannot flee, yet death on lofty peak you grant to me.

[36] O you, who once was seen on quaking mount,!??! 594 who made me then your chosen confidant,?!) [37] your mouthpiece, source of every holiness, your eye to see the poor in their distress;

[17.] Exod. 33:lla: “Thus the Lorp used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend,”

[18.] |[Bonhoeffer’s phrase dem Reuigen (to the rueful one) relates to the motif Dank und Reue (gratitude and ruefulness) in the poem “The Past” (3/158, June 1944): “the past, a gift you may regain / through gratitude and rueful pain.”—NL/]DG] [19.] [Section III is composed in iambic pentameter. This translation follows Bonhoeffer’s metric scheme to reflect the shift in Moses’s voice from the inward focus on his death to his incantation in powerful trochees in section IV, couplets 45-57, as he envisions the land of promise. For discussion of the poetic structure of the poem, see Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 236—42.—NL/]DG]

[20.] Exod. 19:18: “Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lorp had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently.” [21.] Num. 12:8a (underlined in pencil in Bonhoeffer’s Luther Bible); Deut. 34:10 (heavy underlining in copy pen): “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lorpb knew face to face.”

2 2 iv

536 Letters and Papers from Prison [38] your ear to hear your people’s sighs and woes, your arm that brought defeat to mighty foes,

[39] the back that carried young and old grown weary and that by friend and foe was met with fury,!??! [40] Your people’s mediator, Lord, in prayer, Your instrument, friend, prophet, messenger.

[41] For this you grant me death on mountainside and not on plains where human dwarfs abide;'*"! [42] a death with vision free and clear ahead of the commander who in combat led; [43] a death whose somber portals are ablaze with beacon lights of coming times and ways. [44] Though death’s shroud begins to settle o’er me, your Salvation is fulfilled before me.*4! IV

[45] Holy land, I’ve seen you in your pride, gloriously adorned, a radiant bride,'*”!

595 = [46] wedding garb becomes your virgin face; festive bridal crown is costly grace.!?"!

[22.] Num. 12:3 (Bonhoeffer’s pencil underlining in the Luther Bible indicated here by italics): “Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on the face of the earth.” [The Luther Bible has geplagt (tormented) for NRSV “humble”; emphasis by DAW

eclitors. Original manuscript in Harvard’s Houghton Library has “und den der Zorn von Freund und Feinden schlug” (literally “and which the fury of friend and foe beat upon”), clarifying the meaning. Information provided by Martin Rumscheidt.—NL/JDG]. [23.] For background on the significance of dwarfs, see novel fragment, DBWE 7:16465,-esp:. ed. notes 94. 95,99; [24.] [The same desire to experience “once more” the joy of earthly pleasures is expressed in vy. 4 of “By Powers of Good” (4/200).—NL/]JDG] [25.] [Cf. Ps. 45; Rev. 21:2—NL/JDG] [26.] Cf. DBWE 4:44-45.

4/197 537 [47] May these old, oft disenchanted eyes savor you, their sweet and lovely prize. [48] May this life, before its powers sink, ah, once more from streams of joy now drink. [49] God’s own land, below your gateway beams blissfully we stand, as if lost in dreams. [50] Now we feel the faithful fathers’ blessing, strong and promising, as wind caressing.

[51] God’s own vineyard, fresh dew on the ground, heavy grapes, sun’s radiance all around,!?"! [52] God’s own garden, how your fruits are swelling, clear, fresh waters from your springs are welling.

[53] God’s abundant grace above [ree earth, may a holy people here find birth. [54] God’s own justice guards both weak and strong from the whim of tyranny and wrong. !?*! [55] God’s truth brings back to faith a flock misled by the human doctrines they were fed. [56] God’s own peace, a tower of strength, will cover hearts, homes, cities like a faithful lover.

[57] God’s own rest will come to them like balm"! as they celebrate day’s end with calm.

[27.] [The German adjective sonnenglanzumleuchtet is a composite word (literally: “surrounded by the sun’s radiance”) created by Bonhoeffer—NL/JDG]. [28.] [Bonhoeffer’s word for “tyranny” is Willkiir (literally: arbitrary rule, abuse of

power); for the sake of rhyme and meter Gewalt (violence) has been translated more generally as “wrong.”-—NL/JDG] [29.] Cf. Heb. 4:9; DBWE 3:69-70, regarding Gen. 2:1-3.

538 Letters and Papers from Prison 596 = [58] And quiet folk will plant contentedly the grapevine, plow the field, and prune the tree, [59] and one will simply call the other Brother no pride nor jealousy their hearts will smother;

[60] and sons, by fathers taught, learn deference to age, to all things sacred reverence. [61] And maidens in their innocence and grace, the people’s honor, will have pride and place. [62] Who once themselves ate bread of foreign lands will not ignore the alien’s empty hands,!°°! [63] The righteous shall in charity provide for widows, orphans, paupers at their side. [64] O God, among our fathers ever near, now may our offspring pray and find you here. [65] To sacred shrine your people shall ascend and to your glory high feast days shall spend. [66] To you they’ ll bring themselves as offering to you songs of deliverance they'll sing.

[67] In thanks and praise your people raise one voice!’!) to shout your name, that all the world rejoice. [68] Great is the world; the heavens open wide, to look at all the busy human tide. [69] The way to life, for all the nations food, you showed us, God, when you gave us your word.

[30.] Deut. 10:18-19 et passim. (31.| [Bonhoeffer’s original manuscript in Harvard’s Houghton Library has the word

“one” underlined for emphasis. Information provided by Martin Rumscheidt.—NL/ [DG]

4/197 539 [70] When times are hard the world will ever turn 597 your sacred Ten Commandments to relearn.!°7! [71] And when a people’s guilt demands great toll, your sanctuary alone will make them whole. [72] Move on, my people, follow now the call, free earth, free air do beckon to you all.

[73] So take the mountains, meadows, all the places where blessing comes from faithful fathers’ traces.

[74] From foreheads wipe the burning desert sand and breathe the freedom of the promised land. [75] Wake up, take hold, your eyes do not deceive you, your hearts were weary,*! but God did relieve you.

[76] Glorious and splendid the promised land you see, all things are yours, and you’ve been set free! ”'?4J V

[77] On the mountain peak where few have trod stands the prophet Moses, man of God. [78] Steady is his gaze and tired his hand; he surveys the sacred promised land.'!

[32.| [See DB-ER, 709, regarding the fifth commandment and the Nazi euthanasia measures.—NL/JDG.| [33.] Regarding this verse, see Henkys, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefangnisgedichte, 46-48, comparing and contrasting the poem with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s classic “Huttens Letzte Tage.” [See also Henkys, Geheimnis der I'retheit, 241-42.—NL/JDG] [34.] Cf. 1 Cor, 3:22b—23a [NRSV: “all belong to you, and you belong to Christ” vs. the Luther Bible, “everything is yours’°—NL/JDG]; DBWE 16, 2/3, p. 487 (‘only where all things belong to you are you truly free of all things”). [35.| [Couplet 78 is worded identically in German to couplet 2 except that the verb blicken (look) from 2 becomes schauen in 78; both are translated “survey.” The next two couplets also take up wording and themes from section I: the wording of couplet 79 is identical to that of couplet 10; couplet 80, like couplet 11, links God’s wrath and God's grace.—NL/JDG]

540 Letters and Papers from Prison [79] “Thus you keep your promise that I heard; never have you broken, Lord, your word. [80] Your grace redeems and saves us from our pride, your wrath chastises sin and casts aside.

598 [81] Faithful Lord, your faithless servant’s sure that your righteousness shall e’er endure. [82] Carry out your sentence,“ once decreed, death’s long sleep now to my soul concede.

[83] Only faith untainted drinks the wine grown upon the holy land’s full vine. [84] To the doubter, hand the bitter potion;!°“! faith shall give you praise and true devotion. [85] Wondrous deeds with me you have arranged, bitterness to sweetness you have changed. [86] Through death’s veil you let me see at least this, my people, go to highest feast.!*! [87] They stride into freedom, God, I see, as I sink to your eternity. [88] To punish sin, to forgive you are moved; O God, this people have I truly loved.'8"!

[36.] [Bonhoeffer’s die Strafe vollstrecken is court terminology; Bonhoeffer has Moses

assume total guilt and request punishment, not before human executioners, but before God.—NL/JDG] [37.] Cf. 4/200, p. 550, “By Powers of Good,” v. 3: “And should you offer us the cup of suffering.” [38.| [Cf. 4/191, “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” Death: the “highest of feasts on the way to freedom eternal."-—NL/JDG] [39.] [Cf. Bonhoeffer, / Loved This People. This anthology of Bonhoeffer’s writings was published in Germany in 1961, when anti-Nazi conspirators were still widely considered traitors.—NL/JDG]

4/197 and 4/198 541 [89] That I bore its shame and sacrifices and saw its salvation—that suffices. [90] Hold me fast!—for sinking is my stave, faithful God, make ready now my grave.”

198. From Eberhard Bethge'|! 599 September 21

Dear Dietrich, What will you think of me! | don’t quite know what | should do, since I’ve been given such passionate, conflicting advice.!*] But perhaps it’s unnecessary. This is why | haven’t mentioned the poem about freedom,|3] about friendship!*! (which moved me especially). But now | do want to write about the Missa Solemnis, the

questions of the family, and the worries about Renate.b! When my thoughts have crystallized too rigidly, you come along and stir them up each time so that they appear in a new constellation and once again offer the observant eye new, pleasant, or exciting aspects for some time to come. Getting your letters has this effect on me. Above all, I’ve been careful every time to get rid of the instigator of this process quickly.!®! Sometimes this is a real shame and limits my

response. But they do have their profound effect on me. The poem on friendship makes me very proud. You have the capacity, so to speak, to span colossally

broad arcs, and to sustain them in complete strength and beauty. The whole poem, with the prologue for me on the twenty-eighth,!”! is charged with meaning, and | read page by page with heightened expectation. At this point | think | am incapable of any criticism; | want to know whether it can grab a stranger the way it does me. For me it is a surprising, rich expression of experiences shared by me and in which | have participated. But there doesn’t have to be any criticism.

[1.] NZ, A 81,211; handwritten; from San Polo d’Enza; no year (1944). Excerpt previously published in LPP, 396-98.

[2.] Bonhoeffer had encouraged Bethge to continue the illegal correspondence. Because of new investigations by the Reich Central Security Office, however, Christine von Dohnanyi had sent him a message via Renate that continued correspondence would endanger the position of the prisoners [Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi] even more. [3.] 4/191. [4.] 4/196. [5.] Referring to points Bonhoeffer had raised in a letter that has been lost. [6.] Coded reference to securing the illegal correspondence by sending it to Bethge’s mother in Kade. [7.] See the final two verses of 4/196, printed here as an epilogue.

542 Letters and Papers from Prison It could be that the poem was written as if only for me, and since it makes me very happy, perhaps it is something grand and complete. | wonder if you could 600 omit the word “lovely” in the line “do let the lovely cornflower bloom,” since with that word you perhaps unnecessarily move from continuous contemplation into a position of judgment? All that follows about the flower says more about it and better, do you agree? After that it’s different with “but in blossoms, too.” Perhaps the superlative “Rarest, most precious blossom” is also unnecessary? The occasionally longer and shorter lines serve well to check the flow of the very dense thought content. In any case, this was a unique way to celebrate my birthday, and all | can give back to you is to say that it is a great source of strength for the other person to see that the threatening situation in which his friend finds himself leads to such a concentration of energy and to such beautiful fruits. Many, many thanks for this. | also got the letter with the very personal lines about H[ans]’s transfer.l®] | did not hear the Missa Solemnis;!7] | unfortunately came in so late that night that | only heard the final chord and the announcer. | probably couldn’t have heard

much at all anyway here in this horde. But now | do have a radio in my new room; to ensure the safety of things,!!°] I’ve moved into a terrific upstairs room.

| now have a (bad) radio up in my room most of the time for taking notes on the army reports. That’s useful. Unfortunately, | don’t know the Missa Solemnis well at all. But recently | heard Vivaldi and Bach concertos with R[ainalter], and | must say, too, that this is like a liberation, or like being transposed into the real

world, or from the lie into truth, or as if the heart that has been raped senses freedom. | am delighted that you are able to do these things. You took the death of Moses as an accusation [Vorwurf]?!''] | find it very interesting that you say it [8.] The “very personal lines” were in 4/193, p. 517 (Bonhoeffer’s wish that people close to him would never have to worry about him); and 4/193, ed. note Il, on Hans von Dohnanyi's transfer to the infirmary of the Sachenhausen concentration camp on August 22, 1944. [9.] Racio broadcast of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. [It is difficult to deter-

mine so many years later, but the references throughout this letter to the aftermath of the conspiracy, Bethge’s caution in listening to radio broadcasts, etc. would suggest that many of these references, including the Missa Solemnis, may be coded messages; in any case, they appear to be replies to specific comments in a letter from Bonhoeffer that is no longer extant.—]DG|] [10.] Reference to attacks by partisans. | This may also be a reference to Bethge’s listening to radio broadcasts in secrecy.—JDG] [11.] The German editor believes that Bethge uses the German Vorwurf (accusation) to mean Vorlage (a pattern or model). Bethge refers to a lost letter from Bonhoeffer. “The Death of Moses” poem itself (4/197) only arrived in San Polo d’Enza on September 29, 1944; see ed. note 32. [Bonhoeffer’s letter explaining the poem to Bethge has been lost. But the text of the poem itself, as well as Bethge’s comment here, would suggest that Bonhoeffer in this poem indeed was expressing both his accusations against his compatriots

4/198 543 in verse, because it would have become too explosive otherwise! This clarifies something that strikes the reader so forcefully about your unrhymed verses—a strong forward movement, being swept along. By the way, | think Renate has a

pronounced gift for poetry and composition, too. Once she handed mea few’ 601 verses she'd written as a joke. So far—and | guess it’s just as well—her sense of decency and her great sense of quality have prevented her from using the gift. | think there are two different skills that must be acquired through hard work and must be harmonized: mastering the forms, and also having something to say. By the way, it’s not yet clear to me what R[enate] is going to do now; because of a reorganization of the postal service, we now have a terrible gap in receiving mail. Thanks very much for your concern. | was very happy and deeply touched by the musical scorel!?] with its neat notation and even within carefully drawn straight lines(!). It is particularly meaningful to me that you took a ruler or a long pencil in hand to remind me of essential passages. | always so enjoyed singing that high part; it rang out so beautifully in church. How different the two petitions are—one rejoicing and one humble. Many thanks. Renate received my essayl'?] and was very pleased. She apparently liked the style very much. Of course, praise was rare in your family,!'*] as Renate’s mother also always says. Nevertheless, nothing but the family has ever provided a forum for your

activities. From the time you were little, you were expected to recite things for your parents, and so forth. Surely we should not remember our youth with sadness or reproach. The tacit reproach | occasionally sense from my mother’s side about my development made me mention this. “The late recovery of technique”:['>] | was amazed while on leave how very much of my technical skill at the flute had been lost again. That has never been true with what miserable skill

| have at the piano, and that’s because playing started early enough. It needs constant, continued practice. Over a longer period of time, | even forget more or less correct intonation and lose confidence in sight-reading. It made me happier than ever when you wrote that your father likes me very much. He really is 602 always very nice to me, and I| think | have shed my insecurity somewhat. It’s only embarrassing sometimes when he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, acoustically speaking. But that is improving as well, in spite of his increasing hearing loss. for succumbing to Nazism as well as his love for them (“O God, this people have I truly loved”).—]DG]

[12.] Allusion to a lost letter from Bonhoeffer. According to Bethge’s recollection, it was about music by Heinrich Schttz. [13.] Bethge’s sketch about his father; see 4/188, ed. note 3. Bonhoeffer had advised Bethge (4/188): “You should send it to Renate on your own birthday.” [14.] See 4/194, pp. 519-60. [15.] Quotation from Bonhoeffer’s lost letter.

544 Letters and Papers from Prison | wonder if your mother has quite forgiven me my bold move with Renatel!®] by now?

Horst Th[urmann]’s wife wrote me a nice note and said he sends you his warm regards. According to a long birthday letter from Fritz,l'7] Albrecht Schonherr must be somewhere in my area, likewise Otto Kunze. When | poked fun at his ministry being “l’église, c’est moi,” !'8] he replied by writing about all

kinds of work being done by Gehlhoff, Lutschewitz, Knorr, de Boor, Block, Kehrl, Strecker, Rendtorffl'?] (who, by the way, writes me a brief note from time to time in his function as leader of the V[olks]-M[ission] bible weeks!), Frau Ohnesorge, and Sup[erintendent] Krause.!?°] On the whole, the reports all sound very optimistic. | hear Aug[ust] Tetsch is a lieutenant, has a second child, and is in Russia; Jensen (again a second child) near Lyon (at that time); Otto Range likewise; Gerh[ard] Krause (little daughter) at Pleskau Lake; Eugen

Rose (of whom Rainalter here always tells very nice stories about their time together at interpreters’ school in B[er]I[in] last year) is an Indian interpreter in France. Voelz (little son) heading back to the front after a long time in the barracks; likewise Wolfg[ang] Schmidt after being together often with Walter Schmidt in the province of Saxony. Wapler, now missing in Russia, wrote him in mid-June. Karl-Ferdinand!?'! has another son, “Sebastian” (of course!);!?2] Willi

R[ott] still in Athens, recently on special leave in Naseband. W. Kargel still a home guard in Prenzlau. Derschau and K. H. Reimer are located where Bojack 603 — is from.!?3] Bernh[ard] Onnasch wounded in Weimar. Fritz’s father here, very fit and robust.!*4] St. Jakobi Church in Stettin is in ruins. Fritz wears a helmet as an air-raid warden in Stettin, and his flat is still intact but filled with casualties from the bombing. He enclosed in his letter to me a sermon by Marahrens’s!?°!

former adjutant!?°l that seemed very cheap and muddleheaded. The poor guy

[16.] Renate Schleicher was only sixteen years old at the time of their engagement. [17.] Fritz Onnasch. [18.] “Iam the church.” [19.] Those named were involved with the Church Struggle in Pomerania; see DB-LR, 590-91 (Block), and 618-19 (Knorr, Gehlhoff, Rendtorff, de Boor). [20.] Superintendent Bruno Krause, father of Winfried and Gerhard Krause. [21.] Karl-Ferdinand Miller. [22.] “Of course!” is an allusion to Johann Sebastian Bach. [23.] East Prussia. [24.] Friedrich Onnasch continued to be recognized and active as a member of the

Pomeranian Council of Brethren and as church superintendent of Koslin, despite his forced removal from Pomerania; from autumn 1941 on, he served as pastor in Berlinchen in the Neumark. Cf. Pagel and Metz, Wir kénnen’s ja nicht lassen, 174-75, 179, 181-83. [25.] August Marahrens, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran regional church (Landeskirche) of Hanover.

[26.] Hanns Lilje.

4/198 545 has disappeared, likewise the two in the Church Foreign Office.!?”] Only Pompe is still around. | heard that from Lokies. But perhaps you are already much better informed than I. We are still doing amazingly well here, that is, there was partisan shooting here and there at rather close range, and the lieutenant is driving us crazy with stupid reconnaissance missions and the like (the major!*®! has unfortunately— unfortunately in several respects—been transferred). Disgusting guy. Sir. 13:14.[27! A few days ago our little train station was fired on from the air. The lieutenant is a rather insufferable Prussian and is all too fond of involving me in long conversations. He eats with us and lectures us constantly, so that the atmosphere has lost much of the freedom we enjoyed before. There’s sure to be some blow-up

or other (not with me). Recently he forced me to give a lecture—I gather he was thinking of something sermonlike, but | rejected that and told stories from India,2°] whatever | could still remember. He’s a senior state prosecutor [Oberlandesgerichtsrat], my age, with a disgusting devotion to the whole business. Now we are very eager to hear when we'll be moving and how we will manage 604 to cross the Po. Well, this brings my fondest greetings and thanks. You will understand my silence.2'] It is quite unbearable to me as well. Thinking of you, Faithfully yours, Eberhard

September 30 By now ten more days have passed, and | have still been waiting for any news. Then yesterday “Moses”!2] arrived and today the piece with the abstract concept

|27.| Coded news of the arrests of Hanns Lilje, Eugen Gerstenmaier (director of the ecumenical desk in the Church Foreign Office), and Wilhelm Bachmann; cf. George Bell’s September 14, 1944, letter to Gerhard Leibholz (Bethge and Jasper, An der Schwelle zum gespaltenen Europa, 172-73): “Gerstenmaier has been arrested, Hanns Lilje interrogated (twice), Heckel’s assistant Boormann (? [he means W. Bachmann]) arrested. And there is a general closing in on the church.” [28.] Major Walter Tilp. [29.] “Disgusting guy. Sir. 13:14" added later. “Do not try to treat him as an equal, or trust his lengthy conversations; for he will test you by prolonged talk, and while he smiles

he will be examining you. Cruel are those who do not keep your secrets; they will not spare you harm or imprisonment” (Sir. 13:11-12, NRSV). [30.] See Bethge, /n Zitz gab es keine Juden, 115-33, about his work as inspector of missions for the India desk of the Gossner Mission. [See also de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 54-57.—JDG] [31.] See ed. note 2.

[32.] Bonhoeffer’s poem “The Death of Moses,” 4/197.

546 Letters and Papers from Prison of the future.!33] These, along with fifteen letters from Renate that had been missing for so long. | am really very sorry | did not write for so long, but it was because of the most urgent pleading.24] But now | will break out of that. Did you get my letter of the twenty-eighth?[3>] It seems as though you did not get that one. In it were some pictures in the shorts for you (to L[inke]), and a rather longer—I think—reflection about your poetry. Many thanks for the Moses poem. | received it last night before my guard duty and read it afterward. It moved

me greatly but made me unsure how to judge it. The language is beautiful; it seems to me not quite as powerful as others of yours, shackled as it is by the rhymes. And | thought, now I'll have to have a look at what kind of impression and relationship there is with Holderlin, in his rhymed verse and his other free verse. But Rainalter, who has a first-rate feel for language, finds this the best and

most powerful of your poems I’ve read to him. And it was in reading it aloud that several new things struck me. Now | want to say that it is really very accomplished. Some things are wonderfully expressed. | think this preoccupied you for a long time. The other day | decided to try my hand for the first time at writing a “poem” for Renate’s birthday (for her eyes only). My lack of success robbed me of many 605 anhour of sleep. But, [as] you yourself now write, how differently | now read, or rather observed, things in the little Insel volume of German poetry | have here! | must say your poetry is an incredible achievement. The very fact of line after line of rhymed verse creates a certain epic effect. Until now | have seen no need for any changes. It feels very complete to me.

Renate wrote about your nice letter, which pleased her greatly, but she’s only sad that you have apparently not received a longer letter from her, which | gather included her thanks for all your thoughtfulness of her during my leave. How come? She has apparently spent some time with Maria, about which I’m very happy. M[aria] mustn’t be offended at her way of not communicating for long stretches at a time. Christoph!¢! has also written you a letter, sent to your parents. He has all kinds of plans involving reading and other work. He always writes nice letters. Still no change at all with us here. | guess we are experiencing another major break in the action. Your thoughts on the futurel?/] strike me as courageous and

[33.] Not extant. [34.] See ed. note 2. [35.] Bethge means 4/195, dated August 26 and continued on August 29, thanking Bonhoeffer for his letter (4/190) of August 14 on the occasion of his birthday on August 28, 1944, [36.] Christoph Bethge. [37.] See ed. note 33.

4/198 and 4/199 547 perhaps even comforting. Now | should send this off so that you'll finally have word from me. My!38] very best to you, Yours, Eberhard

If | could only tell you about my latest spiritual and worldly experiences!

199. Poem “Jonah”!!! 606 Jonah They screamed in the face of death, their frightened bodies clawing at sodden rigging, tattered by the storm, and horror-stricken gazes saw with dread the sea now raging with abruptly unleashed powers.

[38.] Here Bethge writes in the margin.

[1.] NL, A 67,10; typescript; | page; date below the poem: “(October 5, 1944, in Tegel)”; first published in Bethge, Auf dem Wege zur Fretheit, 29; previously published in LPP, 398-99, and PAM 2:491. The handwritten original went to Maria von Wedemeyer to avoid endangering others. A marginal postscript to Bonhoeffer’s cover letter to Maria (see Bismarck and Kabitz, Love Letters from Cell 92, 205-66) reads: “Do please type a copy of the poem and send it to Eberhard [Bethge]. He'll know who it’s from without anything being said. Perhaps it is a bit incomprehensible to you. Or perhaps note” [trans. slightly

altered]. The typescript on which the first published version was based agrees with the handwritten original provided by Ruth-Alice von Bismarck to the editors of DBW 8; in both versions, v. 1, line 3, reads irre Blicke (horror-stricken gazes), This phrase appears in the first edition of Widerstand und Ekrgebung, 224, and the second edition (p. 434), and was translated in LPP, 398, as “gazed in stricken terror.” [This error is carried over into Bismarck and Kabitz, Brautbriefeand Love Letters from Cell 92 (“their fearful gaze”).—NL/ JDG] The “Jonah” poem was written at a time when Bonhoeffer had to accept that his case could no longer be successful. On October 1, 1944, his brother Klaus was arrested; the arrest of his brother-in-law Rudiger Schleicher followed on October 4 and that of Friedrich Justus Perels on October 5. It was in this context that Bonhoeffer abandoned his plan to escape from Tegel with the help of Sergeant Knobloch (DB-ER, 827-28); R. Bethge, Bonhoeffers Familie, 10-11. Bonhoeffer wanted to avoid any further endangerment of his family. On October 8, 1944, Bonhoeffer was transferred to the Gestapo prison at the Reich Central Security Headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strabe, Berlin (DB-ER, 893-917). On the interpretation of the poem, see Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 82-85; Henkys, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefangnisgedichte, 51-56, and Bethge, “Predigt zu Diet-

rich Bonhoeffers Gedicht ‘Jona,” 175-82. Cf. Jonah 1:4—15. [See also especially Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 251-61.—NL/JDG]

548 Letters and Papers from Prison “Ye gods, immortal, gracious, now severely angered, help us, or give a sign, to mark for us the one whose secret sin has roused your wrath, the murderer, the perjurer, or vile blasphemer,

who’s bringing doom on us by hiding his misdeed to save some paltry morsel of his pride!” This was their plea. And Jonah spoke: “’Tis I!” In God’s eyes I have sinned. Forfeited is my life.!*! “Away with me! The guilt is mine. God’s wrath’s for me.

The pious shall not perish with the sinner!” They trembled much. But then, with their strong hands, they cast the guilty one away. The sea stood still.

607 200. Poem “By Powers of Good”!!! I. By faithful, quiet’?! powers of good! surrounded"! so wondrously consoled and sheltered here— I wish to live these days with you in spirit and with you enter into a new year.

[2.] |The same verb, verwirken (forfeit), occurs in v. 5 of the passion hymn “Herzliebster Jesu” (Hvangelisches Gesangbuch, no. 38; the English translation is “O Dearest Jesus, What Law Hast Thou Broken?” Lutheran Hymnal, no. 143) on the theme of sacrificial death: “Der Fromme stirbt, der recht und richtig wandelt, / der Bose lebt, der wider Gott

misshandelt, / der Mensch verwirkt den Tod und ist entgangen, / der Herr gefangen” (literally, “the pious, innocent person (Jesus) who lives right, dies; the wicked one, conscious of sinning before God, forfeits death and escapes, / the Lord [is] in prison). Jonah forfeits his life so that other God-fearing people may not die in vain. Cf. DBWE 6:238 on actions of “vicarious representative responsibility (stellvertretende Verantwortung), of love for the real human being, of taking on oneself the guilt (Aufstchnehmen der Schuld) that burdens the world.,—NL/JDG] [1.] Cf. NL, A 67,11; hectograph typescript; 1 page; with notation “New Year, 1945”; given to Bethge by Paula Bonhoeffer in the summer of 1945. Reproduced in Bethge and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, centenary ed., 150. First published in Das Zeugnis eines Boten, 47. Previously published in LPP, 400-401. The handwritten original is part of Bonhoeffer’s December 19, 1944, letter from the Prinz-Albrecht-StraBe prison in Berlin to Maria von Wedemeyer (see 4/202, ed. note 7; cf. Bismarck and Kabitz, Love Letters from Cell 92, 208-10); original provided to Bethge by Ruth-Alice von Bismarck in 1988. In the original the poem is preceded by a note in Bonhoeffer’s handwriting: “Here, in addition, are a

4/199 and 4/200 549 2. The old year still would try our hearts to torment, 608 of evil times we still do bear the weight; O Lord, do grant our souls, now terror-stricken, salvation for which you did us create.

few verses that came to me the past few evenings. They are my Christmas greeting for you and my parents and siblings.” Based on the original version, the previously published version—which follows the NL typescript titled “New Year 1945"—has been changed in the following four places. In v. 2, line 3, aufgeschreckten (terror-stricken) replaces aufgescheuchten (scattered); line 4, geschaffen (created) replaces bereitet (prepared); in v. 5, line 1, hell (bright) replaces stil/ (quiet); in v. 7, line 3, bet uns replaces mit uns. [Both phrases mean “with us,” but with an important distinction in this case. Bei means “by our side,” whereas Gott mit uns means “God on our side,” a phrase Bonhoelfer would not have used because it was co-opted by Nazi ideology and everyday usage, e.g., on the belts of soldiers.—NL/JDG] This revised German version of “Von guten Machten” was published in the 1993 edition of the Lvangelisches Gesangbuch hymnal used by the regional! churches of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Musical settings of the German poem are listed in NZ, A 69,2 and in Henkys, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefangnisgedichte, 82-83. |For a discussion of some of the very liberal translations of this poem that have been published in English hymnals, sce Henkys, Gefiingnisgedichte, 274n1.—NL]. In the meantime there have been numerous other musical settings. For interpretations of “By Powers of Good,” see Bethge, “Liedpredigt zu “Von guten Machten’”; Bethge, “Zur Textgestalt des Gedichtes ‘Von guten Machten’”; Hampe, Prayers from Prison, 86-89; Henkys, Gefangnisgedichte, 26-28, 66-90, ct passim. [Sce esp. Ilenkys, Geheimnis der Fretheit, 262-82, on issues surrounding the musical settings of this poem, 282-87; see also Schénherr, “Die letzte Strophe."—NL/JDG| [2.| [Cf Bonhoeffer’s December 19, 1944, letter to Maria von Wedemeyer, which included the poem: “Our homes will be very quict at this time. But I have often found that the quicter my surroundings, the more vividly I sense my connection with you all” (in Bismarck and Kabitz, Love Letters from Cell 92, 268).—NL/JDG] [3.] Cf. Bismarck and Kabitz, Love Letters from Cell 92, 269 |trans. altered]: “It is a great, invisible realm we live in, of whose real existence we have no doubt. When it says in the old children’s song about the angels: ‘two who cover me, two who awaken me’ [zweie, die mich decken, zweie, die mich wecken|, this protection night and day by invisible powers of good is something that we adults today need no less than the children.” Text of the children’s song, titled “Abendgebet” (Evening Prayer), in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, 3:253; a well-known musical setting is in the Humperdinck opera Hansel und Gretel (“Abends, will ich schlafen gehn, vierzehn Engel um mich stehn” [When at night I go to sleep, fourteen angels watch do keep]). See also Luther (WA 34/2:247, 28, and 248, 16-18, Sermon on Michaelmas, September 29, 1531: “I should soon accustom a child from the youngest age on to say: Dear child, you have an angel; when you pray in the morning and the evening, this angel will be by you, will sit by your little bed, will be dressed in a little white cloak, and will take care of you, rock you and keep you safe.” Henkys in Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefangnisgedichte, 27 and 73n15, refers to Ps. 91:11. [Cf Henkys, Geheimnis der I'reiheit, 267ff. for

other references by Bonhoeffer to angels, e.g., in DBWE 6:385, ed. note 75.—NL/JDG] [4.] Ps. 139:5a: “You surround me on all sides and hold your hand over me” (Luther Bible).

550 Letters and Papers from Prison 3. And should you offer us the cup of suffering,!?! though heavy, brimming full and bitter brand, we ll thankfully accept it, never flinching, from your good heart and your beloved hand. 4. But should you wish now once again to give us the joys of this world and its glorious sun, then we’ll recall anew what past times brought us and then our life belongs to you alone.

5. The candles you have brought into our darkness, let them today be burning warm and bright, and if it’s possible,!! do reunite us! We know your light is shining through the night. 6. When now the quiet deepens all around us, Q, let our ears that fullest sound amaze of this, your world, invisibly expanding as all your children sing high hymns of praise. 7. By powers of good so wondrously protected, we wait with confidence, befall what may. God is with us at night and in the morning and oh, most certainly on each new day.

[5.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s meditation on Ps. 119 (1939-40), DBW 15:506: “But if God should really give one of his own children the cup of suffering for Christ’s sake, to drink to the bitter end on the cross and in death—and through all the ages God has honored only a few by asking this of them—then he will have certainly prepared their hearts in such a way that they are the very ones who confess with a strong faith in a new and sovereign way: ‘Happy are those who walk in the law of the Lord.” [6.] On the Gethsemane pericope alluded to here (Matt. 26:36-—46, esp. v. 39), see Henkys, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gefdngnisgedichte, 74-75. (Cf. 3/177, p. 480, and Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit, 274-75.—NL/]DG]

4/200 and 4/201 551

201. To Paula Bonhoeffer!!! 609 December 28, 1944 Dear Mama, To my very great joy I have just been given permission to write you for your

birthday.'*! I must do so in some haste since they want to post the letter right away. I really only have a single wish, and that is to give you some little pleasure in these days that are so bleak for you. Dear Mama, you must know that I think of you and Papa countless times each day, and that I thank God

that you are there for me and for the whole family. I know that you have always lived only for us, and that there has never been a life you could call your own. This is why everything that I experience, I can only experience as if together with you. It is a very great comfort to me that Maria is with you. I thank you, Mama, for all the love that has come from you to me in my cell in the past year and made every day easier for me. I believe that these difficult years have forged an even closer bond between us than ever before. I wish for you and Papa and Maria and for all of us that the new year might bring us a glimmer of light, at least here and there, and that we may yet have the joy of being together again. May God keep you both in good health!

With my most heartfelt wishes, dear, dear Mama, as I think of you on your birthday, Yours gratefully, Dietrich

[1.] NZ, A 81,212; handwritten in pencil from the Prinz-Albrecht-StraBe prison, Berlin. Previously published in LPP, 399-400. The birthday letter for Paula Bonhoeffer, like the one written on December 19, 1944, to Maria von Wedemeyer (Love Letters from Cell 92, 227-29), was delivered by police commissioner Franz Sonderegger; see 4/202, ed. note 7, and Bethge, “Liedpredigt zu “Von Guten Machten,’”” 145. [2.] On December 30.

Doc Letters and Papers from Prison 610 202. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! January 17, 1945 My dear Parents,

I am writing you today because of the People’s Offering [Volksopfer],!*! and I'd like to ask you to take complete charge of my things and dispose of them as you see fit. They said they would even accept a dinner jacket; please give mine away; I have an extra felt hat and a salt-and-pepper suit that’s too small, and a pair of brown loafers. You, dear Mama, have a better idea by now than I do of what I still have. In short, give away whatever anyone might need, without giving ita second thought. If there’s a question about anything, perhaps you can call Commissioner Sonderegger!!°! After all, in the past two years I’ve learned how little a person needs to get by. Especially here, with the inactivity of a long imprisonment, one feels the urgent need to do everything possible for the general good within the strict limits imposed on one. You will be able to appreciate this. When you think about how many people are now losing everything every day, one really has no claim on any kind of possessions. I know you think this way too, and I just wish T could contribute to this myself!—Is Hans Walter!!! really flying 611 in the east now? And Renate’s husband?! Many thanks for your letter, and thank Maria very much for her Christmas letter.!°! Here you read letters till you know them by heart!

[1.| NZ, A 81,213; handwritten; pencil; from the Prinz-Albrecht-StraBe prison, Berlin. Previously published in PP, 401-2. [2.] During the period of interrogations in the Reich Central Security Office, which at times were conducted more openly (cf. DBWE 16:462—64 and 665-67, and DB-ER, 904-5), Goebbels initiated a program called the Volksopfer (people's offering or sacrifice), which Bonhoeffer used as an opportunity to write this last letter that anyone received from him. [3.] This sentence added later; see also ed. note 7. [4.] Hans-Walter Schleicher. [5.] In late October 1944, Bethge was transferred from the Italian front to the Reich Central Security Office on KurfiirstenstraBe in Berlin and sent to the Lehrter StraBe prison for political prisoners connected with the July 20 conspiracy. During the interrogations (in connection with investigation of the cases against Rudiger Schleicher and Klaus Bonhoeffer), his contacts with Hans von Dohnanyi, Friedrich Justus Perels, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were not discovered. The investigations in Bethge’s case dealt with the Confessing Church, his sense of responsibility toward Jews, his associations with conspiratorial visitors in the Schleicher home, and his failure to report such contacts. After being formally discharged from the army and charged, Bethge’s trial date before the People’s Court was set for May 15, 1945 (see Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 157-62, especially 161-62.) [6.] Both letters were lost.

4/202 553 I have a few more favors to ask: Unfortunately no books were handed in for me today. Commissioner Sonderegger would accept them on another day if Maria brings them.!”! I would be very grateful if she did. Matches, facecloths, and towel were also missing this time. Forgive me for saying this; everything else was really splendid! Thank you very much! Could I please get toothpaste and a few coffee beans?!*! and a laxative? Could you, dear Papa, order from the library H. Pestalozzi, Lienhard and Abendstunden eines Linsiedlers; P. Natorp, Sozialpadagogik; and Plutarch, Grose Manner: Biographien?'!

I’m doing well. You two just see that you stay healthy. I thank you for everything. Give Maria my fond greetings and thanks. Also all my brothers and sisters and mother-in-law. |! Yours ever gratefully, Dietrich

Please drop off some stationery with the commissar, too!!!"

[7.] Police commissioner Franz Sonderegger, who had a weakness for Maria, granted

permission for food parcels, laundry, and books to be accepted outside the normally appointed Wednesday time for delivering them. Since postal correspondence was no longer possible after Bonhoeffer’s transfer to Prinz-Albrecht-StraBe, the poem “By Powers of Good” (4/200), the hastily written birthday letter to Paula Bonhoeffer (4/201), and the letter of January 17, 1945 (4/202) reached their recipients via Maria von Wedemeyer. [8.] “Anda few coffee beans?” added later. \9.] Bonhoeffer was transferred from Berlin before he could receive the books by Heinrich Pestalozzi (Lienhard und Gertrud: Kin Buch fiir das Volk and Abendstunden eines Kinsiedlers) and Natorp (Sozialpddagogik: Theorie der Willenserziehung auf der Grundlage der

Gemeinschaft); see 4/203, p. 554. The volume of Plutarch, Grofe Griechen und Romer: Ausgewahlte Lebensbilder, a gift from Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer for Dietrich’s thirty-ninth birthday (see 4/203, and 4/204, ed. note 1), accompanied Bonhoeffer after he was taken from Berlin to Schénberg (see Bethge, Bethge, and Gremmels, Life in Pictures, 156); DB-ER, 927: “He wrote his name and address in large letters with a blunt pencil in the front, back, and middle of his Plutarch volume, leaving the book behind to reveal a trail in the subsequent chaos.” [10.] “And mother-in-law” added later. [11.] Note in the margin.

554 Letters and Papers from Prison 612 203. From Karl Bonhoeffer!!! February 2, 1945

Dear Dietrich, To make things easier for the censors I’m writing this birthday letter!?! on the typewriter. | hope you are able to get it. Of course, it would be nicer if we were allowed to visit you. What we wish for you and for ourselves in this new year of your life needs no words. Our thoughts, which are with you daily in any case, will be with you especially the day after tomorrow. Maria will send her thoughts this way especially. She is taking her little brother and sisters to relatives, so she is not here just now.|3] Aunt Elisabeth!*] has gone to Warmbrunn. Suse is here with her children and wants to remain here if possible. Hans Walter is in the west. Unfortunately | had no luck at the library. Pestalozzi is only given out for the reading room; why, | don’t know, but | will inquire about it with a senior librarian | know. Natorp is checked out. Karl-Friedrich had thought of getting you the Plutarch for your birthday.?! Only the cake comes from us. Maria will surely feel the pain of not being able to bring something herself. In any case, we old folks want to stay here. As a doctor, perhaps | can still help out somewhat, and Mama will have to be my assistant. | do hope for permission to speak with you soon. At my age one has the obligation to put one’s affairs in order, to the extent that 613. is possible. Mama had a bothersome boil in her ear, but it’s a bit better today. We send you fond greetings. The memory of many beautiful experiences and the hope that your time of testing might soon be over will make your birthday a tolerable one. Your Father

[1.] NZ, A 81,214; typescript; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Excerpt previously published in LPP, 402. Written the day the death sentences were pronounced on Klaus Bonhoeffer, Rudiger Schleicher, Friedrich Justus Perels, and Hans John; cf. DBWE 16, 1/236, p. 462, ed. note 8. [2.] For Bonhoeffer’s birthday on February 4, 1945. [3.] Cf. Ruth von Wedemeyer to Paula Bonhoeffer, January 30, 1945 (Love Letters from Cell 92, 275-76): “Dear Frau Bonhoeffer! P've had to be very hard on you, so please forgive me. Despite twelve degrees [centigrade] of frost and an icy east wind, I’ve sent Maria off to the west in a covered wagon together with my three other children, Frau Dépke and her own two children, Fraulein Rath, who has a high temperature, and Frau Dimel, who's very delicate. ...I need her help very badly now. It’s really far too much for her. . . . Join me in praying that she proves equal to her difficult task.” [4.] Elisabeth von Hase, sister of Paula Bonhoeffer. [5.] See 4/202, ed. note 9, for Bonhoefter’s list of desired books.

4/203 and 4/204 555 204. From Karl Bonhoeffer!!! February 7, 1945

Dear Dietrich,

Our birthday letter for the fourth that we wanted to bring on Saturday did not reach you because of the bombing raid. During the raid we were sitting in the S-Bahn [railway car] in the Anhalter train station; it wasn’t a very pretty sight. Apart from the fact that we looked like chimney sweeps afterward, we came away unscathed. But afterward, when we tried to get to you, we were very worried, since they wouldn't let us anywhere near you because of the unexploded bombs.|4] The next day we heard that the prisoners were unharmed; | hope it’s true. As for the family, Maria is accompanying her Patzig siblings as they head westward. Aunt Elisabeth is in Warmbrunn. Suse is here with her children and wants to remain here. Hans Walter is in the west. Unfortunately | had no luck at the library. Pestalozzi is only given out forthe 614 reading room. Natorp is out. Karl Friedrich had decided to give you the Plutarch for your birthday. | hope this letter reaches you. We hope for permission to visit

you soon. At our age there are some things to take care of that one needs to discuss with one’s children. | am typing this for the sake of legibility.

Warmest greetings [ Your Father]

[1.] NL, A 81,215; typescript; from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Previously published in LPP, 403. The letter is the father’s second attempt to reach his son after the previous letter of February 2 was not permitted to be handed in for him (see explanatory notes to 4/203). Since February 7, 1945, was a Wednesday, the usual day for delivering parcels, Bonhoeffer’s parents made another attempt to enter the Reich Central Security Office. The parcel containing the Plutarch volume was accepted this time, but not the letter; the parents were not allowed to see their son. On the afternoon of February 7, Bonhoeffer was taken away from Berlin, destination unknown. Only on the next Wednesday on which parcels could be delivered, February 14, did Maria von Wedemeyer and Bonhoeffer’s parents discover that there was no longer a recipient for their gifts in the Prinz-Albrecht-StraBe prison. [See Emmi Bonhoeffer’s description of accompanying Bonhoeffer’s parents through this air raid in Barnett, For the Soul of the People, 185.—]DG] [2.] See DB-ER, 915.

556 Letters and Papers from Prison 205. Maria von Wedemeyer to Ruth von Wedemeyer!!! Flossenburg, February 19, 1945

Dear Mother, Unfortunately my whole journey to Bundorf and Flossenburg was completely in vain. Dietrich isn’t here at all. Who knows where he is. In Berlin they won't tell me and in Flossenburg they don't know. A pretty hopeless situation. But what am | supposed to do now? If | stay in Berlin, our Patzig friends!?! will show up, and that won't help Dietrich. If | get there too soon, I'll be conscripted into the Flakl3] or who knows what. If | stay in Bundorf, then I'll be so awfully far away from you all and won’t know how I'll ever get back to you. | really think it makes relatively little sense to return to Berlin now. Especially if | can’t even take care of Dietrich!!! Of course, this is a reason, but that does go on without me, too.

| think I’ll stay here for a while. Please do send me a telegram to Bundorf when you start out for Behme,|4] so I’ll know where you are and | won’t head off 615 inthe completely wrong direction. It’s terrible that I still have no news of you or of the family at all. But how lovely Ruth-Alice’s letter was.[?! I’m still enjoying it to this day. If | only knew what is happening with Doris.!°! Apparently she didn’t get out in time. I’m feeling utterly miserable, but that’s only because I’ve been on the train for two days now, had to walk seven kilometers to get there, and then, without any prospect of hearing anything, had to trudge the same seven kilometers back again. Now | guess it will take another two days to get back to Bundorf. | took charge of Christoph!”! right away again, but he is terribly spoiled and | am just always so tired.

[1.] NZ, A 81,216; handwritten; postcard, with printed motto: “The Fuhrer knows naught but struggle, toil and care. Let us relieve him of the share that we are able to take on.” Excerpt previously published in LPP, 403-4. [Cf. Love Letters from Cell 92, 276-77. —JDG]

[2.] The Soviet troops, which had already reached Patzig by late January 1945.

[3.] Women and school-aged children could also be drafted into air-defense units toward the end of the war. | Flak: Flug-Abwehr-Kanone, 1.e., antiaircraft gun.— [DG]

[4.] The Behme estate in Westphalia, residence of the Laer family. [5.] Ruth-Alice von Bismarck. [6.] Doris Fahle, a friend of Maria von Wedemeyer; cf. Love Letters from Cell 92, 2, 19, 199, et passim. [7.] Christoph Freiherr von Truchse8, son of Dietrich and Hedwig von TruchseB in Bundort.

4/205 and 4/206 557 But | love you very much and long for you so terribly and wish I’d hear from you. I’m sure you must have written, though. What news from Hans-Werner?1®] Fondest love and kisses to everyone, and especially my refugees. Lovingly yours, Maria

206. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer!!! February 28, 1945

Dear Dietrich, We have heard nothing from you since your departure from Berlin, and presumably you have not heard from us either. The frequent raids of late have done us no harm apart from a few broken windowpanes, so you need not be anxious. And the rest of the family remain in good health. Maria is traveling to help her refugee siblings!?! from the east settle with their relatives,!?] so Mama, in addi-

tion to taking care of the household, is working as my receptionist, rather too 616 much for her along with everything else that comes with caring for the extended family.

We are worried about your health. We would like to send you the laundry and the little things we were able to send before, but we haven't yet found a way to do so. | hope Christel will find out something today at Prinz-Albrecht-StraBe.|41

lf you are able, let us hear something from you soon. They should give more frequent permission to write to folks as old as we are. Your Father My dear Dietrich!

My thoughts are with you day and night, worrying how you might be faring. | hope you can work and read a bit and that things are not getting you down! May God help you and us through this difficult time. Your old Mother We are staying in Berlin, come what may.

[8.] Hans-Werner von Wedemeyer, Maria’s younger brother.

[1.] NL, A 81,217; typed carbon copy with handwritten addition and later note by Paula Bonhoeffer from Berlin-Charlottenburg. Previously published in LPP, 404. [2.] See 4/203, ed. note 3. [3.] “With their relatives” added later in Paula Bonhoeffer’s handwriting. [4.] [The Gestapo headquarters and location of the Gestapo prison where Hans von Dohnanyi was imprisoned.—] DG]

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Epilogue

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THE SURVIVOR LOOKS BACK KARL-FRIEDRICH BONHOEFFER TO Hts CHILDREN!!!

June 1945 619 | want to tell you about all those things. Why? Because my thoughts are there now, there in the rubble from where no news gets through to us, where just three months ago | visited Uncle Klaus, the death-row inmate, in prison. Those Berlin prisons! What did | know about them just a few years ago, and with what different eyes have | looked at them since. The Charlottenburg interrogation prison, where Aunt Christel was held for a while; the Tegel military interrogation prison, where Uncle Dietrich was interned for a year and a half; the Moabit military prison with Uncle Hans; the SS prison on Prinz-AlbrechtStraBe, where Uncle Dietrich was kept behind bars in the cellar for six months; and the Lehrter StraBe prison, where they tortured Uncle Klaus and tormented Uncle Riidiger, and where they remained two more months after their death sentences. | waited in front of the heavy iron gates of all these prisons when | was in Berlin “on business” in the last few years. | accompanied Aunt Ursel and Aunt Christel, Aunt Emmi and Maria there; they often went there daily to deliver or pick up things. They often made the trip in vain, they often had to listen to insults from contemptible officials, but sometimes, too, they found a friendly guard who thought like a human being and delivered a greeting, accepted a parcel outside the prescribed hours, or gave food to the prisoners in spite of the rules.

[1.] Excerpt from a letter from Leipzig to the family, who had evacuated to Friedrichsbrunn, at the time Leipzig was transferred from U.S. to Soviet military administration. The original of the letter, first printed in the 1970 revised edition of Widerstand und Ergebung (LPP, 409-10), is now lost. [See DB-ER, 932-33, trans. altered here.—JDG]

561

562 Letters and Papers from Prison Ah, bringing food to the prison! It wasn’t all that easy in those last years, and

620 Aunt Ursel in particular was never content with what she was able to do. In the process she became skinny as a rail. There were tragic scenes when Uncle Rudiger sent the food back out and had the guard tell Aunt Ursel he had enough. Who was to believe that of him? Aunt Ursel would send it back in, and out it would come again. Now, Uncle Klaus was different! He always ate everything sent to him. Uncle Dietrich didn’t have it quite as bad as long as he was held at Tegel. He was on good terms there with the prison staff, and the prison commandant was humane. Uncle Hans, too, wasn’t too bad off at first. His prison commandant treated him almost like a friend. But then Hans fell ill and was taken to Professor Sauerbruch’s surgical clinic at Charité hospital, where | saw him for the last time. After he was returned to the prison, he got scarlet fever and diphtheria and was in bed for nearly six months with a serious case of postdiphtheria paralysis, then ended up in the concentration camp at Oranienburg!?] and in the state hospital in Berlin. And now! The last time | was in Berlin was in late March. | had to return shortly before Grandfather’s seventy-seventh birthday. Uncle Klaus and Uncle Rudiger were still alive. Through his doctor, Uncle Hans sent news that was not entirely hopeless. There was not a trace of Uncle Dietrich, whom the SS had removed from Berlin in early February. The last time | spoke on the phone with your grandparents was, | think, about April 8, when | called them from Leipzig shortly before leaving there for Friedrichsbriinn to join you there. At that time everything was still unchanged. It’s been more than two months since then. | wonder what all might have happened from that time on before the Russians took over Berlin? A man who came from there told me that four thousand political prisoners were killed shortly before the Russians got there. And | wonder what happened during the capture and in its aftermath? Is everyone still alive? Did your grandparents manage all right through those difficult days? Both were already on the verge of exhaustion even before this. Grandma had suffered frequent bouts of weakness and loss of memory in recent years as a result of overwork, anxiety, and malnutrition. They have no proper household

[2.] Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin.

Epilogue 563 help. Uncle Dietrich spoke to someone at some length somewhere near Passau. 621 as late as April 5.2] From there he was supposed to be taken to the Flossenbiirg concentration camp, near Weiden. Why isn’t he here yet?!4]

[3.] On April 5, 1945, the prisoner transport carrying Bonhoeffer along with several others made an intermediary stop in Regensburg. See Db-ER, 922-23, [4.] Bethge added the following note to the epilogue of the 1970 edition of Widerstand und Ergebung (cf. LPP, 411; trans. altered here—JDG]: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in the concentration camp at Flossenburg on April 9. With the capitulation, all communications in Germany were broken off for months, Maria von Wedemeyer received the news of Bonhoeffer’s death in June in West Germany. Bonhoeffer’s parents did not hear the news until late July. Hans von Dohnanyi was killed on April 9 in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. Only at the trial of members of the Reich Central Security Office did his wife, Christine, learn the circumstances of his death. Klaus Bonhoeffer and Rudiger Schleicher were taken along with others on April 23 from the prison at Lehrter Strabe 3 and executed by shooting. By late May, Bethge, who had been released from the same prison on April 25 and had been looking into what had become of the others, was able to confirm their deaths with certainty to the family. Only the farewell letters from Klaus Bonhoeffer still exist. Bonhoeffer’s parents died in the Marienburger Allee home in Berlin, his father in December 1948, his mother in February 1951.”

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= ee? az ,

CHRISTIAN GREMMELS

EpITOR’S AFTERWORD

“I’ve often wondered here where we are to draw the line between necessary 623 resistance [Widerstand] to ‘fate’ and equally necessary submission [Ergebung].”! In searching for a German title for Bonhoeffer’s prison letters and papers, Eberhard and Renate Bethge found it in the letter of February 21, 1944, in which this sentence appears: “Widerstand und Ergebung,” resistance and submission.'*! In the original manuscript, Bonhoeffer added the word “here” above the line as an unmistakable reference to the particular place where his letters and papers were written: the military prison in BerlinTegel, the place of political imprisonment that simultaneously became a place of radical theological reflection for the prisoner facing interrogation. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken to the military prison in BerlinTegel!! on April 5, 1943, he entered a world that was utterly alien to him.

“The prison had about eight hundred prisoners. Although some were ordinary criminals, most were members of the armed forces (soldiers and

[1.] 2/115, p. 303, emphasis added; see also p. 304: “So the boundaries between resis-

tance and submission can’t be determined as a matter of principle, but both must be there and both must be seized resolutely.” Henceforth, cross-references to citations from elsewhere in this volume are given in parentheses in the text. [2.] See Eberhard Bethge’s account in Erstes Gebot und Zeitgeschichte, 137-38.

[3.] The military detention center of the Berlin Command Headquarters included the main headquarters (on Lehrter StraBe 61, Berlin NW 40, under commandant Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Maa), two branches (Berlin-Tegel, SeidelstraBe 39, under Captain Walter Maetz; and a prison at Lehrter StraBe 3, Berlin NW 40), a secondary branch (Alt-Moabit 12a, Berlin NW 40), and the infirmary on Lindenberger Weg, Haus 13, in Berlin-Buch.

565

566 Letters and Papers from Prison noncommissioned officers) ... who had been charged with some military or political transgressions and were awaiting trial. Strict discipline was enforced, and life was governed by the ringing of a bell in the center of the 624 building. The building itself had the shape of a cross ...and the entrances to all the cells could be viewed from the control center.” After the “admission procedures were carried out correctly” (p. 343), Bonhoeffer was placed in an isolation cell on the fourth floor. Six months later, in September 1943, because of the increasing risk of Allied air attacks (p. 344), he was put in a cell two floors lower, on station A IV, cell 92.

| “The door slammed shut and locked.” This line from Bonhoeffer’s poem “The Past” (p. 418) reflects the caesura that imprisonment meant for him. The world “out there,” to which all access had been severed, was now juxtaposed—unwillingly—over against a world “in here,” and because the entire

episode of Bonhoelfer’s arrest and transport to prison occurred so suddenly and so violently, this coerced alteration of Bonhoeffer’s life and world meant that he was now forced “to come to terms and put up with a completely new situation” (p. 56).

Bonhoeffer was not alone in this experience. He shared it with his sister Christine, who was detained in the police prison on Kaiserdamm until April 30, 1943, charged with “aiding high treason,” and with his brotherin-law Hans von Dohnanyi, who was incarcerated in the military detention center at Lehrter StraBbe 61, charged by the Gestapo with being the “initiator and intellectual leader of the movement for removal of the Fihrer.”!°! In the winter of 1940-41, Dohnanyi had recruited Bonhoeffer to assist the 625 military resistance group that was based in the Foreign Office of Military Intelligence (Ausland/Abwehr) in the Armed Forces High Command. The number of other family members imprisoned grew as well. On October 1, 1944, Bonhoeffer’s brother Klaus was arrested; this was followed by the arrests on October 4 of his brother-in-law Ridiger Schleicher,!®! and on [4.] Latmiral, in a March 6, 1946, letter to Gerhard Leibholz, in “Die Begegnung.” Bonhoeffer himself mentioned that there were approximately seven hundred prisoners;

see? (1S p:2 20. [5.] Leber, with Brandt and Bracher, Das Gewissen steht auf, 90. Regarding Hans von Dohnanyi, see DB-ER, 800-810; Strohm, “Der Widerstandskreis,” 231-86; H. E. Todt, gl Bai Bonhoeffer-Dohnanyi-Kreis”: H. E. Todt, “Komplizen, Opfer und Gegner des Hitlerregimes, 32-40; Chowaniec, Der “Tall Dohnanyt”; Meyer, Unternehmen Sieben.

[6.] Regarding Klaus Bonhoeffer and Rudiger Schleicher, see Bethge and Bethge, Last Letters of Resistance, 7-28; R. Bethge, “Bonhoeffer’s Family and Its Significance for His

Theology”; Moltmann, “Klaus und Dietrich Bonhoeffer”; Bracher, “Rtiidiger Schleicher”; DBWE 16, 1/236, pp. 460-61.

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 567 October 30 of Eberhard Bethge. Hence the wider Bonhoeffer family shared

the consequences of their joint decision to participate in the conspiracy, confirming the assessment of the chief of the Gestapo and of the SS security service, in his summary of the charges related to the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, that an entire circle of conspirators was “grouped around the name Bonhoeffer.”!!

Life in the prison cell was initially agonizing, above all because of the loss of autonomy.!®! Initially life in prison in the larger sense probably oppressed Bonhoeffer more than he admitted even to himself, especially the structure imposed by a strictly organized daily routine: wake-up at 6:00 a.m., a half-hour walk in the courtyard during the afternoon, the evening meal at 4:00 p.m., “last post” at 6:00 p.m., including being monitored during the rare opportunities to speak with visitors and during the exchange of laundry and packages.!"!

The loss of his familiar world in the early period of imprisonment 626 plunged Bonhoelfer into a crisis whose stages he recorded on the back of a note (1/12). The passage begins with a series of key words, among which “discontent,” “apathy,” and “dullness” express that particular sadness of heart that Bonhoeffer himself described as tristiztta and acedia, the burdensome companions of his life (p. 180). The thought of suicide concludes the series: “suicide, not out of a sense of guilt, but because I am practically dead

already, the closing of the book, sum total.”!!°! These handwritten notes, however, show that Bonhoeffer retracted the thought of suicide, by crossing out the passage from “discontent” to “closing of the book,” which corresponds with his explicit rejection of suicide in his first letter to Eberhard [7.] Jacobsen, Spiegelbild einer Verschworung, L:444.

[8.] On the conditions in the Tegel prison, see Bonhoeffer’s account of his experiences during air raids (2/80) and his general prison report (2/131); see also Latmiral, “Einige Erinnerungen der Haft’; S. DreB, “Meetings in Tegel”; Beesk, “Theologische Existenz am Ort der Gefangenschaft,” 11-61. [9.] Concerning laundry exchanges and the package deliveries, see S$. Dre, “Meetings in Tegel,” 215: “The air in the waiting room is even thicker than in the corridors, but for weeks I have known that ‘without permission to see prisoner go directly to the package office.’ The waiting people are glued to the narrow wooden bench along the wall, holding their small suitcases and parcels carefully, almost tenderly, in their laps. Nobody here who has not put on a mask; no word is said beyond what is necessary. So we sit and wait, rigid, a silent community.” Occasionally this weekly opportunity to drop off packages might even include brief contact with the prisoner; see 2/73, ed. note 44. [10.] See 1/12, p. 74. The word “suicide” also appears in two Tegel notes associated with the drama fragment in the third scene, where Bonhoeffer dealt with this topic once again (probably in July 1943). See NL, A 86, 8 and 9 (“8. [‘guilt’ is crossed out] Suicide / 9. Guilt. Extinguish? Does it do any good?”), published in DBWE 7: 242; there see also 52-59, and 69. Cf. also 2/73, ed. note 9.

568 Letters and Papers from Prison Bethge: “But I have told myself from the beginning that I will do neither human beings nor the devil this favor; they are to see to this business themselves if they wish; and | hope I can stick to it” (2/73, p. 180). With the intensified self-awareness characteristic of one imprisoned, Bonhoeffer wrote his parents on May 15, 1943: “However, I have never understood as clearly as I have here what the Bible and Luther mean by ‘temptation’ [Anfechtung]. The peace and serenity by which one had been carried are suddenly shaken without any apparent physical or psychological reason” (1/17, p. 79). During this initial period the most disturbing question for him was “whether it is really the cause of Christ for whose sake I have inflicted such distress on all of you; but soon enough I pushed this thought out of my head as a temptation [Anfechtung] and became certain 627 that my task was precisely the endurance of such a boundary situation with all its problematic elements, and became quite happy with this and have remained so to this day” (2/73, p. 180). Bonhoelfer’s success in coping with the “powers of temptation” (Luther) was also the result of an inner discipline he imposed on himself to counter the external discipline of the prison regulations. That daily routine became the framework within which Bonhoeffer subdivided his own day: “In the morning alter breakfast, from 7:00 a.m. on more or less, I do theology, then [1] write until noon; in the afternoon I read, then comes a chapter from Delbruck’s world history, some English grammar, of which I always have all

sorts of things to learn, and finally, depending on energy, I write or read some more. In the evening I am then tired enough to be glad to le down, if not yet to sleep” (2/65, p. 167). The fixed daily routine included physical exercise, washing with cold water, memorizing texts, and reading the Bible and the Daily Texts. No deviations were permitted: “I was sometimes tempted simply not to get up at six in the morning as usual—which would certainly have been possible—and instead to sleep longer. Up to now I have still been able to force myself not to give in to this temptation; it was clear to me that this would have been the beginning of capitulation, from which presumably worse things would have followed. This external and purely physical order (morning calisthenics, cold-water wash) gives some strength for inner order” (2/88, p. 227). When he sensed he was beginning to accommodate and accustom himself to the situation, he was careful to distinguish “physical” from “psychological deprivation.” One grows accustomed to the former, but not to the latter, “quite the contrary. I have the feeling that what Iam seeing and hearing makes me years older, and the world often feels for me like a nauseating burden.” The letter of December 15, 1943, from which these sentences are taken also make clear, however, that such descriptions of his situation are connected to his coping with the situation: “And finally I

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 569 would begin to tell you, for example, that, despite everything I have written, it is horrible here, that the dreadful impressions often pursue me well into

the night, and that I can cope with them only by reciting countless hymn verses” (p. 220). As helpful as reciting hymns was his decision to focus “on 628 what one still has and what can be done” (1/17, p. 79), as well as his warning against “taking my own minor privations too seriously” (1/25, p. 98) and his realization that it “is always good to restore one’s levelheadedness and sense of humor by taking a cold shower in order not to lose one’s balance” (1/31, p. 111). In 1943, eight months after his arrest, Bonhoeffer wrote Eberhard

Bethge on the second Sunday in Advent: “For the psychic overcoming of difficulties, there [exists] an easier way of ‘thinking past adversities —I have more or less learned to do this—and a more difficult one: to hold them consciously in one’s gaze and overcome them; I can’t do that yet. But one must learn this as well” (2/84, p. 216).

A few years earlier, in his book Discipleship, Bonhoeffer had written “that knowledge cannot be separated from the existence in which it was acquired.”!!!! In Tegel he now acquired insights intimately associated with his existence as a prisoner: “By the way, a prison cell like this is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside” (2/73,

p. 188). Four weeks later, in anticipation of Christmas, he wrote: “That misery, sorrow, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God than according to human judgment; that God turns toward the very places from which humans turn away; that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn—a pris-

oner grasps this better than others, and for him this is truly good news” (2/87, p. 225). Among these insights so intimately associated with imprisonment was Bonhoeffer’s decision not to turn the fear generated among the prisoners by air raids into “an opportunity for religious blackmail” (2/106, p. 276). Bonhoeffer’s theological reflection several months later is like a summary of his experiences in this place of imprisonment: “Don’t be — 629 alarmed! I will definitely not come out of here as a ‘homo religiosus’! Quite the opposite: my suspicion and fear of ‘religiosity’ have become greater here than ever” (2/73, p. 189). Bonhoeffer’s prison existence also included longing and homesickness: “In the months here in prison I have had a quite terrible longing a couple of times” (2/88, p. 227). He wrote of “craving for fresh air” and “to enjoy an evening in the garden again” (1/37, p. 119), of his “hunger for an evening of trios, quartets, or singing” (2/71, p. 176). The longing to participate in the [11.] DBWE 4:51.

570 Letters and Papers from Prison outside world could be eased but not quenched in prison by the occasional visible signs of “our connection in spirit” (1/29, p. 107). Such signs took one of three forms: First, as packages,!'*! which Bonhoeffer called an “indirect 630 connection” (1/17, p. 80). Second, as the visitation privileges,!!*! which permitted Bonhoeffer occasionally and only briefly to meet with those closest to him (2/79, p. 199) and to be “in touch with the world where I belong” (2/65, p. 167). Above all, however, it was through the Jetters, which the prisoner used to assure himself of the nearness of those from whom he was separated.

[12.] The weekly “parcel day” was initially Wednesday: “Wednesday is thus always an

especially awaited and beautiful day” (1/9, p. 67). Later the day was changed: “When one lives in the face of predetermined dates, as we [Bonhoeffer’s parents] are presently doing from Friday to Friday, when we deliver your weekly packages” (2/63, p. 163). As Bonhoeffer noted in his prison report (2/131), the prison food of “turnips and potatoes” (1/29, p. 107) and “this never-ending gruel” (2/44, p. 136) was inadequate (see in this regard Beesk, “Theologische Existenz am Ort der Gefangenschaft,” 13-15). He gratefully accepted these packages so that he might be as physically strong and healthy as possible (1/37, p. 119; 2/73, p. 188) for the interrogations before the Reich War Court. Such packages included “the first produce from the garden” in the spring (1/25, p. 99), “tomatoes” in the summer (1/37, p. 118), “grapes from the garden” in the fall (2/65, p. 167), and the expected “smoked goose” at Christmas (2/86, p. 219). These parcels from home, however, could not always balance out the insufficient prison food; reduced rations forced Bonhoeffer to admit to his parents in March 1944 that he sometimes “got a little hungry” (2/119, p. 316). Although Bonhoeffer regarded food as one of the “external things” (2/86, p. 220), in Tegel it nevertheless acquired significance far transcending anything external as shown by the theological reflections following upon the theme of “eating” (1/29, p. 107): “And then [when the food parcels arrive] the most material things become bearers of spiritual realitics. | believe this is analogous to the desire in all religions to have the spirit become visible in the sacrament”; similarly in the first letter to Eberhard Bethge (2/73, p. 189): “Every ‘material’ greeting I receive from you all is transformed here into a remembrance of table fellowship with you. Is it not an essential dimension of life precisely because it is a reality of the reign of God?” [13.] The granting of visiting permits [Sprecherlaubnisse] was in any event inadmissible prior to the conclusion of the investigation (cf. the rejection of Karl Bonhoeffer’s request, 1/15, p. 77) and was largely at the discretion of the senior Reich military prosecutor. Compared with the number of family members making such requests, the small number actually granted resulted in family members occasionally having to “negotiate” who would actually make use of them (2/125, p. 334: “With so many of us in the family, each one doesn’t get many chances, and parents and fiancée have priority”; see also 1/32, p. 112). For Eberhard Bethge the application for a permit to visit was possible without any “complications” (2/73, p. 186) only after his UK classification for the Foreign Office/ Military Intelligence had expired, that is, only after his military service had begun. Visits by Eberhard and Renate Bethge happened by chance (e.g., on November 26, 1943; see 2/79, ed. note 2), officially through the granting of a permit to visit, the first of which was mediated by Rudiger Schleicher for December 23, 1943 (2/89, p. 191), or by “transferal” (e.g., on May 29, 1944; see 3/146, ed. note 2). The unofficial possibility to meet in the

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition ave I]

In Tegel letters became the elixir of life for Bonhoeffer,''*! both those he received—“Here in the cell there is no greater joy than letters” (2/44, p. 137);

“It is as 1f the door of the prison cell opened for a moment, and I experienced with you a slice of life on the outside” (1/25, p. 97)—and the letters he wrote, especially those to his parents, to his friend Eberhard Bethge, and 631 to his fiancee, Maria von Wedemeyer. Bonhoeffer specifically engaged each of his correspondents by imagining their personal circumstances. His letters are characterized by an ability to identify with his correspondent’s current situation. For example, in writing to his nephew Hans-Walter Schleicher, who was doing his military training, Bonhoeffer encouraged him to report

the experiences of the “young people” of his generation: “What do they want and wish for themselves? What do they believe, and what are the guideposts of their lives?” (3/153, p. 409). Bonhoeffer was also capable of perceiving statements made in a letter from the perspective of the person making

them. When Christoph von Dohnanyi wrote in one of his letters (2/55, p. 154), “LTomorrow we all have permission to visit Papa,” Bonhoeffer asked, on behalf of his fourteen-year-old godson and nephew: “What sort of image

of the world must be forming in the mind of a fourteen-year-old when for months he has to write to his father and godfather in prison?” (2/64, p. 165). It is especially in his letters to Eberhard Bethge that Bonhoeffer made use of his ability to acknowledge the other person’s perspective alongside his own. Before the birth of Dietrich Bethge, Bonhoeffer reflected in a letter to the future father, who at that me was stationed far away in Italy: “It will not be easy to celebrate such a uniquely joyous day among strangers” (2/110, p. 289). After the child was born, he wrote a few weeks later: “The baptism of your child must often be on your mind” (2/124, p. 329). The most striking feature in Bonhoeffer’s letters is the degree to which

he either offered or concealed information about his own situation. In the fragmentary essay written in Tegel, “What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?”

Bonhoeffer suggested that “‘telling the ‘truth’ means different things, depending on where one finds oneself,” for “the relevant relationships must

Reich War Court even during the interrogation period was used by Bonhoeffer’s parents (see, e.g., 1/27, p. 102) and his fiancée; see the first meeting with Maria von Wedemeyer (1/31, p. 111). Bonhoeffer’s own precise familiarity with the guard schedules (see 3/151, p. 404) enabled him to suggest times when a favorably disposed “officer on duty” (3/152, p. 408) might even allow an unannounced, illegal visit (3/150, p. 402): “It would be best after four in the afternoon; then I can see to it that we are disturbed less.” [14.] See DB-ER, 838-40.

572 Letters and Papers from Prison be taken into account.”!!5! In line with this, Bonhoeffer took into account 632 the circumstances of each addressee to whom he wrote. Eberhard Bethge was the only one among them with whom Bonhoeffer knew he could be completely honest; none of the others should have to hear the whole truth: “Tam obliged to protect my parents and Maria; with you I will put on no pretense, nor you with me”!!®! (2/88, p. 235). Accordingly, Bonhoeffer’s letters to his parents were reserved. He made the effort to calm them up to the very end. Even the final letter that reached Marienburger Allee, written in the basement prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strabe, ends with the assurance “’m doing well” (4/202, p. 553). Nonetheless, the truth was not really hidden from Bonhoeffer’s parents. Despite all assurances to the contrary, there were enough references to the real situation for Karl and Paula Bonhoelffer to draw their own conclusions, quite aside from the fact that all those involved clearly knew far more than the letters related. Beginning with the first uncensored letter to Eberhard Bethge (2/73), the longest in the entire “illegal” correspondence, the special relationship between Bonhoeffer and Bethge is evident. It was characterized by a sense of mutual reliability and trust, the basis of which lay in the past and was confidently expected to endure into the future as well: “With you IT will put on no pretense, nor you with me. We never did so earlier and don’t ever wish to”!!7! (2/88, p. 235). The friends’ loyalty expressed itself in the “duty as a friend” in telling the truth (2/88, p. 235) and in mutual intercession and prayer: “Let us promise cach other to remain faithful in intercession for each other. I will pray for strength, health, patience, and preservation from conflicts and temptations for you. Please pray the same for me”™!'®! (2775 7p. 185).

633 Bonhoeffer used the correspondence with Bethge in a threefold fashion: First, to secure the past;!'! second, to claim the present;!*°! and third, to plan for the future.!*!) [15.] DBWE 16, 2/19, p. 602. [16.] Cf. also 4/178, p. 486.

[17.] Regarding Bethge’s own view of this friendship, see “My Friend Dietrich Bonhoetfer’s Theology of Friendship.” See also Bethge, “Der Freund Dietrich Bonhoefter und seine theologische Konzeption von Freundschaft"; Jamie S. Scott, ““From the Spirit's Choice and the Free Desire’”; also the works mentioned in 4/196, ed. note 1, and in Gremmels and Huber, Theologie und Freundschaft. |See also de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 59-73.—] DG]

[18.] Cf. also 2/73, p. 179, and 4/196. [19.] Section II] in this afterword. [20.| Section IV in this afterword. [21.] Section V in this afterword. Regarding Bonhoeffer’s own threefold distinction (Zettelnotizen 56) “the past belongs to me”—“the present belongs to me”—*“the future

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition ay be

Il “Yesterday | heard someone say that these last years have been lost years for him” (3/132, p. 352). Bonhoeffer immediately proceeded to test this statement against the course of his own life, specifically referring to his decision

to return to Germany from the United States shortly before the outbreak of the war,'??! concluding: “I’m glad I have never for one moment had that feeling; I’ve never even regretted my decision in the summer of ’39, Instead, Iam wholly under the impression that my life—strange as it may sound— has gone in a straight line, uninterrupted, at least with regard to how I’ve

led it” (3/132, p. 352). He addressed the same issue in the next letter to Bethge: “Neither of us has really experienced a break in his life.... Even 634 these times in which we are now living don't represent a break in the passive sense”!?5! (3/133, p. 358). Even though Bonhoeffer came to terms with the past course of his own life under the notion of “continuity’—*“Continuity with one’s own past is actually a great gift” (3/133, p. 358)—at the same

time he realized that “the experience of the past ...is demanded of me repeatedly” (3/157, p. 416).!*#!

The prison notes that Bonhoeffer wrote four weeks after his arrest (1/11 and 1/12) show that one of his earliest experiences in prison was the feeling of having lost his own past. “Different mental patterns of behavior toward the past,” including “forgetting,” “self-deception,” “idealizing,” “overcoming” (1/11, p. 71), and “distortion” (1/12, p. 74), all contributed to the “empizness of time” (1/11, p. 71). There is much to suggest that the experience of time, “which had become an enemy,”!*°! was one of the issues Bonhoeffer

belongs to me,” cf. Augustine, Confessions 11.20.26: “tempora sunt tria: praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris. ... praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de praesentibus contuitus, praesens de futuris exspectatio” (There are three tenses: the presence of what is past, the presence of what is present, and the presence of the future. ... The presence of what is past is memory, the presence of what is present is perception, the presence of what is coming is expectation). [22.] Cf. Bonhoeffer’s letter to Reinhold Niebuhr at the end of June 1939, DBW 15:210: “IT have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. ... Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. | know which of these alternatives [ must choose; but I cannot make that choice in security.” [23.] Concerning the continuation of this discussion and Bethge’s own position, see 3/168, p. 444; 3/172, p. 454; 4/194, p. 519. [24.] [See 1/12, pp. 73-74; 3/157, pp. 416-17.—]DG] [25.] DB-ER, 831.

574 Letters and Papers from Prison was addressing in his study on the sense of time. Bonhoeffer worked on this study, which did not survive the war, from mid-May to mid-June 1943,!76! After the conclusion of the interrogations in the Reich War Court, Bonhoeffer pursued the theme of the “past” in literary works. He himself began to write a drama, “the story of a middle-class [burgerlich] family,” “a rehabilitation of the bourgeoisie as we know it,” which he then reworked as a novel (2/73, p. 182),'*7! confronting National Socialism’s corruption of the

bourgeoisie. This venture gave Bonhoeffer the opportunity to immerse himself through creative writing in the cultural world “lost to him in Tegel Prison” and “allowed him to retrieve his personal past,” thereby preserving

635 “a continuity with his previous selfmage.”!*! As Bonhoeffer’s correspondence with his parents often shows, German literature!**! was one important part of this cultural world from which he came (1/37, p. 120): “In my own reading I now live entirely in the nineteenth century. During these past months, I have read Gotthelf, Stifter, Immermann, Fontane, and Keller with renewed admiration.” Through mutual book recommendations, Bonhoeffer’s and his parents’ correspondence served as a reading circle!’"! that confirmed a shared aesthetic sensibility and judgment, which also threw into relief the differing views of others, especially in Bonhoelfer’s literary exchange with his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer.!°!J [26.] May 15, 1943 (1/17, p. 79): “Lam currently trying my hand at a small study on the ‘sense of time’; June 4, 1943 (1/25, p. 98): “I have just written some more on the ‘sense of time’”; June 14, 1943 (1/29, p. 106): “The study on the sense of time is practically done.” Cf. in this regard also the afterword of DBWE 7, 195-96. [27.] See also 2/44, pp. 135-36. [28.] Zerner, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Prison Fiction,” 139; see also 144-47. Cf. also DBWE 7:8.

[29.| [Including Swiss and Austrian German authors.—]DG] [30.| See, e.g., Karl Bonhoeffer’s reaction upon being urged (1/17, p. 80) to read Jeremias Gotthelf’s Berner Geist: “In the evenings I sometimes read Gotthelf’s Berner Geist to Mama” (1/26, p. 100). When Paula Bonhoeffer announced (1/30, p. 108), “I’m bringing you Grandfather Hase’s /deale and Irrtiimer,” her son replied (1/31, p. 111): “I have read Grandfather's /deale and Inrtumer with great pleasure.” Eberhard Bethge was part of this reading circle: “Yes, Eberhard, I regret very much that we did not get to know Stifter together. .. . This will now have to be postponed until later” (2/73, p. 182). Cf. the list of reading material in prison that Bonhoeffer mentioned, DB-LR, 943-46. [31.] See 2/79, p. 203: “Unfortunately Iam not yet of one mind with Maria in the area of literature. She writes me such truly good, un-self-conscious letters, but she reads and sends me and loves, of all people, Rilke, Bergengruen, Binding, Wiechert, of whom I consider the latter three beneath our level and the first outright unhealthy.” Eberhard Bethge responded with a measure of reserve (2/96, p. 252): “Even with us, you had to wait awhile until we realized that Frank Thie®B wasn’t the ultimate and most exciting author!” Regarding this theme, see also the letter of February 18, 1944, in Love Letters from Cell 92, 154.

Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition B/D Bonhoeffer’s reading of nineteenth-century authors also colored the way

he came to terms with the present. One particularly influential writer in this regard was Adalbert Stufter, whom Bonhoeffer repeatedly mentioned in his letters from prison. He reported: “I am reading some Stifter nearly every day. The sheltered and concealed life of his characters—he is so pleasantly old fashioned in exclusively portraying sympathetic characters—has

something very soothing in this atmosphere” (1/25, p. 99), and “For me, Stifter’s greatness lies in the fact that he refuses to pry into the inner realm — 636 of the person, that he respects the covering and regards the person only very discreetly from without, as it were, but not from within” (2/84, p. 215). Although in literary matters Bonhoeffer described himself as someone who sings the praises of the old days (2/79, p. 203), the understanding of the “whole person” he gleaned from the protagonist in Stifter’s novel Witzko (2/106, p. 278) was a very Umely political reference to the totalitarian claims

of National Socialism that competed with Christianity. As Judge Roland Freisler put it: “One thing Christianity and we National Socialists have in common, and only one: we demand the whole man.”!’*! Both here and elsewhere, Bonhoeffer’s assessment of nineteenth-century literature was often also a critique of the present. His assessment of the “great scholarly figures” in Adolf von Harnack’s Geschichte der Koniglich Preupischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, for example, prompted the “nostalgic” question:

“Where do you see an intellectual ‘life’s work’ these days?” (2/115, p. 305).

This question in turn prompted a theological reflection on the fragmentation of contemporary life. There are fragments, such as Bach’s Art of the Fugue, “which remain meaningful for hundreds of years, because only God could perfect them. ...Tfour life is only the most remote reflection of such a fragment... then it is not for us, either, to complain about this fragmentary life of ours, but rather even to be glad of it” (2/115, p. 306). Bonhoeffer, however, not only reflected on the past within the llerary realm of drama and novel; he also sought to preserve it theologically. Eccl. 3:15, “God seeks out what has gone by,” assures us “that nothing of the past is lost, that God seeks out with us the past that belongs to us to reclaim it” (2/88, p. 229). The christological understanding of this assurance drew on the expression “whatever fails you / I will restore it all” from Paul Gerhardt’s hymn “Frohlich soll mein Herze springen” (2/88, p. 229). Bonhoeffer, who

read the church fathers in Tegel prison (2/73, p. 189), found this assurance confirmed in Irenaeus of Lyon’s doctrine of the recapitulatio mundi “a 637 magnificent and consummately consoling thought,” whose theological content Bonhoeffer succinctly articulated in catechetical form: “What does that [32.] See Moltke, Letters to Freya: 1939-1945, 609.

576 Letters and Papers from Prison mean, ‘I will restore it all’? Nothing is lost; in Christ all things are taken up, preserved. ... Christ brings all this back, indeed, as God intended, without being distorted by sin” (2/88, p. 230).'%9! IV

From the very outset, particularly given the constant threat of air raids, the prisoner Bonhoeffer tried to come to terms [Aneignung]'**! with the unavoidable and unrelenting situation of daily incarceration in a cell: “The daily threat to life most of us experience at present spurs us like nothing else to fill each moment” (2/117, p. 311). Bonhoeffer focused his keen observation primarily on the concrete here of the prison itself, and on the behavior of his fellow prisoners: “I often notice hereabouts how few people

there are who can harbor many different things at the same time. When bombers come, they are nothing but fear itself; when there’s something good to eat, nothing but greed itself; when they fail to get what they want, they become desperate. . . . Christianity, on the other hand, puts us into many different dimensions of life at the same time... . What a liberation it is to be able to think, and to hold on to these many dimensions of life in our thoughts” (3/152, p. 405). Bonhoelfer’s argumentation in this passage proceeded through three stages. First, he spoke of the behavior of others he considered worthy of attention because it was unfamiliar to him, in order to then establish a connection between this behavior and that which was more familiar. Finally, this comparison led to conclusions that at once also provided a guide to one’s own behavior. In this case, this judgment functioned as a liberating confirmation of the multidimensionality inherent in

Christianity and familiar to Bonhoeffer from his own home. This argu638 mentative pattern for coming to terms with the present also shaped the following passage: “Here I’m surrounded almost entirely by people clinging to their desires, so that they’re not there for anyone else; they don’t listen

anymore and aren't able to love their neighbor. I think that even here we have to live as if there were no wishes and no future, and just be our true selves. It’s remarkable then to see how much other people rely on us, look up to us, and even seek our advice” (2/122, p. 325). These attempts to decipher his new social situation by drawing on familiar insights from an earlier period, however, did not always confirm his original Christian views and their corresponding theological concepts, as the following passage from March 9, 1944, attests: “In general, I’m still finding three ideas that are [33.] Cf. in this regard also Love Letters from Cell 92, 192-23.

[34.] Concerning the notion of coming to terms with “alien worlds,” see esp. Alfred Schtitz’s essays “Der Fremde” and “Der Heimkehrer.”

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 577 widespread, partly expressed in superstitious customs: |. ‘Keep your fingers crossed.’ ... 2. “Touch wood.’ . . . 3. “No one can avoid his fate.’” Bonhoeffer translated these observations into theologically relevant language and concluded: “A Christian interpretation of these three points might be that they are reminders of intercession and church-community [Gemeinde], of God’s wrath and mercy, and of divine guidance. ... What I don’t see at all is any relic of an eschatological sort.” Unlike the earlier examples, here the

observations can be decoded at most only approximately through traditional theological concepts. Consequently, Bonhoeffer concluded this particular exercise by asking that his own findings be examined: “Or have you noticed any? Write to me sometime about whatever you have observed in this connection” (2/121, p. 322). In these observations and interpretations of individual passages in the Tegel correspondence, we see for the first time the theme that, beginning with the end of April 1944, Bonhoeffer would address theologically as the more explicit question of religion, religionlessness, and nonreligious interpretation.!°°! The theme of the “multidimensionality” of life also encompasses Bonhoeffer’s attempt to hold fast to other present moments while caught in the concrete present moment of Tegel. This is indicated not only by his temporal orientation from the church year, as shown by the Latin designations for Sundays that accompany the dates on his letters.!“°! The musical notations, 639 which Bonhoeffer wrote down from memory, show that the world of music was also present at Tegel, linked to the church year by the hymns of Advent, Christmas, and Easter, and by the compositions of Heinrich Schutz, and yet these transcended far beyond the sacred realm.'%’! Exposed as he was to the noise of the prison world, Bonhoelfer tried listening “with the inner ear alone”; “I’m getting an existential appreciation of Beethoven’s music from when he was deaf” (2/124, p. 332).

[35.] See section VIIT of this afterword. [36.] Cf. Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller, “Other Letters from Prison,” 27: “He lived by church holidays... rather than by the calendar month.” Love Letters from Cell 92, 209: ‘In here they (i.e., church festivals) always make special demands on one’s spiritual energy, but they're also a special source of strength.” [37.] The four examples of handwritten musical notation, reproduced as faithfully as

possible in the text, are from the following hymns: “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland,” Martin Luther (p. 202); “O stBer, O freundlicher,” Heinrich Schutz (p. 230); “Willkommen suBer Brautigam,” Vincent Lubeck (p. 243); Variation from Ludwig van Beethoven's Sonata in C-Minor (op. 111, second movement) (p. 332). Cf. also p. 543 (a lost notational greeting).

578 Letters and Papers from Prison V

Bonhoeffer’s preparation for life after prison runs like a red thread throughout the Tegel letters, and his anticipated trial*! loomed ahead of him as the gateway into that future. These plans for the future, references to which recede only after the failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, addressed a variety of issues associated with Bonhoeffer’s life and work. Personal plans concerned primarily the topic of marriage (2/73, p. 184):

“If lam free and not to be drafted for at least a couple of months, then I will get married. If I have only two to three weeks free until my induction, I will wait until the end of the war.”'5*! More unsettling than the time span were uncertainties, which Bonhoeffer addressed in the letters to Eberhard

640 Bethge: “Of necessity I have to live from the past; what is to come, which announces itself for me in Maria, still consists so much only in hints that it lies much more on the horizon of hope than in the realm of possession and tangible experience” (2/86, p. 232).°! Bonhoeffer harbored self-doubts about their age difference, about the religious background of Maria von Wedemeyer’s family in the Berneuchen movement, as well as about her “different intensity, which, on one hand, makes me very happy, but, on the other, makes me somewhat uneasy” (2/106, p. 277)—not least in light of the demands of the prolonged waiting period. Eberhard Bethge, the younger of the two who “in this case was actually the elder” (according to Gerard Rothuizen), patiently listened to his friend ’s self-objections. Here as well as elsewhere, he reacted by trying to reassure Bonhoeffer, even by ciling passages from authors such as Wilhelm Busch (2/94, p. 249): “Fear makes many things happen that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.”

[38.] See section VII of this afterword. [39.] See also 2/61, p. 161, and Love Letters from Cell 92, 186: “God is forever upsetting our plans, but only in order to fulfill his own, better plans through us.” [40.] See also 2/86, p. 221: “We have now been engaged nearly a year and still haven't ever had one single hour alone together! ... We have to consciously repress everything

that is usually part of the engagement period, the sensual-erotic dimension. ... Maria considers me a paragon of virtue and a model of Christian behavior, and in order to reassure her Iam obliged to write her letters like an ancient martyr and thus her image of me becomes ever more distorted.” [41.] In his replies Bethge also sometimes took the opportunity to take Maria von Wedemeyer’s position over against Bonhoeffer; see his reaction to the poem “The Past” (3/ 158), which revealed a crisis in Bonhoeffer’s relationship with his fiancée (cf. in this regard Love Letters from Cell 92, 315): “I did consider whether you ought to find a more ‘conciliatory’ title when you give it to her... . [lt could be too hard on her to make yourself known only in this way” (3/162, p. 433).

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 579 Bonhoeffer had already made some general statements about marriage in an earlier letter to his parents (September 25, 1943, 2/61, p. 161): “But these sorts of questions can be decided only in practice and not in advance.” Among Bonhoeffer’s plans for writing, his theological priority was finish-

ing his Ethics: “I... sometimes think my life is more or less behind me and all I have left to do is to complete my Ethics” (2/86, p. 222). There are indications that in Tegel Bonhoeffer pursued several of the themes he hoped to incorporate into Ethics."*! The “Outline for a Book” (4/187) was conceived 641 as an introductory study, and its structure and content suggest that it was meant to deal with many of the theological issues he had presented in letters to Bethge. Almost as an aside, he asked Bethge: “By the way, it would be very nice if you didn’t throw away my theological letters... . 1 might perhaps like to read them again later for my work” (3/172, p. 458).!48! In Tegel, Bonhoeffer also noticed that he enjoyed “free, nontheological creative writing” (2/61, p. 161). Bonhoeffer mentioned nothing more about any literary plans in his letters during 1944, but the experiences described

in his accounts of alerts (2/80) and of prison life (2/131) prompted his resolve to plan a statement on “a fundamental reform of criminal justice” later (2/88, p. 232).|44

Because the future was so uncertain in any event, Bonhoeffer hardly spoke about any career plans. He did, however, raise the problem on which everything would depend later (2/86, p. 221), asking Bethge “whether you think this trial, which has connected me to the Military Intelligence Office (and I can’t imagine that has remained a secret), may possibly endanger the exercise of my profession in the future.” Bethge discussed the question with

Hans Lokies, a member of the Berlin Council of Brethren, and returned with a reassuring message (2/94, pp. 248-49). Bonhoeffer never raised the issue again. What one notices instead is how intently his plans focused on the time immediately following the trial. He pursued the question, already mentioned in the first letter to Bethge, as to whether after a possible acquittal he might be stationed near Bethge in Italy.'*°! Bonhoeffer also wrote that he was “studying the medical corps handbook, for any eventuality” (2/101,

[42.] See the German editor’s foreword to this volume (DBW 8:9) and the toreword to DBW6 (p. 8). [43.] Cf. Bethge, In Zitz gab es keine Juden, 141-44.

[44.] Cf. 2/73, pp. 195-96. [45.] See 2/73, p. 183, and cf., e.g., 2/86, p. 223 and the beginning of 2/127 (the first page of which was destroyed).

580 Letters and Papers from Prison p. 263). Whereas at the beginning of the war he had briefly considered becoming a military chaplain himself,4°! he now discussed this as a possibil642 ity for Eberhard Bethge.'*”! Although the prospects were not very promising during the war,'**! Bonhoeffer nonetheless encouraged Bethge to pursue any and all contacts, particularly when Bethge’s military unit was affected by the Allied offensive and partisan skirmishes on the Italian front.!*¥! These attempts, however, came to nothing, and in conclusion Paula Bonhoeffer wrote on July 30, 1944: “In any case, it would have been a great exception” (4/185, p. 497). After the failure of the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt, planning for the future no longer seemed worth the effort.'°°! The letter written on July 21, 1944, focused “on the path that I have finally taken.” “So Iam thinking gratefully and with peace of mind about past as well as present things.” Bonhoeffer committed his own future to that of God: “May God lead us kindly through these times, but above all, may God lead us to himself” (4/178, p. 486).

[46.| Bonhoeffer had contacted military bishop Franz Dohrmann in 1939 offering his services as a chaplain; cf. the letter to the chief military chaplain Johannes Radtke on September 9, 1939 (DAW 15:262-63). The denial came in mid-February 1940 (sce Bonhoeffer’s letter of February 27, 1940, DBW 15, 1/179), citing the stipulation of the Army High Command that “only clerics who had themselves already served in the military can become field chaplains” (E. Muller, “Feldbischof unter Hitler,” 68). [47.] See 2/112, pp. 296-97; 3/138, p. 368.

[48.] “Diverse interests among state and party authoritics” prompted “personnel appointments in the area of military chaplaincy to be watched extremely critically and with suspicion”; indeed, such appointments were “one of the most important ‘sources of friction’ between the armed forces and the party” (Messerschmidt, “Zur Militarseelsorgepolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” 77). See also military bishop Franz Dohrmann’s letter (April 21, 1944) to church vice president Friedrich Hymmen: “You yourself know the restrictions affecting the selection of military chaplains, and that it was not possible for me to organize military pastoral care according to my own standards of suitability and selection of chaplains.” “My appointment of chaplains was restricted regarding both quality and quantity” (cited in Messerschmidt, “Zur Militarseelsorgepolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg,” 75). “Civilian clergy” appointed as military chaplains were investigated with regard to “espionage, politics, and criminal background”; they had to provide, among other documents, “proof of an Aryan background” and a “declaration of their willingness to support the National Socialist state without reservation” (Beese, Seelsorger in Uniform, 58-59; cf. Bethge’s comments in the letter of June 6, 1944, 3/160, p. 423). [49.] See Bethge, Jn Zitz gab es keine Juden, 136, 138.

[50.] Some remarks regarding an “abstract concept of the future,” which Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter that Bethge received in Italy on September 30 (see 4/198, pp. 545-46) have been lost.

VI 643

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 581

Even though the letters to Eberhard Bethge bypassed the official censor, Bonhoeffer nonetheless used coded language when discussing certain topics. Themes that of necessity would have to appear beyond suspicion if the letters were discovered particularly included any allusions to the progress of the conspiracy surrounding the assassination of Hitler: “Soon we shall be thinking a great deal about our trip together in the summer of ’40, my last sermons!” (July 8, 1944, 3/172, p. 458);"! here Bonhoeffer was referring to the eastern Prussian visitations he and Bethge undertook in a region where, in June 1941, Hitler had transferred his headquarters (“Wolfsschanze’). Four days before July 20, 1944, Bonhoeffer remarked in his encoded missive (3/177, p. 474): “Iam very glad that Klaus is in such good spirits! He was so depressed for quite some time”; and “Maybe we'll celebrate our wed-

ding in Friedrichsbrunn!” In other words, “the conspiracy had reached its goal.”?! There were also veiled references with assessments of the military situation’! and, with regard to Eberhard Bethge, a series of suggestions for conduct that focused on two eventualities: First, in the event Bethge was taken prisoner by Allied troops, Bonhoeffer recommended the names of possible contacts, including Gaetano Latmiral (4/189, p. 508)" and Rein- 644 hold Niebuhr, for whom Bonhoeffer sent a letter of introduction to Bethge (3/148, p. 399). Second, Bonhoeffer considered the possibility of Bethge’s own arrest and subsequent investigation by the Gestapo; there were various agreements about what to say in case of interrogation: “I still remember how it was he [Oster] who was interested in your mission work one summer evening at our house, and wouldn't stop asking about it although you really

[51.] DB-ER, 695-98. [52.] DB-ER, 826.

[53.] Encoded news reports involved changes in the course of the war along the front: “The feeling that any day great events can shake the world and change all our personal circumstances is so strong” (3/137, p. 361; see also ed. note 2); or, “You can’t imagine how relieved and happy I am that you can be here just now” (3/142, p. 379; see also ed. note 3). Sometimes the mention of family members served the same purpose: “I feel sorry for Grandmother” (4/188, p. 506; see also ed. note 12). The report, “We’re getting up at 1:30 a.m. almost every night here” (3/177, p. 482) refers to allied air attacks on Berlin. Similarly, Bonhoeffer’s remark, “Regarding the deployment of our new weapon, I am very confident and calm (3/166, p. 440), does not really mean what it appears to say. [54.] Bonhoeffer’s fellow prisoner in Tegel Gaetano Latmiral, however, did not make use of the offer for Italian officers to return to Italy; he did not leave Tegel until December 21, 1944. See “Die Begegnung.”

582 Letters and Papers from Prison didn’t feel much like it at all” (4/189, p. 508);'°°! Bethge explicitly confirmed this agreement: “I well remember the evening conversations we used to have in the garden at your house and how | used to resist” (4/194, p. 522). Some allusions to life before Bonhoeffer’s arrest were also encoded, for

example, the reference to listening to prohibited “enemy broadcasts.”°! Bonhoeffer and Bethge naturally also made use of the device common in church circles of making brief references to concise biblical passages.!°”! Vil

The first six months in Tegel in particular were characterized by an arc whose poles he identified with two verses from the Psalms: “My times are in your hand” (Ps. 31:15) and “How long, O Lorne” (Ps. 13:1) (1/17, p. 80).

645 For the prisoner in investigative custody, time became a period of waiting: “This dependence on waiting in every matter characterizes my present situation” (2/41, p. 130), “though in the background there hovers this incessant waiting from morning till night” (2/57, p. 155). Initially Bonhoeffer was awaiting the authorization to appoint a lawyer, which occurred on July 30, 1943, after the criminal investigation was concluded.!**! By order of the senior Reich prosecutor on September 16, 1943, the legal attorney Dr. Kurt Wergin was admitted as Bonhoeffer’s chosen defense counsel (2/58). On September 25, Bonhoeffer wrote to his parents: “I was really/ oO glad when first the authorization for the attorney and then the arrest warrant arrived. So the apparently aimless waiting may be coming to an end at last alter all” (2/61, p. 161)."! Bonhoeffer still hoped for a favorable conclusion: “Initially R. would have liked to finish me off; now he has been forced to content himself with an utterly ridiculous indictment that will garner him little prestige” (2/79, pp. 204-5). Indeed, the hope that Bonhoeffer not be “sentenced but released” (2/73, p. 183) was not completely ungrounded at this point. After the arrests of Hans and Christine von Dohnanyi and

I5,I

[55.] Bonhoeffer repeated this twelve days later in his letter of August 23, 1944 (4/193, p. 518): “Incidentally, H[ans v. Dohnanyi] and O[ster] are interested in your mission work; [ had nothing to do with this.” [56.] [Cf. 2/86, ed. note 12.—JDG]. [57.| See the encoded reference to the rumor of General Oster’s suicide in the letter of August 11, 1944 (4/189, p. 508): “It is really incomprehensible that Oster acted according to 1 Sam. 31:4"; then, three days later, the denial (4/190, p. 511): “Incidentally, the interpretation of 1 Sam. 31 doesn’t seem right after all.” Cf. also the German editor’s introduction to DBW 16:3-4. [58.] For details, see 1/39, ed. notes 2, 3, and 8. [59.] The indictment against Bonhoeffer is document 1/230 in DBWE 16:435-36.

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 583 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the greatest fear was that in the interrogations Manfred Roeder, who was a fanatically loyal National Socialist,!°°! might uncover the entire scope of the conspiracy against Hitler in the Military Intelligence Office; however, this did not happen. The pre-agreed-upon arrangements for communications about the interrogations via secret messages and encoded reports (including the agreements made with Admiral Canaris and Major General Oster about what to say) were so successful that Roeder, who signed the documents “by order” of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Reich War Court, had to be satisfied with relatively “minor” charges (subversion of the war effort, granting of UK classifications).!°! Since the 646 actual center of the conspiracy was not discovered, the conspiracy itself continued until July 20, 1944.62! Two months after the indictment was handed down, the trial date was set for December 17, 1943.!®°! In November 1943, however, Hans von Dohnanyi

fell ill, and the date was canceled. Bonhoeffer did not agree with the family’s decision not to subject him to the treacherous waters of such a trial!"

[60.] Concerning Roeder, sce Gistrow, Tédlicher Alltag, 49-79; Sahm, Rudolf von Sche-

liha, 191-238; Grosse, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, sein Anklager Manfred Roeder und die Luneburger Nachkriegsjustiz.” [61.] According to § 5, par. I, no. 3 of the Special Ordinance Regulating Wartime Criminal Law (Kriegssonderstrafsrechtsverordnung), the death penalty applied to “whoever undertakes, by self-mutilation, by means calculated to deceive or by other means, to keep himself or another entirely, partially, or temporarily from fulfillment of military service” (DBWE 16, 1/230, p. 444, ed. note 28). The indictment against Dietrich Bonhoeffer, however, “on the basis of the person doing the act,” recognized the possibility of mitigating circumstances according to § 5, par. 2: “In less severe cases penal servitude or prison may be imposed” (DBWE 16, 1/230, p. 446, ed. note 29). This would have circumvented the death sentence, which was normally mandatory for such an offense.

[62.| On July 30, 1944, ten days after the failed coup attempt, Paula Bonhoeffer alluded to her own joy that no connection with “our two,” namely, Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had been established (4/185, p. 100). Once the secret files of the resistance group in the Foreign Office/ Military Intelligence were discovered in Zossen on September 22, 1944, however, the fate of the prisoners was sealed. [63.] The decree dated November 18, 1943, is in DBWE 16, 1/233, p. 451; see in this volume 2/73, ed. note 72. Bonhoeffer’s reaction (2/73, p. 191): “December 17 is the date! Finally!”

[64.] The arrests on April 5, 1943, were prompted by violations of foreign currency regulations by members of the Foreign Office/ Military Intelligence in Munich (branch VII). These violations provided a welcome opportunity for the Reich Central Security Office to take action against the Military Intelligence Office with the goal of depriving it of its power. Concerning the influence of competing National Socialist institutions on the proceedings against Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, cf. the summary presentation by Chowaniec, Der “Fall Dohnanyi,” 99-106, and Meyer, Unternehmen Sieben, 336-82.

584 Letters and Papers from Prison 647 by himself.!°°! When the February 1944 trial date also fell through, Bonhoeffer reacted with unmistakable annoyance: “I cannot help feeling that there has been rather too much messing about and fantasizing, while the simplest things have been left undone” (2/115, p. 303).'°%! In the course of the political attempts driven primarily by Dr. Karl Sack, director of the army legal department, to defuse the proceedings against Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer learned at the beginning of April 1944 that he could no longer expect

any imminent change in his own situation through a new trial date.!°7! Thereafter, Bonhoeffer’s hopes for regaining his freedom focused on a different goal, namely, on the course of the conspiracy itself, on the assassination, whose imminence Bonhoeffer related to Eberhard Bethge on July 9, 1944: “I think we'll be seeing each other again soon! All the very, very best until then!” (3/172, p. 458). VIII

Bonhoelfer’s letters from Tegel contained theological reflections from the very outset. Their special feature was that they referred immediately and 648 directly to the concrete life situation of imprisonment: Observations of his fellow prisoners’ behavior prompted Bonhoelfer to reflect on shame and

[65.] 2/88, p. 226: “I no longer believe I will be released. As I understand it, I would have been acquitted at the hearing on December 17; but the lawyers wanted to take the safer route, and now I will presumably be sitting here for wecks yet, if not months.” 2/88, p. 234: “Now it appears the decision has been made that I cannot be with all of you for Christmas—but no one dares to tell me.” [66.] Bonhoeffer’s annoyance, his feeling of being “tantalized” (2/88, p. 235), also derived from the difficulty in keeping him sufficiently informed about everything in a timely fashion. His assertion in the letter of March 9, 1944, for example, was prompted by erroneous information (2/121, p. 319): “Sepp is now back home and has pushed through his case with all his old vigor and defiant mien.” Josef Muller (“Ochsensepp”) was the liaison between the Munich Military Intelligence Office and the Vatican. Like the Dohnanyi couple and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he had been arrested on April 5, 1943. Although his trial ended in acquittal in March 1944, he continued to be held in prison (see 2/121, ed. note 4). [67.) 3/132, p. 390: “I have been told not to expect any change in my current situation for the time being... . I can’t call that either right or clever, and Iam keeping my own counsel about it, which I very, very much wish I could talk over with you. But on a practical level I just have to go along with it.” Concerning Bonhoeffer’s own trial preparation, including the resolution, as was the case with Hans von Dohnanyi (see 3/177, ed. note 11), not to “get sick here under any circumstances” (2/106, p. 279), see esp. the draft letters written to the lead investigator Dr. Roeder during the interrogation period, DBWE 16, 1/226, pp. 409-11; 1/228, pp. 413-27.

Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition 585 “confession” (2/79, p. 200).!°8! Self-observation in dangerous situations prompted thoughts of “trouble,” “prayer,” and “consolation.”!’?! The possibility of conflict between marriage and friendship prompted a theological reconsideration of the doctrine of mandates.!”°! Trial events and the experience of separation prompted Bonhoeffer to reconsider theologically how to deal with reality from the perspective of the pastoral ministry.!“!! And after reading mostly Old Testament texts in Tegel, Bonhoeffer found that he was increasingly “thinking and perceiving things in line with the Old Testament” (2/84, p. 213).!7! Nonetheless, the end of Bonhoeffer’s hopes for a trial was an unmistakable dividing line. ‘The realization that he would have to accommodate himself to his present situation and to continued imprisonment ushered in the theologically most productive period in Tegel.!”?! On April 30, 1944, Bonhoeffer mentioned for the first time the “theological thoughts” that might “surprise, or perhaps even worry” Bethge (3/137, p. 362). Bonhoelfer had related his Tegel observations and experiences to his friend and at 649 the same time asked him to “try sometime to determine what the people you find yourself with actually believe” (2/89, p. 241). Bethge had done

sol In Tegel, Bonhoeffer now drew the conclusions. His theological

[68.] See DBWE 6:302-6, Concerning the development of this theme, sce 2/84, pp. 213-14. Cf. also the discussion on how soon one forgets “one’s impressions of a night's bombing” in contrast to Luther (2/108, p. 284): “For Luther it took one bolt of lightning to change the direction of his life for years to come... . Everything one can say, even if it makes an impression at the moment, is lost to forgetfulness. So what is to be done? It’s a big problem for Christian pastoral care.” [69.] See 2/106, p. 276; also 2/108, p. 284. |70.] See in this regard 2/102, p. 267, and ed. note 20.

[71.] 2/88, p. 226; 2/89, pp. 237-38; 2/102, p. 265: “Whatever weaknesses, miscalculations, and guilt there are in what precedes the facts, God is in the facts themselves.” [72.] He continues: “In recent months I have been reading much more the Old than the New Testament. Only when one knows that the name of God may not be uttered may one sometimes speak the name of Jesus Christ. ... Whoever wishes to be and perceive things too quickly and too directly in New Testament ways is to my mind no Christian.” [73.] See also 3/132, p. 353: “If my present situation were to be the conclusion of my life, this would have a meaning that I believe I could understand. On the other hand, all this might be a thorough preparation for a new beginning.” Regarding Bonhoeffer’s “theology of powerlessness come of age,” see esp. DB-ER, 853-88. [74.] Cf., e.g., Bethge’s observations during military training in Lissa, 2/96, p. 254: “Another, a touching nineteen-year-old, glowing with enthusiasm, was borrowing the Eher books on German history from the city library—a lance corporal with no high school education. Who’s going to set him straight? ‘Faith’? He probably has hardly any. At home, where the women are, there’s a little corner where you can uncover a remnant of religious assurance.”

586 Letters and Papers from Prison reflections began when he replaced the traditional teaching of the “religious a priori”!”°! with a new basic assumption, one he formulated as a diagnosis (“people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore”) together with the prognosis: “We are approaching a completely religionless age” (3/137, p. 362). The continuation of the letter of April 30, 1944, shows that this assumption, whose validity Bonhoeffer did not doubt, was also the presupposition for the new approach taken in the ensuing letters: if “people really .. . become radically religionless . . . what does that then mean for ‘Christianity’?” Or, under the same presupposition: “How do we talk about God—without religion?” (3/137, p. 364). During his 1939 trip to America,

Bonhoeffer had already commented in his diary: “Do people really not know that one can get along just as well, and perhaps even better, without ‘religion’—if only God himself and his word did not exist?”!’°! In the letters Bonhoeffer began with the difference between “religion” and “God” and then complemented this through a series of distinctions, the most important of which—at Icast judging by its theological consequences—was the thesis of the nonidentity of “religion” and “Christianity.”!”’! The pre650 ~~ supposition of this thesis was Bonhoeffer’s understanding of religion as developed in these letters.!”*! Because it has been shaped by “metaphysics,” “inner life,” “partiality,” “privilege,” and a corresponding understanding of God (“God” as a “working hypothesis,” as a “stopgap” and “guardian’”),

“religion” belongs to an epoch that has come to an end through the historical development that has led to the “autonomy” and “coming of age” of the world itself. “God is being increasingly pushed out of a world come of age, from the realm of our Knowledge and life” (3/170, p. 450), “is ever on

the retreat” (3/152, p. 406), and is “losing ground” (3/161, p. 426). While the letters do contain a systematic critique of religion that was connected to the theology of Karl Barth—of “religion” that is not “a condition for salvation” (3/137, pp. 365—66)—its influence receded behind a historical critique

[Pol eeecoAlos, ed. note Pl. [76.] DBW 15:225 (entry of June 18, 1939). See also DBWE 10, 2/3, p. 358: “Christ is not the bringer of a new religion, but the bringer of God”; cf. 3/177, p. 482: “Jesus calls not to a new religion but to life.” [77.] See Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the “religious a priori,” 3/137, p. 362. [78.] See DB-ER, 871-79; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 72-76; Bethge, “Christlicher Glaube ohne Religion”; Feil, “Ende oder Wiederkehr der Religion?”; also Green, “Bonhoeffer’s Concept of Religion”; Benktson, Christus und die Religion, Gotthold Muller, “Religion zwischen Metaphysik und Prophetie”; Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 163-96; Kraus, Theologische Religionskritik, 68-73; Schénherr, “Die Religionskritik Dietrich Bonhoeffers”; Bartl, Theologie und Sdkularitat, 168-88. [See also Wustenberg, Theology of Life, 1-30.—JDG]

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 587 of religion that developed in Tegel particularly through Bonhoeffer’s reading of Wilhelm Dilthey.!’9! Dilthey’s influence is discernible in the passages in which Bonhoeffer tried to explicate his own position “from a historical angle”: “lhe movement toward human autonomy (by which I mean discovery of the laws by which the world lives and manages its affairs in science, in society and government, in art, ethics and religion), which began around the thirteenth century (1 don’t want to get involved in disputing exactly when), has reached a certain completeness in our age. The human being has learned to manage all important issues by himself, without recourse to ‘Working hypothesis: God.’ .. . It’s becoming evident that everything gets along without ‘God’ and does so just as well as before” (3/161, pp. 425-26).'8°! 651 For Bonhoeffer this development cannot be reversed. The attempt to escape these straits through various “escape routes” is futile. Such thinking merely constitutes a “sallo morlale back to the Middle Ages,” “a counsel of despair, a sacrifice made only at the cost of intellectual integrity. It’s a dream” (3/177, p. 478), |8U

Bonhoeffer’s statement “that everything gets along without ‘God’"— without getting along without God—is not the theological sanctioning of a historical development. Rather, the statement names the precondition for a theology that regains “the fresh air of intellectual discourse with the world” (4/186, p. 498) by recognizing “that the world and humankind have come of age. One must not find fault with people in their worldliness but rather confront them with God where they are strongest” (3/172, p. 457). This prompted Bonhoeffer to focus in his theological letters from prison on “the religionlessness of the human being come of age” (4/187, p. 500), a topic Bonhoeffer developed not just methodically with his demand for “interpreting biblical concepts nonreligiously” (3/172, p. 455), but also by positioning it in relation to the theology of Karl Barth (to the criterion ofa

[79.| See 3/161, ed. notes 10 and 14; 3/177, ed. notes 18-19, 22, et passim. Concerning the influence of C, F. von Weizsacker’s Worldview of Physics, see 3/152, ed. note 6; 3/161, ed. note 11; 3/177, ed. note 29. Regarding W. F. Otto’s book The Homeric Gods, see 3/164 and 3/165 (Prison Notes I and IT) and 4/187 (“Outline for a Book”), ed. note 19.

[80.] See also 3/177, pp. 475-76: “Historically there is just one major development leading to the world’s autonomy. In theology it was Lord Herbert of Cherbury. . .. In moral philosophy Montaigne and Bodin substitute rules for life for the commandments. In political philosophy Macchiavelli separates politics from general morality and founds the doctrine of reason of state. Later H. Grotius. .. sets up his natural law as an international law, which is valid ets: deus non daretuy, ‘as if there were no God.” Bonhoeffer then summarizes (p. 477): “In every case the autonomy of human beings and the world is the goal of thought.” [81.] See, e.g., 3/170, pp. 450-51; 3/172, pp. 455-57.

588 Letters and Papers from Prison

~~ ‘ a ee . > a5) :

652 “positivism of revelation”)'**! and of Rudolf Bultmann (with regard to the program of “demythologization”).'°*! The “Outline for a Book” (3/187) suggests how Bonhoeffer envisioned his treatment of this topic. His confidence on the subject was expressed as early as the “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism” (3/145, p. 390): “It is not for us to predict the day—but the day will come—when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new laneuage, perhaps quite nonreligious language, but liberating and redeeming like Jesus’s language, so that people will be alarmed and yet overcome by its power—the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God’s kingdom is drawing near.” In summary, Bonhoeffer’s theme is not the “coming of age,” “this-worldliness,” and “religionlessness” of the modern world. As plausible

and impressive as these expressions are, theologically they function only as auxiliary concepts. They serve the task of witnessing to the presence of Jesus Christ in the present (3/137, p. 362): “What keeps gnawing at me is 653. the question, what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today?” The topics “this-worldliness,” “worldliness,” and “autonomy” are treated

[82.| See 3/161, p. 429: “|Barth’s] ethical observations, so far as they exist, are as important as his dogmatic ones—but in the nonreligious interpretation of theological concepts he gave no concrete guidance, either in dogmatics or ethics. Here he reaches his limit, and that is why his theology of revelation has become positivist, a ‘positivism of revelation, as I call it.” See also 3/137, ed. note 15. Concerning Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Karl Barth, see among others Prenter, “Dictrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth’s Positivism of Revelation”; Storch, “Um dic Deutung des ‘Offenbarungspositivismus’”; Rothuizen, Aristocratisch Christendom, 217-26; Kelly, “Bonhoeffer and Barth”; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 69-72; H. E. Todt, “Glauben in einer religionslosen Welt’; Peters, Die Prdsenz des Politischen, 169-73; Burtness, “As Though God Were Not Given’; Panegritz, Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wastenberg, “Der Einwand des Offenbarungspositivismus”’; Aguti, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer e Karl Barth”; Wyller, Glaube und autonome Welt, 377-42.

[83.] See 3/139, p. 372: “It’s not only ‘mythological’ concepts like miracles, ascension, and so on (which in principle can’t be separated from concepts of God, faith, etc.!) that are problematic, but ‘religious’ concepts as such, You can’t separate God from the miracles (as Bultmann thinks); instead, you must be able to interpret and proclaim them both ‘nonreligiously. Bultmann’s approach is still basically liberal (that is, it cuts the gospel short), whereas I’m trying to think theologically.” Concerning Bonhoeffer’s relationship to Bultmann, see, among others, Ebeling, “Non-religious Interpretation of Biblical Concepts”; Harbsmeier, “Die ‘nicht-religidse Interpretation biblischer Begriffe’ bei Bonhoeffer und die Entmythologisierung”; Krause, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer und Rudolf Bultmann”; Rothuizen, Aristocratisch Christendom, 226-40; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

192-95; Peters, Die Prasenz des Politischen, 173-76. Concerning similarities and differences with Paul Tillich, see 3/161, p. 428.

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 589 because the theme is “the claim [Inanspruchnahme]!*#! of Jesus Christ on the world that has come of age” (3/170, p. 451). In Bonhoeffer’s view “religionlessness” is not a refutation but a challenge to a Christianity that asks: “How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well?” (3/137, p. 363). In his “Outline for a Book,” Bonhoeffer added the remark: “All this is put very roughly and only outlined” (4/187, p. 504). Despite this disclaimer, his letters amply suggest that these reflections go far beyond an internal theological program of interpretation. The focus is ultimately on the church. From the background of experiences suggesting that “our church has been fighting during these years only for its self-preservation, as if that were an end in itself” (3/145, p. 389), Bonhoeffer envisioned a postwar church that would find its purpose outside itself in being there for others, an existence thus reflecting the existence of the One whose disciple it considers itself: “The church is church only when it is there for others... . It must tell people in every calling what a life with Christ is, what it means ‘to be there for others’” (4/187, p. 503). Bonhoeffer focused in this context on the worldly existence of the Christian, as already reflected in the question he posed in the Tegel novel fragment: “So you think we must have more religion, if we want to be in responsible positions someday,” which he answered with, “No, I think—we have to be Christians.”°! This reversal of a religious disposition into a nonreligious and thus genuinely Christian attitude characterizes not only the poem “Christians and Heathens” (3/174) but also a whole series of additional “reversals” expressing the notion of LeTdavota as theologically

engaged penitence.°! Such reversals include, aside from the reformula- 654 tion of the idea of transcendence,!*’! especially the deliberations in which Bonhoeffer addressed God’s presence in the world. Bonhoeffer had long

[84.] [/nanspruchnahme has the sense of both “addressing” and “claiming.”—JDG] [85.] DBWE 7:105-6. [86.] See 3/177, p. 480: The person who follows the call to penitence allows himself or herself “to be pulled into walking the path that Jesus walks, into the messianic event, in which Isa. 53 is now being fulfilled” (cf. 3/177, ed. note 50). The suffering of the Servant

of God (see 3/177, ed. note 53) continues in the suffering of the persecuted Jews even into the present (2/106, p. 276): “The entire history of the children of Israel consists of such cries for help.” Cf. in this regard Kuske, Old Testament as the Book of Christ, 132-58; Lapide, “Bonhoeffer und das Judentum’; E. Bethge, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews’; Klappert, “Weg und Wende Dietrich Bonhoeffers in der Israelfrage,” 116-22; Abromeit, Das Geheimnis Christi, 338-56. [87.] See 4/187, p. 501: “The transcendent is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but

the neighbor within reach in any given situation. God in human form!” 4/181, p. 490: “Christianity arises out of the encounter with a concrete human being: Jesus. Experience of transcendence.” See also 3/137, p. 367; 3/169, pp. 447-48.

590 Letters and Papers from Prison been convinced that God cannot be understood without the world, nor the world without the God who came into it in Jesus Christ. In the late Tegel correspondence, this christologically grounded togetherness of God and world was addressed theologically one last time.'>*! The God who “consents to be pushed out of the world and onto the cross” (3/177, p. 479) establishes his relationship with us precisely by abandoning us.!®°! Without God, we do not live without the God who does not allow us to live without him. “And this is precisely what we do recognize—before God! God himself compels us to recognize it... . God would have us know that we must live as those who manage their lives without God” (3/177, p. 478). Participation in God’s omnipotence as procured by religion is replaced by “participation in the being of Jesus” (4/187, p. 501), an exchange—“the opposite of everything a religious person expects from God”—that Bonhoeffer described as a liberating, “joyous exchange” (Martin Luther):'9°! A person is permitted to do what he or she must in any case do before God; “our lives are allowed to be ‘worldly’” (3/177, p. 480). This is a Christianity that in religionlessness finds its way back to being Christian.

655 IX

The publication history of Widerstand und Ergebung (Letters and Papers from

Prison) began in June 1944 with Eberhard Bethge’s query to Bonhoeffer whether he, Bethge, might send certain excerpts from the letters, especially those addressing theological themes, to close friends from the period of the Finkenwalde seminary (3/168, p. 445). Bonhoeffer responded immediately: “If you want to decide on your own to send excerpts... of course you can do so. /myself would not do so yet, because you are the only one with whom I venture to think aloud like this... . But do as you like” (3/172, p. 457).

Publication of this correspondence, however, was by no means the top priority for Bethge, who had been entrusted with Bonhoeffer’s legacy. He directed his attention first to the Ethics manuscripts, which Bonhoeffer had considered his life work and which Bonhoeffer’s parents for this reason also urged Bethge to publish. Only after Ethics was published in 1949 did Bethge, “after much hesitation and doubt,”!*" begin thinking about publishing the

[88.] Cf. DBWE 6:66-68 et passim. [89.] Cf. Jiingel, God as the Mystery of the World, 57-63; E. Bethge, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews,” 85: “Before and with the Biblical God we live without the Greek God”; “before and with the concretely crucified God on earth we live without the metaphysical triumphalist God”; “before and with the suffering God we live without the powerful God at our disposal.” [90.] See DBW 14:336.

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 591 letters and papers from prison. Concerning these early beginnings, Bethge remarked, “At that time, my primary intention was to make available to a group of people who were interested in Bonhoeffer some short, specifically theological, meditations from ‘Tegel. Extracts had been transcribed for a few friends even before the end of the war, and there were a couple of copies in my desk. But what were the theological considerations without their setting in the circumstances of the time? I had to guard against the

misunderstanding that this was a tractate or monograph by Bonhoeffer on a chosen theme and not authentic correspondence. So other parts of Bonhoeffer’s letters to his parents and to me were added—and the whole became a book.”!9?!

Although family and personal references could not really be eliminated when publishing private letters of this sort, to expose them fully seemed inappropriate at that time, only a few years after the end of the war. This particularly applied to two people: Maria von Wedemeyer, Bonhoeffer’s fiancée, who in 1950 wanted to keep her correspondence with Bonhoeffer 656 to herself when Bethge began work on the Letters and Papers,*! and Bethge, whose double role as addressee of the letters and editor of the book had not

yet been made explicit. The majority of personal responses expressed to Bethge after the book appeared were positive, including those of Gerhard Ebeling, Erwin Sutz, and Helmut Thielicke. Franz Hildebrandt was a bit more reserved, writing on September 29, 1951: “T still don’t believe he [Bonhoeffer] made this turn to ‘this-worldliness’ and to a glorification of ‘worldliness.’”!°! Karl Barth reacted with surprise: “Without being able to ask him personally, we shall have to make do with remaining behind, somewhat confused. ... Do we not

always expect him to be clearer and more concise in some other context, either by withdrawing what he had said, or by going even further? Now he has left us alone with the enigmatic utterances of his letters—at more than one point clearly showing that he sensed, without really knowing, how the story should continue—especially how the program of an un-religious speech was to be realized.”!9®!

[91.| DB-ER, 888.

[92.] LPP, preface to the new edition (1985), vil. [93.] Bethge, in the postscript to Love Letters from Cell 92, 314-15. [94.] On May 22, 1953, George Bell wrote to Eberhard Bethge: “Am I right in supposing that it is you to whom most of the letters to a friend are written?” [95.] See DB-ER, 888-89; Dinger, Auslegung, Aktualisierung und Vereinnahmung, 12ff. [96.] Karl Barth to Walter Herrenbritick, letter of December 21, 1952, in Smith, World Come of Age, 90. The first sentence comes later than the rest of the passage as quoted.

592 Letters and Papers from Prison What Barth called the “enigmatic” element doubtless contributed to the breadth and variety of reactions provoked by Letters and Papers. “These letters, written at a time when the tribulations of war were deepening faith, were published during a time when people were becoming unnerved by the increasing de-christianization of Western society. . . . His letters, ris-

ing from night and fog, surfaced like a message in a bottle thrown into 657 the sea that had finally reached its addressees. Their effect was doubtless enhanced by their not being merely an articulation of a new Christianity, one already better accommodated to the present situation, but one that resonated with a familiar language: relaxed, concerned, and yet paradoxtcally mysterious.”!*7! The fragmentary nature of many of the reflections, which prompted some readers to view them as unfinished and ambiguous, led to a broad spectrum of reactions. Readers often adduced Letters and Papers to legitimize their own theological agenda. Paul van Buren looked back self-critically on a meeting he had with Eberhard Bethge in 1967: “You, responsibly, gave a lecture on various aspects of Bonhoeffer’s thought. I, less responsibly, used Bonhoeffer as a springboard for diving into the familiar waters of my own thinking.”!'9®!

Puzzled by the Letters and Papers, in 1952 Karl Barth recommended that

it would be better to stick to the early Bonhoeffer.! His advice had farreaching effects. The “moving and theologically exciting sketches” of the letters prompted revisiting Bonhoeffer’s early writings, which were “almost unknown or had become unknown.”!!9°! Bonhoeffer’s earlier writings were now studied through the lens of his late work. ‘This led to a scholarly interest in the relationship between continuity and discontinuity in Bonhoeffer’s theological development, which became a standard subject for discussion in presentations of his theology as a whole.!!0!

[97.] André Dumas, in H. E. Todt, with Bethge, Wie eine Flaschenpost, 126-27.

[98.] Ibid., 197. For a critique of this inclination to use the unfinished, ambiguous nature of the later letters from prison for the sake of underpinning one’s own theological agenda, see Schellong, “Kirchliches Schuldbekenntnis,” 56n5, [99.] Cf. DB-ER, 889.

[100.] Ernst Wolf, in the preface to the 1954 edition of Bonhoeffer’s dissertation, Sanctorum Communio (Theologische Bucherei 5). [101.] The thesis of “discontinuity” is inclined to underplay elements of continuity in Bonhoeffer’s work (see esp. H. Muller, Von der Kirche zur Welt, 48-52; 355-56: a “qualitative leap”). See also H. Muller, “Problem of the Reception and Interpretation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” By contrast, Bethge and Feil see the unity of person and work in Bonhoeffer differently manifested theologically in different life situations (DB-ER, 859-63; Feil, Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 4) [but see also the German edition of Feil’s book, 52—55—

JDG]. The coherency of theological insight is not abrogated through “changes in areas of interest,” “shifts in emphasis,” “expansion of themes,” or “changes in topics” within

Editor's Afterword to the German Edition 593 In 1951, the publication of Widerstand und Ergebung produced the break- 658 through for an acknowledgment of the person and work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It set in motion the waves of Bonhoeffer reception, which—with characteristic delays in the sphere of church and theology—have continued uninterrupted into the present.!!°?! A reading of the letters and papers from Tegel, by prompting the question concerning a church without privileges, encouraged Christians in the German Democratic Republic.!!09! Liberation theologians in Latin America as well as those opposed to apartheid in South Africa picked up on the relationship between “prayer” and “doing justice” (3/145, p. 389).!!94! Given the multiplicity of theological interpretations that kept Lellers and Papers within the contemporary theological forum, many of the interpretations tended, not surprisingly, to relativize one another. ‘The book riveted the interest of its interpreters without accommodating itself to the sway of any one interpretation.

Quite apart from the reception this correspondence experienced in church and academic theological circles—the history of which remains to

be written!!9!—it also exerted an influence that probably can never be 659 completely captured in a written history, since its effects have been indeterminable. It is the story of those readers who joined in the dialogue of the correspondence and continued it with their own voices. “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” “Who am I?” “What do we really believe?” Such were Bonhoeffer’s questions in Tegel. Once readers recognized these questions

the various periods ofa person’s life and in the problems and tasks associated with these periods (DB-ER, 676-78). Even Bonhoetter himself was aware that under certain circumstances, a person's manner of expression might be altered or even completely reversed (2/69, p. 173): “Already one hundred years ago Kierkegaard said that Luther today would say the opposite of what he said back then. I think that is true—cum grano salis.” [102.| [See de Gruchy, “The Reception of Bonhoeffer’s Theology,” in de Gruchy, Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 93-113.—JDG]

[103.] See 4/187, pp. 502-3; see the contributions in Pabst, Kirche fiir andere, and those in Schonherr and Krotke, Bonhoeffer-Studien, published by the Bonhoeffer committee of the Bund Evangelischer Kirchen in der DDR (German Protestant Church Association in the former German Democratic Republic). See also Kuske, Weltliches Christsein; Krotke, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer als “Theologe der DDR’”; Feil, Glauben lernen in einer Kirche fiir andere.

[104.] [See J. de Santa Ana, “Influence of Bonhoeffer on the Theology of Liberation’; and John de Gruchy, “Bonhoeffer, Apartheid, and Beyond”, in de Gruchy, Bonhoeffer for a New Day.—]DG]

[105.] Apart from the study by Jorg Dinger, Auslegung, Aktualisierung und Vereinnah-

mung, see Saxer, “Zur Nachwirkung und Interpretation der Briefe Dietrich Bonhoeffers”; Feil, “Menschen im Widerstand”; see also Neumann, “Religionsloses Christentum” und “nicht-religiose Interpretation,” 1-42; Pangritz, Dietrich Bonhoeffers Forderung einer Arkandisziplin, 11-135.

594 Letters and Papers from Prison as their own, they were increasingly inclined to take seriously Bonhoeffer’s answers, to test and complement them further, or draw their own conclu-

sions from them in taking responsibility for the challenges confronting them in their own contemporary situations. Since their initial publication, Letters and Papers has accompanied Christian self-understanding as a source

of encouragement, prompting more people to persevere with Christianity and the church than can ever be measured. X

In his £thics manuscripts Bonhoeffer described the way in which one “learns to live with others”: “not standing outside the processes of life as a spectator, critic, or judge. Living with others... by the richness of life’s impulses” and

“in the midst of the abundance of the concrete tasks and processes of life with their infinite variety of motives.”!!°°! Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison demonstrate that he lived up to this definition. Even alter so many decades, these letters still provide remarkable insights into the motives and problems of life, not least under the difficult conditions oppressing virtually every aspect of life during the war initiated by Hitler. Karl Bonhoeffer remarked

in his memoirs that the entire Bonhoelfer family “viewed the victory of 660 National Socialism in 1933... from the very outset and unanimously . . . as a great misfortune.”|!?7! Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his family had to suffer the consequences of his “participation in the fate of Germany” (2/88, p. 236). The Bonhoeffer family home on Marienburger Allee, together with the Schleichers’ house next door, with which it was connected by a garden path, was a center for constant contact with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans

von Dohnanyi. Regular discussions took place there in which Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, often Christine von Dohnanyi and Ursula Schleicher and, less often because of the distance, Susanne Dref} participated, with Klaus Bonhoeffer and Rudiger Schleicher mostly joining them during the evening. The family discussed the pros and cons of various courses of action

suggested by influential persons who could be trusted and who were in part also friends (e.g., Justus Delbruck, Friedrich Justus Perels, Hans Oster, Karl Sack, Paul von Hase, Otto John). The family sat together deciphering

[106.] DBWE 6:370. Luther already emphasized that the testing of faith (mortificatio) takes place at the center of human society, in economics and politics, not outside it (Lectures on Genesis, WA 43:214, 3-4): “Hae sunt verae mortificationes, quae non fiunt in desertis locis extra societatem hominum, sed in ipsa oeconomia et politia.” [107.] “Lebenserinnerungen,” in Zutt, Straus, and Scheller, Karl Bonhoeffer, 99. Cf. in this regard and with respect to the following discussion, R. Bethge, “Bonhoeffer’s Family and Its Significance for His Theology.”

Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition 595 encoded news reports that came from the prisons, assessing what was to be done, and seeking advice from various quarters on how to implement their strategy. They had to arrange the weekly laundry delivery, pack and deliver

parcels, often hindered and endangered by the increasingly frequent air attacks!!°8! against which they sought to protect themselves by building air-raid shelters!!"9! and by seeking out less dangerous quarters for family 661 members out in the country.!!!°! Letters and Papers is thus also a document

of survival in wartime. There are numerous and unmistakable allusions to daily life during the war, including references to “clothes coupons” and “food coupons,” to “traveling restrictions” and “bomb leave,” and how the “agricultural” use of gardens was to improve the food situation.!!! In contrast to the public resistance with which Bonhoeffer had responded in his book Discipleship to the attempt by the Nationalist Socialist state to

force the church into line [Gleichschaltung], the resistance that aimed at eliminating Hitler stood under the necessity of silence, camouflage, and pretense. The account “After Ten Years” describes the price those involved had to pay (prologue, p. 52): “We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. We have become cunning and learned the arts of obfuscation and equivocal speech. Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings, and

often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word.”"!!*! None of these strictures applies to Lellers and Papers. Amid the National Socialist world of infinite mistrust, this correspondence holds fast to the real world, which, in the form of family and friendship and through the mutual [108.] See, e.g, Karl Bonhoeffer’s accounts concerning his former assistants (2/83, p. 212): “Burlage ... was killed with 150 others in his air-raid bunker... . Zutt saved nothing except his suitcase.” Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer speaks similarly about one of his Hamburg colleagues (2/42, p. 132): “He arrived with a small satchel. He had been in the city center during the first three severe attacks, then slept a night outside in the country, and did not return to the city. Thus he was swept along to us.” See also 2/49, ed. note 5; 2/5060: Note 532/751, p. 149; 2/54, p. 149° 2/50,ed. note-2:°2/05; Dp. .105;4/205, p00 [109.] See 1/33, p. 114; 1/36, p. 117. See also Paula Bonhoeffer’s advice on how to protect oneself from phosphorous bombs (2/43, pp. 133-34). [110.] Concerning Friedrichsbrunn, see also 2/52, pp. 147-48; 2/85, pp. 216-17. See

2/53, p. 148, and 2/45, p. 137, concerning the warehousing of household items from Marienburger Allee 43 to Sakrow and Patzig and (2/56, p. 153, and 2/59, p. 158) to Kade for the Bethge family. [111.] See, e.g., 1/4, p. 59; 1/32, p. 113; 2/44, p. 136; 2/48, p. 142; 2/53, p. 149; 2/62, pp. 162-63; 2/63, p. 163; 2/68, p. 171 (“homegrown tobacco”). See also Karl Bonhoeffer’s remark (1/38, p. 122): “And very often—as patients tell me again and again—people are glad to be back home again since there is still more food available here.” [112.] See also the poem “Night Voices” (3/175, p. 467): “‘We learned to tell cheap lies, / to go along with obvious wrongdoing. / When violence was heaped on the detenseless, / we looked away.””

596 Letters and Papers from Prison 662 interplay!!'S! of trust, responsibility, and loyalty, encouraged and fostered precisely those virtues that those in power sought to misuse for their own purposes. Bonhoeffer’s conviction that “the most important things in life are human relationships” (4/190, p. 509) is a decisive repudiation of the religion of hubris!!! practiced by those in power within the system, those “demigods”!!!>! whom he calls “lunatics, who know nothing about human relationships.” ‘Thus, against this background, Bonhoeffer’s theological legacy is that “God allows himself to be served by us in all that is human” (4/190, p. 509).

[113.] This refers not only to the recapitulation of a shared past but also to the anticipation of a shared future in the exchange of plans, hopes, and fears. In the process “the life of each partner became part of the autobiography of the other, an element of each one’s own personal history” (Schutz, “Der Heimkehrer,” 76). On the theme of “correspondence transference” discernible in ongoing correspondence, see Erikson, Life History and the Historical Moment, 56-57. On the sociology of letter writing, see “Exkurs uber den schriftlichen Verkehr,” in Simmel, Soziologie, 287-304. Regarding LPP specifically, see Jamie S. Scott, Christians and Tyrants, 132-37. [114.] See esp. Stern, “Der Nationalsozialismus als Versuchung.” See also Von Klemperer, “Glaube, Religion, Kirche und der deutsche Widerstand”; Strohm, “Die Bedeutung von Kirche, Religion und christlichem Glauben.” [115.] DBWE 7:176.

APPENDIX 1 CHRONOLOGY 1942-1945

1942 665

December 24 Bonhoelfer presents his account “After Ten Years” to family and friends. 1943

January 13 Engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer. March 23 Civil wedding ceremony of Renate Schleicher and Eberhard Bethge.

March 31 Karl Bonhoeffer’s seventy-fifth birthday.

April Maria von Wedemeyer begins training as a nurse at the Clementinenhaus in Hanover.

April 5 Bonhoeffer’s arrest and transport to ‘Tegel military prison. Hans and Christine von Dohnanyi and Josef and Marie Muller are arrested on the same day. Hans Oster is placed under house arrest.

April 12 First interrogation of Dohnanyi and probably of Bonhoeffer as well. German Afrikakorps surrenders.

April 14 Bonhoeffer’s first letter to his parents; thereafter he was permitted to write every ten days.

April 17 Transfer to a more spacious cell. April 19 Beginning of the Warsaw ghetto uprising (put down by May 16).

April 23 Good Friday. Letter from Dohnanyi to Bonhoeffer in which he accepts complete responsibility. Maria von Wedemeyer’s nineteenth birthday. 597

598 Letters and Papers from Prison April 30 Christine von Dohnanyi released from custody.

May Bonhoeffer composes a wedding sermon for Renate and Eberhard Bethge.

May 15 Renate and Eberhard Bethge’s wedding. May 23 Bonhoeffer’s parents receive first permission to visit in Tegel prison. Maria and her mother, Ruth von Wedemeyer, visit Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer.

June 10 Bonhoeffer drafts letters to the head investigator, Manfred Roeder (concerning Operation 7).

June 15 Maria von Wedemeyer transferred to Augusta hospital in Berlin; is excused from her training due to illness. Canaris is interrogated.

666 June 24 Visitation privileges for Maria von Wedemeyer in the Reich War Court.

June 26 Maria von Wedemeyer in Patzig for convalescence.

July Bonhoeffer works on his drama fragment. July 8-10 Bethge in Switzerland on behalf of the military intelligence office, visits Barth and Visser *t Hooft.

July 10 Allied troops land in Sicily. July 23 General Field Marshal Keitel orders that the investigations of Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer no longer focus on the suspicion of high treason.

July 25 Coup in Italy; Mussolini arrested. July 30 Bonhoeffer meets with Maria von Wedemeyer in the Reich War Court; notified by Roeder that the investigations have been concluded for now, preparation of indictment to begin. Bonhoeffer writes his parents (1/39): “I now have permission to write to you every fourth day; this is very good for me. I think I will alternate between writing to you and to Maria.” Concludes the drama fragment. Asks his parents to find an attorney.

Beginning

of August Bonhoeffer’s final letter to Roeder defending himself against the charges.

Mid-August Bonhoeffer begins to write a novel. August 17 Rudiger von der Goltz authorized as defense attorney.

Appendix I 599 August 23 Severe air raids on Berlin during the night of August 23-24. Severe damage to the Bethges’ apartment in Berlin-Dahlem. Because of air-raid danger, some offices of the Reich War Court shifted to Torgau.

September 3 Severe air raids on Berlin during the night of September 3-4. In Tegel prison Bonhoeffer transferred to cell 92, two floors lower. Allied troops land in southern Italy.

September 15 Bethge conscripted into the military, begins basic training in Spandau.

September 16 Indictments issued against Dohnanyi and Oster. Wergin accepted as Bonhoeffer’s choice of defense attorney.

September 20 Bonhoeffer composes a last will and testament. September 21 Indictment issued against Bonhoeffer.

October | Moltke in Copenhagen to warn against impending 667 mass deportation of Danish Jews. Seven thousand Danish Jews are covertly taken to Sweden.

October 3 Pastoral letter from the Danish bishops addressing the issue of persecution of Jews is read aloud in churches.

October 16-19 Confessing Church synod in Breslau adopts two statements: “Exegesis of the Fifth Commandment” and a corresponding “Statement to the Congregations’; Bonhoeffer had been part of the preparation of both.

October 17 Karl Bonhoeffer petitions the president of the Reich War Court that Bonhoeffer be released from prison while awaiting trial.

October 22 Renate Bethge visits her husband, who is now stationed in Lissa.

October 27 Adam von Trott in Sweden. November 11 Gaetano Latmiral brought to Tegel. November 18 Bethge on leave in Berlin. Reich War Court sets December 17 as Bonhoeffer’s trial date. November 18-23 — Bonhoeffer’s first letter to Eberhard Bethge.

November 23 Heavy air raid on Berlin. Bonhoeffer composes another last will and testament (2/75); writes “Prayers for Prisoners” (2/76—78).

600 Letters and Papers from Prison November 26 Air raid on the nearby Borsig factory. Incendiary bombs hit Dohnanyi’s cell; Dohnanyi is transferred to the Charité clinic with a brain embolism. Trial documents of the Reich War Court are burned. Bonhoeffer’s parents, Bethge, and Maria von Wedemeyer visit him together in Tegel.

November 28 Bonhoeffer writes a report about his experiences during air raids. At the end of November, Roeder is ordered by the Reich War Court to spend three days reconstructing the trial documents.

December | Maria von Wedemeyer spends a week in Klein-Krossin. December 3 Dohnanyi’s defense team composes a defense brief for him (first version).

December 5 In a letter to Bethge, Bonhoeffer alludes to new theological themes; probably finishes his novel fragment.

December 15 Bonhoeffer works on the essay “What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth?” (DBWE 16, 2/19).

668 December 16 Attorney Wergin visits and announces postponement of the trial date.

December 23 Bethge on “bomb leave” in Berlin; receives permission to visit Bonhoeffer in Tegel prison.

December 25 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (2/89): “Besides, your visit stimulated a little work .. . and it encouraged and renewed in me the desire for my major work [Ethics].” Eberhard Bethge returns to Lissa; Renate follows. 1944

January Roeder as chief judge transferred to Air District 4 in Lemberg; Helmuth Kutzner takes charge of the proceedings against Oster, Dohnanyi, and Bonhoeffer.

January 3 The Red Army reaches the former eastern border of Poland.

January 5 Maria von Wedemeyer visits Bonhoeffer in ‘Tegel prison on her way to Altenburg, where she is to be a substitute teacher.

January 8 Bethge in Berlin before leaving to join his unit in Italy. January 14 Bonhoeffer writes to his parents (2/98): “’m back to working with more concentration and am especially enjoying reading Dilthey.”

Appendix I 601 January 15 Bethge writes from Rignano, where his field unit is quartered.

January 19 Solf resistance group and Moltke arrested. January 22 Dohnanyi removed from the Charité clinic and taken to the prison infirmary in Berlin-Buch. Allied troops land in Anzio-Nettuno.

January 27 Heavy air bombardment of Berlin during the night of January 27-28. The prison guard Holzendorf (Bonhoeffer refers to him as “Engel”) is killed in the city.

January 29 During the early morning hours, heavy air bombardment of Berlin, also striking the Borsig factory near Tegel prison.

January 30 During the night, heavy air bombardment of Berlin. February 3 Birth of Dietrich Wilhelm Rudiger Bethge. February 4 Maria von Wedemeyer allowed to visit Bonhoeffer in Tegel prison on his birthday.

February 10 Max de Crinis, Karl Bonhoeffer’s successor in the 669 Charité clinic, declares Dohnanyi [it to stand trial.

February 11 Hitler orders Canaris dismissed and the entire intelligence service placed under the control of the SS Reichsftthrer Himmler.

February 12 With the imminent possibility of Dohnanyi’s trial, Bonhoeffer hopes for a decision “in about a week.” Schmidhuber is sentenced to four years prison, Ickradt Lo tWo years.

February 16 Bethge’s field unit is now in Velletri, near the Allied beachhead at Anzio-Nettuno.

February 20 Maria von Wedemeyer receives permission to visit in Tegel on her way to Bundorf, where she is to work as a tutor in the family of her cousin Hedwig von Truchsef. Admiral Canaris under house arrest.

February 21 Dohnanyi for all practical purposes incapable of being interrogated. Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (2/115): “As long as Hans is ill, nothing can be changed.” (Bonhoeffer’s own trial postponed again.) February/March — Bonhoeffer composes the story about “Lance Corporal Berg” (DBWE 7:183-94).

March 4 Josef Muller’s trial ends in acquittal, although he remains in custody.

602 Letters and Papers from Prison March 6 First daytime air bombardment of Berlin. March 9 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge that the trial has now been set for May.

March 10 Ruth von Wedemeyer receives permission to visit in Tegel prison.

March 24 Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer spend ten days in Patzig. March 30 Maria von Wedemeyer receives permission to Visit in Tegel prison.

April “Report on Prison Life after One Year in Tegel” (2/131) written for Berlin commander Paul von Hase.

April 4 The Berneuchen Easter week begins in Bundorf; Maria von Wedemeyer participates.

April 11 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (3/132): “I have been told not to expect any change in my current situation for the time being.”

April 15 Bonhoeffer interrogated in the Reich War Court (Bonhoeffer writes to Maria von Wedemeyer: “for the first time in months”),

670 = April 22 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (3/135): “Alter being unproductive for so long, [1] feel more creative now that spring is coming.”

April 26 Bonhoeffer writes to his parents that, after a year in prison, there is “a huge new dimension in one’s life” (3/136).

April 30 First theological letter to Bethge (3/137), raising the question of a “religionless Christianity.”

May 3 and 4 Bonhoeffer interrogated in the Reich War Court. (On May 5, writes Bethge [3/139]: “The result has been quite satisfactory. But since the question of the date is still unresolved, | am really losing interest in my case.”)

May 5 Bonhoeffer’s second theological letter to Bethge (3/139). Theme: “nonreligious interpretation of biblical concepts.”

May 7 Heavy air bombardment of Berlin. May 9 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge that “the next few weeks will bring such great and surprising events” (3/141).

May 11 Allied troops break out of the beachhead at AnzioNettuno, threatening German positions near Velletri and Rignano.

Appendix I 603 May 15 Bethge on leave from the front (special leave for the baptism of his son).

Mid-May “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of Dietrich Wilhelm Rudiger Bethge” (3/145).

May 19 Renate and Eberhard Bethge receive permission to visit in Tegel prison (visitors’ permit transferred to them by Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer). Heavy daytime air bombardment of Berlin.

May 21 Dietrich Bethge baptized. Bonhoeffer’s “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism” read aloud. Maria von Wedemeyer is present.

May 22 Maria von Wedemeyer receives permission to visit in Tegel prison.

May 24 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (3/149): “I’m now reading, with great interest, Weizsacker’s book on the ‘worldview of physics’ and hope to learn a good deal from it, even for my own work.”

May 26 Heavy fighting around Velletri. May 29 A letter from Bonhoelfer to Maria von Wedemeyer is smuggled out of Tegel; it also contains a theological letter to Bethge (3/152) that states: God 1s no “stopgap.”

June Gencral retreat of German troops in Italy. Dohnanyi 671 falls ill with deliberately induced diphtheria and is transferred to the isolation ward in Potsdam.

June 3 Bethge illegally visits Bonhoeffer in Tegel. Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer visit Patzig.

June 4 Rome falls to the Allies. June 5 Bonhoeffer sends his poem “The Past” to Bethge.

June 6 Allies invade Normandy.

June 7 Bethge returns to the Italian front. June 8 Bonhoeffer’s theological letter (3/161, on the topic of “Christ and the world come of age”).

June 13 During the night of June 13-14, the V-1 rocket is used for the first time against England.

June 18 Bethge reaches his unit in Montevettolini. June 21 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (3/166): “This morning we had the nastiest of all the air raids so far.”

june 25 Red Army offensive against the Center Army Group. June 27 Maria von Wedemeyer receives permission to visit in Tegel prison. Bonhoeffer writes to her (Love Letters

604 Letters and Papers from Prison to Cell 92, 215-18): “A husband and wife should be together as often and for as long as possible.” He writes to Bethge (3/169) that he is working on an “exposition

of the first three commandments’; includes reflections on the Old Testament.

June 30 Bonhoeffer’s theological letter (3/170) mentioning “the claim [Inanspruchnahme] of Jesus Christ on the world that has come of age.” Paul von Hase visits Bonhoeffer in Tegel (“more than five hours!”).

July Kutzner petitions Keitel to suspend the case against Dohnanyi. Bethge is in San Polo d’Enza with his military unit; partisan skirmishes in the Apennines. Red Army advances quickly to the west.

July 8 Bonhoeffer’s theological letter (3/172) states: “One must not find fault with people in their worldliness but rather confront them with God where they are strongest.” “By the way, it would be very nice if you

672 didn’t throw away my theological letters but... send them off to Renate from time to time. I might perhaps like to read them again later for my work.” Bonhoeffer sends his poems “Who Am I?” (3/173) and “Christians and Heathens” (3/174) to Bethge.

July 16 Bonhoeffer’s theological letter (3/177) states: “Before God, and with God, we live without God.”

July 18 Bonhoeffer continues the theological letter 3/177, referring to “participating in God’s powerlessness in the world.”

July 20 Failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in the “Wolfschanze”; the coup attempt is put down by midnight.

July 21 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (4/178): “Later on I discovered, and am still discovering to this day, that one only learns to have faith by living in the full thisworldliness of life.” In the Reich Central Security Office a “special commission” investigating the July 20 attempt begins uncovering and pursuing the conspiracy (the arrests of Oster, Hase, and Canaris follow).

July 25 Himmler named commander of the reserve army. July 27 Bonhoeffer writes to Bethge (4/180) that he is working on “the question of ‘unconscious Christianity.”

Appendix I 605 August 3 Bonhoeffer sends Bethge his “Outline for a Book” (4/187).

August 14 Bonhoeffer’s first letter for Bethge’s thirty-fifth birthday (4/190) states: “Indeed, the most important things in life are human relationships”; he also sends the poem “Stations on the Way to Freedom” (4/191).

August 18 Schlabrendorff taken to the Reich Central Security Office prison. Hans John and Friedrich Justus Perels arrested.

August 21 Bonhoeffer’s second letter for Bethge’s birthday (4/192) includes the Daily Text reading and meditation for August 28, 1944.

August 22 Dohnanyi transported from the isolation ward in Potsdam to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

August 23 Maria von Wedemeyer visits Bonhoeffer in Tegel, “so fresh and at the same time as steadfast and calm as seldom before” (4/193).

August 25 Allies take Paris. August 27-28 Bonhoeffer composes his poem “The Friend” (4/196). 673 September 8 Arrests of Constantin von Dietze and Adolf Lampe. V-2 rocket used for the first time.

September 22 Criminal commissioner Sonderegger of the July 20 special commission discovers the secret archive of the military intelligence resistance group in a branch office of the Army High Command in Zossen.

September 25 Military conscription of all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty capable of bearing arms into the German Volkssturm units.

September 27 Josef Muller taken to the Reich Central Security Office prison.

September 29 Bethge receives Bonhoeffer’s poem “The Death of Moses” (4/197).

October At Bonhoeffer’s request, Maria von Wedemeyer moves in with Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer and helps as an assistant during appointment hours.

October | Klaus Bonhoeffer arrested. Bonhoeffer abandons plans to escape.

October 4 Rudiger Schleicher arrested.

606 Letters and Papers from Prison October 5 Friedrich Justus Perels arrested. Bonhoeffer sends his poem “Jonah” (4/199) to Maria von Wedemeyer to send on to Bethge.

October 8 Bonhoeffer transferred to the Reich Central Security Office prison, first to cell 19, later cell 24.

October 21 Aachen becomes the first major German city to be occupied by the Allies.

October 28 Bethge learns of his imminent arrest in San Polo d’Enza and destroys the remaining letters he still has from Bonhoeffer (the “September correspondence’).

October 30 Bethge taken to the prison on Lehrter Strafbe 3 in Berlin.

November New round of interrogations begin for Bonhoeffer. November 1 Gerhard Ritter arrested. Bonhoeffer interrogated again and describes it “in a word: repugnant.” Order given to halt the gassings at Auschwitz.

December 19 Bonhoclffer’s letter to Maria von Wedemeyer with his poem “Powers of Good” (4/200) as “my Christmas greeting to you and my parents and siblings,” handed over by Sonderegger.

December 22 Maria von Wedemeyer writes Hedwig von Truchseh

674 that Hedwig’s husband, Dietrich von Truchsef, and Hans Jurgen von Kleist-Retzow have been arrested in Berlin. 1945

January 12 Beginning of the major Soviet offensive against the German eastern front.

January 24 Moltke executed. January 29 Maria von Wedemeyer leads the Aindertrek of youth fleeing from Patzig to the west.

January 31 Red Army takes Patzig. February | Dohnanyi transferred to the underground prison at the Reich Central Security Office.

February 2 Roland Freisler pronounces the People’s Court death sentence on Klaus Bonhoeffer, Rudiger Schleicher, Friedrich Justus Perels, and Hans John; Goerdeler executed.

Appendix I 607 February 3 Heaviest daytime air bombardment of Berlin to date; Freisler killed in the bombing.

February 4-11 Allied Big Three Conference in Yalta/Crimea: Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill agree to divide Germany into four occupation zones: the Soviet/ Russian, American, English, and French.

February 7 Twenty prisoners are transported from the Reich Central Security Office underground prison; twelve (including Bonhoeffer and Josef Muller) are taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp, eight (including Canaris and Oster) to the Flossenburg concentration camp.

February 13 Maria von Wedemeyer returns to Berlin, receives a pass to Bundorf. During the night of February 13-14, there is heavy Allied air bombardment of Dresden, which is filled with refugees.

February 19 Maria von Wedemeyer writes to her mother from Flossenburg (4/205): “Unfortunately my whole journey to Bundorl and Flossenburg was completely in vain. Dietrich isn’t here at all.”

February 24 Payne Best and General von Rabenau taken to Buchenwald; Rabenau shares a cell with Bonhoeffer.

March 8 Dohnanyi writes a secret message: “They have everything.”

Mid-March Dohnanyi transferred to the police ward of the city 675 hospital.

April 3 Prisoners, including Bonhoeffer, transported out of Buchenwald.

April 4 The prisoner transport stops in Regensburg; meeting with some arrested family members of the conspirators.

April 5 Based on the newly found Zossen files, Hitler orders the executions of the Canaris group. The prisoner transport with Bonhoeffer continues on toward the Bavarian forest. Dohnanyi is taken back to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

April 6 At dawn the prisoner transport arrives at the schoolhouse in Schonberg. Following a summary courtmartial in Sachsenhausen, Dohnanyi is sentenced to death.

608 Letters and Papers from Prison April 8 Second Sunday of Easter. Bonhoeffer holds a devotional service for his fellow prisoners in the Schonberg schoolhouse and is then picked up. Summary court-martial during the night of April 8-9 in Flossenburg.

April 9 In the early morning in Flossenburg, executions of Canaris and members of his group, including Bonhoeffer. Dohnanyi is executed in Sachsenhausen.

April 22 During the night of April 22—23, a group of prisoners from the Lehrter StraBe 61 prison (where many political prisoners associated with July 20 were imprisoned) is executed by firing squad at the Lehrter train station; the group includes Klaus Bonhoeffer, Rudiger Schleicher, Friedrich Justus Perels, and Hans John.

April 25 Other prisoners, including Bethge, are [reed from the Lehrter Strabe 3 prison.

April 28 The first Red Army soldiers appear on Marienburger Allee. Mussolini, trying to flee to Switzerland, is captured and executed by Italian partisans.

April 30 Hitler commits suicide in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

May 1 Goebbels commits suicide in the bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

676 May 7-9 Surrender of the German armed forces. May 30 Freudenberg telegraphs from Geneva to London that Bonhoeffer is dead. Maria von Wedemeyer learns of it in June, Bonhoeffer’s parents at the end of July.

Mid-June Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer writes to his family (epilogue): “Why isn’t he here yet?”

APPENDIX 2 BONHOEFFER FAMILY [TREE

Karl-Friedrich Karl (b. 1931) (1899-1957) Friedrich(b. 1932) 0O

Margarete (Grete) Martin (b. 1935) von Dohnanyi Katharina (b. 1937) (1903-92) Walter (1899-1918)

Klaus Thomas(b, 1931) GN) Cornelic (Cornelchen)

oe ‘, b. 1934

Emilie (Emmi) Delbruck .

VAT ay . OQYVz - Ursula: (Uisel) Hans-Walter. «_(b. 1924) Karl Bonhoeffer (1902-83) Renate (b. 1925)

(1868-1948) 00 DorotheeGh (b.eyacaial 1928) oo Riidiger Schleicher Paula von Hase 1895 1945) Se ( sristinchen, (1876-1951) (1895-1945 Tine) (b. 1930) Christine (Christel)

(1903-65) Barbara (Barbel) (b. 1926)

00 Klaus (b. 1928)

Hans von Dohnanyi Christoph (b. 1929) (1902-45)

Dietrich (1906-45) Sabine

(b. 1906) Marianne {(b. 1927) ad DeiLeibholz fe Christiane(b. 1930) Gerhard (Gert) ESE Ra eRe ate (1901-82)

Susanne (Suse, Susi)

(1909-91) z Michael (Michel) (1935-75) CO

Walter DreB Andreas (b. 1938) (1904-79)

609

610 Letters and Papers from Prison Andreas DreB Barbara = Barbel von Dohnany1 Christiane Leibholz Christine (Bonhoeffer) von Dohnanyi Christine = Christinchen = Tine Schleicher Christoph von Dohnanyi Cornelie = Cornelchen Bonhoeffer Dietrich Bonhoeffer Dorothee Schleicher Emilie = Emmi (Delbruick) Bonhoeffer Friedrich Bonhoeffer Gerhard = Gert Leibholz Grete = Margarete (von Dohnanyi) Bonhoeffer Hans von Dohnanyi Hans-Walter Schleicher Karl Bonhoeffer (b. 1868) Karl Bonhoeffer (b. 1931) Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer Katharina Bonhoeffer Klaus Bonhoelfer Klaus von Dohnanyi Margarete = Grete (von Dohnanyi) Bonhoeffer Marianne Leibholz Martin Bonhoeffer Michael = Michel Dreb Paula (von Hase) Bonhoeffer Renate (Schleicher) Bethge Rudiger Schleicher Sabine (Bonhoeffer) Leibholz Susanne = Suse = Susi (Bonhoeffer) DreB Thomas Bonhoeffer Tine = Christine Schleicher Ursula = Ursel (Bonhoeffer) Schleicher Walter Bonhoeffer (b. 1899) Walter Bonhoeffer (b. 1938) Walter DreB

APPENDIX 2 TEXTS PUBLISHED IN DBWE'8

AND IN Letters and Papers from Prison AND Gesammelte Schriften

The following documents from the 1972/1977 “new, greatly enlarged” edition of Lellers and Papers from Prison are not included in DBWE 8: Bonhoeffer’s correspondence with Manfred Roeder (LPP, 56-70), which appears in DBWE 16, 1/228, pp. 413-27; and “Lance Corporal Berg” (LPP, 253ff,), which appears in DBWE 7:183-94.

LPP DBWE & LPP DBWE 8

3-17 Prologue 53-55 1/30 a Lf) 70-72 1/31

21-22 1/2 72-73 1/32 23 l/s 73-75 1/33

23-24 1/4 75 1/34 24-25 Waa 751/35 1/36 27-28 ii 76 28 1/8 76-78 L/3¢ 29-3] 1/10 78-79 1/38 33-34 1/11 80 1/39 34-35 1g 87-89 2/41 36 1/13 92-93 91-92 2/43 o/ae 36 1/15 37-38 1/14 93-95 2/44

37-38 1/16 95-96 2/50 38-40 L/T7 96-97 2/46 41-47 1/18 97-98 2/47 47 1/19 98-99 2/48

47-48 1/23 99 2/49 48-5] V25 100-101 2/50 51 1/26 102 yay a 52 1/27 103 Py Bay ay 1/28 103-4 2pI99 611

612 Letters and Papers from Prison

LPP DBWE 8 LPP DBWE 8

104-6 2/54 182 2/95 106-7 2/55 182-84 2/96 107-8 2/56 185 2/97 108-10 2/57 185-86 2/99

110-11 2/58 187-88 186-872/100 2/98 111-12 2/59 112-13 2/60 188—90 2/101 113-14 2/61 190-95 2/102 114-15 2/62 195-96 2/103 115-17 2/64 2/63 197-98 196-97 2/105 2/104 117-18 118-20 2/65 198-201 2/106 120 2/66 201-2 2/107 120-22 2/67 202-5 2/108 L22 2/68 205-7 2/109 122-24 2/110 124-252/69 2/70207-9 210 2/ aii

125-26 ZI) 211-14 27 AL? 126-28 2/12 214 27115 128-37 2/73 215-16 2/114 137-38 2/76 Zia 216-20 2/115 139-41 220-22 2/116 141-42 27 TT 223-24 2/117 142-43 2/78 224-26 2/118 144 2/74 226-27 2/119 144-50 2/79 227-28 2/120 151-52 2/80 228-33 Bj 2/121 152-53 2/8) 233-35 ize 153-55 2/82 235-36 ZI 155-56 2/83 236-41 2/124 156-59 2/84 241-42 2/125 159-60 2/85 242-43 ra all 160-64 2/86 243-44 2/126 165-66 2/87 244-46 2/128 166-75 2/88 246-247 2/130 175 2/91 248-52 yy ad | 176-79 2/89 271-73 3/132 179-80 2/94 2/92 274-75 273-74 3/134 3/133 180-82

Appendix 3 613 LPP DBWE 8 LPP DBWE § 275-77 3/135 349-56 3/175 277-78 3/136 356-57 3/176 278-82 3/137 357-63 oy Wa 283-84 3/138 369-70 4/178 285-87 3/139 370-71 4/191 287-89 3/140 372-73 4/179 289-9] 3/141 373 4/180 291-92 3/142 374-75 4/183 292-94 3/144 375-76 4/184 294-300 3/145 376-78 4/185

301-2 3/146 378-79 4/186 302-3 3/147 379-80 4/18] 304-7 3/148 380 4/182 307-8 3/149 380-83 4/187 308-9 3/150 383-84 4/188 309-10 3/151 384-85 4/189 310-13 3/152 386-87 4/190 313-14 5/153 388-9] 4/196 315-16 3/154 391-92 4/192 316-18 o/ 155 392-94 4/193 318 3/156 394 4/194 319-20 3/157 395-96 4/195 320-23 3/158 396-98 4/198

525 3/159 398-99 4/199 323-24 3/160 399—400 4/201]

324-29 3/161 400-401 4/200

330 3/162 401-2 4/202 331 3/163 402 4/203 331-32 3/164 403 4/204 332 3/165 403-4 4/205 332-33 3/166 404 4/206

334-35 3/167 409-10 Epilogue 335-37 3/169 337-39 3/168

339-42 3/170 CS DBWE 8 343 3/171 343-47 of Ad2 4:613-20 4/197

347-48 o/ To (not published 348-49 3/174 in LPP)

APPENDIX 4 UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL FROM BONHOEFFER’S LITERARY ESTATE

The following list of unpublished material includes document numbers as cited in the Bonhoeffer Nachlaf volume (these are the numbers as they appear in the Bonhoeffer microfiche collection). This list was omitted from DBW 8 and has been created for the English edition. Some of the letters from this period that relate more specifically to the conspiracy have been published in DBWE 16.

Addressee or Contents Date NL Number Ursula Schleicher to D. Bonhoeffer — April 20, 1943 NL, A ‘76,5 Paula Bonhoeffer to D. Bonhoeffer = April 22, 1943 NL, A 76,6 Hans-Walter Schleicher

to D. Bonhoeffer June 6, 1943 NL, A 76,36 Renate Schleicher to D. Bonhoeffer = May 13, 1943 NL, A 76,20 Christoph von Dohnanyi

to D. Bonhoeffer June 6, 1943 NL, A 76,37

Ursula Schleicher to D. Bonhoeffer — June 5, 1943 NL, A 76,32

Walter DreB to D. Bonhoeffer July 11, 1943 NL, A 76,46 Susanne DreB to D. Bonhoeffer July 18, 1943 NL, A 76,50 Hans Christoph von Hase

to D. Bonhoeffer July 30, 1943 NL, A 77,54

Christoph von Dohnanyi

to D. Bonhoeffer September 1, 1943 NL, A 77,69

Christoph von Dohnanyi

to D. Bonhoeffer September 24,1943. NL, A 77, 80

614

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Archival Sources and Private Collections

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s papers and personal library, as well as correspon-

dence from others and relevant material in other archives, have been cataloged in the Nachlap Dietrich Bonhoeffer volume compiled by Dietrich Meyer and Eberhard Bethge. All such citations in DBWE are indicated by NL, followed by the corresponding reference code within that published

index. Not all this material is part of the actual Bonhoeffer NachlaB in the Staatsbibhothek in Berlin; footnote citations of NZ material from other archives also give the numbering from the respective archive. All the material listed in the Meyer and Bethge catalog, however, has been included on microfiches now located at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin (previously at the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz) and in the Bonhoelfer Collection at Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York. Archives of the Dietrich Bonhoelfer Church, Sydenham, London Augustinus-Lexikon, Giessen Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BA Berlin-Lichterfelde) NachlafB Hans und Christine von Dohnanyi (NL Dohnanyi) Houghton Library, Harvard University Literary estate of Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller Papers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1942-44, bMS Ger 161 Institut fur Spatmittelalter und Reformation, Tubingen Sgren Kierkegaard Forskningscenteret, Copenhagen Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin NachlaB Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Nachlab 299) Private Collections Eberhard and Renate Bethge Ruth-Alice von Bismarck Emmi Bonhoeffer 615

616 Bibliography Gerhard Ebeling Hans-Walter Schleicher Ursula Schleicher

2. Literature Mentioned by Bonhoeffer and His Correspondents About, Edmond. Les mariages de Paris (The marriages of Paris). Berlin: International Bibliothek, 1922. Andreas, Willy. Staatskunst und Diplomatie der Venezianer im Spiegel ihrer Gesandtenberichte (Venetian statecraft and diplomacy as reflected in their diplomatic messages). Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1943. Annual Report and Handbook 1932. Geneva: World Alliance for International Friendship through the Churches. NL-bibl. 6 A 1. Barth, Karl. Die Kirchliche Dogmattk. Vol. 2: Die Lehre von Golt. Published as 2

vols. 2/1, Zurich: Zollikon, 1940; 2/2, Zurich: Zollikon, 1942. Translated as Church Dogmatics. Vol. 2, The Doctrine of God. Vol. 2/1 translated by T. H. L. Parker et al.; vol. 2/2 translated by G. W. Bromiley et al. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1957. ———.. Der Romerbrief. 3rd ed. (2nd printing of 1922 rev. ed.). Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1923. Translated from the 6th German ed. by Edwin C. Hoskyns as The Epistle to the Romans. London: Oxford University Press, 1960. Benz, Richard. Die Stunde der deulschen Musik (The hour of German music). 3rd rev. ed. Jena: E. Diederichs, 1943. Die Bibel oder die ganze Heilige Schrift des Allen und Neuen Testaments nach der deutschen Ubersetzung D. Martin Luthers. (The Bible or entire Holy Scrip-

ture of the Old and New Testaments according to the German translation of Dr. Martin Luther). Supervised by the Commission of the German Evangelical Church Conference. Mitteloktay ed. Stuttgart: Privileg. Wurtt. Bibelanst, 1911. NZ-Bzbl. 1A 6. Die Biene auf dem Missionsfelde (The bee on the mission field). Monthly publication of the Gossner Mission Society. Nos. 1-108, 1824-1941. BerlinFriedenau: Verlag der Gossnerschen Mission. Bulow, Gabriele von Humboldt. Jochter Wilhelm von Humboldts: Ein Lebensbild aus den Familienpapieren Wilhelm von Humboldts und seiner Kinder 1791-1887. Edited by Anna von Sydow. New ed. Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1937. Translated by Clara Nordlinger as Gabriele von Bulow, Daughter of Withelm von Humboldt: A Memoir Compiled from the Family Papers of Wilhelm von Humboldt and His Children, 1791-1887. London: Smith, Elder, 1897.

Bultmann, Rudolf. “Neues Testament und Mythologie: Das Problem der Entmythologisierung der neutestamentlichen Verkundigung.” In Offenbarung und Heilsgeschehen, Beitrage zur evangelischen Theologie 7, 27-69.

Bibliography 617 Munich: A. Lempp, 1941. Translated by Reginald H. Fuller as “New Testament and Mythology.” In Kerygma and Myth, Harper Torchbook rev. ed., 1-44. New York: Harper & Row, 1961. Burckhardt, Jacob. Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung zum Genup der Kunstwerke

ltaliens. Complete new printing of the original edition. Vienna: E. A. Seemann, 1938. Translated by Mrs. A. H. Clough as The Cicerone; or Art Guide to Painting Italy: For the Use of Travelers. Edited by A. von Zahn. London: J. Murray, 1873.

——. Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. With a preface by Wilhelm von Bode. Berlin, 1928. Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore as The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Introduction by Benjamin Nelson and Charles Trinkaus. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1958. Calderon de la Barca, Pedro. Calderons ausgewahlte Werke in drei Banden (Calde-

ron’s collected works in three volumes). Stuttgart, n.d. NZ-Bibl. 8 C 8. Cardano, Girolamo. Des Girolamo Cardano von Mailand, Burgers von Bologna, eigene Lebensbeschreibung (Memoir of Girolamo Cardano of Milan, a citi-

zen of Bologna). German translation and introduction by Herman Hefele. Jena: E. Diederichs, 1914. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Leben und Taten des scharfsinnigen I:dlen Don Quichote von La Mancha. Leipzig: M. Hesse, 1926. Translated by Edith Grossman as Don Quixote. London: Secker & Warburg, 2004. ——.. Obras Complelas (Complete works). Madrid: Tipogr. de la Reuista de Archivos Bibliotecas y Muscos, 1927, NL- Bibl. 8 C9. Cherbury. See Herbert of Cherbury. Cooper, Duff. Talleyrand. English original. London: Jonathan Cape, 1932. German translation by Karl Lerbs. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1937. Cusa. See Nicholas of Cusa. Dahn, Felix. kin Kampf um Rom: Historischer Roman (A battle for Rome: A historical novel). Complete ed. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1940. Dante Alighieri. Die gottliche Komodie. Vols. 1-3. German translation from the Italian by Hermann Gmelin. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1949-51. ‘Translated by Anthony Esolen as The Inferno, Purgatory; Paradise. New York: Modern Library, 2004-5. de Kruif, Paul. Mikrobenjdger. 6th ed. Zurich: Orell Fussli, 1937. Translated as The Microbe Hunters. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996. Delbruck, Hans. Weltgeschichte: Vorlesungen, gehalten an der Universitat Berlin 1896-1920 (World history: Lectures held at the University of Berlin 1896-1920). 2nd ed. Vols. 1-5. Berlin: Deutsche Verlaggesellschaft, 1931. NL-Bibl. 2 A 5.

Dilthey, Wilhelm. Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung: Lessing, Goethe, Novalis, Holderlin; Vier Aufsdatze. 1906. 2nd ed., Leipzig: Teubner, 1907. NL-Bzbl. 7 A 7.

618 Bibliography Translated and edited by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Fridjof Rodi as Poetry and Experience. Vol. 5, Withelm Dilthey: Collected Works. Princeton, N,J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. —.. Von deutscher Dichtung und Musik: Aus den Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Geistes (On German poetry and music: Studies on the history of the German spirit). 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1931. NZ-Bibl. 2 A 5. ——.. Wellanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation (Worldview and analysis of humanity since the Renaissance and Reformation). Vol. 2 of Gesammelte Schriften (Collected works). 7th ed. Stuttgart: Teubner; Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Memotren aus einem Tolenhaus. German translation

by Nadja Strasser. Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1924. Translated by Jessie Coulson, edited by Ronald Hingley as Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Durer, Albrecht. Die Offenbarung Johannes: 16 Holzschnitte (The Revelation of John: 16 woodcuts). Berlin, n.d. NL-Bibl. 9. 9. Eder, Hildegard. Line Tur fiel ins Schlof (A door slammed shut in the castle). Viennese Novels 75. Vienna: 1944. iin neues Lied. See Neues Lied.

Eschenbach, Wolfram von. Parzival. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1923. NL-bibl. 8 C 52. Translated by Cyril Edwards as Parzifal and Titurel. Oxford World's Classics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. [vangelisches Gesangbuch fiir Brandenburg und Pommern (Protestant hymnal

for Brandenburg and Pomerania). Berlin: Provinzialkirchenraten von Brandenburg und Pommern, 1931. Flechtner, Hans-Joachim. Du und das Welter: Wellerkunde fur Jedermann (You

and the weather: Meteorology for everyman). Berlin: Deutsche Verlag, 1940.

Fontane, Theodor. Frau Jenny Treibel, oder, “Wo sich Herz zu Herz find” (1892)

(Mrs. Jenny Treibel, or, “Where heart to heart finds itself”). In Werke, Schriften und Briefe (Works, writings and letters), sec. 1, vol. 4., 2nd ed., 297-478. Munich: Hanser, 19774.

——.. Irrungen, Wirrungen (Misunderstandings, confusion) (1888). In Werke, Schriften und Briefe (Works, writings and letters), sec. 1, vol. 2, 319475. Munich: Hanser, 1971. ——.. Der Stechlin (1898). Vol. 5 of Werke, Schriften und Briefe (Works, writ-

ings and letters), sec. 1. 2nd ed. Munich: Hanser, 1980. Translated with an introduction and notes by William L. Zwiebel as The Stechlin. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1995. ——. Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg (Travels through Mark Brandenburg) (1862-82). In Werke, Schriften und Briefe (Works, writings

Bibliography 619 and letters), sec. 2, vols. 1-3, edited by Walter Keitel and Helmuth Nurnberger, 3rd rev. ed. Munich: Hanser, 1987. Gesangbuch der Evangelischen Briidergemeine (Moravian hymnal). Gnadau, 1908.

Gesangbuch zum Gebrauch der evangelischen Brtidergemeinen (Moravian hymnal). Barby: Schilling, 1778. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Myrons Kuh (Myron’s cow). In vol. 49, sec. 2 of Goethes Werke (published in sections by Grand Duchess Sophie von Sachsen), 3-15. Weimar: Bohlau, 1900. —§#.. Reineke Fuchs. In vol. 50. of Goethes Werke, 1-186. Weimar: Bohlau, 1900. Translated by Thomas Arnold as The Story of Reynard the Fox. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1954. ——. Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung. Vols. 51 and 52 of Goethes Werke. Weimar: Bohlau, 1911. Translated by John Raymond Russell as Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Calling. Columbia, $.C.: Camden House, 1995. Gotthelf, Jeremias. Geld und Geist oder die Versohnung: Line Lrzadhlung. Edited by R. Hunziker, H. Bloesch, W. Kuker, and K. Guggisberg, newly revised

by W. Kuker. Lausanne: Editions Rencontre, 1970. Translated as Wealth and Welfare. New York: H. Fertig, 1976. ——. Jakobs des Handwerksgesellen Wanderungen durch die Schweiz (Travels

through Switzerland of Jacob the handworker). Lausanne: Editions Rencontre, 1970. ———. Uli der Knecht, with Ul der Pachter. Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1941. NL-Bibl. 8 C18. Uli der Knecht translated by Julia Firth as Ulric, the Farm Servant. London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1907.

——.. Zeitgeist und Berner Geist (The spirit of the age and the spirit of Berne). Lausanne: Editions Rencontre, 1970. Harnack, Adolf von. Geschichte der Koniglch Preupischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (History of the Royal Prussian Academy in Berlin). Vol.

4. Berlin: Reichsdruckerei, 1900. Hartmann, Nicolai, ed. Systematische Philosophie (Systematic philosophy). Stuttgart: KohIhammer, 1942. NL-Bibl. 7 A 24. Hase, Karl von. /deale und Irrtiimer: Jugenderinnerungen (Ideals and mistakes: Memories of youth). 7th ed. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1917. NZ-Bzbl. 10, 25;

Hauff, Wilhelm. Hauffs Werke in sechs Teilen (Hauff’s works in six parts).

Based on the Hampel edition, newly edited with an introduction and notes by M. Drescher. Pt. 1, 43-76: Marchen (Fairy tales [Almanac for the years 1826, 1827, 1828]). Pt. 4: Lichtenstein: Romantische Sage aus der Wiirttembergischen Geschichte (Lichtenstein: Romantic saga from the history of Wurttemberg). Berlin: Bong, 1907.

620 Bibliography Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. Halle an der Saale: M. Niemeyer, 1927. 8th ed. Tubingen: M. Niemeyer, 1957. Translated by Joan Stambaugh as Being and Time: A Translation of Seon und Zeit. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Holderlin, Friedrich. “Sokrates und Alcibiades” (Socrates and Alcibiades). In Sdmtlche Werke (Collected works), ed. by F. BeiBner, vol. 1, pt. 1, 260. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1946. Holl, Karl. Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Kirchengeschichte (Collected essays on church history). Vol. 1: Luther 4th ed. Vol. 2: Der Osten (The East). Vol. 3: Der Westen (The West). Tubingen: Mohr, 1927-28. Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Carmina. Edited by L. Mueller. Leipzig: Konigliche Akademie fur Graphische Kunste und Buchgewerbe, 1904. Translated by John Conington as The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. London: George Bell, 1904.

——.. Liber der arte poetica, Edited, with a commentary by Jacopo Grifoli. Vol. 3. Poetiken des Cinquecento. Munich: Fink, 1967. Hoskyns, Edwyn C., and F. Noel Davey. Das Ratsel des Neuen ‘Testaments. Pref-

ace by Gerhard Kittel and Julius Schniewind. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1938. Translated from the English original The Riddle of the New Testament. 1931. London: Faber & Faber, 1964. Jean Paul [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter]. Blumen-, Fruchl- und Dornensticke (Siebenkas) (Flowers, fruit and thorns). Vol. 6 of Sdmiliche Werke (Col-

lected works). Historical-critical edition edited by Eduard Berend. Ist ed. Weimar: Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1928. ——.. Flegeljahre (Adolescent years). Vol. 10 of Samiliche Werke (Collected works). Weimar: Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1934. See Life of Jean Paull. Richter. Compiled from various sources. Together with his autobiography. Trans-

lated from the German by Mr. William Howitt. London: J. Chapman, 1849.

——.. Leben des vergnugten Schulmeisterleins Maria Wuz in Auenthal: Eine Art

Idylle (Life of the cheerful schoolmistress Maria Wuz in Auenthal: A sort of idyll). Vol. 2 of Samtliche Werke (Collected works), sec. 1, 408-46. Welmar: Bohlaus Nachfolger, 19277. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1709). Vol. 6 of Samtliche Werke in sechs Banden. 2nd ed. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1921-23. NL-Bibl. 7 A 35. Translated by Victor Lye Dowdell as Anthropology from a Pragmatic

Point of View. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996. Keller, Gottfried. Der griine Heinrich. Vol. 2 of Samtliche Werke in fiinf Banden. Edited by Th. Boning and G. Kaiser. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985. Translated by A. M. Holt as Green Henry. New York: Grove Press, 1960.

Bibliography 621 ———.. feremias Gotthelf. Vol. 6 of Gesammelte Werke in sechs Banden (Collected

works in six volumes). Edited by C. Enders. Leipzig: Reclam, 1922. Kierkegaard, Sgren. Der kinzelne und die Kirche: Uber Luther und den Protestant-

wsmus (The individual and the church: On Luther and Protestantism). Compiled, translated, and introduced by Wilhelm Kutemeyer. Berlin: Kurt Wolff, 1934. NZ-Bibl. 7 A 40. ——.. Entweder-Oder: Ein Lebensfragment. 6th ed. Dresden: Ungelenk, 1927.

NL-Bibl. 7 A 45. Edited and translated with introduction and notes by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong as Lither-Or. 2 vols. Princeton, N.]J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. Kindt, Karl. Klopstock. Berlin-Spandau: Wichern Verlag, 1941. NL-Bzbl. 10 34.

Kirn, Paul. Aus der Frihzeit des Nationalgeftihls (From the early years of national consciousness). Leipzig: Koehler & Amerlang, 1943. Contains code dots from the Tegel prison period. Klages, Ludwig. Graphologie (Handwriting analysis). Wissenschaft und Bildung: Einzeldarstellungen aus allen Gebicten des Wissens 285. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1932. —. Handschrift und Charakter: Gemeinverstandlicher Abrif der graphologischen Technik (1917) (Handwriting and character: A general outline of graphological science). 5th—7th eds. Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1923. NL-Bibl.

TT,

Kleist, Heinrich von. Michael Kohthaas. Short story. Berlin: Realschulbuch-

handel, 1810. Translated by Michael Greenberg as Michael Kohlhaas. Hoboken, N.J.: Melville House, 2004. Kramp, Willy. Die Fischer von Lissau (The fishermen of Lissau). Berlin: von Hugo, 1939. Lasker, Eduard. Lehrbuch des Schachspiels. 8th ed. Berlin: Siedentop, 1928. Translated as Lasker’s Manual of Chess. ‘Toronto: J]. M. Dent, 1926.

——.. Schachstrategie (Chess strategy). 5th ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1928. Lesebuch deutscher Erzahler (A reader of German stories). Selected and introduced by Wolfdietrich Rasch. Berlin, 1941. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. “An Elise Reimarus am 9. 8. 1778” (To Elise Reimarus on August 9, 1778). In Gesammelte Werke in zehn Banden (Collected works in ten volumes), edited by P. Rilla, vol. 9. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1968. Low, Rudolf. Hauser uber dem Rhein (Houses along the Rhine: Three novels). Vol. 1: Dieter Basilius Deifil; vol. 2: Marie Louise Burckhardt; vol. 3: Achilles Kern. Vienna: Amalthea-Verlag, 1938. Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand. fiirg Jenatsch (1876). Vol. 1 of Sdmtliche Werke (Col-

lected works [in four volumes]). Edited by Walther Linden. Berlin: Bong, 1939.

G22 Libliography Morgenstern, Christian. Palmstrom (Palmstream) (1910). In Gesammelte Werke (Collected works). Wiesbaden: VMA Verlag, 1996.

Morike, Eduard. “Auf eine Lampe” (On a lamp). In Sdmtliche Werke (Col-

lected works), Ausgabe in drei Banden (edition published in three volumes), edited by Gerhard Baumann in cooperation with Siegfried Grosse, vol. 1. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1961. Naso, Eckhart von. Moltke: Mensch und Feldherr (Moltke: The person and the commander). Berlin: Buchergilde Gutenberg, 1937. Natorp, Paul. Sozzalpadagogih: Theorie der Willenserziehung auf der Grundlage der Gemeinschaft (Social pedagogy: The theory of educating the will on the basis of the community). 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Frommann, 1909. Ein neues Lied (A new song). A songbook for German Evangelical youth, 2nd

ed. Berlin-Dahlem: Evangelischen Reichsverband weiblicher Jugend, 1933:

Ortega y Gasset, José. Geschichte als System und Uber das rémische Imperium. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt, 1943. Published in English as History as a System and Other Essays toward a Philosophy of History. With an afterword

by John William Miller. Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981. Otto, Walter F. Die Gotter Griechenlands: Das Bild des Gottlichen im Spiegel des

griechischen Geistes. Bonn: Cohen, 1929. 3rd unrevised ed. Frankfurt am Main: Schulte-Bulmke, 1947. Translated by Moses Hadas as The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion. New York: Octagon Books, 1978.

Paul, Jean. See Jean Paul. Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich. Abendstunden eines Einsiedlers (Evening hours of a hermit). Arranged and with a commentary by Karl Richter. 8th ed. Leipzig: Sicgismund & Volkening, 1927, ——.. Lienhard und Gertrud: Ein Buch fur das Volk. Arranged and introduced by Fritz Storch. Jugendbucherei 31. Bielefeld, 1927. Translated and abridged by Eva Channing as Pestalozzi’s Leonard and Gertrude. New York: Gordon, 1977. Petersdorff, Herman von. Klezst-Retzow: Fin Lebensbild (Kleist-Retzow: A biography). Stuttgart: Cotta, 1907. NL-Bibl. 10 33. Pfeffer, Karl-Heinz, and Friedrich Schonemann, eds. Das britische Empire

und USA (The British Empire and the USA). 2 vols. Studien zur Auslandskunde. Berlin: Junker & Dunnhaupt, 1943, 1944. Plutarch. Grofe Griechen und Romer: Ausgewahlte Lebensbilder (Great Greeks and Romans: Selected portraits). Newly edited by Dagobert von Mikusch. Berlin: Propylaen-Verlag, 1935. NL-Bzbl. 11 10. ‘Translated by Bernadotte Perrin and published in Plutarch’s Lives. 11 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

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(Fritz Reuter’s collected works), complete, critical, and revised ed. in 18 vols., edited by Friedrich Muller, vol. 7, 17-118. Leipzig: Max Hesses Verlag, 1904. ——.. Ut mine kestungstid (About my time in prison). Vol. 10 of Fritz Reuters samlliche Werke (Fritz Reuter’s collected works). Leipzig: Max Hesses Verlag, 1904. Translated by Carl Bayerschmidt as Seven Years of My Life. Boston: Twayne, 1975. ——.. Ut mine Stromtid (About my farming days). Vols. 12-14 of Fritz Reuters samlliche Werke (Fritz Reuter’s collected works). Leipzig: Max Hesses Verlag, 1904. Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich. Geschichten aus alter Zeit (Stories of old times). Ist and 2nd series. 4th ed. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1921. Ritter, Gerhard. Die Weltwirkung der Reformation (The Reformation’s influence on the world). Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1941. Rothe, Hans, ed. Dauwmier und wir: Eine Sammlung Daumierscher Lithographien

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Schilling, Otto. Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie (Compendium of moral theology). Vol. 1: Allgemeine Moraltheologie (General moral theology); Vol. 2: Spezielle Moraltheologie (Special moral theology). Munich: Hueber, 1928. NL bibl. 6 B Al.

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624 bibliography Scholz, Wilhelm von. Die Ballade: Menschen und Machte, Schicksale und Taten

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letters: Historical-critical edition), Buchfassung (Collection of books), vol. 1/5, 9-234. Stuttgart: KohIhammer, 1982. ——. Der Nachsommer. Vols. 6-8 of Sdmtliche Werke. Edited by K. Eben and

F. Huller. Hildesheim: H. A. Gerstenberg, 1972. Reprint of A. Stifters Samlliche Werke. Bibliothek deutscher Schriftsteller aus Bohmen 31-33. Prague: J. G. Calve, 1916-21. Translated by Wendell W. Frye as Indian Summer. 3rd ed. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.

——. Der Waldsteig (The forest path). In Werke und Briefe: Historischkritische Gesamtausgabe (Works and letters: Historical-critical edition), Buchfassung (Collection of books), vol. 1/6, 143-213. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1982. ——. Weisheit des Herzens: Gedanken und Betrachtungen; kin Brevier (Wisdom of the heart: Thoughts and meditations; A breviary). Berlin: F. A. Herbig, 1941. NL-bibl. 8 C 39. Contains code dots from the ‘Tegel prison period. ——.. Wittko: Eine Erzahlung. Vols. 5/1—3 of Buchfassung, Werke und Briefe: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1984-86. Translated by Wendell W. Frye as Witiko. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. Storm, Theodor. Sdmitliche Werke in vier Banden (Collected works in 4 volumes). Edited by Karl Ernst Laage and Dieter Lohmeier. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Deutsche Klassiker, 1987. Die tdglichen Losungen und Lehrtexte der Briidergemeine ftir das Jahr 1944 (Mora-

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Thomae Hemerken a Kempis. Opera Omnia (voluminibus septem edidit additque volumine de vita et scriptis e1us disputavit Michael Josephus Pohl). Volumen Alterum: De Imitatione Christi quae dicitur Libri ILL cum ceteris Autographi Bruxellensis Tractatibus. Tractatuum Asceticorum Partem Alteram complectens De Imitatione Christi cum Novem Tractatulis. Friburgi Bris-

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Weizsacker, Carl Friedrich Freiherr von. Zum Weltbild der Physik. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1943. Translated by Marjoric Grene as The World View of Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.

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Augustinus-Lexikon. Edited by Cornelius P. Mayer and Erich Feldmann. Basel: Schwabe, 1986-. Bacon, Francis. Uber die Wurde und den hortgang der Wissenschaften (1623). German translation by Johann Pfingsten of De Augmentis Scientiarum.

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1966. Translated by Joseph Devey as The Advancement of Learning. New York: American Home Library, 1902. Bangs, Carl. Arminius: A Study in the Dutch Reformation. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971. Barnett, Victoria. For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Barth, Karl. “Aus einem Briefe K. Barths an Landesuperintendent P. W. Herrenbruck, 21 Dezember 1952.” In Die Miindige Welt, 1:121—22. Trans-

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——. Credo: Die Hauptprobleme der Dogmatik dargestellt im Anschluf an das Apostolische Glaubensbekennmis. 16 Vorlesungen an der Universitat Utrecht

im Februar und Marz 1935. (Credo: The central problems of dogmatics in the context of the apostolic confessions. Sixteen lectures at the University of Utrecht in February and March 1935). 4th ed. Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1936. Translated by J. S. McNab as Credo. New York: Scribner, 1962.

——. hechitfertigung und Recht. Vheologische Studien 1. Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1938. Translated by Ronald Howe as “Church and State.” In Karl Barth, Community, State, and Church: Three Essays, edited and introduced by Will Herberg, 101-48. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968.

——.. Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie. Gesammelte Vortrage. Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1925. NL-B2bl. 3 B 11. Translated by Douglas Horton as The Word of God and the Word of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 19577. Bartl, Klaus. Theologie und Sakularilal: Die theologischen Ansalze Friedrich Gogayrtens und Dietrich Bonhoeffers zur Analyse und Reflexion der sdkularisierten Welt

(Theology and secularism: The theological approaches of Friedrich Gogarten and Dietrich Bonhoeffer toward analysis of and reflections on the secular world). Europaische Hochschulschriften 23, no. 393. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1990. Bauer, Karl-Adolf, eds. Predigeramt ohne Pfarramt? Die “Illegalen” im Kirchenkampf (Preachers without a ministry? The “illegals” in the Church Strug-

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Baumgarten, Otto. Politik und Moral (Politics and morality). Tubingen: Mohr, 1916. NZ-Bibl. 4 4. Beese, Dieter. Seelsorger in Uniform: Evangelische Militarseelsorge im Zweiten Weltkrieg; Aufgabe—Leitung—Predigt (Chaplaincy in uniform: Protestant

military chaplaincy in the Second World War; Duties—leadership— preaching). Hanover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1995. Beesk, Gottfried. “Theologische Existenz am Ort der Gefangenschaft: Was

bedeuten die Erfahrungen Dietrich Bonhoeffers (und anderer inhaftierter Christen) fur mich und meine Arbeit als Gefangnisseelsorger?” (Theological existence in the prisons: What do Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s experiences [and those of other imprisoned Christians] mean for me and my work as prison chaplain’). Manuscript. Berlin, 1988. Beethoven, Ludwig van. Werke: Vollstandige kritisch durchgesehene tiberall berechtigte Ausgabe. 25 vols. Leipzig, 1862—65, 1888. Cited as Gesamtausgabe (GA).

628 bibliography “Die Begegnung: Festgabe fur Gaetano Latmiral zum 80. Geburtstag” (The

encounter: In honor of Gaetano Latmiral on his eightieth birthday). LBG-Rundbrief 31 (1989). See Latmiral. Begegnungen mit Dietrich Bonhoeffer. See Zimmermann, Wolf-Dieter. Die Bekenntnisschrifien der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. Edited and published

in the anniversary year of the Augsburg Confession, 1930. 2 vols. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1930. Vol. 2: NE-Bibl. 2 C 3. Translated

by Charles Arand, Eric Gritsch, Robert Kolb, William Russell, James Schaaf, Jane Strohl, and Timothy J. Wengert as The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche (The confessions of the Reformed

church). Authentic text with historical introduction and index. Edited by E. F. Karl Muller. Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1903. NL-Bibl. 2 C 3. la. Benktson, Benkt-Erik. Christus und die Religion: Der Religionsbegriff bet Barth,

Bonhoeffer und Tillich (Christ and religion: The concept of religion in Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Tillich). Arbeiten zur Theologie 2, no. 9. Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1967. Bernd, Clifford Albrecht. Theodor Storm: The Dano-German Poet and Writer. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Das Berneuchener Buch: Vom Anspruch des Evangeliums auf die Kirchen der

Reformation (The “Berneuchen” book: The claims of the gospel in the churches of the Reformation). Published by the Berneuchener Conference. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1926. Bethge, Eberhard. Bekennen und Widerstehen: Aufsalze, Reden, Gesprache (Con-

fession and resisting: Essays, speeches, conversations). Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1984. ——. bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr. Edited and with an essay by John W. de Gruchy. New York: Seabury, 1975. ——., ed. Bonhoeffer-Gedenkheft (Bonhoeffer memorial). Berlin: Haus & Schule, 1947.

——.. “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology.” In Smith, World Come of Age, 22-88.

——.. “Christlicher Glaube ohne Religion: Hat sich Dietrich Bonhoeffer geirrt?” (Christian belief without religion: Did Dietrich Bonhoeffer err?) Evangelische Kommentare 8 (1975): 395-97. ——, ed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Auf dem Wege zur Fretheit; Gedichte aus Tegel (On

the way to freedom: Poems from ‘Tegel). Berlin: Verlag Haus & Schule, 1946. 2nd enlarged ed.: Dietrich und Klaus Bonhoeffer: Auf dem Wege zur Fretheit; Gedichte und Briefe aus der Haft (On the way to freedom: Poems and letters from prison). Berlin: Haus & Schule, 1947.

Bibliography 629 ——.. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologe—Christ—Zetigenosse; Eine Biographie. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1967. Translated by Eric Mosbacher, Peter Ross, Betty Ross, Frank Clarke, and William Glen-Doepel as Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, under the editorship of Edwin Robertson. Revised

and edited by Victoria J. Barnett, based on the 7th German ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

—.. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Juden.” In Huber and Todt, Ethik im Ernstfall, 171-214. Translated as “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews.” In Godsey and Kelly, Ethical Responsibility, 43-96. ——.. rstes Gebot und Zeitgeschichte: Aufsatze und Reden, 1980-1990 (The

firs’ commandment and contemporary history: Essays and speeches). Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1990.

——.. “Der Freund Dietrich Bonhoeffer und seine theologische Konzeption von Freundschaft.” In Gremmels and Huber, Theologie und Freundschaft, 29-50. Translated as “My Friend Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology of Friendship.” In The Changing lace of I'riendship, edited by Leroy S. Rouner, 133-53. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. ——.. In Zilz gab es keine Juden: Erinnerungen aus meinen ersten vierzig Jahren (In Zitz there were no Jews: Memories from my first forty years). Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1989.

——.. “Liedpredigt zu ‘Von guten Machten’ am 17 Januar 1988” (“Song” sermon on “By powers of good” on 17 January 1988). In Bethge, Erstes Gebot und Zeitgeschichte, 143-53.

——. “Mein Freund Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” In Gremmels and Huber, 7heologie und Freundschaft, 13-28.

——. “Nichts scheint mehr in Ordnung” (Nothing scems to be in order anymore). In Huber and Todt, Ethik im Ernstfall, 30-40.

——. “The Nonreligious Scientist and the Confessing ‘Theologian: ‘The Influence of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer on His Younger Brother Dietrich.” In de Gruchy, Bonhoeffer for a New Day, 39-56. ——.. Ohnmacht und Mindigkeit: Beitrage zur Zeitgeschichte und Theologie nach Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Powerlessness and being of age: Contributions to con-

temporary history and theology after Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1969.

——.. *Predigt zu Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gedicht ‘Jona’” (Sermon on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Poem ‘Jonah’). In Wenn der Dornbusch brennt: Beitrage zum Pfarrerberuf, zur Praxis geistlichen Lebens und zum Weg der Kirche; eine kestgabe fur Dieter Voll (When the thornbush burns: Essays on the min-

istry, toward a praxis of the spiritual life and the way of the church; In honor of Dieter Voll), edited by Richard RieB, 175-82. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1989.

630 Bibliography ——. “Wendepunkte im Leben und Werk Dietrich Bonhoeffers.” In Bethge et al., Glaube und Weltlichkeit bei Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1-35. Stuttgart:

Calwer Verlag, 1969. ‘Translated as “Turning Points in Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 23, no. 1 (1967): 3-21. Also in Vorkink, Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, 73-102.

——.. “Zur Textgestalt des Gedichtes ‘Von guten Machten’” (On the form of the text of the poem ‘By powers of good’”). Bonhoeffer-Rundbrief 28 (1988): 5-6. Bethge, Eberhard, and Renate Bethge, eds. Letzte Briefe im Widerstand: Aus dem Kreis der Familie Bonhoeffer. 4th ed. Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1997. Translated by Dennis Slabaugh as Last Letters of Resistance: Farewells from the Bonhoeffer Family. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.

Bethge, Eberhard, Renate Bethge, and Christian Gremmels, eds. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Sein Leben in Bildern und Texten. Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1989. Translated by John Bowden as Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures. Lon-

don: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. (Abridged) centenary ed. translated by Brian McNeil as Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures. Edited

by Renate Bethge and Christian Gremmels. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. Bethge, Eberhard, and Ronald C. D. Jasper, eds. An der Schwelle zum gespaltenen Europa: Der Briefwechsel zwischen George Bellund Gerhard Letbholz, 1939-

1951 (On the cusp of a divided Europe: The correspondence between George Bell and Gerhard Leibholz, 1939-1951). Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag, 1974.

Bethge, Renate. Bonhoeffers Familie und thre Bedeutung fur seine Theologie. Beitrage zum Widerstand, 1933-1945, 30. Berlin: Gedenkstatte Deutscher Widerstand, 1987. Translated by Geffrey B. Kelly as “Bonhoeffer’s Family and Its Significance for His Theology.” In Larry L. Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: His Significance for North Americans, 1-30. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. Bettenson, Henry. Documents of the Christian Church. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. Bismarck, Ruth Alice, and Ulrich Kabitz, eds. Brautbriefe Zelle 92: Dietrich Bonhoeffer—Maria von Wedemeyer, 1943-1945. Munich: C. H. Beck’sche Ver-

lagsbuchhandlung, 1992. ‘Translated by John Brownjohn as Love Letters from Cell 92: Dietrich Bonhoeffer—Maria von Wedemeyer, 1943-194), With a

postscript by Eberhard Bethge. London: HarperCollins, 1994. Rev. ed. published in the United States as Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer, 1943-45, Nash-

ville: Abingdon Press, 1995. (All quotations in this volume are taken from the London edition.)

Bibliography 631 Bittinger, Werner, ed. Schtitz—Werk—Verziechnis (SWV) (Index to the works of Schutz). Kleine Ausgabe. Kassel: Barenreiter, 1960. Bobert-Stutzel, Sabine. Dietrich Bonhoeffers Pastoraltheologie (Dietrich Bon-

hoeffer’s pastoral theology). Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1995. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke. Eberhard Bethge, Ernst Feil, Christian Gremmels, Wolfgang Huber, Hans Pfeifer, Albrecht Schonherr,

Heinz Eduard Todt, and Use Todt, general editors. Gutersloh: Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1986-99. ‘Translated as Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Victoria J. Barnett, Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., and Barbara Wojhoski, general editors. 16 vols. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996-. Vol. 1: Sanctorum Communio: Eine dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche. Edited by J. von Soosten. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986. Translated by Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens as Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998. Vol. 2: Akt und Sein: Transzendentalphilosophie und Ontologie in der systematischen Theologie. Edited by Hans-Richard Reuter. Munich: Chr. Kaiser

Verlag, 1988. Translated by Martin Rumscheidt as Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology. Edited by Wayne

Whitson Floyd Jr. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. Vol. 3: Schopfung und Fall: Theologische Auslegung von Genesis 1-3. Edited by

Martin Ruter and Ilse Todt. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1989. Translated by Douglas Stephen Bax as Creation and Kall: A Theological Exposition of Gen-

esis 1-3. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 199’. Vol. 4: Nachfolge. Edited by Martin Kuske and Ilse Todt. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1989. 2nd ed., Gutersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1994, Translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss as Discipleship. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Vol. 5: Gemeinsames Leben und Das Gebetbuch der Bibel. Edited by Gerhard

Ludwig Muller and Albrecht Schonherr. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1987. Translated by Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness as Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible. Edited by Geffrey B. Kelly. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.

Vol. 6: Ethik. Edited by Ilse Todt, Heinz Eduard Todt, Ernst Feil, and Clifford Green. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1991. 2nd ed., Gutersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1998. Translated by Reinhard Krauss and Charles C. West, with Douglas W. Stott, as Ethics. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. Vol. 7: Fragmente aus Tegel. Edited by Renate Bethge and Ise Todt. Gutersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1994. Translated by Nancy

632 Bibliography Lukens as fiction from Tegel Prison. Edited by Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. Vol. 8: Widerstand und Ergebung. Edited by Christian Gremmels, Eberhard

Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Todt. Gutersloh: Chr. Kaiser/ Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1998. Translated by Lisa E. Dahill, Isabel Best, Reinhard Krauss, Nancy Lukens, and Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt, with supplementary material translated by Douglas W. Stott, as Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by John W. de Gruchy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. Vol. 9: Jugend und Studium: 191S—1927. Edited by Hans Pfeifer, with Clifford Green and Jurgen Kaltenborn. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986. Translated by Mary C. Nebelsick with the assistance of Douglas W. Stott as The Young Bonhoeffer: 191S—1927. Edited by Paul Matheny, Clifford J. Green, and Marshall D. Johnson. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. Vol. 10: Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika: 1928-1931. Edited by Reinhard Staats and Hans Christoph von Hase, with Holger Roggelin and Matthias Wunsche. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1991. 2nd ed., Gutersloh: Chr. Kaiser/ Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 2005. ‘Translated by Douglas W. Stott as Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931, Edited by Clifford J. Green. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008. Vol. 11: Okumene, Universitat, Pfarramt: 1931-1932. Edited by Eberhard Amelung and Christoph Strohm. Gutersloh: Chr. Kaiser/Gutersloher Verlagshaus, 1994. Translated by Nicolas Humphreys, Marion Pauck, and Anne schmidt-Lange as Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931-1932. Edited by Michael Lukens. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, forthcoming. Vol. 12: Berlin: 1932-1933, Edited by Carsten Nicolaisen and Ernst-Albert

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Wyller, Trygve. Glaube und autonome Welt: Diskussion eines Grundproblems der neueren systematischen Theologie mit Blick auf Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oswald

Bayer und K. i. Logstrup (Faith and the autonomous world: Discussion of a fundamental problem in recent systematic theology, in view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oswald Bayer, and K. E. Logstrup). Bibliothek Topelmann 91. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998. Zerner, Ruth. “Regression und Kreativitat: Ein Nachwort.” In Bonhoeffer, Fragmente aus Tegel, edited by Renate and Eberhard Bethge, 181-216.

Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1978. Translated by Ursula Hoffmann as “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Prison Fiction: A Commentary.” In Fiction from Prison: Gathering up the Past, edited by Eberhard and Renate Bethge. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981. Zellelnolizen. See Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Das Zeugnis eines Boten: Zum Gedachtnis von Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The testimony

of a messenger: In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Published by the Abteilung fur Wiederaufbau und Kirchliche Hilfsaktionen des Oekumenischen Rates der Kirchen. Geneva, 1945. Zimmermann, Jens. Bonhoeffer and Continental Thought: Cruciform Philosophy.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Zimmerman, Jens, and Brian Gregor, eds. Being Human, Becoming Hunan: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought. Fugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2010. Zimmermann, Wolf-Dieter, ed. begegnungen mit Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Ein Alma-

nach. 4th ed. Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1969. Translated by Kathe Gregor Smith as J Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Edited by Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann and Ronald Gregor Smith. London: Collins, 1966.

Zimmermann-Wolf, Christoph. “Ein anderes Verstandnis von ‘Vorbild’: Dietrich Bonhoeffers Gedanken uber die Bedeutung des ‘vorgelebten’ Glaubens” (A different understanding of ‘model’: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on the significance of a ‘pre-lived’ faith). Preiburger Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie und Theologie 40 (1993): 146-60. ——.. hinander beistehen: Dietrich Bonhoeffers lebenbezogene Theologie fur gegen-

wartige Klinikseelsorge (To stand by one another: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology of life for contemporary clinical chaplaincy). Studien zur ‘Theologie und Praxis der Seelsorge 6. Wurzburg: Seelsorge-Echter, 1991. Zutt, Jorg, Erwin Straus, and Heinrich Scheller, eds., Karl Bonhoeffer zum Hundertsten Geburtstag am 31. Marz 1968 (On the 100th anniversary of Karl Bonhoeffer’s birth, March 31, 1968). Berlin: Springer, 1969.

INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL REFERENCES

OLD TESTAMENT Leviticus Ruth Genesis 26:6 139 ?:11-12 376 2:1-3 537

2:20 84 Numbers 1 Samuel 2:24 85 1:23 51] 2:10 292

33:16 728712:3 536 3] 511, 582 12:8 535 31:4 508, 582 3:19 87 14:36 (37) 533

3:21 215 16 533 2 Chronicles

oe 71386 16:49 4:17 17:14533 533 20:12 38 25:8 397 20:12 534 Job81, 302 37:35 447 20:13 593 39:23 400, 21:4-9 533 1 302

441, 492 Zo 533 ZI 266 41:52 326 27:12-13 532 7:1388

27:14 534 ad 407 be 407 Exodus 42:7 Fa a Fa Fa Deuteronomy 42:7ff 266 13:18 533, 534 1:37 532

13:21 aro 5:16 86 Psalms 13:21-292 534 10:18-19 538 24, 63, 81, 180,

14:21-22 533 32:49 532 187, 269, 269, 16:7-8 533 32:49—50 532 336, 369, 431

19:18 535 32:5] 534 5 8] 20712 86 33:1 532 9:19-20 361

32:1-8 533 34:1] 531 13 80 33:1] 535 34:4 532 13:1 80, 582

34:10 2492 34:10 242, 535 18:30 (29) 235, 236 663

664 Index of Scriptural References

20:8 98:1 374 3:4-—5 2242 485 269 106:32-33 534 3:7 229 229

23:1 485 111:10 A4 3:11 229 25:17 269 119 431, 550 3:15 299, 230, 27:4 Zo 119:94 475 385, 575 30:5 389127:3 20-6 448 52] 31 80 865:2—3 5:2 521 31:6 196, 342 133:1 453 31:15 To 1os OU: 139:5 549 Song of Solomon 196, 582 144:1 388 24, 410, 521

32:1 269 7:6394 34:19 409 Proverbs

34:20 493 52] Isaiah 37:3 415 1:744 29 276

37:5 164 4:18 379, 390 8:18 371, 381, 42:6 475 6:20—22 385 9:11—10:4 276

38:5 4292 4:23 387 396

47 81, 187 9:13 86 9:1] 276 48:7 269 12:4 86 9:16 276

50 210 18:24 234, 388 9:20 276 50:15 276 22:11-12 367 10:4 276

54:4 409 24 23:26 379 26:20447 389 58 361 105 38:18 58:11 361 24:10 73, 105 41:10 475 60 150 24:11-12 367 42:16 264 60:2 150 25:2 521 43:1 475 60:12 236 30):7—9 386 53 218, 480, 481 60:14 23630:9 30:8386 386 53:4 53:1 479 48] 62:2 475

65:3 282 31 iD 53:4-5 480 68 60 31:10 86 53:7 48]

68:19 66 31:11-13 85 56:10 466 68:20 66, 195 31:15 85 57:18 400 70 60, 81, 187 31:20 85 65:17 464 Si:7 534 31:25 73, 85 66:22 464 90 246 31:28—29 85

90:14 381 Jeremiah 9] 417 Ecclesiastes 17:9 79

91:11 417, 400 549 521 rad29:7 fel i |389 389 94:12-13 3 229

95:7-8 201 3:1-8 WZ 31:3 475

Index of Scriptural References 665

31:26 184 8:23-27 279 14:43-45 494 32:15 50 8:26-27 279 15:34 448, 479

33:9 390 9:1] 48] 15:42—46 482

45 486 9:13 415 15:43 482 45:4-5 150, 387, 9:18-19 48] 15:47 482

48610:29 9:23-26 48] 16:1 482 45:5 361 22h 51:6ff 386 18:3 478 Luke 51:9 386 18:11 407 7A | 242 19:5 85 2:15-16 48] Ezekiel 84 5:1-11 2:17 24] 3:1-3 208 19:6 19:2] 503 472 yA biG’ 45] 5:a2 415 Jonah 24:6 361 7 48] 1:4-15 547 25 49] 7:1-10 48] 23 447 25:1-13 286 7:37-38 48] 25:36 324 7:44—46 48]

Lamentations 25:37-—40 49] 8:41—42 48]

Seal 388 26-28 60 8:49—56 48] 26:36-46 269, 550 16:19-31 271

Sirach/ 26:39 550 19:1-8 48] Ecclesiasticus 26:40 480, 486 19:9 385 13:11-12 545 26:47—-50 494 19:10 407 13:14 545 26:71 153 22-24 60 40:27 521 27:57-60 48? 22°50 492 27:61 482 22:40—46 269

NEW TESTAMENT 28:16-20 269 22-24 60

Matthew 28:20 275 23:50—53 482

2:1-12 48] 23:55—56 482 y hay 48] Mark 24:44-49 269

5:17-48 456 1:15 48] PrA2 407 5:48 278, 456 yea iF 415

66:37349] 4:35-4] 468 John 5:22-24 48] 1:14 373 6:34 DO. foe 217 5:35—43 48] 1:29 48]

26373 8:31 361 1:36 48] 7 A | 387 10:14-16 48] 1:47 482 8:5-13 48] 10:21 482 10:14 485

8:17 479, 480, 10:51 49] 15:16 102 48] 14:32-—42 269 16:20 96 8:23 ff 279 14:35-36 269 17 62, 76

666 Index of Scriptural References

19:25 461 15:25 361 Philippians

19:30 482 469 16:13 15:26 515 3335 1:23 342 19:38 Colossians Acts of 2 Corinthians 1:26-27 32

the o 84 1:6-8Apostles 269 1:2422336 3:18-19 84

2:1-13 105 1:20 511, 514, 515 4:3 32

8 482 2:14 313 8:26-—40 482 5:17 231 1 Thessalonians

10 482 6:1-10 313 5:23 5:14 409 179 6:1 313

Romans 6:10 DLO Ey222 10:4-5 224 1 Timothy 3: Q4 fF 373 11:14 38 1:1488 5:5 116 12:4 365 Fal Bs 358 6:3-—5 448 6:6—7 386 8:3—9 4294:6 Galatians 8:26 49] 400 6:8 386 8:28 195 4:9 296 2 Timothy 8:31 485 4:19 475 105 | 2 321 5:22-23 400 1:3358 12:15 405 6:15 231, 365 1:7105

15 87 2:1358, 379, 515 1537 TOE Ephesians 4:8 196 1:7422

1 Corinthians 1:10 230 Philemon

336 E12 82, 87 8-9 62 1:3422 3:3-—4 32 1:18—25 472 5 410 Hebrews 3:22-—23 102 5:16 31] 4:7 201 3:23 539 5:22-33 410 4:9 537 7 62 5:23 86 10:22 235

10:13 195 5:28 85 11 235 10:16 49? 5:30-32 86, 410 13:9 213 11:30 49? 6:2-3 86 | ab 296 6:10 51532 James 6:19 1:8

278

4:15 183, 275, 384

Index of Scriptural References 667

I Peter 2 Peter Revelation ea B24 361 3:10-13 464 180 220) 180 1:9-10 L104 3:9 409, 493 1 John 21te 429 3:14 180 2:14 515 2:4 429

3:22 371 3:24 400 10 71 4:] 185 10:6 fp"

5:6 292 10:9-10 208 21°] 404 212 537

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INDEX OF NAMES

This index lists people mentioned in this volume, including authors and editors of literature cited in the notes. It provides brief profiles of the people listed and differs from the German edition by also including information about those whose work began alter 1945, as well as additional information

of interest to readers of the English edition. It does not include personal names that appear in book titles or only in the bibliography. When possible, dates of birth and death have been provided.

About, Edmond (1828-85): French author—264 Abraham: biblical character—397, 492

Abromeit, Hans-Jurgen: German Lutheran bishop and Bonhoeffer scholar—365, 367, 394, 589 Adam: biblical character—339 Aguti, Andrea: Italian professor of the philosophy of religion—588&

Albertz, Martin (1883-1956): 1931-53, pastor and superintendent at St. Nicholas, Berlin-Spandau; 1933, member of the Berlin Confessing Church Council of Brethren; responsible for the assistant pastors and vicars, Berlin-Brandenburg; 1935-41, after dismissal from office, directed the Confessing Church theological examination board, BerlinBrandenburg; 1936-45, chair, second provisional church administration; 1941, sentenced to eighteen months in prison in the trial of the Confessing Church examination board—472

Alcibiades (ca. 450-404 BCE): Athenian statesman, military commander—437 Altdorfer, Albrecht (ca. 1480-1538): southern German painter and graphic artist—202, 206 Altenahr, Albert: German Benedictine abbot and theologian—512, 514 Althaus, Paul (1888-1966): German Lutheran theologian, especially influ-

enced by Schlatter and Holl; 1919, professor of systematic and New 669

670 Index of Names Testament theology, Rostock; 1925-56, Erlangen; 1933-38, defended the German Christians and National Socialism; 1934, member of the Lutheran Council; 1947, temporarily dismissed by the military government during the denazification proceedings for his early support of National Socialism—415, 428 Althusius (Johannes Althaus) (1557-1638): Dutch jurist and Calvinist philosopher—476 Andersen, Dorothea, née Vibrans (Dorli): oldest sister of Gerhard Vibrans;

organist and parish aid; 1934, parish aide at St. Gertrud’s church, Lubeck; 1939, married Johannes Andersen—278, 454 Andreas, Willy (1884-1967): professor of modern history, Berlin and Heidelberg—128 Angelico, Fra (Guido di Pietro; as a monk: Fra Giovanni da Fiesole) (ca. 1400-1455): Florentine Italian painter; Dominican monk; outstanding painter of early Renaissance—194, 269 Anne (Saint): mother of Mary; patron saint of those in distress; invoked by Luther during his famous experience during a thunderstorm—284 Antaeus: character in Greek mythology; son of Poseidon and Gaia; defeated and killed by Hercules—386 Aphrodite: Greek goddess of [feminine beauty and love—436 Apollo: Greek god of music, harmony, and order; son of Zeus and Leto, brother of Artemis; master of Delphi—438 Archimedes (ca. 285-212 BCE): Greek mathematician, inventor, and physicist —332

Aristotle (384-322 BCE): Greek philosopher—45, 317 Arminius, Jacobus (1560-1609): Dutch reformed theologian, critic of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination—453 Asmussen, Hans Christian (1898-1968): 1932, pastor, Altona; after 1933, leading figure in the Confessing Church following his suspension from his ministry in Hamburg-Altona; 1935-36, director and lecturer, theological college, Berlin; 1941, arrested and convicted in the trial of the Confessing Church examination board; 1945, president of the chancellery of the Evangelical Church of Germany—160, 502 August, Reinhold Wilhelm (1910—43 [killed in action]): from Posen; winter 1936-37, participated in the fourth Finkenwalde session; 1937, pastoral administrator in Kirchohmfeld, Worbis—185 Augustine, Aurelius (354-430): Latin church father—73, 76, 231, 503, 573

Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750): German church musician and composer—68, 177, 187, 306, 341, 473, 475, 542, 544, 575

Index of Names 671 Bachmann, Wilhelm: inspector of studies at the seminary, Ilsenburg; 1935-— 37, worked in Bishop Theodor Heckel’s Church Foreign Office; 1940,

in Heckel’s evangelical relief organization for (civilian) internees and prisoners of war; 1944, arrested by the Gestapo—544 Bacon, Lord Francis (1561-1626): British philosopher, author, and politiclan—494 Badoglio, Pietro (1871-1956): Italian marshal; July 1943-June 1944, min-

ister president after Mussolini’s arrest; September 3, 1943, signed the cease-fire between Italy and the Allies—525 Baedeker: bookseller family; known since 1827 for its travel guides—305

Bamm, Peter (pseudonym for Curt Emmerich; 1897-1975): physician (ship’s doctor, later surgeon in Berlin) and author—110 Bangs, Carl (1922-2002): U.S. theologian and Reformation scholar—453

Baumer, Gertrud (1873-1954): early German feminist and conservalive nationalist politician; she withdrew from the political sphere and became a novelist during the Nazi years—175 Barnett, Victoria: U.S. scholar of the churches and the Holocaust; general editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition—34, 110 Barth, Karl (1886-1968): Swiss Reformed theologian and author of Church Dogmatics; 1921, professor of Reformed theology, Gottingen; 1925, pro-

fessor of dogmatics and New Testament exegesis, Munster; 1930-35, professor of systematic theology, Bonn, until his dismissal for political reasons; 1935-62, professor of systematic theology, Basel—19, 199, 220, 232, 319, 362-64, 366, 373, 415, 429, 452, 472, 502, 586-88, 591, 592, 598 Bartl, Klaus: German pastor—586

Bastian, Max (1883-1958): career military; 1935-38, head of the General Office of the Navy; 1938, admiral; 1939, managing president and, after 1940, president of the military high court; November 30, 1944, dismissed—157 Bauer, Karl-Adolf (1874-1939): Reformed pastor and church historian—399

Baumgarten, Otto (1858-1934): German theologian; after 1894, professor, Kiel; 1912-21, chair of the Protestant Social Congress; 1919, member of the German peace delegation at Versailles—513 Bayer, Barbara (Barbel), née von Dohnanyi: daughter of Hans and Christine von Dohnanyi; married Wilhelm Friedrich Bayer—61, 65, 152, 153, p22

Beck, Ludwig (1880-1944): career military officer; 1935-38, chief of the Army General Staff; August 1938, resignation following the Sudeten crisis, dismissed as colonel general; shortly thereafter began participating as a central military figure in the military resistance against Hitler; was

672 Index of Names designated to be the head of state after Hitler’s removal; July 20, 1944, committed suicide after the failed coup attempt—49 Beckmann, Gottfried (1909-80): summer 1935, participated in the first Zingst/Finkenwalde session; 1936, pastor, Rottelsdorf; 1937, incarcerated in Magdeburg—472 Beese, Dieter: Protestant church superintendent and scholar of police ethics and German chaplains during World War Il—296, 412, 423, 580 Beesk, Gottfried: German Protestant pastor and prison chaplain—567, 570 Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827): German composer—176, 275, 288, SO ey Ord.

Bell, George Kennedy Allen (1883-1958): British theologian and ecumenical leader; 1929-57, bishop of Chichester; 1932, head of the British section and executive committee of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work; 1937, member of the House of Lords; 1942, met with Bonhoef-

fer and Hans Schonfeld in Sweden to learn about German resistance plans; 1945, chair of the Council for Foreign Relations of the Church of England—159, 194, 219, 231, 389, 399, 544, 591

Benktson, Benkt-Erik: Swedish professor and Kierkegaard scholar—429, 586

Benz, Richard (1884-1966): literary, musical, and cultural historian—154, 394

Berg: character in Bonhoeffer’s story “Lance Corporal Berg” (DBWE 7) —343

Bergengruen, Werner (1892-1964), German novelist, short-story author, and lyric poet—203, 574 Berns (in Sacrow): not otherwise identified—253 Bernd, Clifford A.: Germanist; expert on German poctry—167 Best, Sigmund Payne: captain in the British secret service; April 1945, in the same prisoner transport as Dietrich Bonhoeffer—607 Bethge, Christoph: Eberhard Bethge’s youngest brother; married Gerhard Vibrans’s widow, Elisabeth Trebesitus—88, 90, 153, 188, 194, 234, 280, 359, 546

Bethge, Dietrich Wilhelm Rudiger: son of Eberhard and Renate Bethge; from 1953, in London; studied law at Oxford (Christchurch); cellist (coprincipal in the English Chamber Orchestra)—15, 16, 28, 29, 258, 289, 290, 292, 293, 315, 324, 339, 355, 368, 383, 392, 395, 402, 487, 497, 504, 508, 571, 601, 603

Bethge, Eberhard (1909-2000): pastor, educator, theologian, biographer of Bonhoeffer and editor of his writings; 1920-29, attended the humanities gymnasium Monastery of Our Dear Lady in Magdeburg; October

Index of Names 673 1934, expelled from the preachers’ seminary in Wittenberg at the behest

of the Reich bishop; after 1934-35, assistant pastor under Confessing Church pastor Paul Henheik; 1935-37, participated in the preachers’ seminary in Zingst/Finkenwalde (also member of the House of Brethren) led by Bonhoeffer; 1937—40, inspector of studies at one of the two

Pomeranian collective pastoral training programs (Grob-Schl6nwitz and Sigurdshof) led by Bonhoeffer that prepared ministers for the Confessing Church; 1940-45, missions inspector for the Gossner Mission Society, Berlin; 1943, marriage to Bonhoeffer’s niece Renate Schleicher;

January—October 1944, military service in Italy, until his arrest and deportation to Berlin as a political prisoner in connection with the July 20, 1944, attempt on Hitler’s life; April 25, 1945, released from Lehrter Strabe prison; after the end of the war, assistant to Bishop Otto Dibelius; 1946-53, student chaplain at the Humboldt University, Berlin; 1953-61, overseas pastor, London; 1961-75, director of the pastoral college of the Rhineland church, Rengsdorf; 1969, honorary professor of practical theology, Bonn—2, 3, 5-9, 11-18, 20-26, 29, 30, 32, 37, 49, 55, 57, 59, 62, 63, 66-68, 75, 81, 82, 90, 96, 97, 113, 127, 128-30, 133, 135, 137, 139, 140, 144, 145, 151, 152, 157-61, 166, 172, 177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 186, 187, 190, 193, 194, 196, 199, 201, 208, 211, 212, 213, 224, 226, 229, 231-41, 243, 244-47,

249, 250, 252, 254, 255-58, 260-62, 264-67, 270, 271, 274, 275, 277-83, 286, 288, 289, 291-93, 297, 298, 300, 302, 307, 310, 311, 313, 315, 324, 9207520;.001, 000, 001041, 00 G02, 000001, 901001 —1as 0 ayatOeor f, 378, 381-83, 390-93, 395-404, 409-11, 415-18, 422, 424, 426, 430-32, 434-36, 438-41, 443-46, 448-50, 452, 454, 457-59, 462, 470-73, 481, 485, 487, 489-91, 495-98, 502, 504-6, 509, 512, 514, 516-18, 522, 523, 525-28, 530, 532, 534, 541-43, 545, 547-49, 551-53, 563, 565-68, 57074, 578-82, 584-86, 589-92, 597-605

Bethge, Elisabeth (Aunt Else), née Nietzschmann (1879-1964): Eberhard Bethge’s mother; widowed since 1923; lived in Kade, district of Ziesar—16, 128

Bethge, Hans (1905-92): Eberhard Bethge’s older brother; engineer—88, 90

Bethge, Renate Ursula Gertrud Paula: niece of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, daughter of his sister Ursula and Rudiger Schleicher; May 15, 1943, marriage to Eberhard Bethge—7, 9, 12-14, 16, 18, 28, 55, 57, 61-65, 67, 68, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 88-90, 96, 107, 113, 115, 120, 128, 129, 135, 144, 151, 152, 154, 158, 161, 162, 164, 168, 177-79, 183, 185, 186, 188-91, 199, 201, 203, 204,

207, 208-10,212,.220,, 222,224, 229) 252,254,250, 291) 200; 240, 244, 246-58, 261, 262, 264-66, 271, 274, 275, 278, 280, 285, 289-93, 296-300,

674 Index of Names 302, 303, 306, 309, 310, 311, 314, 315, 317, 318, 322, 324-27, 329-31, 33739, 341, 354-56, 361, 362, 368-71, 374-77, 380, 381, 390, 392, 396, 397, 400-403, 409, 410, 412, 416, 422, 434, 435, 439, 444, 445, 449, 458, 487, 488, 496-98, 504, 506, 507, 511, 516-21, 525, 541, 543, 546, 547, 552, 565, 566, 570, 594, 597-99, 603-4 Bethge, Wilhelm (1867-1923): Eberhard Bethge’s father; pastor in Warchau and Zitz/Ziesar—290, 384, 504, 520 Bettenson, Henry: U.S. patristics scholar—394 Binding, Rudolf G. (1867-1938): Swiss author of German descent—203, 574 Bismarck, Hans von (1943-90): son of Klaus and Ruth-Alice von Bismarck —17]

Bismarck, Herbert von (1884-1955): estate owner in Lasbeck, district of Regenwalde; grand nephew of Reich chancellor Otto von Bismarck; husband of Maria, née von Kleist-Retzow—259 Bismarck, Jurgen Philipp Robert Karl Herbert von: son of Herbert von Bismarck; engineer—297 Bismarck, Karl Ernst Gunther: authorized signatory (Prokurist), Pomerania (Bismarck-Kniephof )—297, 325 Bismarck, Ruth-Alice von, née von Wedemeyer: daughter of Hans and Ruth von Wedemeyer, sister of Maria von Wedemeyer; July 15, 1939, married Klaus von Bismarck in Patzig—114, 170, 196, 341, 547, 548, 556 Block, Eduard (1886-1970): superintendent in Schlawe, Pomerania; 1938,

enabled Dictrich Bonhoeffer to establish the collective pastorate in Schlawe—544 Bobert-Stutzel, Sabine: professor of practical theology, Kiel; author of work on Bonhoeffer’s pastoral theology—221

Bodin, Jean (1530-96): French jurist and prominent political theoretician—453, 476, 587

Bohm, Hans Adolf August Hugo (1899-1962): member of the Council of Brethren of the Old Prussian Union; 1941, convicted in the trial of the Confessing Church examination board in Berlin; after July 20, 1944, arrested —160

Bojack, Konrad (1910-41 [killed in action]): 1935, participated in the first Zingst/Finkenwalde session; ministry in Lyck, eastern Prussia; September 1, 1939, drafted—544 Bonhoeffer, Gornelie Sabine Julie Elisabeth: daughter of Klaus and Emmi Bonhoeffer—88, 89, 12]

Bonhoeffer, Emilie (Emmi) Amalie Charlotte Henriette, née Delbruck (1905-91): daughter of the historian Hans Delbruck and his wife, Lina, née Thiersch; 1930, married Klaus Bonhoeffer—91, 113, 121, 310, 555, 561

Index of Names 675 Bonhoeffer, Friedrich (1828-1907): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s grandfather; president of the assize court and of the state court in Ravensburg and Ulm —425

Bonhoeffer, Johann Friedrich: son of Karl-Friedrich and Margarete Bonhoeffer—59, 115, 141

Bonhoeffer, Karl-Friedrich (1899-1957): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s eldest brother; physicist; March 22, 1930, marriage to Margarete von Dohnanyi; professor of physical chemistry, Berlin and Leipzig; 1947, Berlin; 1949, director, Max-Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry, Géttingen—7, 12, 92-94, 96, 97, 99, 102, 103, 105, 109, 113, 115, 117, 121, 132, 133, 136, 140, 142, 147, 148, 154-56, 161, 167, 169, 170, 175, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 172, 174, 175, 191-93, 210, 212, 217, 248, 259, 283, 287, 302, 316, 317, 332, 334, 335, 360, 390, 401, 412, 424, 553-55, 561, 596, 608

Bonhoeffer, Karl Ludwig (1868-1948): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s father; son of Friedrich and Julie Bonhoeffer; married Paula, née von Hase; 1903, professor of psychiatry, Konigsberg; 1904, Heidelberg, that same year called to Breslau; 1908, appointed Privy Medical Counselor; after 1912, professor of psychiatry and neurology, Berlin, and director of the psychiatric and neurological clinic at the Charité hospital, Berlin; retired in 1936, but remained in office until 1938—7, 55, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 69, 70, 75, 77, 78, 90, 91, 93, 95, 96, 100, 104, 109, 113, 115, 118, 121, 122, 127, 130, 133, 134, 137-39, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149, 154, 157-60, 163, 165, 166, 168-70, 172, 174, 175, 177, 186, 199, 206, 210, 211, 224, 231, 234, 240, 243—45, 258, 261, 272, 290, 293, 300, 302, 315, 317, 323, 327, 332, 335, 338, 342, 353, 356, 357, 359, 390, 392, 399, 412, 459, 496, 498, 522, 552, 554, 555, 557, 570, 572, 574, 594, 596, 598, 599, 601-3, 605

Bonhoeffer, Karl Walter Paul: son of Karl-Friedrich and Margarete Bonhoeffer—59, 103, 115, 141

Bonhoeffer, Katharina Elisabeth Pauline: daughter of Karl-Friedrich and Margarete Bonhoeffer—59, 115 Bonhoeffer, Klaus (1901—45): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s brother; studied inter-

national law in Geneva, Amsterdam, and England; 1925, doctorate in law, Heidelberg; 1930, married Emmi Delbrtck; 1935, corporate lawyer with Lufthansa; early member of the resistance conspiracy against the National Socialist regime; October 1, 1944, arrested; February 1945, sentenced to death; April 23, 1945 executed in Moabit prison (Lehrter StraBe)—138, 147, 148, 151, 155, 234, 239, 241, 257, 258, 283, 291, 303, 305, 309, 310, 314, 331, 399, 424, 425, 449, 474, 547, 554, 561-63, 566, 581, 594, 605, 606, 608 Bonhoeffer, Margarete (Grete) Maria Anna, née von Dohnanyi (1903-92):

daughter of the composer Ernst von Dohnanyi; sister of Hans von

676 Index of Names Dohnanyi; 1930, married Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer—59, 94, 96, 103, 104, 115, 116, 121, 140, 142, 147, 192, 287, 334

Bonhoeffer, Martin Klaus Anton (1935-89): son of Karl-Friedrich and Margarete Bonhoeffer—59, 103, 115, 160 Bonhoeffer, Otto (1864-1932): brother of Karl Bonhoeffer; chemist at Bayer Leverkusen; chair of the Rhineland-Westphalia employers’ association —138, 403

Bonhoeffer, Pauline (Paula), née von Hase (1876-1951): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s mother; daughter of Karl Alfred von Hase and Klara, nee Countess Kalckreuth; March 5, 1898, married Karl Bonhoeffer—7, 56, 61, 64, 75, 78, 88, 92, 94, 96, 100, 101, 104, 107, 109, 111, 112, 113, 117, 118, 122, 127,

130, 133, 134, 137-39, 142-44, 146-50, 154, 157, 159, 160, 164-66, 169, 170—72,175, 177, 186, 199, 206, 211, 231, 243, 245, 250, 258, 259, 273, 300,

315, 327, 335, 342, 359, 390, 392, 412, 459, 496, 548, 551-54, 557, 572, 574, 580, 583, 594, 598, 602, 603, 605 Bonhoeffer, Thomas: son of Klaus and Emilie Bonhoelfer—8s9, 121, 159, 194

Bonhoeffer, Walter: son of Klaus and Emilie Bonhoeffer; lawyer—90, 121 Bonhoelfer, Walter (1899-1918): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s brother; died of his injuries in the First World War—56, 64, 216 Boor, Werner de (1899-1976): 1932-45, pastor, Stolp/Pomerania—544 Bori, Pier Cesare: professor of theology, University of Bologna, author of study in Italian on Bonhoeffer and von Harnack—279 Bormann, Eugenie: physician, psychiatrist, student of Karl Bonhoeffer; she and her sister maintained contact with the Bonhoeffer family—174 Bosch, Robert (1861-1942): industrialist (electronics)—101 Bowden, John: British editor and translator of some of Bonhoeffer’s writings —6

Bracher, Dorothee, née Schleicher: daughter of Rudiger and Ursula Schleicher; May 3, 1951, married the historian Karl Dietrich Bracher—6l, 159, 194, 257, 339, 340, 354, 360 Bracher, Karl Dietrich: German historian of the Nazi period—566 Brahms, Johannes (1833-97): German composer—82, 478

Brandt, Willy (1913-92): German Social Democrat politician; 1957-66, mayor of West Berlin; 1966-69, foreign minister and vice-chancellor; 1969-74, chancellor; 1971, awarded Nobel peace prize—566 Brown, Maurice J. E.: coauthor of work on Schubert—288 Bruckner, Anton (1823-96): composer—341 Brueghel, Pieter (ca. 1525/30-1569): Dutch baroque painter—331 Brunner, Emil (1889-1966): Swiss Reformed theologian; 1924—53, professor

Index of Names 677 of systematic and practical theology, Zurich; also taught in the United States and Japan—22

Bruno, Giordano (1548-1600): Italian philosopher, burned at the stake during the Inquisition—477, 494

Brunstad, Friedrich (1883-1944): German theologian and philosopher; after 1925, professor of systematic theology, Rostock—405 Buchmann, Georg (1822-84): German philologist—308 Bulow, Gabriele von (1802-87): daughter of Wilhelm von Humboldt—509 Bultmann, Rudolf (1884-1976): 1916, professor of New Testament theology, Breslau; 1920, Giessen; 1921-61, professor of New Testament, Marburg; 1933, member of the Pastors’ Emergency League; advocate of demythologization and an existentialist interpretation of the New Testament—18, 372, 410, 412, 415, 423, 430, 432, 434, 445, 502, 588 Bunger, Wilhelm (1870-1937): lawyer; July 1929-February 1930, Saxon minister president (German People’s Party); president of the senate—100

Bunke, Adolf: brother of Hermann Bunke; attorney in Glogau/Silesia; 1940, member of the Confessing Church council, Blostau—392, 431 Bunke, Hermann (1895-1969): deputy Protestant military chaplain in military district ITT (Berlin-Brandenburg)—392, 404, 412, 422, 423 Burckhardt, Jacob (1818-97): Swiss cultural and art historian—281, 319, 901, 359;.009;499 Buren, Paul van (1924-98): U.S. theologian; best known for his theology of the post-Holocaust relationship between Christianity and Judaism—592 Burlage, Wilhelm: physician, specialist in nervous diseases; 1931—35 at the psychiatric and neurological clinic at the Charité hospital; assistant to Karl Bonhoeffer—212, 596 Burtness, James: U.S. Lutheran professor of systematic theology; author of works on Bonhoeffer—588 Busch, Wilhelm (1832-1908): graphic artist, poet, painter—132, 249, 578 Busse, Margarete, née Nietzschmann (1877-1963): eldest sister of Eberhard Bethge’s mother—153 Cain: biblical character—386 Calderon de la Barca, Pedro (1600-1681): Spanish dramatist—95 Calvin, John (1509-64): French Protestant reformer and formative theologian of Reformed Protestantism—131, 452 Canaris, Wilhelm (1887-1945): career military/navy; 1924-28, on the staff of the chief of the navy in the Reich Armed Forces Ministry; 1935, rear admiral and head of the Military Intelligence Office in the Ministry of

Defense; later in the Armed Forces High Command; February 1944,

678 Index of Names dismissed from office; July 23, 1944, arrested; April 9, 1945, executed in the Flossenbtrg concentration camp—55, 583, 598, 601, 604, 607, 608 Cardanus (Cardano), Jerome (1501-76): Italian mathematician, physician, philosopher, and astrologer—355, 377, 440

Cauer, Hanna: Bonhoeffer’s maternal third cousin; painter and sculptor —96 Cedergren, Elsa: wife of Hugo Cedergren—267

Cedergren, Hugo (1891-1971): nephew by marriage to King Gustav V of Sweden; general secretary of the Swedish YMCA—267 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616): Spanish novelist, dramatist, and poet; author of Don Quixole—303 Cherbury: see Herbert, Edward Lord of Cherbury—475 Chichester: see Bell, George Chowaniec, Elisabeth: German historian of the German resistance—59, 60, 161, 223, 244, 293, 474, 496, 517, 566, 583 Churchill, Sir Winston Spencer (1874-1965): British statesman; 1940-45, prime minister—607

Chrysostom, John (ca. 347-407): Greek church father and patriarch of Constantinople—43, 118, 656, 660

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BCE): Roman statesman, author, orator—143, 400, 509 Clark, Frank: cotranslator of first edition of Lellers and Papers from Prison—6 Clab, Gottfried: worked on scholarly apparatus for DBW 3—366 Claudius, Matthias (1740-1815): German poet; editor of the newspaper Der Wandsbecker Bote (The Wandsbeck Messenger)—289, 320

Clements, Keith: British Baptist minister and ecumenist; 1997-2005, general secretary of the Conference of European Churches in Geneva; editor of DBWE 13—19

Comba, Ernesto (1880-1959): professor of systematic theology, Facolta veldese di Teologia, Rome; 1925, representative of the Waldensian Church at the Stockholm Ecumenical Conference; 1927, in Lausanne; 1937, at the Life and Work conference, Oxford, and Faith and Order, Edinburgh; spring 1943, mentioned by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the “camouflage letter” as an Italian ecumenist—234 Cooper, Alfred Duff (1890-1954): British politician and historian—250 Cornelius: biblical character—482 Cornelius, Peter (1824-74): composer, author on musical topics—89 Crinis, Max de: psychiatrist and SS physician; 1938, successor of Karl Bon-

hoeffer as director of the psychiatric and neurological clinic at the Charité hospital—293, 302, 601 Cusa: see Nicholas of Cusa

Index of Names 679 Cyprian, Thascius Caecilius (ca. 210/15—258): church author; bishop of Carthage—189 Czeppan, Maria, nee Horn (called by the affectionate diminutive nickname Hornchen) (1884-1967): 1906-23, governess in the Bonhoeffer family —316

Dach, Simon (1605-59): German lyric poet—75, 76 Dahn, Felix (1834-1912): jurist, historian, author; leading representative of nineteenth-century historicism—175 Dammeier, Anna: domestic in the Schleicher family—176, 257 Dannenbaum, Hans (1895-1956): 1926, chaplain in the Berlin City Mission; 1945, its director; from September 3, 1939, chaplain assigned to the military detention prisons in Tegel and on Lehrter StraBe; 1947, head of the missionary office of the regional Lutheran church of Hanover—179, 339

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321): Italian poet—495 Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-82): British biologist (theory of evolution) —450 Daumicer, Honoré (1808-79): French painter and caricaturist—277 Davey, Francis Nocl: British Anglican New Testament scholar—99 de Gruchy, John W.: South African theologian, author and editor of numerous works on Bonhoeffer—7, 11, 28, 268, 398, 454, 485, 507, 544, 572, 593

de Kruif, Paul Henry (1890-1971): U.S. bacteriologist, author—140 Dehn, Gunther Karl (1882-1970): pastor, pacifist, and religious socialist;

member of the Berlin Council of Brethren and Confessing Church; 1931-33, professor of practical theology, Halle; 1933, dismissed as a socialist and pacifist (“Dehn affair”); 1941, arrested and convicted in the trial of the Confessing Church examination board—269 Delbriick, Hans (1848-1929): historian—145, 167, 169, 263, 320, 568 Delbruck, Justus (1902-45): son of Hans Delbruck; brother of Klaus Bonhoeffer’s wife Emmi; from 1940, worked in the Canaris office and was

part of the conspiracy with Oster, Dohnanyi, and Klaus Bonhoeffer; August 1944, arrested; April 1945, released but picked up by the Soviets two weeks later; October 1945, contracted diphtheria and died in a Soviet internment camp in Niederlausitz—239, 594 Derschau, Alexander von (1906-82): 1935-46, pastor in Zezenow/Stolp; married to Irmgard Onnasch—544 Descartes, René (Renatus Cartesius) (1596-1650): French philosopher and mathematician—477 Dibelius, Otto (1880-1967): German pastor and church leader; 1925, general superintendent of the Old Prussian province of Mark Brandenburg

680 Index of Names (Kurmark); active in ecumenical movement; June 1933, placed on forced leave by German Christian church authorities; 1937, arrested briefly and

released; member of the Berlin (Confessing) Council of Brethren; part of the group that wrote the Freiburg memorandum; 1945-66, bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg; 1949-61, chair of the governing council of the Evangelical Church of Germany—160, 256

Diem, Gudrun: daughter of Carl and Liselotte Diem; friend of Christine Schleicher—354 Diestel, Karl Julius Max (1872-1949): German theologian, ecumenist; 1931, governing secretary, German section of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches; after 1933, member, Confessing Church Council of Brethren—234 Dietze, Constantin von (1891-1973): economist; 1927-33, professor of agricultural and trade sciences, Jena; 1933-37, Berlin; 1937, prohibited from teaching; in the same year, professor, Freiburg im Breisgau; significant contributor to the Freiburg memorandum; September 1944, arrested as a result; imprisoned in the prison on Lehrter StraBbe; April 1945, liberated—400, 605 Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833-1911): philosopher who helped form the modern study of hermeneutics and the philosophy of history; 1882-1905, professor, Berlin—23, 240, 259, 263, 266, 285, 291, 317, 320, 336, 355, 394, 425, 426, 440, 453, 457, 475-77, 494, 496, 518, 587, 600 Dimel, Grete: friend of Ruth von Wedemeyer—554

Dinger, Jorg: German theologian and pastor, author of publications on Bonhoeffer—591, 593

Diogenes of Sinope (ca. 400-329/323 BCE): Greek philosopher, itinerant teacher, advocated a lifestyle focused on satisfying only the simplest needs—165 Dionysus: Greek god of wine; son of Zeus and Semele—437 Distler, Hugo (1908-42): church musician and composer; 1940, professor of composition and organ at the music conservatory, director of the state

and cathedral choir and head of the conservatory choir, Berlin; 1942, committed suicide—375 Dohnanyi, Barbara von: see Bayer, Barbara Dohnanyi, Christine (Christel) von (1903-65): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sister; February 12, 1925, married Hans von Dohnanyi; 1943, arrested and temporarily held in custody—12, 59-61, 69, 70, 75, 76, 140, 146, 152,153, 168, 208, 234, 243, 244, 250, 289-92, 299, 313, 354, 376, 434, 474, 496, 517, 522, 541, 557, 561, 563, 566, 583, 594, 597, 598

Dohnanyi, Christoph von: conductor emeritus, Cleveland Symphony; son of Hans and Christine von Dohnanyi; Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s nephew and

Index of Names 681 godson—/, 61, 65, 104, 109, 144, 148, 149, 151, 154, 156, 159, 162, 163, 165, 194, 209, 246, 247, 263, 327, 338, 356, 522, 571

Dohnanyi, Elisabeth (Elsa) von, née Kihnwald (1877-1946): mother of Hans and Grete von Dohnanyi; divorced from Ernst von Dohnanyi; pianist—312, 313, 520

Dohnanyi, Hans von (1902-45): German lawyer; 1925, married Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sister Christine; from 1929, worked in the Reich Ministry of Justice and eventually directed the minister’s office; 1933, consultant to the president of the Reich Court; 1934, personal consultant to the Reich minister of justice Gurtner; 1938, Reich court councilor in Leipzig; August 25, 1939, appointed to the central division in the Military Intelligence Office of the Armed Forces High Command; head of the political

department in Major General Hans Oster’s office, and with Oster one of the leaders of the resistance conspiracy against Hitler; April 5, 1943, arrested; April 9, 1945, executed in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp—3, 7, 11, 12, 18, 37, 49, 59-61, 90, 100, 103, 104, 121, 122, 127, 132, 140, 141, 161, 164, 165, 179, 187, 208, 210, 220, 234, 243, 244, 246, 293, 302, 303, 309, 310, 312, 313, 319, 434, 474, 493, 496, 497, 508, 517, 518, 541, 542, 552, 557, 561-63, 566, 582-84, 594, 597-601, 603-5, 607, 608

Dohnanyi, Klaus von: lawyer and politician; son of Hans and Christine von Dohnanyi; 1949, received his doctorate after studying law—61, 65, 204, 247, 263, 323, 338, 354, 356, 522

Dohring, Bruno (1879-1961): court and cathedral preacher in Berlin—412, 446, 471

Dohrmann, Franz (1881-1969): 1920, military district pastor, Stettin; 193445, Protestant bishop of the military forces; 1945, interned in the Benedictine monastery Niederaltaich—297, 377, 380, 399-402, 404, 417, 423, 431, 580

Don Quixote: title character in Cervantes’s novel—42 Dopke, Mrs.: from 1938, wife of the estate administrator in Patzig—554 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich (1821-81): Russian novelist—415, 474, 488 Dreist, Walter: author of introductory guide for medical personnel—264

DreB, Andreas: youngest son of Susanne and Walter Dre; professor of mathematics, Bielefeld University—88, 90, 121 DreB, Ilse (1907-93): sister of Walter DreB—340 Dreb, Margarethe, née Vogt (1882-1969): mother of Walter DreB—138, 340

Dre’, Michael Johannes (1935-75): son of Walter and Susanne Dre; musician, dancer—88, 90, 109, 121, 159, 169, 194, 218, 259

Dre, Susanne (Susi, Suse), née Bonhoeffer (1909-91): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sister; November 14, 1929, married Walter DreB; mother of Michael

682 Index of Names and Andreas—64, 88, 91, 98, 100, 110, 119, 121, 135, 138, 140, 146-49, 169, 170, 216, 218, 258, 259, 283, 286, 318, 340, 376, 554, 567, 594

DreB, Walter (1904-79): November 4, 1929, married Susanne, née Bonhoeffer; father of Michael and Andreas; 1938, Confessing Church pastor, Berlin-Dahlem and lecturer at the theological college, Berlin; professor of church history, Berlin—88, 100, 102, 110, 119, 138, 148, 158, 160, 216, 217, 318, 340, 404, 501

Dudzus, Otto (1912-2000): 1931-33, one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s students,

Berlin; summer 1937, participated in the fifth Finkenwalde session; 1937-38, (illegal) vicar with Ginther Harder in Fehrbellin; from 1938, pastor of the Confessing Church in Wilhelmshorst near Potsdam; January 1942, drafted into the military—159, 160, 194, 519, 532 Dumas, André: French Reformed theologian; author of book on Bonhoeffer’s theology—586, 592

Durer, Albrecht (1471-1528): German Renaissance painter, engraver, and theoretician—66, 133, 253 Ebeling, Gerhard (1912-2001): German theologian; 1936-37, participated in the fourth Finkenwalde session; from the end of 1938, pastor of the Confessing Church, Berlin-Hermsdorl, also responsible for the Conlfessing Church congregation 1n Berlin-Frohnau; December 1940, drafted as an auxiliary medical officer (stationed in Berlin); after 1946, professor of systematic theology, Tubingen and Zurich; 1968-79, professor of systematic theology, history of dogma, and hermeneutics, Zurich—90, 153, 159, 160, 194, 588, 59]

Eder, Hildegard: German novelist—433 Eliphaz: biblical character—407

Else: domestic in the Bonhoeffer family who took care of appointment schedules and other chores—133, 170 “Engel” (real name: Holzendorf): photographer; member of the guard staff in Tegel, helped Bonhoeffer with illegal correspondence; January 1944, killed during an air raid; Bonhoeffer disguised his name in the prison letters—276, 357, 376, 601

Episcopius, Simon (1583-1643): Dutch theologian, follower of the Arminlans—453 Erikson, Erik H. (1902-94): German-born psychologist; later professor of psychology, Harvard; father of developmental psychology—596 Erna: domestic in the Dre family—217 Eschenbach: see Wolfram (von Eschenbach) Euripides (ca. 485-ca. 406 BCE): Greek tragic poet—438, 455 Ezekiel: biblical character—208

Index of Names 683 Fahle, Doris: friend of Maria von Wedemeyer—556 Fascius, Friedrich: coauthor of work on the Bundesarchiv—101

Feil, Ernst: German theologian, philologist, and philosopher; member of the editorial board, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke—23, 39, 49, 107, 259, 364—67, 375, 394, 425, 476-78, 489, 513, 586, 588, 592, 593 Feirefiz: brother of Parsifal—320

Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804-72): German philosopher, critic of religion—478 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814): philosopher of German idealism—477 Flechtner, Hans-Joachim (1901-80): German physicist—144 Fleischhack, Heinz (1913-88): 1937-38, member of the collective pastorate, GroB-Schlonwitz; 1939, assistant pastor, Kisleben; 1940, civilian service at an Eisleben factory; 1942, drafted into military service—472 Florian, Saint (d. 304): martyr, patron saint of Poland—330 Floyd, Wayne Whitson, Jr.: theologian and educator; author and editor of numerous works on Bonhoeffer—9 Fontane, Theodor (1819-98): German novelist of Huguenot descent—120, 128, 145, 158, 164, 574 Forli: see Melozzo da Forli Frederick IT (“the Great”) (1712-86): 1740-86, king of Prussia—308

Freisler, Roland (1893-1945): lawyer and judge under the Nazi regime; 1942, president of the People’s Court; February 3, 1945, killed during an air raid on Berlin—575, 606, 607 Frettloh, Magdalena L.: German theologian—492 Freudenberg, Adolf (1894-1977): German diplomat and pastor; after 1939,

emigrated and became secretary for refugee relief in the provisional World Council of Churches in London and Geneva—608 Frick, Peter: professor of New Testament, University of Waterloo; one of the translators for DBWE 15—22 Fuller, Reginald H.: New Testament scholar; translator of the first edition of Letters and Papers from Prison—5

Furtwangler, Wilhelm (1886-1954): German musical conductor—176 Gallas, Alberto: Italian professor of the history of theology, Milan; editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Italian edition—406, 425

Gauguin, Paul (1848-1903): French painter—331 Gawlick, Gunter: German religious philosopher—477

Gay, Cesare: Italian attorney and ecumenist; cofounder of the Italian section of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches; spring 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer mentions him in the “camouflage letter”—234 Gehlen, Arnold (1904-76): German philosopher and sociologist—136

684 Index of Names Gehlhoff, Gerhard (1896-1954): 1934-45, pastor, Lupow/Stolp, Pomerania; member of the Pomeranian Confessing Church Council of Brethren—544 Geismar, Eduard: prominent Danish Kierkegaard scholar—173 Gerhardt, Paul (1607-76): German theologian and hymnist—56, 78, 104, 179, 196, 198, 230, 238, 242, 246, 311, 398, 401, 461, 472, 485, 492, 493, 513, 575

Gerrens, Uwe: German pastor and theologian; author of publications on Karl Bonhoeffer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in relation to the Reichstag fire, forced sterilization, and “euthanasia”’—100 Gerstenmaier, Eugen (1906-86): 1936-44, officer in Bishop Theodor Heckel’s Church Foreign Office; 1942, became member of the Kreisau circle

through contact with Helmut von Moltke; July 24, 1944, arrested and sentenced by the People’s Court to seven years’ imprisonment; April 14, 1945, liberated from the Bayreuth prison—544 Giescking, Walter (1895-1956): German-born pianist—332 Gildemeister, Martin (1876-1943): from 1924, director of the physiological institute at the university, Leipzig—192 Gilli, Mario: engineer; captain in the technical corps of the Italian air force; October 1943—August 1944, prisoner of war in Tegel—508 Girbig, Werner: German author of works about World War I]—322

Gisevius, Hans Bernd (1904-74): from 1933, government official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior; from 1939, special officer in the Military Intelligence Office; 1941, vice-consul and local representative of the Military Intelligence Office at the German consulate, Zurich; on July 20, 1944, in Berlin; January 1945, fled to Switzerland—508 Godsey, John D.: U.S. professor of systematic theology; author of works on

Bonhoeffer, including the first published monograph on Bonhoeffer’s theology; coeditor of DBWE 4: Discipleship—6

Goebbels, Joseph (1897-1945): National Socialist politician and publicist; 1933-45, Reich Minister of Public Information and Propaganda; 1945, committed suicide—123, 187, 552, 608 Goerdeler, Carl Friedrich (1884-1945): lawyer and government official; 1930-37, mayor of Leipzig; from 1939, leading figure, along with Colonel General Beck, in the civilian resistance movement; August 12, 1944, arrested; September 1944, sentenced to death; February 2, 1945, executed—606 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832): German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist—115, 169, 178, 273, 291, 320, 438, 455

Gollwitzer, Helmut (1908-93): 1938-40, pastor, Berlin-Dahlem as Martin Niemoller’s replacement after Niemoller’s arrest; after 1940, military

Index of Names 685 service; 1945-49, prisoner of war in Russia; 1950, professor of systematic theology, Bonn; from 1957, professor, Free University and college of theological studies, Berlin—472 Goltz, Hannah Caroline Helene Marie Countess von der, née von Hase (1873-1941): sister of Bonhoeffer’s mother, daughter of Karl Alfred and Clara von Hase; wife of Rudiger von der Goltz—117, 124, 134 Goltz, Rudiger Count von der (“Uncle Rudi”) (1865-1946): Prussian career

military officer; in World War I, major general and commander of the Baltic division—117

Goltz, Rudiger Count von der (1894-1976): justice official and defense attorney in important political trials; son of Rudiger and Hannah von der Goltz; Bonhoeffer’s cousin; September 1933, Prussian state official (representing the NSDAP); 1944, Bonhoeffer’s and Dohnanyi’s defense lawyer—117, 122, 598

Gotthelf, Jeremias (pseudonym of Albert Bitzius) (1797-1854): Swiss theologian, pastor, and novelist—66, 67, 93, 98, 100, 107, 111, 120, 176, 209, 221, 320, 507, 574

Granier, Gerhard: coauthor of work on the Bundesarchiv—101 Grant, Michael (1914-2004): British classicist and historian—437, 438 Green, Clifford J.: Australian-born U.S. theologian; author and editor of numerous works on Bonhoeffer; executive director, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition—9, 23, 24, 221

Gregory VIT (Hildebrand): (ca. 1021-85): from 1073-85, pope—470

Gremmels, Christian: German professor of social ethics and Protestant theology; author of works on Bonhoeffer; member of editorial board, Detrich Bonhoeffer Werke; from 1985, chair of West German section of the

International Bonhoeffer Society; from 1992, chair of the International Bonhoeffer Society, German section; editor of DBW8—9, 55, 67, 151, 193, 219, 236, 352, 353, 371, 382, 391, 392, 399, 425, 485, 508, 548, 553, 572 Grieg, Edvard Hagerup (1843-1907): Norwegian composer—407 Grillmeier, Alois (1910—98): German Jesuit professor of dogmatics and history of dogmatics—230 Grosch, Gotz (1912-43 [killed in action]): summer 1936, participated in the third Finkenwalde session; 1934—35, headed the Brotherhood of Young Theologians of the Confessing Church, Berlin-Brandenburg; April 1940,

drafted into the military—136 Grosch, Rudolf (1875-1959): father of G6étz Grosch; secondary school teacher; 1906-37, teacher at the Realgymnasium, Grunewald (after 1932, the Grunewald Gymnasium)—136 Grosse, Heinrich W.: German Protestant ethicist; professor at the Pastoral Sociological Institute, Hanover—583

686 Index of Names Grotius, Hugo (1583-1645): Dutch scholar of international law; main work: De iure belli ac pacis libri tres (1625)—476, 587

Grude-Onnasch, Margret, née Bethge: sister of Eberhard Bethge; September 17, 1939, married Friedrich (Fritz) Onnasch; second marriage to Gottfried Grude, pastor in Magdeburg—88, 153, 446, 525 Grunewald, Matthias (Mathis Nithardt) (ca. 1470-1528): German painter; most famous work was the Isenheim Altar in Colmar—194 Gustrow, Dietrich: author of work on Manfred Roeder—583

Haeften, Hans-Bernd von (1905-44): lawyer; 1921, confirmed together with Dietrich Bonhoeffer; member of the diplomatic corps (Copenhagen, Vienna, Bucharest); 1940, reporting legation officer in the cultural section of the Foreign Ministry, Berlin; from 1941, active member of the Kreisau circle; participated with his brother Werner in preparations for

July 20, 1944; arrested immediately after the failed coup; August 15, 1944, executed in Pl6tzensee—404

Hampe, Johann Christoph: German author of work on Bonhoeffer’s poetry—418, 441, 459, 512, 526, 531, 547, 549 Handel, Georg Friedrich (1685-1759): composer—473, 474

Hansen, Conrad (1906-2002): renowned German pianist; taught at the Berlin Conservatory during the 1930s—176 Harbsmeier, Gotz (1910-79): pastor, Hanover regional church—588 Hardenberg, Baron Friedrich von (pen name: Novalis) (1772-1801): poet of early Romanticism—72 Harder, Gtinther Heinrich Reinhold (1902-72): pastor, Fehrbellin; 1933,

cofounder of the Pastors’ Emergency League; 1936-72, lecturer and professor of New Testament at the Confessing seminary, Berlin; 1941, convicted in collective trial against the examination board of the Old Prussian Union Council of Brethren; 1942-43, together with Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the “primus usus legis” committee of the Old Prussian Council of Brethren—519 Harnack, Adolf von (1851-1930): after 1888, German Protestant theologian and professor of church history, Berlin; 1905-21, general director of the Prussian State Library; 1911, cofounder and first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of the Sciences; 1914, ennobled; neighbor and friend of the Bonhoeffer family; influenced Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theological development—173, 177, 279, 288, 305, 316, 323, 363, 373, 430, 455, 476, 502, 575

Harteck, Paul (1902-85): chemist; friend of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer; 1934, professor of physical chemistry, Hamburg; after 1951, in the United States—132

Index of Names 687 Hartmann, Nicolai (1882-1950): from 1931, German philosopher and professor, Berlin; after 1946, Gottingen—136, 155, 158, 166, 170 Hase, Benedikt Karl August von (“Uncle Bubi”) (1890-1979): son of Karl Alfred and Clara von Hase; painter, artisan, etcher; youngest brother of Paula Bonhoeffer—212, 406 Hase, Elisabeth von (1872-1945): Bonhoeffer’s aunt, sister of Paula Bonhoeffer, daughter of Karl Alfred and Klara von Hase; missing after the February 1945 bombing of Dresden—68, 168, 487, 554, 555 Hase, Frieda von (1849-1943): married to chief staff physician Paul von Hase (1840-1918); mother of Karl Paul Immanuel von Hase—96 Hase, Hans Christoph Karl Eduard von (1907-2005): Bonhoeffer’s cousin; son of Hans and Ada von Hase; 1934-45, military chaplain; 1957-73, head of the central office, Diaconical Welfare and Social Agency of the Evangelical Church of Germany, Stuttgart; coeditor of DBW 10—136, 159, 170, 194, 316, 318, 358

Hase, Hans Karl Paul Stanislaus von (1873-1958): son of Karl Alfred and Clara von Hase; brother of Paula Bonhoeffer; uncle and godfather of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—117, 137 Hasc, Johann Georg von (1926-57): son of Benedikt von Hase; technician of high frequency physics—103 Hase, Karl August von (1800-1890): father of Karl Alfred von Hase; German theologian and church historian; professor of church history, Jena; Privy Councilor—108, 111, 574, 574

Hase, Margarete (Deta) von, née von Funck (1898-1968): wife of Major General Hase—380 Hase, Paul (Karl Paul Immanuel) von (1885-1944): career military offi-

cer; cousin of Paula Bonhoeffer; 1940, major general and military commander of Berlin; 1944, general; July 20, 1944, participated in the attempted coup; August 8, 1944, executed in Plotzensee—96, 133, 137, 140, 158, 234, 343, 450, 451, 498, 594, 602, 604

Hauff, Wilhelm (1802-27): German author of historical and satirical novels, fairy tales, stories, poems—130, 131 Hauptmann, Gerhart (1862-1946): German novelist, dramatist and poet— 10]

Heckel, Theodor (1894-1967): 1934-45, bishop and director of the Church Foreign Office of the German Evangelical Church; 1939-45, director of the Protestant relief organization for internees and prisoners of war—544 Heckscher, Ruth Roberta (Raba): daughter of Walter and Spes Stahlberg —389 Hedin, Sven (1865-1952): Swedish scholar of Asiatic studies; sympathetic to “Aryan” ideologies—101

688 Index of Names Hedinger, Ulrich: German Protestant theologian, author of works on Barth and dogmatics—436 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831): German idealist philosopher; professor of philosophy at several German universities, including Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin—321, 406, 477 Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976): German existentialist philosopher; 1928-—

45, professor, Freiburg; after 1933, first National Socialist rector of Freiburg university; 1945-51, dismissed and forbidden to teach by the Allied occupation forces—116, 427 Heidenhain, Else (“Hainchen”): close acquaintance of the Bonhoeffer family; sister of Martin Heidenhein, one of Karl Bonhoeffer’s colleagues in Breslau whose son, who died young, was an assistant to Karl Bonhoeffer —162

Heidenhain, Martin (1864-1949): professor of anatomy, Breslau; 1907, professor, Tubingen; Bonhoeffer family friend—162 Heim, Ernst Ludwig (“Old Heim”) (1747-1834): Berlin physician—143 Heim, Karl (1874-1958): 1920-39, professor, Tubingen—395, 428 Heinrich IV (Henry [V) (1050-1106): from 1054, German king and Holy Roman emperor—470, 473 Heinrich von Laufenberg (ca. 1390-1458): medieval spiritual poet—228 Helen: character in Greek mythology; daughter of Zeus and Leda, and wife of Menelaus—438 Henke, Josef: coauthor of work on the Bundesarchiv—101

Henkys, Jurgen: Protestant theologian; publications on practical theology, Bible study, hymnody, and Bonhoeffer’s prison poetry; editor, DBW 14—10, 34, 56, 418, 441, 459, 461, 462, 465, 466, 469, 470, 485, 489, 492, 493, 512-14, 526, 531, 534, 535, 539, 547, 549, 550 Henne, Gottlieb (1887-1956): 1920-56, leading member, St. Paul’s German

Reformed Church, London; 1933, member of the parish election committee—267 Hera: Greek goddess; spouse of Zeus—436

Herbert, Edward Lord of Cherbury (1583-1648): British philosopher, founder of a religious philosophy not dependent on Christianity—475, 476, 587

Herder, Johann Gottfried von (1744-1803): theologian, philosopher, writer—75 Hermes: Greek god of travelers—436, 437

Herrenbruck, Walter: regional church superintendent, Reformed Church; council member, Evangelical Church of Germany—591 Herzlieb, Minna (“Minchen,” actually Wilhelmine) (1789-1865): adopted daughter of the Jena publisher Friedrich Frommann; in 1807, Goethe

Index of Names 689 was for a time passionately attracted to her; model for Ottilie in Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities—273, 291

Hettler, Friedrich Hermann: biographer of Josef Muller—223, 319 Hildebrandt, Franz (1909-85): German pastor and close friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; 1937, emigrated to England after brief imprisonment; later taught at Drew Theological Seminary—591 Himmler, Heinrich (1900-1945): agriculturist and National Socialist politician; 1929-45, Reichsfuhrer of the SS; 1933, head of the political police in Bavaria and the other German states; 1934, participated in the murders associated with the Rohm coup; 1935, chief of the German police; June 1936, also became head of the German police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior; one of the organizers of the Holocaust; August 1943, Reich

interior minister; 1944-45, commander of the reserve army; May 23, 1945, committed suicide—601, 604 Hindenburg, Paul von Beneckendorff (1847-1934): general field marshal;

1916, head of the highest army command; 1925-34, president of Germany—123

Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945): National Socialist politician, German dictator; 1920, founded the National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP); 1933, became Reich chancellor and /ihrer; 1938, became commander in chief of the armed forces; 1941, also commander in chief of the army; April 30, 1945, committed suicide in Berlin—2, 3, 8, 30, 38, 43, 123, 356, 371, 458, 485, 526, 581, 583, 594, 596, 601, 607, 608 Holderlin, Friedrich (1770-1843): German poet—437, 546

Holl, Karl (1866-1926): German Protestant theologian and Luther scholar; 1901, professor of church history, Tubingen; after 1906, professor of church history, Berlin; 1915, member of the Prussian Academy of Science—67, 98, 172, 173, 180, 375

Holstein, Horst (1894-1945): Berlin lawyer and notary; 1936, member of the constitutional committee of the provisional church administration; defense attorney for Confessing Church members at several civil and criminal trials; 1940, officer at the front, but for health reasons soon reassigned to Berlin; 1945, died of a heart attack—123 Holzel, Christoph: did dissertation on Grotius’s legal philosophy—476 Holzendorf: see “Engel” Horn, Maria: see Czeppan, Maria Hornchen: see Czeppan, Maria Homer (lived between 750 and 650 BCE): Greek poet; the epics, the Odyssey and the /liad, are attributed to him—437

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus): (65-8 BCE): Roman lyric poet and satirist—203, 269

690 Index of Names Hoskyns, Edwyn Clement (1884-1947): British theologian—99 Huber, Wolfgang: German theologian and Bonhoeffer scholar; after 1990, chair of the editorial board of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke; after 1994, bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg; after 2003, chair of the national Council of the Evangelical Church of Germany—193, 352, 572 Humboldt, Baron Wilhelm von (1767-1835): German scholar and statesman—509 Humperdinck, Engelbert (1854-1921): German composer—549 Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938): phenomenologist, professor of philosophy, Gottingen and Freiburg—116 Hymmen, Johannes (1878-1951): 1940-45, member of the clerical advisory council of the German Evangelical Church; vice president of the consistory—401, 580

Ickradt, Heinrich Wilhelm (Heinz) (1897-1954): businessman; secretary in the Portuguese consulate, Munich; assigned to the Munich Military Intelligence Office VII; 1942, implicated and arrested with Schmidhuber in the currency (“Depositenkasse”) affair related to the Operation 7 rescuc—601 Immermann, Karl Leberecht (1796-1840): German writer—120, 574 Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. 127-202): Greek theologian and apologist from Asia Minor, after ca. 177, bishop of Lyons—230, 575 Isaac: biblical character—492

Jacob: biblical character—492 Jacobi, Gerhard (1891-1971): 1930-54, pastor, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin; 1933, leading member of the Young Reformation movement and of the Pastors’ Emergency League; 1934-39, head of the Confessing Synod, Berlin; 1934, member of the Old Prussian Union and the Reich Council of Brethren; imprisoned repeatedly—324 Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf: German historian; author of works on the German resistance —567

Jaenicke, Walther: author of article on Karl Bonhoeffer—192 Jairus: biblical character—481 James: biblical character—173, 183 Jannasch, Wilhelm (1888-1966): 1922, senior pastor, Lubeck; 1934, forced to retire; 1933-45, worked for the Confessing Church; 1936, member of the provisional church administration; 1937, secretary of the Pastors’ Emergency League—160 Jasper, Ronald C. D.: Anglican liturgical scholar; dean of York; authorized biographer of George Bell—545

Index of Names 691 Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) (1783-1825): storyteller, novelist—66, 67, 155, 169, 176

Jehle, Herbert (1907-83): Quaker and pacifist; mathematician and physicist from Stuttgart; 1932-33, belonged to the Berlin Bonhoeffer circle—325 Jensen, Hans-Werner (1912-83): German pastor and church leader; as vicar participated in Bonhoeffer’s collective pastorate in GroB-Schlonwitz; 1939, pastor, Buchholz, district of Furstenwalde; 1940-45, military service—544 Jeremiah: biblical prophet—387, 544 Jeremias, Joachim (1900-1979): 1935-68, professor of New Testament, Gottingen—481 Job: biblical character—302, 407 John Chrysostom: see Chrysostom, John John of Patmos: biblical character—208 John the Baptist: biblical character—485 John the Evangelist: biblical character—66, 104 John, Hans (1911-45): lawyer; 1939, academic assistant, Institute for Aviation Law, Berlin University, where he served for a time as a legal assistant for Rudiger Schleicher; 1940—43, military service associated with the Military Intelligence Office; participated in preparations for the assassination of Hitler; after July 20, 1944, arrested on the charge of conspiratorial contacts with Klaus Bonhoeffer and others; imprisoned in the Berlin prison on Lehrter Strabe; April 23, 1945, executed—554, 605, 606, 608 John, Otto (1909-97): lawyer; 1937-44, like Klaus Bonhoeffer, corporate

lawyer in the central administration of German Lufthansa in Berlin; after July 20, 1944, fled to England by way of Spain; worked in the British military’s “Calais soldiers broadcast” —151, 594 Jonah: biblical character—547, 548 Jones, Dick: member of the British intelligence service; Bonhoeffer’s fellow prisoner in Tegel—399

Joseph: biblical character—492 Joseph of Arimathea: biblical character—482 Jost, Wilhelm (1903-88): colleague of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer; 1938-44, professor of physical chemistry, Leipzig—192 Judas Iscariot: biblical character—46, 494 Jungel, Eberhard: German theologian—590 Kabitz, Ulrich: German historian and editor, specialist on literature of and about Bonhoeffer; coeditor, DBW 16: Konspiration und Haft 1940-1945; 1992, coeditor with Ruth-Alice von Bismarck, Brautbriefe Zelle 92—99, 547, 549

692 Index of Names Kalckreuth, Christine Countess von (Ninne) (1898-1984): cousin of Paula Bonhoeffer; painter and graphic artist, Munich-Schwabing—250, 256, 209; 4045499

Kalckreuth, Leopold, Count von (1855-1928): Bonhoeffer’s maternal great uncle; painter and graphic artist—194, 314, 331

Kalckreuth, Stanislaus, Count von (1820-94): painter; 1858-76, director of the art academy, Weimar; married to Anne, née Cauer, from Bad Kreuznach—194

Kaltenborn, Carl-Jurgen: professor (emeritus) of ecumenics, Humboldt University, Berlin; 1969, doctoral dissertation on Harnack as teacher of Bonhoeffer—177

Kanitz, Joachim Werner Archibald (Jochen) (1910-96): German theologian; 1931-33, student of Bonhoeffer in Berlin; 1935, participated in the first Zingst/Finkenwalde session; after 1936, pastor; May 1939, conscripted into the military (medical corps)—159, 160, 194, 218, 239, 488

Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804): German philosopher of transcendental or critical idealism—71, 98, 215, 429, 450, 477 Karajan, Herbert von (1908-89): musical conductor—341 Kargel, W.: see Kergel, Walter

Kehrl, Rudolf (1890-1964): 1927-45, teacher at the cathedral academy in Kolberg; close ties to the Confessing Church—544 Keimann, Christian (1607-62): Protestant hymnist—242 Keitel, Wilhelm (1882-1946): career military; 1938-45, colonel general, chief of the High Military Command; 1940, general field marshal; May 8, 1945, signed the German surrender; 1946, executed—598, 604 Keller (Mrs.): Silesian farm woman—4l15 Keller, Gottfried (1819-90): Swiss writer—107, 120, 129, 209, 507, 574 Kelly, Geffrey B.: U.S. theologian; professor of theology, La Salle University,

Philadelphia; author of numerous writings on Bonhoeffer; 1992-2000, president, International Bonhoeffer Society, English Language Section—365, 489, 531, 588 Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630): mathematician, astronomer—406

Kergel, Walter (1909-45): winter 1937-38, participated in the collective pastorate in Kéoslin—544

Kesselring, Albert (1885-1960): general field marshal of the Air Force (Luftwaffe); December 1941—March 1945, commanding officer of German troops in Italy—141, 298

Kierkegaard, S¢ren (1813-55): Danish theologian, author, and philosopher—28, 173, 268, 319, 492, 593

Kindt, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm (1901-59): Protestant theologian, educator, philosopher—339

Index of Names 693 Klages, Ludwig (1872-1956): German philosopher, psychologist—339 Klappert, Bertold: professor of systematic theology, church seminary, Wuppertal—589

Klapproth, Erich (1912-43 [killed in action]): Confessing Church theologian from Karlsruhe/Baden; 1931-33, member of Bonhoeffer’s circle of students in Berlin; 1936-37, participated in the fourth Finkenwalde session; 1938, head of the Brotherhood of Young Theologians of the Confessing Church of Berlin-Brandenburg; pastorate, Berlin-Friedenau —136, 153

Kleeberger: Berlin internist, cardiac specialist—380 Kleist, Heinrich von (1777-1811): German writer—282, 303 Kleist-Retzow, Hans-Friedrich von (1923-41 [killed in action]|): son of Hans Jurgen and Maria von Kleist; April 1938, confirmed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Kieckow—62 Kleist-Retzow, Hans-Hugo von (1814-92): conservative Prussian politician —108

Kleist-Retzow, Hans Jurgen von (1887-1969): estate owner in Kieckow/ Pomerania; son of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow; husband of Maria, née von Diest; after July 20, 1944, arrested—215, 606

Kleist-Retzow, Jurgen Christoph von (1921-41 [killed in action]): son of Hans Jurgen von Kleist—62 Kleist-Retzow, Konstantin von: son of Hans Jurgen and Maria von KleistRetzow— 380

Kleist-Retzow, Maria von (“Mieze”), née von Diest (1893-1965): wife of the estate owner Hans-Jurgen von Kleist—215, 354 Kleist-Retzow, Ruth von, née Countess von Zedlitz-Trtitzschler (1867-1945): grandmother of Maria von Wedemeyer; married Jurgen von Kleist; after 1897, following her husband’s death, she owned the estate of Klein-Krossin near Kieckow—63, 89, 99, 108, 110, 115, 174, 254, 256, 259, 277, 282, 318, 322, 325, 354, 356, 376, 423, 474, 506, 516, 525 Klemperer, Klemens von: see von Klemperer, Klemens Klemperer, Victor (1881-1960): scholar of Romance languages; from 1920, professor, Dresden; 1933, removed from office due to Nazi race laws— 210

Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb (1724-1803): German lyric poet—339, 340 Knobloch: noncommissioned officer, member of the guard staff in Tegel; together with noncommissioned officer Helmut Linke—13, 16, 372, 547 Knopf: assistant to Hermann von Soden during the latter’s journey to Palestine—232 Knorr, August (1900-1958): physician; 1932-45, head of internal medicine at the Deaconess Hospital in Koslin, Pomerania; extremely active there

694 Index of Names on behalf of the Confessing Church; member of the Pomeranian Council of Brethren—544 Koch, Rudolf (1876-1934): graphic artist and book designer in Offenbach —521

Koch, Werner (1910-94): 1935-36, participated in the second Finkenwalde session—526 Kohlhaas, Michael: character in novel of the same name by Kleist—303 Konig, Stefan: author of work on lawyers during the Third Reich—123 Korenke, Christine Elisabeth—61, 88, 178, 257, 318 Korte, Wilhelm: German scholar of linguistics—176 Kramer, Sybille: lecturer in psychiatry, Technical University, Munich—105 Kramp, Willy (1909-86): writer—507

Kraus, Hans-Joachim (1918-2000): Old Testament scholar; one of the founders of Christian-Jewish dialogue in postwar Germany—586 Krause, Bruno (1880-1967): father of Winfried and Gerhard Krause; pas-

tor in Uckermiinde, Vilmnitz, Grimmen (1926-34, superintendent), Spantekow/Anklam—544, 588

Krause, Gerhard (1912-82): German theologian; winter 1936-37, participated in the fourth Finkenwalde session; until 1955, prisoner of war in Russia; from 1962, professor of practical theology and Reformation history, Bonn—364, 544

Krause, Winfried (1910-43): Gerhard Krause’s brother; summer 1937, participated in the fifth Finkenwalde session; 1938, assistant pastor at st. Mary’s, Koslin; September 1939, drafted into military service; 1943, died in the military hospital in Marburg from wounds suffered in Russia—136, 153, 239 Krotke, Wolf: German professor of systematic theology—593

Kunert, Erwin: summer 1935, participated in the first Zingst/ Finkenwalde session; 1936-76, pastor—291 Kunze, Otto: winter 1937-38, participated in the collective pastorate, Késlin; 1941—45, military chaplain—544

Kuske, Martin (1940-95): German theologian, pastor, and Bonhoeffer scholar—214, 589, 593

Kutzner, Helmuth: officer in the military high court in Berlin; during the first half of 1944, conducted the investigations into activities involving Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer—600, 604 Ladenig: military justice inspector with the military high court—58, 77, 157 Laer, Friederike von, née von Wedemeyer (1884-1945): sister of Maria von Wedemeyer’s father; lived on the Oberbehme estate in Westphalia—487, 498

Index of Names 695 Lampe, Adolf (1897-1948): economist; member of the Confessing Church and of the Freiburg circle; September 8, 1944, arrested; April 25, 1945, released from the Lehrter StraBe prison in Berlin—605 Lang, Theodor (1890-1973): diplomat; chancellor of the German embassy in London; 1934, lived in Sy¥denham—159, 193 Laocoon: legendary Trojan prince, priest of Apollo and Poseidon; protested

against the plan to draw the wooden horse into ‘Troy; because the gods wished the destruction of Troy, two serpents sent by Poseidon killed him and his two sons; their death agony was depicted in a marble group (ca. 50 BCE) now in the Vatican—270, 295, 307 Lapide, Pinchas (1922-97): Austrian-born Jewish philosopher; survived the concentration camps; after war, became Israeli diplomat to the Vatican and elsewhere; active supporter of Christian-Jewish dialogue—589 Laplace, Pierre Simon Marquis de (1749-1827): French mathematician and physicist—406, 426 Lasker, Eduard (1868-1941): chess theoretician—143 Lassar (Mrs.): married to a Jewish attorney who committed suicide—89 Lasserre, Jean (1908-83): French Reformed theologian, pastor, and pacifist; 1930-31, fellowship at Union Theological Seminary, New York, where he

was together with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Erwin Sutz; 1961-69, secretary of the French-speaking section of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, representing France, Belgium, and Switzerland—485 Lasson, Georg (1862-1932): German theologian and pastor, Berlin; from 1907, editor of the complete works of Hegel for the publishing house of Felix Meiner in Leipzig—406

Latmiral, Gaétano (1909-95): Italian engineer; professor of electromagnetic theory; 1943, member of an Italian military commission of radar technicians in Berlin, where they were surprised by the cease-fire between Italy and the Allies after the fall of Mussolini, its six members were arrested as persons cleared for access to secret information; from November 11, 1943 until Christmas 1944, prisoner in Tegel with Dietrich Bonhoeffer—151, 346, 469, 508, 567, 599 Laufenberg: see Heinrich von Laufenberg Lazarus: biblical character—27] Leber, Annedore (1904-68): German publisher and Social Democrat politician; widow of resistance figure Julius Leber, who was executed in January 1945—566 Le Blanc, Max (1865-1943): predecessor of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer as director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Leipzig University—192

Lehmann, Paul Louis (1906-94): U.S. Reformed theologian; from 1927, studied at Union Theological Seminary, New York; from 1930, acquainted

696 Index of Names with Dietrich Bonhoeffer; 1947, professor of practical theology and, after 1949, of ethics, Princeton University—267 Leiber, Robert (1887-1967): Jesuit; from 1924, private secretary and close advisor of Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII); professor of church history at the Gregoriana in Rome—298

Leibholz, Gerhard (Gert) (1901-82): German lawyer; 1926, married to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s twin sister, Sabine; 1929-31, professor of state law, Greifswald; 1931-33, Gottingen; 1935, forced to retire as a result of Nazi

race laws; 1938, emigrated to England with his family; 1947, returned to Gottingen; 1951-71, judge in the federal constitutional court, Karlsruhe—270, 376, 399, 412, 425, 545, 566

Leibholz, Marianne Regina Nanette Paula Ursula: daughter of Gerhard and Sabine Leibholz; Bonhoeffer’s godchild; writer—113, 159, 160, 194, 219, 358

Leibholz, Sabine (“Bina”), née Bonhoeffer (1906-99): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s twin sister; April 6, 1926, marriage to Gerhard Leibholz—118, 244, 269, 287, 376, 412, 425 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716): German philosopher—105, 186, 454 Leiper, Henry Smith (1891-1975): U.S. theologian and ecumenist—267

Lempp, Albert (1877-1943): bookseller and publisher; owner of the Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich; 1943, leader of a small resistance circle in Bavaria that issued a statement of solidarity on behalf of the Jews—153 Lerche, Otto-Karl (1910-45 [killed in action]): summer 1936, participated in the third Finkenwalde session—256

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-81): German poet, dramatist, literary critic, and philosopher—259, 266, 300, 319, 320

Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742-99): German physicist and author of aphorisms—320

Lilje, Johannes (“Hanns”) (1899-1977): German Protestant theologian; 1927-36, general secretary of the German Student Christian Federation; 1935-44, general secretary of the Lutheran World Convention; after July

20, 1944, arrested and imprisoned until the end of the war in Nuremberg—544, 545

Linke, Helmut: noncommissioned officer; member of the guard staff in Tegel; together with noncommissioned officer Knobloch helped convey illegal correspondence between Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge—382, 391, 395, 399, 410, 423, 432, 458, 482, 499, 523, 546 Lippi, Fra Filippo (ca. 1406-69): Florentine painter—201

Loewenfeld, Julius Ludwig Wilhelm von (1808-80): Prussian general; 1870-71, wounded during the French campaign near St. Privat—451

Index of Names 697 Lokies, Hans Emanuel Christoph (1895-1982): 1927, inspector and director of the Gossner Mission Society, Berlin; 1938-62, lecturer in missionary and religious studies at the theological college, Berlin; December 1941,

convicted in the trial of the Confessing Church examination board— 160, 248, 271, 544, 579

Lorrain, Claude (Claude Gellée; called Le Lorrain) (1600-1682): French landscape painter—295, 331 Lotter, Karl: 1942, attorney with the military high court; 1943-44, investigated the Depositenkasse affair (the currency irregularities related to the Operation 7 rescue) under Dr. Roeder; 1944, appointed head of the armed forces legal section; judge general—157 Low, Rudolf (1878-1948): Swiss artist and novelist—102

Lubbe, Marinus van der (1909-34): Dutch communist accused of setting the Reichstag afire; December 23, 1933, sentenced to death by the military high court for high treason; January 10, 1934, executed in Berlin —100, 123

Lubeck, Vincent (1654-1740): composer of organ works and cantatas— 577

Luther, Martin (1483-1546): German biblical scholar and theologian; leading figure in the Reformation; author of seminal theological works, hymns, and commentaries; translator of the most famous edition of the German Bible—25, 40, 41, 49, 56, 86, 172, 173, 180, 189, 201, 243, 268, 284, 304, 319, 441, 452, 476, 479, 485, 501, 503, 504, 549, 568, 577, 585, 590, 593, 594

Lutschewitz, Gotthold Wilhelm Heinrich (1902-89): 1931-33, inspector of studies, preachers’ seminary, Stettin; 1933-45, professor, Gross Dubsow (Pomerania)—544 Maab, Rudolf (1893-1945): career military; April 1942, lieutenant colonel; commander of the Lehrter StraBbe military interrogation prison, BerlinMoabit—408, 451, 565

Machiavelli, Niccolo (1469-1527): Italian politician and political theorist—215, 314, 475, 587

Mackworth-Young, Gerard (1884-1965): British administrator in India and archaeologist—288 Maechler, Winfried Max (1910-2003): 1932-33, member of Bonhoeffer’s circle of students in Berlin; 1935, member of the first Finkenwalde session; member of the House of Brethren; November 1936, ministry, Berlin-Dahlem and in Schlawe, Pomerania; in the medical corps during the war—159, 194, 444, 451, 525

Maetz, Walter: captain and commander of the Tegel military interrogation

698 Index of Names prison branch office on SeidelstraBe 39—112, 114, 137, 151, 156, 191, 2835, 344, 390, 392, 408, 451, 505

Marahrens, August (1875-1950): 1925-47, bishop of Hanover; opposed German Christians but advocated course of compromise with Nazi authorities; 1934-36, chair of the provisional church administration; 1939-45, member of the clerical advisory council of the German Evangelical Church; 1941, approved the exclusion of “non-Aryan” Christians from GEC parishes; 1947, resigned as bishop—544

Maritain, Jacques (1882-1973): French Catholic philosopher; 1945-48, French ambassador to the Vatican—486

Marx, Karl (1818-83): German social, political, and economic theorist; developed the theory of class struggle and the exploitation of the working class—486 Matthews, John W.: U.S. Lutheran pastor; 2005-, president of the International Bonhoeffer Society’s English Language Section—365 Mauthner, Fritz (1849-1923): philosopher and author—426 May, Georg Gerhard: Austrian Protestant bishop and ecumenist—297 May, Karl (1842-1912): German author of travelogues and adventure stories—103 Mayer, Rainer: German professor of systematic theology and religious education; author of several publications on Bonhoeffer—430 Maximilian, Emperor of Habsburg—363 McGilfert, A. C. (1861-1933): U.S. theologian and church historian—477

Meier, Kurt: German historian of the churches during the Nazi era, particularly the German Christians—472 Melozzo da Forli (1438-94): Italian Renaissance painter—219 Menelaus: brother of Agamemnon, king of Sparta—438 Messerschmidt, Manfred: author of work on military chaplains—423, 580 Messow, Werner Bruno Wilhelm (1888-1961): from 1929, pastor, BerlinSteglitz—102

Metella, Caecilia (ca. 50 BCE): famous for her gravestone on the Via Appia in Rome—330 Metz, Brigitte: German pastor and author of works on the Church Struggle —544 MeuB8, Gisela: author of study of Bonhoeffer’s “arcane discipline’—365 Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand (1825-98): Swiss writer—128, 539 Meyer, Winfried: German historian and expert on the Operation 7 rescue and Hans von Dohnanyi—49, 59, 474, 566, 583

Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564): Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, and architect—281, 298, 319, 330

Index of Names 699 Miene, Jacques Paul (1800-1875): French Catholic cleric; editor of the collection of church fathers and authors, Patrologiae Cursus completes—73 Moller, Martin (1547-1606): hymnist—231 Moltke, Freya von, née Deichmann (1911-2010): 1931, married Helmut James von Moltke, after whose execution she rescued his “Kreisau papers” and correspondence; 1960, emigrated to the United States—107, 575 Moltke, Helmuth Count von (1800-1891): military commander and author; established an estate entailed to the Moltkes at Kreisau—106 Moltke, Helmuth James Count von (1907-45): German attorney for international law; after 1939, administrative advisor in the Military Intelligence Office of the Armed Forces High Command, subsection VI for questions of international law; April 1942, traveled to Norway and Sweden with Dietrich Bonhoeffer; May 1942, founded the Kreisau circle (named for his estate in Silesia); January 23, 1945, executed in Berlin—107, 575, 599, 601, 606

Moltmann, Jurgen: German Protestant theologian and professor of systematic theology—566 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem Seigneur de (1533-92): French philosopher —475, 487 Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643): Italian composer—473 Morgenstern, Christian (1871-1914): German poet, humorist—154 Morike, Eduard (1804-75): German pastor, poet—320, 331 Moses: biblical character—531, 532 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-91): Austrian composer—89, 319 Muller, Christine-Ruth: German theologian; author of work on Bonhoeffer and the Jews—49

Muller, Eberhard (1906-89): 1932, traveling secretary for the German Student Christian Federation; 1934-38, general secretary of the organization; 1946-72, founder and head of the Evangelical Academy in Bad BollI—580

Muller, Gerhard Ludwig: author of work on Bonhoeffer’s theology—107, 489 Muller, Gotthold: German systematic theologian—586

Muller, Hanfried: German professor of systematic theology; author of first German dissertation on Bonhoeffer—512, 592 Muller, Josef (“Ochsensepp”) (1898-1979): Catholic attorney in Munich; during the 1930s, active as legal adviser and attorney for Catholic institutions; 1939, reserve first heutenant in the Military Intelligence Office VU in Munich; from 1940, maintained contacts on behalf of the resistance with the Vatican and the Allies; April 5, 1943, arrested together with his

700 Index of Names wife, Marie; April 1945, liberated by U.S. forces—122, 223, 319, 336, 434, 435, 584, 601, 605, 607

Muller, Karl-Ferdinand (1911-74): winter 1935-36, participated in the second Finkenwalde session; member of the House of Brethren; pastor, Greifenberg-Rega (Pomerania) and Karnitz (Pomerania) —544 Muller, Marie, née Lochner (1909-96): wife of Josef Muller; April 5-25, 1943, in Gestapo custody—434, 435, 597 Muller, Sebastian: son of Karl-Ferdinand Muller—544 Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945): Italian dictator and leader (Duce) of the fascist party—525, 608 Naomi: biblical character—376

Napoleon (Bonaparte) (1769-1821): 1804-15, emperor of France—250, 279, 455

Naso, Eckart von (1888-1976): German author—106 Nathanael: biblical character—482 Natorp, Paul (1854-1924): philosopher and social educator—553—55 Naumann, Friedrich (1860-1919): German pastor, theologian, and politician —428 Nelson, F. Burton (1924-2004): U.S. professor of theology and ethics, North Park Seminary, Chicago; Bonhoeffer scholar—531] Neumann, Peter: German historian of the Church Struggle—593 Newton, Isaac (1643-1727): British mathematician, physicist, astronomer —406 Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64): theologian; 1448, cardinal; 1450, prince bishop of Brixen—22, 477 Nicolai, Philipp (1566-1608): German theologian and hymnist—465 Niebuhr, Reinhold (1892-1971): U.S. theologian and social ethicist; 193031, one of Bonhoeffer’s professors at Union Theological Seminary, New York—237, 267, 399, 400, 573

Niemoller, Martin (1892-1984): World War I naval officer and submarine captain; 1919-24, studied theology; 1924, ordained; after 1931, pastor, Berlin-Dahlem; 1933, cofounder of the Pastors’ Emergency League; 1937, arrested; 1938-45, held in concentration camps; 1947-64, president of the Protestant Church in Hesse-Nassau; postwar president of the Protestant Church in Hesse-Nassau; 1961-68, one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches—123, 267, 296, 315, 340, 343, 383, 452,

Niesel, Wilhelm (1903-88): Reformed theologian and leading member of the Confessing Church of the Old Prussian Union; 1930-34, pastor, Wuppertal-Elberfeld and academic inspector at the preachers’ seminary there; 1934-45, member of the Council of Brethren of the Old Prussian

Index of Names 701 Union, responsible for seminary education; 1935, lecturer in systematic theology at the theological college in Berlin; after 1937, arrested several times by the Gestapo—205 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844-1900): German philosopher, poet, and classical philologist—294, 319, 331 Novalis: see Hardenberg, Baron Friedrich von

Ohnesorge, Anna: from Silesia; secondary school vice principal, forced to retire; from spring 1938, lived in Bergen on the island of Rugen; member, Pomeranian Council of Brethren—544

Oldenhage, Klaus: German archivist and expert on contemporary archives—10]

Onnasch, Bernhard (1921-96): youngest brother of Friedrich (Fritz) Onnasch; wounded several times as an officer; from 1948, pastor in the Hanover regional church—544

Onnasch, Friedrich (1881-1945): father of Friedrich Onnasch (Fritz); 1922, pastor at St. Mary’s and superintendent, Koslin; member of the Pomeranian Council of Brethren; from December 1937, Bonhoeffer’s collective pastorate met in his home; arrested several times; September 1940, Reich prohibition against speaking in public (at the same time as Bonhoeffer) and travel restrictions for the province of Pomerania; September 1941, assigned to the pastorate Berlinchen/Neumark, from which he also participated in the visitation services of the Brandenburg Council of Brethren; from 1943, member of the Council of Brethren of the Old Prussian Union; February 17, 1945, shot to death by Russian soldiers in Berlinchen—544 Onnasch, Friedrich (Fritz) (1911-45): son of superintendent Friedrich Onnasch; 1935, participated in the first Zingst/Finkenwalde session; member of the House of Brethren; Confessing Church pastor in Stettin; 1937-39, academic inspector in Finkenwalde (until its closure in September 1937), then in the collective pastorate in Késlin; September 17, 1939, married Eberhard Bethge’s sister Margret; like his father, shot to death in Koslin by Russian soldiers in 1945—153, 159, 160, 194, 200, 256, 446, 525, 544

Onnasch, Margret: see Grude-Onnasch, Margret Onnasch, Martin: professor of church history, Greifswald—282 Orff, Carl (1895-1982): composer, music educator; main work: Carmina burana: Cantones profanae (1937)—473

Origen (ca. 185-254): Alexandrian biblical critic, exegete, theologian, and spiritual writer—365 Ortega y Gasset, José (1883-1955): Spanish cultural philosopher—166, 360

702 Index of Names Oster, Hans (1887-1945): career military officer; 1929, major in the sixth division in Munster; winter 1932-33, discharged; October 1933, began working as a civilian employee in the Military Intelligence Office; 1935, reactivated as a lieutenant colonel by Admiral Canaris; 1938, start of

contacts with the resistance during the Fritsch affair, including with Ludwig Beck, Hans von Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer, and others; September 1938, chief of section Z (Central Section) in the Military Intelligence Office; December 1942, major general; April 16, 1943, dismissed from service after Hans von Dohnanyi’s arrest and transferred to the Fiuhrer reserves; July 21, 1944, arrested; April 9, 1945, executed in Flossenburg—l11, 37, 49, 161, 508, 518, 581, 582, 583, 594, 597, 599, 600, 604, 607

Ostwald, Carl Wilhelm Wolfgang (1883-1943): colleague of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer; professor of colloid chemistry, Leipzig University—192 Ott, Heinrich: Swiss theologian and pastor—150

Otto, Walter Friedrich (1874-1958): classical philologist—436-38, 440, 441, 455, 501, 526, 587

Pabst, Walter: Confessing Church pastor, Berlin; after 1945, active in the Protestant church in the German Democratic Republic—593 Pagel, Karl: German author of works on the Church Struggle—544 Palestrina, Giovanni (1525-94): Italian composer, church musician—250, 509

Palmstrom: character in Christian Morgenstern poems—154 Pangritz, Andreas: German professor of systematic theology; author of numerous publications on Bonhoeffer and Barth—230, 306, 332, 364, 365, 407, 588, 593

Pappus (ca. 320 CE): Alexandrian mathematician, author of commentaries on Euclid and Ptolemy, also of a universal geography based upon the world map of Ptolemy; most important work is a handbook on the Greek mathematical sciences—332 Paris: Character in Greek mythology whose elopement with Helen caused the Trojan war—438 Parsifal: protagonist of Middle High German epic by Wolfram von Eschenbach concerning the quest for the Holy Grail—320 Pasewald, Elisabeth: from 1939, secretary for Rudiger Schleicher—383 Paton, William (1886-1943): Scottish theologian; 1939-43, assistant gen-

eral secretary of the provisional World Council of Churches; 1940, founded a British working group dedicated to peace—38, 282 Paul: biblical character—365, 369, 430, 447, 451, 503, 504 Paul (Jean): see Jean Paul

Index of Names 703 Pejsa, Jane: U.S. author of work on Ruth von Kleist—108 Perels, Friedrich Justus (1910-45): Berlin lawyer; 1933, career restrictions due to the Nazi race laws; 1936-40, attorney for the Old Prussian Council of Brethren and the Pastors’ Emergency League; 1940-44, employed

in the chancellery of attorney Dr. Horst Holstein in Berlin; October 5, 1944, arrested and taken to the prison on Lehrter StraBe; February 2, 1945, sentenced to death by the People’s Court; April 23, 1945, shot—49, 194, 236, 368, 391, 399, 412, 415, 424, 431, 547, 552, 554, 594, 605, 606, 608

Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich (1746-1827): Swiss educator and _ social reformer—553-—55

Peters, Tiemo Rainer: author of work on Bonhoeffer’s political theology —588

Petersdorff, Herman von (1864-1929): German historian and biographer —108

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) (1304-74): Italian poet and scholar—457 Pfeffer, Karl Heinz (1906-71): 1940-46 professor of sociology (folklore and regional studies), Berlin—360

Pfeifer, Hans Martin: German theologian, teacher, pastor, and editor; 1975-78, secretary of the International Bonhoeffer Society, West German section; from 1996, head of the editorial board, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke—10

Pfitzner, Hans Erich (1869-1949): composer, music author—250, 359 Philipp, Arthur Lothar: historian of Scotland Yard—263 Pieper, Josef (1904-97): German Catholic philosopher, influential through his modernization of Thomist ethics; after 1946, professor, Munster—40, 45, 180, 375 Pisker, Lotte: domestic for many years in the Bonhoeffer family—91, 133

Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) (1876-1958): 1920-29, nuncio in Berlin; 193039, cardinal state secretary; 1939-58, pope—298 Plag, Albrecht: German pastor—231, 237 Plathow, Michael: pastor and professor of systematic theology—366 Plato (427-347 BCE): Greek philosopher—332, 429 Plutarch (ca. 46—ca. 120 CE): Greek philosopher and writer—553, 555 Poelchau, Harald (1903-72): from 1933, prison chaplain, Berlin; member of the Kreisau circle; chaplain in Tegel to many of the imprisoned resistance members—179, 194 Pohl, Michael Joseph: German Latin scholar and publisher of Thomas a Kempis’s /mitation of Christ—230

Pompe, Hans-Dietrich: 1935-36, participated in the second Finkenwalde session; 1937, assistant pastor, Pomerania; 1939-42, military service;

704 Index of Names 1942, second secretary of the Evangelical Relief Service for Internees and Prisoners of War—544 Prenter, Regin: Danish theologian; author of works on Luther—588 Raabe, Wilhelm (1831-1910): German humorist and novelist—164, 169

Rabenau, Friedrich von (1884-1945): artillery general; 1939-43, head of the army archives; after July 20, 1944, arrested; April 12, 1945, executed in Flossenbirg—607 Rade, Martin (1857-1940): founder and editor of the periodical Die christliche Welt; 1921, professor of systematic theology, Marburg—489 Radtke, Johannes: head military chaplain in Berlin Spandau—580 Rahner, Karl (1904-84): German Jesuit theologian—482 Rainalter, Josef (1907-96): attorney in Meran; served in the same military unit as Eberhard Bethge in Italy—281, 300, 306, 313, 332, 336, 369, 370, 410, 423, 517, 542, 544, 546 Range, Otto: 1939, ordination in Stettin; assistant pastor, Seeger—544

Ranke, Leopold von (1795-1886): German historian and professor, Berlin—193, 209, 320, 321 Raphael (Raffaclo Santi) (1483-1520): Italian Renaissance painter—319, 494

Rasch, Wolfdietrich (1903-86): author, professor of literary history—173 Rath, Else: friend of Ruth von Wedemeyer—554 Ratschow, Carl Heinz (1911-99): professor of theology, Marburg—452

Reck-Malleczewen, Friedrich (1884-1945): German author; killed in Dachau—173 Reger, Max (1873-1916): composer—375

Reimarus, Elise (Margaretha Elisabeth Reimarus; 1735-1805): German author and translator; “the muse of Hamburg”—266 Reimer, Karl-Heinrich (1904-90): 1929-45, pastor, Naseband, district of Belgard/Pomerania; Confessing Church member; member of the final Pomeranian Council of Brethren; 1934, arrested and expelled from Koslin; 1943, military service; 1947, return from Russian prisoner of war camp; 1951-77, pastor, German Christ Church, London—544

Rembrandt (Harmenszoon van Rijn) (1606-69): Dutch baroque painter—111, 319

Rendtorff, Heinrich (1888-1960): 1921, missionary; 1924, director of the preachers’ seminary, Preetz; 1926, professor of practical theology and New Testament, Kiel; 1930-33, bishop of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and honorary professor, Rostock; 1934, dismissed from office; 1934—45, pas-

tor, Stettin-Braunsfelde; 1934, member of the Pomeranian Council of Brethren; 1945, professor, Kiel; 1956, retired—544 Reuter, Fritz (1810-74): northern German poet—102, 106, 120, 128

Index of Names 705 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich (1823-97): cultural historian, novelist—202, 207 Riemer, Bernhard (1911—43 [killed in action]): brother of Gerhard Riemer; friend and fellow student of Eberhard Bethge from their days at the secondary school in Magdeburg—185, 186, 188, 520 Riethmuller, Otto (1889-1938): 1928-38, chair and director of the Burckhardt House in Berlin-Dahlem and of the Evangelical Reich Association of Young Women; hymnist; 1935, head of the youth board of the Provisional church administration; 1936, member of the Reich Council of Brethren—493 Rilke, Rainer Maria (1875-1926): German poet—99, 203, 574 Ritter, Gerhard (1888-1967): German historian; 1942-43, member of the Freiburg circle, which prepared a memorandum for a post-Nazi political system; November 1944—April 1945, imprisoned at Lehrter Strabe—606 Robertson, Edwin Hanton (1912-2007): British Baptist pastor, translator, and author of works on Bonhoeffer—441, 531 Robinson, John: bishop of the Church of England and author of Honest to God—19

Roeder, Manfred (1900-1971): German lawyer; 1941, military prosecutor

for the military high court toward the end of the Third Reich; 1942, prosecuted the cases against Rudolf von Scheliha and against the Rote Kapelle resistance group; April—August 1943, chief investigator for the hearings involving Dohnanyi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others; September 1943, prepared the indictment against Dietrich Bonhoelfer; May 1944, chief judge; December 1944, judge general; 1949, released from U. S. custody—7, 58, 102, 106, 122, 123, 128, 135, 145, 168, 204, 210, 219, 221, 222, 283, 314, 582-84, 598, 600

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-1945): 1932-45, thirty-second president of the United States—607 Rose, Eugen: winter 1935-36, participated in the second Finkenwalde session; 1937-70, pastor (until 1945 in Grében/Teltow)—300, 544 RoBler, Helmut (1903-82): German Protestant theologian; one of Bonhoeffer’s fellow students in Berlin—428 Rotelle, John E.: translator of works of Augustine—76 Rothacker, Erich (1888-1965): philosopher and psychologist; 1928—54, professor, Bonn—136 Rothe, Hans: German novelist and dramatist—277, 365, 489, 498 Rothe, Richard (1799-1867): Protestant theologian, ethicist, and dogmatician; 1837-49 and 1854-67, professor of theology, Heidelberg—365, 389, 498

Rothuizen, Gerard T. (1926-88): Dutch theologian; author of several works on Bonhoeffer—415, 526, 578, 588

706 Index of Names Rott, Wilhelm (Willy) (1908-67): 1930, studied under Karl Barth in Bonn; 1935-37, following parish ministry in the Rhineland, academic inspector at the first Zingst/Finkenwalde preachers’ seminary; 1937, appointed to the provisional church administration in Berlin; 1943, military service with the Intelligence Office of the High Military Command—159, 160, 194, 544 Rouner, Leroy S. (1930-2006): professor of religion and philosophy, Boston University—267

Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640): Dutch baroque painter—319

Rumscheidt, Martin: professor emeritus of theology, Atlantic School of Theology; translator of numerous works—33, 34, 421, 536, 538 Ruth: biblical character—376 Ruysdael, Salomon van (ca. 1600-1670): Dutch painter—295

Sack, Alfons: attorney; 1933, official defense attorney for Ernst ‘Torgler in the Reichstag fire trial—123, 234, 431, 584 Sack, Karl (1896-1945): lawyer; 1934, jomed military justice department; 1938, began work with Hans von Dohnanyi in the Fritsch trial; 1942, chief of the army legal section in the High Military Command; minister director and general stall judge; from 1942, in close contact with Friedrich Justus Perels; September 8, 1944, arrested; April 9, 1945, executed in Flossenburg—498, 594

Sahm, Ulrich: German journalist; concentration on church and Middle Eastern affairs—583

Sams, Eric (1926-2004): British musicologist, cryptologist, and Shakespeare scholar—288 Sancho Panza: character in Cervantes’s Don Quixote—304 Sanderson, J. Burdon: cotranslator of nineteenth-century English edition of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion—406

Santa Ana, Julio de: Brazilian theologian and ecumenist—593 Satan: see subject index Sauerbruch, Ernst Ferdinand (1875-1953): surgeon; director of the Charité hospital in Berlin—101, 244, 562 Saxer, Ernst: Swiss scholar of the Reformation—593 Schaff, Philip: German American theologian and religious historian—453

Scharf, Kurt (1902-90): 1933-46, pastor, Sachsenhausen near Oranienburg; 1935, president of the Brandenburg Council of Brethren and of the Confessing Synod of the Confessing Church, Mark Brandenburg; 1938,

chair of the conference of Councils of Brethren; repeatedly arrested; 1941, drafted into military service; 1966-76, bishop of the Evangelical Church, Berlin-Brandenburg (from 1973, only for West Berlin) —517

Index of Names 707 Scharl, Emmeran: Catholic youth chaplain, Bavaria; founder of a populist Catholic movement there—230 Scharrer, Ernst: German neuroscientist—141 Scheel, Otto (1876-1954): historian of the Reformation; 1919, Tubingen; from 1924, Kiel—284

Scheidt, Samuel (1587-1654): organist, composer of important organ works—312

Schein, Johann Hermann (1586-1630): composer; from 1616, predecessor of J. S. Bach as choirmaster in the Leipzig St. Thomas church—312 Scheller, Heinrich: coauthor of volume on Karl Bonhoeffer—272, 594 Schellong, Dieter: German church historian—592 Schiller, Friedrich von (1759-1805): German poet, playwright, critic, and historian—441 Schilling, Otto (1874-1956): Catholic moral theologian—4l, 45 Schlabrendorff, Fabian von (1907-80): lawyer and economist; March 13, 1943, part of an aborted assassination attempt on Hitler; after July 20, 1944, arrested and held in the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-StraBe in Berlin; spring 1945, taken to Flossenburg; liberated from a prisoner transport in Tirol—605 Schlatter, Adolf (1852-1938): Protestant theologian born in Switzerland; professor of systematic theology and New Testament exegesis, Berne, Greifswald, Berlin, and finally Tubingen; 1923, Bonhoeffer attended his classes; despite Schlatter’s positive attitude toward National Socialism in 1933, Bonhoeffer held him in high regard as a biblical scholar—115, 131, 415

Schleicher, Christine: see Korenke, Christine Elisabeth Schleicher, Dorothee: see Bracher, Dorothee Sabine Julie

Schleicher, Hans-Walter Karl Otto Rudiger: son of Rudiger and Ursula Schleicher; physicist—27, 65, 88, 100, 138, 150, 161, 177, 244, 274, 275, 317, 328, 330, 338, 339, 341, 354, 382, 408, 474, 552, 554, 555, 57] Schleicher, Jorg (1904-1977): brother of Rudiger Schleicher; engineer and architect; later an actor in Tubingen, Augsburg, and Munich—70 Schleicher, Renate: see Bethge, Renate Schleicher, Rudiger (1895-1945): German lawyer; 1919, entered Wurttemberg civil service; 1923, married Ursula Bonhoeffer; 1924, appointed to

the Reich Ministry of Transport in Berlin; 1933, entered the Reich Air Transportation Ministry and, until 1939, head of the legal department there; 1939, honorary professor and head of the Institute of Aviation Law, University of Berlin; participated in the conspiracy against the National Socialist regime; October 4, 1944, arrested and taken to the Lehrter StraBe prison in Berlin; February 2, 1945, sentenced to death by

708 Index of Names the People’s Court; April 24, 1945, executed by firing squad in Moabit prison (Lehrter Strafe)—7, 65-68, 88, 90, 92, 114, 121, 123, 172, 176, 191, 234, 240, 248, 254, 259, 260, 262, 264, 277, 279, 280, 283, 290, 291, 293, 304, 340, 341, 353-55, 372, 378, 382, 383, 431, 432, 481, 513, 524, 527, 547, 552, 554, 562, 563, 566, 570, 594, 605, 606, 608

Schleicher, Ursula Clara Julia Hanna, née Bonhoeffer (1902-83): Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sister; May 15, 1923, married Rudiger Schleicher—61-65, 67, 76-78, 81, 82, 88-90, 92, 105, 109, 121, 144, 161, 172, 177, 178, 186, 239, 242, 277, 290, 302, 325, 339, 340, 354, 355, 360, 380, 381, 395, 410, 431, 561, 562, 594

Schlingensiepen, Ferdinand: German theologian and Bonhoeffer scholar—53] Schmid, Heinrich (1811-85): German scholar of the Lutheran confessional tradition—489 Schmidhuber, Wilhelm Adolf (1898-1965): career diplomat, connected to the Canaris circle; 1942, arrested in the currency (“Depositenkasse”) affair

related to the Operation 7 rescue; February 12, 1944, sentenced by the military high court to four years in prison—601 Schmidt, Walter: 1938, participated in the collective pastorate, Koslin; 1939, assistant pastor, Priorau—544 Schmidt, Wolfgang (1909-45): summer 1937, participated in the fifth Finkenwalde session; 1937-39, predicant, Stettin; 1940, pastor, Boldekow/ Anklam; 1945, missing in action—544 Schneider, Reinhold (1903-58): Catholic writer and historical author; 1936, prohibited from publishing—263 Schober, Franz von (1798-1882): German poet—288

Schollmeyer, Matthias: German scholar of the theology in Bonhoeffer’s prison fiction—367 Scholz, Wilhelm von (1874-1969): German author; also wrote, directed, and acted in plays, though primarily wrote fiction and biographies—173 Schone, Georg (1875-1960): son of Richard and Helene Schoéne, friends of the Bonhoeffer family; Berlin surgeon; 1934, dismissed for political reasons—143

Schone, Richard (called “the old Schone”) (1840-1922): professor of archaeology; general director of the Royal (Prussian) Museums in Berlin; distant relative of Paula Bonhoeffer; lived across the street from the Bonhoeffers’ first Berlin home on Wangenheimstrasse—80 Schonemann, Friedrich (1886-1956): professor of American studies, Berlin; after 1945, independent scholar—360 Schonfeld, Johannes Otto Leopold (Hans) (1900-1954): economist and theologian; 1929, academic assistant at the International Institute for

Index of Names 709 Sociology, Geneva; 1930, ordination and service as assistant pastor, Ger-

man Lutheran congregation, Geneva; 1931-46, head of the research department in the World Council of Churches—282 Schonherr, Albrecht (1911-2009): 1932-33, among the circle of students around Bonhoeffer in Berlin; 1935, participated in the first Zingst/Finkenwalde session and active in the House of Brethren; 1935, ministry, Greifswald; 1937, pastor, Brussow; 1947, superintendent, Brandenburg / Havel; 1963, general superintendent of the church district of Mark Brandenburg [Kurmark], Eberswalde; 1967, bishop; 1973-81, bishop of BerlinBrandenburg—159, 160, 194, 218, 256, 371, 445, 457, 512, 544, 549, 586, 593

Schonhoffer, Johannes (1885-1966): Catholic theologian; monsignor with the Propaganda Fide in Rome—223, 298 Schreiber, Matthias: author of work on Friedrich Perels—368 Schroder, Winfried: author of article on pantheism—477 Schroter (Herr): neighbor of the Dre family, Berlin-Dahlem—148 Schubel, Albrecht: author of work on military chaplains—297 Schubert, Franz Peter (1797-1828): Austrian composer and exponent of Romanticism—155, 251, 287, 288 Schumann, Robert Alexander (1810—56): German composecr—89, 369

Schur, Werner (1888-1950): professor of ancient history, Breslau and Heidelberg—144 Schutz, Alfred (1899-1959): Austrian-American philosopher and sociologist —576, 596 Schutz, Heinrich, (1585-1672): German composer—187, 231, 251, 312, 391, 398, 543, 577

Schutz, Paul Wilhelm Lukas (1891-1985): German theologian; 1930-37, lecturer in Protestant ethics and dogmatics, Giessen; 1940—52, head pastor, St. Nicholaus, Hamburg—430 Scott, Jamie S.: professor of interdisciplinary studies in literature and religion, York University, Ganada—572, 596 Seeberg, Reinhold (1859-1935): German theologian; 1885, professor, Dorpat; 1889, professor of systematic theology, Erlangen; 1898, Berlin—180, 214, 230, 269, 362, 366, 453, 476

Senftleben, Otto: lawyer; 1940-42, ministerial adviser; group leader “S” (pastoral counseling ) in the Army High Command—404 Seydel, Gustav Paul Heinrich Karl (1910-43 [killed in action]): summer 1936, participated in the third Finkenwalde session; 1937, assistant pastor, Sachsenhausen; 1942, married Dorothee, née Frick; 1942, assistant pastor, Berlin-Steglitz—185 Sheed, F. J.: translator of Augustine—73

710 Index of Names Simmel, Georg (1858-1918): philosopher, sociologist—596

Smid, Marike: historian at the Protestant Institute for Interdisciplinary Research (FEST), Heidelberg; scholar of Dohnanyi circle and Church Struggle—59, 496

Smith, Ronald Gregor: Scottish theologian; as director of SCM Press in London, introduced translations of Bonhoeffer to the English-speaking world—19, 29, 591

Socrates (ca. 469-399 BCE): Greek philosopher in Athens, teacher of Plato —254, 333, 437

Soden, Hermann Baron von (1852-1914): Lutheran theologian, pastor; from 1913, professor of New Testament, Berlin—232 Solf, Hanna (1887-1954): widow of the diplomat Wilhelm Solf; her house was the meeting place for a resistance circle; January 1944, arrested after denunciation by a Gestapo spy—601

Solle, Dorothee (1929-2003): German feminist and political theologian and author—459 Sonderegger, Franz Xaver: police official; 1939, transferred to the Gestapo in Berlin; 1943, assigned to military prosecutor Dr. Roeder in the Depositenkasse affair (investigating currency irregularities related to the Operation 7 rescuc, leading to the arrest and interrogation of Hans von Dohnanyi,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other prisoners) in the military high court; 1944, criminal commissioner; assigned to the “July 20 special commission” in the Reich Central Security Office—17, 496, 517, 552, 553, 605, 606

Spalatin, Georg (actually Burckhardt) (1484-1545): from Spalt near Nuremberg; humanist, Reformation theologian; friend of Luther, tutor of Frederick the Wise—49

Speckhardt, Hugo Karl (1893-1949): lawyer; March 1941, military high court; specialist in the Reich War Legal Office; 1943, military prosecutor for the military high court—191 Speirs, Ebenezer Brown: cotranslator of nineteenth-century English edition of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion—406

Spengler, Oswald (1880-1936): German philosopher and historian of culture—320, 321, 331 Spinoza, Baruch (Benedictus de) (1632-77): from a Marrano Jewish family

that emigrated from Portugal to Holland; philosopher—477, 494 St. Leger, James: author of work on Grotius—476

Staats, Reinhart: studied theology in Tubingen, Berlin, and Gottingen; 1976-84, professor, Heidelberg; coeditor of DBW 10—230 Staemmler, Wolfgang (1889-1970): 1929, superintendent, Halle; 1931, aca-

demic director of the provincial Saxon preachers’ seminary, Frankfurt /Oder; member of the provincial Saxon Council of Brethren; 1939,

Index of Names ra ia arrested and expelled from the district of Merseburg and forbidden from speaking publicly; 1941, arrested and sentenced to one year in prison for violating these terms; 1944, sentenced to three years; 1945-50, provost of Wittenberge—472

Stahlberg, Alexander (Alla) (1912-94): son of Walter and Spes (née von Kleist-Retzow) Stahlberg—96, 389 Stahlberg, Ruth Roberta: see Heckscher, Ruth Roberta Stahlin, Wilhelm (1883-1975): 1922-23, founding member of the Evangelical Brotherhood of Michael and of the Berneuchen circle; 1926-58, professor of practical theology, Munster—430 Stalin, Joseph Vissarionovich (1879-1953): Soviet revolutionary statesman and political leader; after 1924, dictator of the Soviet Union—607 Stern, Fritz: historian of Germany—596 Stifter, Adalbert (1805-68): Austrian writer, poet, and painter—48, 63, 67, 99,107, 111,116,120, 136, 145,158,.164,-175, 182,215,221, 255,271,278, 293, 320, 324, 354, 504, 507, 574, 575 Storch, Martin: author of work on Barth—588 Storm, Theodor (1817-88): German poet and author of short stories—145, 166, 167

Straus, Erwin (1891-1975): Jewish physician, a colleague of Karl Bonhoeffer at the Charité hospital; Bonhoeffer tried unsuccessfully to keep him on staff—272, 594

Strecker, Johannes (1885-1966): 1934, pastor, Wusterhausen/Neustettin; 1940, arrested, charged with subversion of the war effort—544 Strohm, Christoph: German theologian and Bonhoeffer scholar; professor of church history; coeditor, DBW 11—566, 596

Sturm, Julius (pseudonym for J. Stern) (1816-96): theologian and author; mainly religious poetry, also patriotic poetry—68 Suselbeck, Heiner: German pastor and theologian—42 Sutz, Erwin (1906-87): Swiss Reformed pastor and theologian; 1930-31, fellowship at Union Theological Seminary, New York, where he became Bonhoeffer’s friend; after 1933-40, pastor in Wiesendangen, Switzerland; 1940-46, Rapperswil—412, 430, 591

Talleyrand, Charles Maurice Duke of Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838): French diplomat—250 Tersteegen, Gerhard (1697-1769): Protestant hymnist, pietist, and poet— 197

Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus) (ca.160-ca. 230 CE): African theologian from Carthage; a father of the Latin church—189, 190 Tetsch, August (1909-45 [killed in action]): summer 1936, participated in

TA Index of Names the third Finkenwalde session; pastor; June 1940, conscripted into the military—544

Thielicke, Helmut (1908-86): German Protestant theologian, educator, and writer—5)91 Thie®B, Frank (1890-1977): novelist—252

Thoma, Hans (1839-1924): painter and graphic artist—295 Thomas a Kempis (of Kempen) (ca.1379-1471): Dutch mystic and ascetic writer; 1399, author of /mitatio Christi—230, 231, 331

Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-74): one of the leading theologians and _ philosophers of the Middle Ages; Italian philosopher and Dominican theologian; from 1272, taught in Paris and elsewhere; from 1262, head of the new course of general studies in Naples; 1322, canonized; 1567, declared a Doctor of the Catholic church—45, 317 Thurmann, Horst: summer 1937, participated in the third Finkenwalde session; member of the House of Brethren; 1937, pastor, Cologne; 1940, arrested; 1941, incarcerated in Dachau—544 Tillich, Paul (1886-1965): systematic theologian; taught in Germany and, after emigrating prior to World War II, in the United States; one of the founders of the circle of religious socialists; 1924, professor of systematic theology and philosophy, Marburg, 1925, Dresden and Leipzig, 1929, Frankfurt am Main; 1933, left Nazi Germany because of his dismissal

for political reasons (religious socialist); 1933-37, guest lecturer, and 1937-55, professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York; 1955-62, at Harvard—19, 399, 405, 406, 415, 428, 429, 588 Tilp, Walter: 1942, major, Abwehr troop 320 with the Armed Forces High Command 10 in Italy, where he was Eberhard Bethge’s superior officer; from September 1944, licutenant colonel—280, 297, 310, 336, 368, 544

Todt, Heinz Eduard (1918-91): German professor of systematic theology and social ethics; 1978-85, chair of the International Bonhoeffer Society, West German section; from 1985 until his death, chair of the editorial board of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke; publications in New Testament,

theological ethics, and Bonhoeffer studies; one of the editors of DBW 6 —39, 515, 566, 588, 592 Todt, Ilse: German scholar of anthropology and indigenous religion; since 1961, at the Protestant Institute for Interdisciplinary Research (FEST), Heidelberg; editor of many volumes of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werk, including DBW6, Ethik; since 1992, member of the DBW editorial board—9, 10, 11, 33, 34, 406, 419

Toland, John (1670-1722): British deistic writer, philosopher of religion during the Enlightenment; main work: Christianity Not Mysterious (1696)—477

Index of Names 713 Troeltsch, Ernst (1865-1923): German Protestant theologian, philosopher, and historian; from 1915, succeeded Wilhelm Dilthey in Berlin—45, 214, 362, 428, 498 ‘Trott zu Solz, Adam von (1909-44): German diplomat and participant in the Kreisau circle; July 25, 1944, arrested; August 15, 1944, executed—599 TruchseB, Christoph Baron von: son of Dietrich and Hedwig von Truchseb —556, 601, 606

TruchseB, Dietrich (Ditze) Baron von (1900-1979): estate owner in Bundorf in Lower Franconia—325, 340, 556, 606 TruchsebB, Hedwig Baroness von, née Rotenhan: married to Dietrich Baron von TruchseB—302, 316, 556 Turner, William (1775-1851): British landscape painter—295 Uhland, Ludwig (1787-1862): ballad poet—149 Uhlhorn, Gerhard (1826-1901): Protestant theologian; high consistory official; 1878, Abbot of Loccum—98

Velazquez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y (1599-1660): Spanish baroque painter—33] Vibrans, Gerhard (1907-42 [killed in action]): summer 1935, participated in the first Zingst/Finkenwalde session; 1936, pastor, Rosian; 1940, military service in France—186, 218, 251, 278, 289, 290, 299, 309, 505

Victingholl, General Heinrich von: from 1943 commander of the German Tenth Army in Italy—14 Vilmar, August Friedrich Christian (1800-1868): German theologian, literary historian, regional parliamentary representative; from 1855, professor, Marburg—131

Visser ‘t Hooft, Willem Adolf (1900-1985): Dutch Reformed theologian and ecumenical pioneer; from 1938, general secretary of the provisional World Council of Churches; 1938—43, one of Bonhoeffer’s contacts in Geneva during the latter’s travels for the Abwehr; 1948-66, general secretary of the World Council of Churches—184, 199, 282, 598 Vivaldi, Antonio (1680-1743): Italian violinist and composer—542 Vives, Juan Luis (1492-1540): Spanish humanist—494

Voelz, Helmut (1910-78): summer 1935, participated in the first Zingst/ Finkenwalde session; 1939, pastor, Kietzig/Stargard—544 Vogel, Heinrich Rudolf Gottfried (1902-89): German theologian and pastor, active in the Confessing Church—482 Volkmann, Antonie (Toni): Italian-born adopted daughter of Richard von Volkmann-Leander); first cousin of Karl Alfred von Hase; novelist— yal be

714 Index of Names Von Klemperer, Klemens: L. Clark Seelye Professor of History (emeritus), Smith College, Massachusetts—596

Wagner, Horst: reporting legation officer in the Foreign Ministry, Gruppe Inland II B office (which monitored Jewish activities) —391 Wagner, Richard (1813-83): German composer—320, 391 Walcha, Helmut: organist, church musician—55, 57 Walpole, Hugh (1884-1941): British novelist—263 Walther von der Vogelweide (ca. 1170-1230): Middle High German poet; Minnesinger—319, 320 Wapler, Rudolf: summer 1937, participated in the fifth Finkenwalde session; 1938, assistant pastor in Schinne and Gehrden; 1940, conscripted into the military; missing in action—544 Weber, Hans Emil (1882-1950): 1913, professor of systematic theology, Bonn; 1935, Munster; 1946, Bonn—453 Weber, Max (1864-1920): German social economist, economic historian, and sociologist—45 Wedemeyer, Hans von (1888-1942): estate owner in Patzig and Klein Reetz, Neumark; husband of Ruth, née von Kleist-Retzow; member of the Berneuchen circle; 1942, killed in action near Stalingrad as a major and a battalion leader of an infantry regiment—57, 68, 335, 338 Wedemeyer, Hans-Werner von: younger brother of Maria von Wedemeyer —557

Wedemeyer, Maria von (1924-77): daughter of Hans and Ruth von Wedemeyer; Ruth von Kleist-Retzow’s granddaughter; 1938-42, pupil at the Wieblingen country boarding school near Heidelberg (run by Elisabeth von Thadden); 1942, secondary school examination and diploma; January—June 1943, worked as a Red Cross nurse in Hanover; January 1943, engagement to Dietrich Bonhoeffer; July-August 1943, medical leave in Seefeld, district of Pyritz, Pomerania; September—December 1943, temporary worker in Kniephof while supporting her mother in Patzig; from January 1944, worked as a teacher at the Magdalenenstift in Altenburg, Thuringia, and as a private teacher in Bundorf, Lower Franconia; October 1944-January 1945, stayed with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s parents

in Berlin; January 31, 1945, led a refugee transport to the west with her siblings and six other people; then journeyed to various concentration camps looking for Dietrich Bonhoeffer—3, 8-10, 12-14, 17, 18, 57, 61-64, 66-69, 80, 81, 89, 102, 106, 107, 109-12, 114, 116, 117, 119-21, 123, 128-31, 134, 137, 140, 142-45, 149, 150-52, 156, 157, 159, 161, 162, 165-67, 170, 171, 176, 178, 182, 184, 186, 190, 193, 194, 196, 199, 203, 207,

Index of Names TAD 210, 218, 221, 222, 224, 226, 234, 235, 237, 239, 240, 243-45, 248, 252, 253, 258, 259, 270-73, 275, 277, 279, 287-89, 292, 296, 298, 302, 309, 311, 316, 323-25, 327, 328, 330, 335, 337-40, 342, 351, 352, 356, 357, 361, 370, 371, 375, 376, 398, 402, 407, 415-18, 421, 430-33, 446, 474, 486, 487, 497, 498, 506, 518, 522, 531, 534, 546-49, 551-57, 561, 563, 571, 572, 574, 577, 578, 591, 597, 598, 600-603, 605, 608 Wedemeyer, Maximilian von (1853-1905): father of Hans von Wedemeyer —335, 342 Wedemeyer, Maximilian von (1922-42): son of Hans and Ruth von Wedemeyer; 1938, confirmed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Kieckow; October 26, 1942, killed in action on the eastern front—68, 171, 214, 342 Wedemeyer, Ruth von, née von Kleist-Retzow (1897-1985): daughter of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow; 1918, married Hans von Wedemeyer; mother of Maria von Wedemeyer—57, 68, 89, 96, 111, 119, 311, 322, 325, 335, 341, 342, 353, 375, 412, 474, 554, 556, 598, 602 Weidemann, Alfred: from 1938, worked in the Army High Command, general office of the reserve army section; from October 1, 1943, head of the “pastoral counseling, 269” group in the Army High Command; 1943, major gencral—412, 423, 431 Weiss, Johannes (1863-1914): German professor of New Testament, representing the history of religions school of thought; from 1890, Marburg; from 1908, Heidelberg—269 Weizsacker, Carl Friedrich Baron von (1912-2007): physicist, scientific theoretician, philosopher—104, 401, 405, 406, 426, 477, 478, 587, 603 Wergin, Kurt (1900-1973): Berlin attorney and notary; friend of Klaus Bonhoeffer; 1934, dismissed as company lawyer for the Berlin transportation authority for failing to join the NSDAP; provided aid for persons

persecuted for political reasons or reasons of origin; participated in Operation 7; September 16, 1943, appointed as Bonhoeffer’s defense lawyer—156, 161, 193, 224, 264, 282, 323, 324, 370, 582, 599, 600

Weymarn, Alexander von: 1933-49, head of the press and information office of the World Council of Churches in Geneva—241 Wieacker, Franz (1908-94): legal historian; 1937, professor, Leipzig; 1948, Freiburg im Breisgau; 1953, G6ttingen—476 Wiechert, Ernst (1887-1950): author; opponent of National Socialists—203, 574

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (1717-68): German archaeologist and art historian—294, 295, 315

Wolf, Ernst (1902-71): German theologian and leading member of the Confessing Church; 1931, professor of historical theology, Bonn; 1935,

716 Index of Names transferred to Halle as disciplinary measure; managing editor of E'vangelische Theologie and Verkiindigung und Forschung, 1942, drafted into the military corps—431, 502, 592 Wolf, Hugo (1860-1903): Austrian composer—68, 70, 251, 319, 327

Wolfram von Eschenbach (ca. 1170—1200/20): Middle High German poet; main work: Parzival—320 Wustenberg, Ralf K.: systematic theologian and Bonhoeffer scholar—23, 364, 425, 586, 588 Wyller, Trygve: professor of theology, University of Oslo—588 Zacchaeus: biblical character—481 Zacharias: cabinet maker; socialist; often a guest and helpful in the Bonhoeffer family because of his views and familiarity with the workers’ opinions—159 Zedlitz-Trtitzschler, Robert Count von (1837-1914): grandfather of Maria von Wedemeyer; president of Silesia, Posen, and Hesse; Prussian minister of culture—91 Zerner, Ruth: historian and Bonhoeffer scholar—574 Zeus: father of the gods, highest of the Greck gods—438 Zimmermann, Jens: professor of English; Canada Research Chair in Religion, Interpretation and Culture, Trinity Western University—29

Zimmermann, Christian-Matthias: son of Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann; Maria-Claudia’s twin—256

Zimmermann, Maria-Claudia: daughter of Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann; Christian-Matthias’s twin—256 Zimmermann, Wolf-Dieter (1911-2007): 1932-33, student of Bonhoeffer,

Berlin; summer 1936, participated in the third Finkenwalde session; 1936, special commission for the Old Prussian Council of Brethren; 1938, pastor under General Superintendent Otto Dibelius; from 1939, “illegal” pastor; 1946, cofounder of the “Unterwegs” circle and editor of the periodical Unterwegs; 1954, broadcast commissioner, Protestant Church in Berlin-Brandenburg and head of the Berlin Protestant radio service—119, 250, 271, 445

Zimmermann-Wolf, Christoph: member, German Society for Pastoral Counseling—504 Zippel, Hans-Henning (1909-43 [killed in action]): 1934, member of the Brotherhood of Assistant Pastors and Vicars of the Province of Saxony, Confessing Church; husband of Ingeborg, née Koch—186, 472 Zippel, Inge née Koch (1914-76): theologian; chaired the Brotherhood of Assistant Pastors and Vicars of the Province of Saxony—186

Index of Names ra Wy Zutt, Jurg (1893-1980): psychiatrist, neurologist; a student of Karl Bonhoeffer in Berlin; director of the West End Clinic (Berlin-Charlottenburg)—212, 272, 391, 474, 594, 596 Zwick, Johannes (1496-1542): German hymnist—352

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INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Greek Terms TvevpLa, 429

adtatpeTws, 394 TVEDLA ayLov, 231 avOpwuttos TéAELos, 278, 456 TOALS, 320 aULVOs, apyv, apviov, 481 TUp KAaBdpoLoV, 319 avakedadratwots, 230

avip dubuxos, 278 odp€, 231, 309, 429, 492

appntos, 365 auvodos, 190 aovyxvTws, 394

aTpETITWS, 394 TEAELOL, 456

axwploTtws, 394 TédELOS, 278

o€l, 361 dpovrots, 45 60S LOL TOV OTH, 500

60S LOL TOU OTA Kal KLYAOW Xdpt kal eiprvn, 422 TH yrv, 333 Hebrew Terms

€EK-KAnOLa, 364 won, 481 EgXaTos EXOPds, 333

Q0e0s, 477 Aachen, 606 absence

KALVT) KTLOLS, 231, 492 of desire, 165 of loved ones, 238, 244, 381, 446

weTtavoia, 480, 486, 589 of religion, 363 See also God

O GLVOS TOU Oeod, 481 absolutes, 430, 438 absolution, 181

Tav, 477 Abwehr. See Military Intelligence TEpPLTOLN, 365, 430 Office 719

720 Index of Subjects acedia, 79, 180, 567 “Anthropological Question in

melancholy, 180 Contemporary Philosophy adiaphora, 473 anthropomorphism, 438

Act and Being, 20, 362 and Theology, The,” 427

Advent, 178, 180, 188, 199, 201, antiquity, 295, 320, 321, 477 202 206, 211, 213, 216, 217, anxiety, 3, 12, 13, 15, 43, 84, 139,

229, 569 160, 238, 265, 366, 402, 443

music, 202, 577 Anzio landings, 266, 274, 300, 307,

aesthetics, 320, 574 308, 393, 401, 599, 601, 602. existence 28, 268, 294 See also Allied offensive; Italy afterlife, in OT 472 apathy, 74, 180, 567. See also acedia;

See also resurrection resignation

“After Ten Years,” 21, 26, 271, Apennines, 470, 473, 604 304, 386, 415, 467, 515, apologetics, 426, 427, 431, 450,

595, 597 504

air raids, 88, 129, 130, 151, 152, Apostles’ Creed, 502, 504 193, 200, 202, 204, 243, 261, arcane discipline, 29, 32, 364, 365,

272, 289, 293, 305, 307, 310, 373, 390 317, 334, 381, 404, 530, 555, architecture, 314, 332

595, 599 aristocracy, 388

See also Berlin; Dresden; Armed Forces High Command,

Hamburg; Italy; prison 422, 435, 566. See also air-raid shelters, 112, 114, 117, 130, military; war

530, 595 Arminianism, 453

Alban Hills, 308, 314 Army Medical Services, 75

Allied offensive army reports, 16, 336, 542

in Italy, 13, 14, 155, 361, 379, art, 219, 268, 331, 332, 425, 426,

380, 393, 401, 471, 473, 580, 587

598, 600 Gothic, 331

in West, 422, 423, 445, 603, Greek, 295, 314

605, 606 landscape painting, 295, 313, Altdamm, 159, 193 painting, 306 Altenburg, 287, 600 sculpture, 332 Alps, 280, 471 See also beauty; English; See also Russian offensive; war 314, 331

America, 225, 236, 312, 352, 485, German; music

DID, 080 Art of the Fugue, 306, 575

angels, 219, 361, 549 arts, the 306, 500 anguish, 12, 418, 437 Ascension, 372

animal form, 437, 448, 501 day, 98, 103, 342, 352, 371, 588

Annenkirche, 340 hymns, 352

Index of Subjects ipl asthma, 80, 108 of nature, 14, 148, 163, 331,

atheism, 482 404, 527 Athens, 437, 544 See also aesthetics; art attorney. See trial lawyer Behme, 556

Auschwitz, 606. See also Holocaust belief. See Christianity; faith

authenticity, 28, 366, 503, 507 Berlin, 16, 17, 18, 57, 58, 93, 94,

authority, 213, 330, 452 103, 104, 116, 129, 133, 135,

of Jesus, 452 138, 145, 147, 149, 158, 175, maternal, 97 191, 193, 207, 216, 217, 226, of parents, 86 229, 233, 236, 238, 243, 248, worldly, 86 249, 257, 259, 273, 280, 287,

autonomy 288, 302, 318, 335, 362,

human, 23, 27, 425, 477 386, 393, 487, 497, 524, 553,

loss of in prison, 567 555-57, 562, 563

of religious consciousness, 476 bombing of, 12, 132, 139, 141,

world, 475, 476, 586-88 143, 146-49, 191, 207, 212,

See also freedom; world; world 210; 2612 202.2722 75-270;

come of age 279, 287, 322, 330, 336, 464, 482, 488, 555, 557, 581, 601,

Babylon, 447 602, 607

Bamberg, 319, 320 bombing of Borsig factory, 200, baptism, 295, 329, 365, 368, 395 207, 600

infant, 329, 489 fall of, 3, 562

of Dietrich Bethge, 15, 16, interpreters’ school, 544 21, 28, 29, 183, 241, 274, Philharmonic Orchestra, 341 299, 306, 315, 329, 368, See also Marienburger Allee;

377-79, 381-93, 395, 401, prisons

411, 413, 444, 507, 522, Berlin-Charlottenburg, 146, 157,

571 191, 208, 249, 272, 273, 317,

See also sacraments 333, 554, 555, 557

Barcelona, 121, 197 Berlin-Dahlem, 340

Bavaria, 316, 325, 328, 340, 487 Berlin-Grunewald, 449

BBC (British Broadcasting Berlin prisons, 343, 561 Corporation), 18, 220, 474, Buch military hospital, 273,

582. 293, 474, 601 Beatitudes, See Sermon on the Charlottenburg interrogation,

Mount 561

beauty, 134, 238, 242, 2384, 331, LehrterstraBe, 18, 59, 208, 210,

332, 342, 465, 527, 541 319, 552, 561, 563, 565, 566,

Apollonian, 331, 495 606, 608

Dionysian, 331 Moabit military, 146, 561, 565

722 Index of Subjects Prinz-Albrecht StraBe, 17, 547, 511, 512, 514, 520, 523-25,

548, 551, 552, 555, 557, 561, 542, 546, 605

571 Karl Bonhoeffer’s seventy-fifth,

Spandau, 158, 183, 209, 249, 163, 327, 356, 597

392, 599 Maria von Wedemeyer’s, 352,

Tegel military prison, 12, 16, 356, 374

130, 146, 191, 194, 200, 205, Renate Bethge’s, 506, 516 208, 231, 335, 343-47, 371, Black Forest, 62, 449 372, 381, 382, 418, 451, 508, blackmail

526, 547, 561, 562, 565, 567, political, 455

574 religious, 276, 569

Berlin University, 22 blessing, 460, 521

Berneucher movement, 430, 578, earthly blessing, 492

602 See also children; cross; God;

betrayal, 46, 216, 465, 494 New Testament; Old Bible, 152, 179, 204, 214, 336, 343, Testament; work

369, 376, 394, 428, 491, 568 “blood and soil,” 526. See also

interpretation of, 452, 502 National Socialism Luther’s, 66, 266, 276, 279, 288, Bologna, 443 306, 361, 376, 379, 385, 386, boredom, 71, 73, 74, 98, 155 388, 390, 407, 429, 466, 475, Borkum, 153

481, 482, 491, 532, 535, 536, boundaries

539, 549 of church, 27, 367

memorization of, 568 of human existence, 26, 366, reading of in prison, 3, 60, 62, 448 79, 81, 252, 319, 324, 326, of knowledge, 406

369, 568, 585 between persons, 47

study, 181 568

Rembrandt’s, 114,159, 193 boundary situation, 180, 304, 565,

See also Daily Texts; bourgeois, 181, 182, 251, 266, 271,

hermeneutics 294, 303, 456, 574

biblical concepts, 372, 455, 457, values, 384 475, 502, 587, 602. See also Brenner Pass, 256

religionless Christianity Breslau, 487

biologists, 287 Brocken, 294

birthdays, 57, 273 Brunswick (Braunschweig), 214 Bonhoeffer’s, 260, 272, 274, Bucharest, 316 279, 287, 288, 290, 291, 299, Buchenwald, 17, 607

302, 554, 555 Bundorf, 302, 556, 601, 607 Eberhard Bethge’s, 145, 152, Burckhardthaus, 144, 153, 178 290, 299, 499, 504, 508, 509, business, 32]

Index of Subjects 723 “By Powers of Good,” 464, Christianity 536, 540, 548-50, 553, aristocratic, 415

606 defense of human values, 47, 201 early church fathers, 22, 189, 575

Galabrrasl70 essence of, 430 calamity, 441, 442, 459, 464, 53 future of, 5, 15, 362-64, 499, Campagna, 337 500, 546, 586 cancer, 302 multidimensional, 405, 576

Canossa, 470, 471, 473, 516 and National Socialism, 575

Cantate Sunday, 374, 375 origin, 490, 589 cantus firmus, 394-96, 404 primitive, 363

Capernaum, 48] without privileges, 693

Carmen, 90 questionable forms of, 440

Castel Gandolfo, 300 and redemption, 447

Castell di Medici, 443 and religion(s), 362, 363, 479, Catholic Church. See Roman 490, 586

Catholic and resurrection hope, 447

center, 366 task of, 47 church, 27 unconscious, 13, 489, 491, 546 God the, 24, 26, 366, 367, 373, Western, 363

406 “What is Christianity today?”

of gospel, 422 362, 406, 499-504, 588 of life, 407 See also Christology; church;

Central America, 449 rcligionless Christianity;

Chalcedon, 394 worldliness Chamby, 219, 233 Christian Year, 3

Charité hospital, 243, 246, 273, “Christians and Heathens,” 453,

293, 562, 600, 601 457, 460, 479, 480, 490, 505,

cheerfulness. See hilaritas 589, 604

chess, 95, 131, 143, 158, 176, 519 Christmas, 182, 186, 192, 204,

Christ. See Jesus Christ 2002 ZV 22152 10.2:

Christian 222-26, 234, 235, 240, 243, being, 265, 268, 283, 286, 364, 246,251 259,263; 280, 303,

389, 485, 486 424, 569

essence, 430 carols/hymns, 232, 252, 577 faith, 254 letters, 242, 243, 249, 253, 262 forms of practice, 252 tree, 244, 246, 247, 263 life, 251, 265, 3604, 394 See also prison

problems, 407 Christology, 28, 362, 410, 459,

tradition, 414 575, 590

witness, 276, 588 Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 153

724 Index of Subjects church, 322, 328, 373, 429, 498, classical. See antiquity; art

501-3, 589 classicism, 320, 321 affairs, 369 clavichord, 159, 220 and comradeship, 267 clericalism, 478, 502

confessions, 365 codes, secret, 13, 205, 542, 581 congregational formation, 475 cognition, 367, 373, 476

disillusionment with, 27 collective pastorates, 9, 69,

example of, 504 236, 289, 313, 431. See also

faith of, 502 Schlonwitz

form of, 389 communion. See Lord’s Supper freedom of, 28 compassion, 413, 505 freewill offerings, 503 composure, 45, 51, 91,233, 262,

future of, 5, 363, 504, 589 266, 282, 371

leader, 486 compromise, 40

“for others,” 26-28, 503, 589 concentration camps, 4. See also

God ’s preservation of, 511 Buchenwald; Flossenburg;

property, 503 Sachsenhausen

and religion, 373 Concordat of Worms, 473

renewal of, 511 concupiscentia, 185

scl{-preservation, 27, 389, 500, Confessing Church, 184, 186, 190,

589 201, 205, 298, 368, 372, 392,

and social classes, 500 399, 412, 413, 429, 431, 500,

sphere of freedom, 268 502, 552

unity, 172 in Breslau, 599

and world, 26, 29, 367, 428, 589 Council of Brethren,

worries about, 278, 577 Pomerania, 544

See also Confessing Church; friendships within, 519, 520

German Evangelical lectionary, 252.

Church; Lutheran Church; against the world, 500 Roman Catholic Church See also Burckhardthaus;

Church Foreign Office, 545 Church Struggle; collective Church Struggle, 25, 27, 544. See pastorates; Finkenwalde;

also Confessing Church; legalization

Finkenwalde; German confession (Beichte), 179, 181, 200,

48] 504

Christians 216, 295, 296, 585

children, 82, 86, 87, 222, 403, 411, confession (Bekenntnis), 490, 453,

as blessing, 86, 201, 401 conscience, 39, 40, 45, 91, 196,

circumcision, 365, 366, 430 236, 248, 255, 362, 452

cities, 320, 386 conscription. See military service; civil courage, 40, 41, 47 UK classification

Index of Subjects 725 consolation, 179, 284, 585 378, 379, 391, 395, 398, 400,

God’s, 41 402, 404, 409, 410, 422, 441,

conspiracy. See July 20 plot, 474, 485, 493, 511, 512, 514,

resistance 525, 568, 605

Conspiracy and Imprisonment Danish bishops, 599

(DBWE 16), 9 Darwinism, 450 contemplation, 413 darkness, 195, 24?

and action, 52 death, 4, 51, 72, 242, 269, 333,

conversation, 295, 296, 351 339, 366, 367, 386, 398, 406,

conversion, 480 497, 447, 485, 493, 495, 514, cornflower, 269, 300, 527, 542 535, 536, 540, 547

costly grace, 373 conquering of, 333 Cottbus, 109 “The Death of Moses,” 467, countryside, 386 531-40, 542, 545, 546, 605 courage, 47, 272 and freedom, 514, 524 creation, 373, 502 lust for, 437 “new creation,” 231 penalty, 583

See also God, nature death sentences

479 606, 608

Creation and Fall (DBWE 3), 215, of conspirators, 554, 557, 563, creative writing, 13, 135, 136, 145, Decalogue. See Ten

158, 161, 167, 181, 241, 255, Commandments 263, 277, 281, 307, 309, 359, deism, 477. See also God

474, 504-7, 510, 574, 579 demythologization, 372, 430, 502,

drama, 415, 532, 574, 598 588

novel, 181, 445, 457, 463, 536, depression. See acedia

589, 598, 600 desire, 165, 325, 407

See also poetry earthly, 231

Crimea, 472 for freedom, 184 criminal justice reform, 232, 579 despair, 24, 39, 73, 196, 273, 427,

Christ acedia

cross, 189, 492. See also Jesus 478, 450, 478, 587. See also culture, 267-69, 320, 321. See also detachment, 319, 359

education deus ex machina, 24, 366, 450,

cynicism, 52, 200, 215, 216, 223 479. See also God Deutero-Isaiah, 447

Dahlem, 253 Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung Daily Texts, 12, 119, 139, 190, 209, (newspaper), 66, 293 239, 241, 253, 264, 265, 276, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 166 282. 292.511, 316; 3220520, Dietrich Verlag, 155 335, 342, 353, 371, 372, 376, Dionysian. See beauty

726 Index of Subjects discernment, 45, 203 ecumenical movement, 189,

discipleship, 195, 389 219, 233. See also World Discipleship (DBWE 4), 19, 21, 27, Alliance; World Council

213, 323, 365, 485, 486, 569, of Churches 595. See also costly grace education, 28, 169, 254, 267-69,

disciplina arcane. See arcane 299,921

discipline educated people, 27, 187, 254,

discipline, 29, 85, 227, 485, 503, 255, 277, 278, 413, 490

512, 513, 568 uneducated people, 285, 310

discontent, 74, 113, 567 See also culture

43] Egypt, 447

doctoral program (Bethge’s), 187, €goism 325, 356, 351, 3/5

Don Quixote, 42, 176, 303 eighteenth century, 98, 131, 305,

Dort, Synod of, 453 317, 384

doubt, 278, 534 empire (Reich). See Third Reich drama. See creative writing endurance, 69, 180, 228, 286, 568 dreams, 63, 73, 106, 109, 115, 131, Engadine, 294

463, 537 engagement

Dresden, 90, 175, 193 Bethge’s first, 398 bombing of, 607 Bonhoelfer’s to Maria, 8, 68,

duty, 39, 40 77, 95, 136, 184, 210, 221, dying, 333, 339. See also death 236, 277, 578

England, 225, 267, 287, 399

earth bombing of, 435, 440, 603 affirmation of, 51, 447, English

life on, 228, 447 hypocrisy, 215 love of, 213, 248 landscape painting, 331 new earth, 464 language, 167, 234, 568 not the ultimate reality, 87, novel, 263 228, 352 Enlightenment, 23, 320 east Prussia, visits to, 236, 458, envy, 52, 503, 529 506, 581. See also collective Erfurt, 284 pastorates; Pomerania; eschatology, 322, 361, 472, 502

Schlonwitz eternal life, 29, 11, 15, 20, 21, 27,

Easter, 61, 64-66, 183, 229, 241, 186

289, 303, 305, 306, 322, 328, eternity, 228, 342, 447, 448, 540 332, 333, 334, 337, 340, 342, ethics, 128, 373, 425, 451, 587

351, 352, 355, 357, 424 Christian, 490 Easter hymns, 332, 577 ethical fanaticism, 39 ecclesiology, 27. See also church ethical person, 268

ecstasy, 418 issues and concepts, 21, 38, 426

Index of Subjects dar knowledge, 367 religionless Christianity;

Paul’s, 62 trust

significance of success, 42 faithfulness, 28, 223, 408, 442,

social, 490 467, 503 theology, 373 fall, the, 215, 502

Ethics (DBWE 6), 11, 15, 20, family, 15, 110, 119, 164, 204,

21, 27, 29, 49, 181, 213, 520, 541, 543, 594, 596 222, 240, 255, 321, 426, fanaticism, 39 451, 475, 479, 482, 496, fantasy, 74 518, 579, 594, 600 fate, 4, 46, 48, 56, 66, 265,

elsi deus non daretur, 476-78, 587 303, 322, 304, 378, 500,

Ettal; 223,236, 516 565, 577

Europe, 15, 132, 172, 316, 473 of Germany, 236, 595

Christian, 476 Faust, 331, 495 church m; 27 Fehrbellin, 519

postwar, 4, 353, 370, 518 fear, 4, 41, 51, 198, 200, 201, 2153,

secularized, 24 214, 249, 279, 303, 405, 407,

southern, 331 465, 578

See also Allied offensive; of approaching disaster, 48 ecumenical movement; Christ’s fear, 256, 269 England; Germany; Italy; freedom from, 49, 51, 196

war of future, 46, Evangelical Church of the Old of God, 44, 385 Prussian Union, 190. See of reprisals, 17

also collective pastorates; Fiction from Tegel Prison (DBWE 7),

Confessing Church; LO he 2 Pomerania fides directa, 489 evil, 37-44, 79, 215, 420, 503 fides reflexa, 489

executions. See death sentences Finkenwalde, 69, 159, 190, 194,

existentialism, 415, 427, 445, 450, 201.218; 200.500; 500.3522.

457 326, 352, 400, 479, 502, 524, 590

fairy tales, 130, 255 Catechism, 365, 475 faith, 12, 29, 31, 40, 46, 47, 196, circular letters, 210 197, 235, 254, 304, 362, 373, Homiletics, 430

405, 411, 414, 422, 430, 440, visit to Sweden, 267 482, 486, 493, 500-3, 535, flesh, 429. See also

540 Menschwerdung; spirit;

in Jesus Christ, 4, 5, 500 Florence, 233, 260, 499

as venture, 41 Flossenburg concentration camp, See also belief; Christianity; 17, 556, 563, 607

728 Index of Subjects formation Friedrichsbrunn (Harz

character, 510 Mountains), 15, 61, 65, 81, Christian, 475 91, 113, 122, 129, 132, 140, cultural, 321, 510 142, 147, 157, 165, 192, 261, ethics as, 39 287, 294, 318, 474, 497, 561,

intellectual, 22 562, 581, 595

ethics 536, 572

See also church; education; friend(s), 234, 388, 460, 494, 521,

Formula of Concord, 473 “Friend, The,” 511, 526-30, 541,

Forum, the, 298 542,605

forgetfulness, 310 friendship, 3, 183, 185, 224, 248, forgiveness, 41, 87, 160, 197, 216, 268, 284, 385, 388, 467, 523,

269, 295, 296, 517 524, 571, 585, 596

of enemies, 213 relationship between

and love, 517 Bonhoeffer and Bethge,

See also God; Jesus Christ 233, 235, 236, 238, 260, 262,

Forli, 219 275, 311, 312)326,-552;570,

fortune, 441, 442, 530 393, 402, 507, 510, 511, 523, “Fortune and Calamity,” 441, 467, 524, 526-30, 551, 571

49? 517, 530 See also marriage; “The Friend”

France, 331, 525, 544 “Fuhrer and the Individual in the Franz Eher publishers, 254 Younger Generation, The,” freedom, 40, 72, 82, 184, 187, 196, 496

225, 241, 245, 366, 467, 512, funeral (Bonhoelfer’s wishes),

513, 518, 524 160, 231

of the Christian, (Luther) 172, future, 42, 50, 51, 68, 70, 74, 384

268 affirmation of, 50, 51, 201, 580

and death, 51, 493, 495 generations, 27, 28, 42, 50, 263,

and friendship, 530 290, 383

and guilt, 438 planning for, 50, 387, 571 and humanity, 530 uncertain, 68 intellectual freedom, 328

and obedience, 41 Garnisonkirche, 60 sphere of freedom, 268, 527 Geneva, 18, 282, 608. See also

and suffering, 493, 513 ecumenical movement; See also autonomy; church; fear; World Council of Churches Jesus Christ; “Stations on German army, 14, 298

the Way to Freedom” behavior of soldiers, 14, 190,

French, 260, 607 191, 223, 255, 271, 280, 300, Impressionists, 331] 308, 314, 409, 471 Revolution, 426 retreat from Italy, 603

Index of Subjects 729 surrender of Afrikakorps, 80, fatherhood of, 87

597 forgiveness, 196, 213, 461, 534

See also Armed Forces High forsaken by, 479 Command; military; war generosity of, 83 German Christians (“Deutsche glory of, 214 Christen”), 214, 399. See goodness of, 517 also Church Struggle; grace of, 201, 213, 533, 537, 540

Confessing Church guidance of, 83, 322, 517, 577 German Democratic Republic, and humanity, 501

593 hypothesis, 24, 478

German-Roman empire, 321, 337 “in the facts,” 265 Germany, 161, 215, 285, 374, 415, of Jesus Christ, 429, 515

b13, 52) judgment of, 196, 361, 389

art of, 331 of justice, 537

fate of, 594 kingdom of, 87, 373, 390, 395,

law, 133, 294 45] literature of, 21, 120, 169, 546, knowledge of, 25

574 language for, 366, 482

love for, 540 law of, 213

German Youth Movement living without, 415

(Wandervogel), 284 Lord of earth, 511

Gesammelle Schriflen, 8, 611-13 love for, 196

Gestapo, 4, 14, 17, 18, 59, 234, love of, 228

567, 581 577 Gethsemane, 480, 486 name of, 189, 213, 366

392, 422, 423, 496, 557, 566, mercy of, 322, 366, 387, 461,

Gnadenberg school, 118 omnipotence, 25, 501, 590

God, 372, 450, 501 peace of, 537 absence of, 477-79 plan of, 398

action in history, 304, 363 power of, 26, 292, 395, 479,

biblical understanding of, 25, 480, 515

26, 479, 480 powerlessness of, 26, 479, 480,

blessing of, 198 482, 513, 604

care of, 196 promuses O1,. 4927-011 514.515 commitment to, 198 providence of, 133, 235, 329,

creator, 196 379, 492, 580 dependence on, 194, 198, 505 redeemer, 196

despisers of, 467 reign of, 189

eternal, 394 rest, 53

expulsion from world, 490 righteousness of, 292, 373

and fate, 46 separation from, 70

730 Index of Subjects as stopgap, 405, 406, 455, 586, 510, 515

603 Greek mythology, 22, 436-40

suffering of, 26, 448, 461, 479, Greek Orthodox Church, 305

480-82, 486, 590 guards. See prison

as Thou, 304 Guben, 380

trust in, 4, 196 guilt, 24, 46, 74, 225, 265, 367,

as truth, 537 406, 427, 438, 460, 466, 468, unity of, 437 517, 539, 542, 548, 567, 569 vengeance of, 213

weakness of, 479 Hades, 437, 447 will of, 83, 226, 227, 275, 361, Hadrian’s villa, 330

384, 396, 417, 515 Hamburg, 93,129,132 145; 199

without religion, 586 Hanover, 62, 94, 665

as working hypothesis, 425, happiness, 52, 62, 66, 74, 175, 184, 426, 450, 455, 457, 479, 500, 255, 268, 384, 387, 397, 441,

586 427, 450, 491, 492, 521

and world, 590 and the cross, 255

wrath of, 87, 201, 213, 276, 322, earthly happiness, 83, 86, 184,

387, 533, 577 228, 342

See also deus ex machina; Holy See also marriage Spirit; Jesus Christ; reign of Harz Mountains, 61, 132, 192,

God; word of God 294. See also Friedrichsbrunn

godparents, 403 Havel region, 314 Good Friday, 60, 61, 177, 304, 340, healing, 385, 481

480 health, 183, 211, 272, 384, 406,

goodness, 421 414, 427, 445, 450, 451, 491, BOSDEL 25,279,500, 41 2510, 00U, 49?

395, 422, 431 heart, 52, 63, 79, 394, 457, 418,

Gospels, the, 369, 447 505

Gossner Mission, 12, 153, 187, 369, disposition of, 75, 76

398, 508, 518, 545, 58] greatness of, 49

Gotiglaubiger, 308 made secure by grace, 213

Gottingen, 141, 287, sadness of, 180

government, 425, 587 Heidelberg Disputation, 479

grace heritage, 384 cheap, 29 hermeneutics, 19, 452, 455, 457,

costly, 373 475, 480, 502, 577, 587. See See also Discipleship, God also Bible; sermons

geraphology, 339, 353, 356, 375 Herrnhut. See Daily Texts;

gratitude, 71, 83, 154, 181, 237, Moravian church 238, 326, 391, 416, 421, 505, heteronomy, 478

Index of Subjects 731 hiddenness, 216 House of Brethren, 326, 352. See hilaritas, 32, 188, 263, 281, 319, also collective pastorates;

322, 336, 528 Confessing Church;

history, 21, 42, 46, 52, 71, 320, 321, Finkenwalde; Life Together

425, 448 human

justice of, 389 autonomy. See freedom Lord of, 49 being, 265, 268, 309, 324, 369,

redemption in, 447 425, 437, 438, 456, 457, 480,

world, 26, 169 485, 486, 495, 500 “History of Systematic Theology boundaries, 366, 367

in the Twentieth Century, cult of the, 524

The,” 428, 475, 478 dignity, 505

Hitler Youth, 294 equality, 47 Holland, 391, 426 example, 503 Holocaust, 8, 26 experience, 509 Holy Communion. See Lord’s goodness, 367

Supper relationships, 219, 509, 596, 605

Holy Scriptures. See Bible rights, 50

Holy Spirit, 196, 231, 389, 400, sorrows, 342

452 strength, 366, 367, 491, 494,

Holy ‘Trinity Church, Kingsway, 515, 516

London, 18 weakness, 366, 494, 505, 515,

Holy Week, 62, 304. See also 516 Easter; Good Friday wholeness, 456, 457 homesickness, experience of, 72, will, 82

13s 227; DOS) DOT; Looe 240% See also Jesus Christ; sin(s)

253, 257, 278, 309, 351, 395, humanism, 28, 320

455, 569, 585 Christian, 28—30 homo religiosus, 189, 485, 569 humanity

Honest to God, 19 contempt for, 44, 45, 467

honesty, 52, 214, 215, 478 the strong and weak, 494, 537,

honor, 70, 447, 467 587 God, 266 treason against, 215

See also marriage See also culture; education;

hope, 3.4, 12:50. 51561 113116, society 196, 216, 218, 387, 488, 578 humility, 438, 503

for freedom, 584 humor, 71, 111, 495, 569 in resurrection, 26, 447 English, 253 horseback riding, 120 hymns, 3, 63, 324, 569, 577. See Houghton Library, Harvard, 10, also Advent; Ascension;

536, 538 Christmas; Easter; music

732 Index of Subjects icons, 159, 193, 511, 524 Rignano, 208, 260, 279, 297,

idealism, 320, 321 307, 310, 336, 367, 380, 414, idolatry, 447, 472, 533 423, 443, 600, 602 illness (Bonhoeffer’s), 114, 139, travels to, 270, 309, 449, 487 160, 164, 173, 174, 187, 236, Velletri, 300, 310, 369, 380,

293, 296, 316 404, 423, 502, 603 illusion, 71, 215, 248, 253, 301, war front 3, 13, 16, 552, 580 488, 503 See also Allied offensive I Loved This People, 540

Imnitatio Christi, 230, 231, 237 Jesus Christ, 195, 428, 431, 440,

584 actions, 515 imprisonment. See prison birth, 225, 569 impatience, 74, 235, 253, 534, 582, 514

incarnation. See Jesus Christ call to life, 482

India, 449, 518, 545 as center, 366, 406 Indians (Native Americans), 312 claim on life, 451, 452

individualism, 372, 373 command of, 389 infant baptism. See baptism creator, 45]

intercession, See prayer(s) cross of, 389, 461, 501, 590

integrity, 478, 587 crucified, 448

intellectual life, 255, 306, 317, 384, death, 515 409, 449, 498, 507, 510, 575 fear of, 269

investigations, 168, 541, 598. forgiveness of, 421] See also July 20; trial “for others,” 25, 228, 501

Islam, 24 humanity of, 195, 485, 490, 503 Israel, 276, 447 images of, 270 Israclites. See Jews incarnation of, 373, 501 Traly, 24-212; 219;2245 226, 259— Lamb of God, 481

35, 249, 260, 261, 264, 295, language of, 28, 588 304, 307, 315, 319, 336, 341, life of, 515 410, 414, 423, 432, 448, 449, longing, 418

499, 544, 579 lordship of, 363, 364, 451, 589 air raids in, 8, 13, 127, 371, 377 man of sorrows, 270

Bethge’s situation, 281, 368, name of, 213

496, 571, 580 participation in being of, 590

elles 513 “high priestly prayer,’ 62

coup in, 598 reconciler, 451 culture, 14, 314, 315, 321 redeemer, 451

Fascists, 525 restoration of all things in, 231 partisans, 14, 470, 525, 542, resurrection of, 333, 373, 389,

580, 604, 608 448, 501

Index of Subjects 733 revelation in, 414 Kade, 128, 153, 158, 521, 541, 595

savior, 515 Kaiserdamm, 59, 566

and sinners, 451 Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for suffering of, 49, 50, 195, 481, Physical Chemistry, 132

515 Kieckow, 215, 219

values, 451 Kiensegg, 117

virgin birth, 373 kingdom of God. See God will of, 385 Klein-Krossin, 219, 259, 318, 354,

witness to, 588 506, 600

See also baptism; Christology; Klein-Reetz, 151 Menschwerdung; world come Kniephof, 170

of age knowledge, 366, 367, 405, 406

Jews, 4, 26, 189, 552, 589, 590, of God, 25, 296

599 of life, 29, 450 “Jonah,” 531, 547, 548, 606 scientific, 405, 406, 426

joy, 63, 70, 75, 85, 97, 98, 165, of self, 221 179, 187, 213, 238, 242, Konigsberg, 392, 436, 440 265, 269, 323, 397, 418, Koslin, 69, 153, 193, 255, 544

515, 516, 524, 537, 550, Kottbus, 138 57]

judgment, 395, 465, 529 Lake Alba, 314

day, 51, 319 Lake Nemi, 314

and forgiveness, 269 “Lance Corporal Berg,” 7, 343 God’s, 225, 276, 389, 569 Landhaus Clinic, 143

human, 225, 569 Laocoon statue, 270, 295, 307 July 20, 1944, plot, 3, 4, 16-18, Lasbeck, 259 30, 361, 379, 424, 441, 455, “Last Days, The,” 6 458, 460, 474 497, 512, 531, Last Judgment. See judgment 541, 552, 567, 578, 580, 581, last will and testament

583, 604, 605, 608 (Bonhoeffer), 159, 182, 193, arrests, 64,110, 583, 566 210, 219, 599 reflections on failure, 531 Lateran, 305 See also resistance; trial; prisons Latin America, 26, 593 justice, 1, 29, 30, 38, 39, 45, 46, 52, laughter, 97, 98 284, 389, 390, 415, 463, 465, law. See justice

467, 593 legalization of pastors, 298, 399.

God’s, 537 See also collective pastorates;

579 Finkenwalde See also trials LehrterstraBe prison. See Berlin

legal, 106, 133, 232, 304, 388, Confessing Church;

justification, 172, 266, 365, 373 prisons

734 Index of Subjects Leipzig, 77, 94, 116, 141, 147, 191, fullness, 4, 37, 265, 325, 394,

192; 212, 217, -2875200,002, 405, 409, 418, 482 334, 341, 354, 497, 561, 562 Jesus calls us to, 482

letters, 145, 251, 301 love of, 51, 213, 228, 266 censorship of, 56, 64, 123, inner life, 272, 364, 455-57,

152,158, 221, 554, 581 523, 586

illegal, 7, 16, 17, 410, 482, 541, meaning of, 61, 515, 528

57] multidimensionality, 577

importance of, 137, 184, 186, mystery of, 215

212, 218, 233, 248, 252, 257, new, 28, 502, 515 265, 311, 313, 360, 377, 405, past, 420, 517 458, 472, 509, 524, 570, 571 private, 48, 455

lost, 16, 285, 542, 543, 552 public, 48 See also theological letters purposes of, 99 Letters and Papers from Prison reflection, of 325

4S CLASSIC 1-23.16 responsible, 37, 44, 456

interpretations of, 593 in the spirit, 449 publication of, 590-94 spiritual, 218, 385 recepuonm OL, 2, 19 20).25: way to, 538

590-94 See also Christian, marriage;

translation of, 31—34 personal; polyphony;

See also theological letters relationships; responsible

liberty. See freedom action

library, Bonhoefter’s, 164, 193. See Life Together (DBWE 5), 19, 27, 214,

also prison S20 9025409

lies, 223, 295, 456, 467 heh: 195.2425 500 the Lie, 468, 542 Lissa (Poland), 13, 183, 187, 200, life, 37, 38, 50-52, 242, 366, 367, 204, 210, 212, 213, 223, 247,

418, 419 254, 255, 257, 353, 585, 599,

active and contemplative, 81 600

attitude toward, 312 literature, taste in, 203, 252, 277,

bodily, 49, 143, 150 507, 520, 575 center of, 149, 407 liturgy, 364

city and country, 386, 507 baptism, 396 common, 45, 47, 238 See also hymns; sermons;

dimensions of, 52, 405, 414 worship

earthly, 418, 448, 492, 495, 513 Lobe den Herrn (cantata), 55, 327,

experience of, 397 ay

fulfillment, 309 London, bombing of, 435. See also fragmentary character, 301, BBC; Holy Trinity Church;

305, 306, 387, 405, 575 Sydenham

Index of Subjects 735 loneliness, experience of, 12, 74, Magdeburg, 264, 320, 330, 331,

195, 464, 505, 515, 569 506

Lord’s Supper, 179, 181, 189, 295, Cathedral, 286, 310 492. See also sacrament mandates, 267-69, 300, 526, 527,

Losungen. See Daily Texts 585

love, 3, 4, 72, 73, 105, 196, 284 Mansfeld, 284

earthly, 394, 410 Marburg, 153, 192

of enemies, 213, 389 Marienburger Allee (Bonhoeffer

erotic, 393, 394 family home), 16, 61, 128, and friendship, 284 146, 563, 572, 594, 595,

of neighbor, 325, 358 608

of others, 45 marriage, 83-87, 90, 161, 211,

redemptive, 49 220: 222, 224 22 1s 22O:

self-sacrificial, 45, 227 229, 236, 248, 255, 264, See also forgiveness; friendship; 271, 278, 284, 328, 353,

God; life; marriage; 398, 527, 578, 579, 604

relationships; self-love; age difference in, 222, 252,

suffering 211578 Love Letters from Cell 92, 9, 57, background differences, 252 89, 92, 94, 96, 97, 106, as estate, 83-85

109, 111, 112, 114, 119, and friendship, 183, 185, 224,

122. 123; 129.136, 134. 247, 248, 267, 585

139, 140, 143, 150, 161, happiness in, 82-87, 90, 97, 165, 166, 170, 173, 176, 210, 224, 228, 229, 378 205,221; 222, 209, 245; honor in, 82—87 265. 272-2112 Zor, O02: and love, 82-87, 110, 210, 284,

316, 322, 328, 338, 342, 376

352, 402, 418, 421, 430, relationships, 84-86, 110, 233 464, 487, 498, 547-49, martyrdom, 323 551, 554, 556, 574, 576-78, Maundy Thursday, 304, 305

591, 603 meaning, 391, 515, 528

loyalty, 284, 596 Mecklenburg, 354 Lutheran(s), 213, 268, 303 mediocrity, 510

controversies, 502 meditation(s), 76, 81, 380, 404,

doctrine, 428, 488 409, 414, 422, 525

numbering of Ten memory, 3, 37, 71, 74, 113, 118,

Commandments, 446 225, 238, 245, 284, 505

orthodoxy, 452, 500 moral memory, 284

ritual, 428 Menschwerdung, 29, 501 See also church; confession Meran, 208

Lyon, 544 mercy, 429

736 Index of Subjects metanota, 26, 27 Moabit. See Berlin prisons metaphysics, 364, 372, 501, 586 moderation, 503

method, 296 modernity, 321 Methodist, 296 modesty, 503

methodism, 427, 431, 450, 492 Monastery of Our Dear Lady, 310,

Mexico, 127 353, 506

Middle Ages, 28, 319, 337, 478, Monte Pincio, 305

490, 587 Monte Soratte, 298 middle class, 384. See also morality, 500 bourgeois moral laws, 45, 46

military chaplaincy, 296, 297, 315, Moravian Church hymnal, 291. See

368, 370, 377, 380, 382, 392, also Daily Texts 399, 412, 414, 417, 423, 424, mother-in-law (relationships), 431, 580 374-76, 444 Military Criminal Ordinance, 156 Mundigkeil, 23, 426. See also

Military Intelligence Office rcligionless Christianity; (Abwehr ), 12, 13, 14, 17, 55, world come of age 59, 158, 183, 187, 208, 210, Munich, 248, 250, 251, 257, 266,

219, 220, 223, 239, 434, 518, 359, 434, 435, 439, 443, 444,

522, 566, 570, 579, 583, 584. 454, 480 See also conspiracy; July 20; bombing of, 480

resistance Europaischer Hof, 256, 434,

military service, 183, 187, 209 435

conscription, 158 music, 3, 176, 232, 306, 317, 336, conscription of Bonhoeffer, 161 351, 385, 401, 519 exemption of Eberhard Bethge, Christmas, 275

158 conservatory, 153 See also Armed Forces High music making, 188, 251, 312, 313,

Command; UK classification 327, 335, 402, 569. See also ministry, 87, 213, 283, 284, 296, hymns; Lobe den Herrn

504, 585 musical instruments, 332, 335,

pastor’s wife, 87, 107, 120, 283 543 See also Confessing Church; lute, 114, 117 legalization; military piano, grand, 67, 96, 107, 153,

chaplaincy; sermons 159, 193, 434

423 violin, 114

Ministry for Church Affairs, 412, spinet, 67

Ministry of Propaganda, 100, 101 Muslims, 320. See also Islam

miracles, 74, 372 mystery, 216, 373 Missa Solemnis, 451, 542 of life, 215

mistrust, 455, 457 mysticism, 373

Index of Subjects Veey| Nachod, 65 nonreligious language, 364, 366, naiveté, 294, 295 372, 390, 429, 445, 457, 482,

Naples, 449 577, 588. See also religion; National Socialism, 2, 8, 21, 25, religionless Christianity

190, 282, 308, 336, 509, North Africa, 24, 127, 316, 449 518, 526, 543, 574, 575, 580, novel. See creative writing 583-95

and Christianity, 575 obedience, 85, 512 See also People’s Offering; to authority, 41, 49

prisons to Christ, 25, nature, 110, 436, 477, 500 objectivity, 285, 351, 369, 510

beauty of, 331 Old Testament, 24, 181, 213, 214,

“Nature of the Church, The,” 365, 222, 248, 254, 367, 373, 376,

502 394, 413, 472, 491, 585

Naumbureg, 320 blessing and cross, 492, 493

cathedral, 320 Christ and, 447

statues, 331 and New Testament, 448, 493 Nazism. See National Socialism patriarchs, 492 necessity (necessitas), 46, 240, 248, prophetic, 413

268 “worldliness,” 214, 373, 447, 491

Negroes (African Americans), 312 See also hermeneutics; sermons

neo-pagans, 461 Operation 7, 59, 223, 598 Netherlands. See Holland optimism, 50, 51, 271, 274

Nettuno. See Anzio Oranienburg, 562

Neues Lied, Ein, 190, 201, 332, 352, orders of preservation, 373

370 Osram, 141, 175, 288, 334

“New Life in Paul,” 502 “other,” the, 409

New Testament, 213, 214, 222, outcasts, social, 455, 456 322, 329, 361, 367, 372, 430, “Outline for a Book,” 15, 495, 498,

448, 472, 480, 493, 504, 515, 499-505, 518, 579, 588, 589,

585. See also hermeneutics; 603, 604

sermons Oxford Group, 430. See also

New Year, 195, 246, 248, 262, 459 ecumenical movement New York, 127

Nibelungen, 320 pain, 74, 227, 238, 266, 323, 337, night, 74, 195, 419-21, 462, 463, 466 368, 388, 389, 418, 419, 421 “Night Voices,” 458, 462, 471, 489, God’s pain, 461, 480

498, 595 spiritual, 309

nineteenth century, 120, 317 See also God; suffering in German thought, 285, 575 Palestine, 232, 521

nobility, 47, 48 Palm Sunday, 337, 338

738 Index of Subjects Pantheism, 477 change, 357, 358, 384, 386, 454

Pantheon, 298 decision to return from United papacy, 298, 308, 319, 470, 473. See States (July 1939), 352, 573

also Rome; Vatican feelings, 41, 351, 389

Passau, 563 hardship, 67

Passion narratives, 60 liberation, 44

Passiontide. See Easter; Holy Week questions, 410 past, the, 70, 71, 72, 74, 229, 236, realm of, 455 321, 385, 416, 419, 421, 433, remorse, 71]

444, 573, 574 thinking, 285

continuity with, 358, 573, 574 sorrow, 63, 70,75, 97, 397, 225,

living from, 218, 578 242 397, 569

theological reflection on, 575 submission, 69, 266, 303, 304, 565

“Past, The,” 16, 416, 418, 432, See also future; happiness;

#90; 401,200), 0002000; marriage; peace;

578, 603 relationships; suffering

Patmos, 104 personalist philosophy, 304 Patzig, 128, 137, 149, 150, 151 165, 259, pessimism, 50

302, 316, 317, 319, 327, 328, philistinism, 321 HOU. 904. GGUS OOO, O0Os O00, philosophy, 21, 317, 478

360, 412, 430, 446, 474, 487, existential. See existentialism

peace idealism, 41 of God, 390, 537, 588 moral, 475

555, 556, 595, 598, 603, 606 of history, 22

inner, 79, 85, 97, 135, 143, 181, of nature, 104 188, 195, 213, 249, 266, 362, political, 476

486, 532, 568 photographs, 241, 267, 299, 339,

justice and, 21, 28, 29, 139, 147 371, 397, 491, 508, 522

with one another, 342 phraseology, 20, 251, 358

peasants, 456 physics, 104, 287, 401, 477, 603. See

Pentecost, 101, 102, 104-9, 337, also World View of Physics 352, 370, 400, 402—5, 424, Pieta, the, 298, 330

44] piety, pletisim, 219,.25),.291, 902;

penultimate and ultimate, 29, 213, 367, 373, 500

342, 365 Platonic, 429

People’s Court (Volksgericht), play, 268

552, 606 Pleskau Lake, 544

Peoples Offerme, the, 552 Plotzensee, 469

perfection, 494, 495 Po River, 471, 545

personal life (Bonhoeffer), 50, poems, poetry, 10, 13, 30, 31, 237,

Lt 275,.279 241, 306, 416-18, 432, 433,

Index of Subjects 739 439, 441, 453, 457, 470, 471, and doing justice, 593 474, 480, 489, 498, 505, 514, evening, 189, 197

518, 520, 523, 543, 546 morning, 189, 194, 511] birthday gift, 523, 524, 528 for prisoners, 182, 194, 197,

prose poems, 285 1985599

poems sermons political morality, 513 predestination, 232

See also the titles of individual preaching, 251, 252, 475. See also

politics, 267, 321, 476 Prenzlau, 544

polyphony, 393, 394, 397, 405, 577 present, the, 50, 71, 74, 236, 283,

and Christianity, 576 ay al

poor, 535 pride. See sin(s) Poland, 361. See also Lissa; Warsaw principles, 39, 42, 45

Posen, 183 prison positivism of revelation, 364, 373, air raids, 202, 284, 343, 376,

429, 431, 588 380, 401, 405, 439, 488, 567,

possibility, 513 569, 576

Potsdam, 117, 244, 247, 257, 341, Bonhoeffer’s German 439, 474, 496, 517, 603, 605 Christian fellow prisoner,

power, 43, 82 214, 233, 270, 286

to act, 48 Christmas in, 225, 236, 237,

of evil, 39 240, 245, 258, 396

of gratitude, 505 church bells, 113, 118 of hope, 50, 51, 488 conditions, 127, 135, 139, 145, lust for, 460, 503 160, 188, 202-7, 220, 221,

of memory, 505 323, 343-47, 360, 569

political, 41, 43, 44 daily routine 21, 56, 66, 70, 76,

problem of, 13 79, 111, 155, 167, 169, 567, religious, 43 178, 187, 214, 227, 567, 568 worship of, 503 escape plans, 17, 547, 605

see also God; Jesus Christ exercise, 137, 151, 167, 171, 174,

powerlessness, 52, 265, 585. 207, 568

See also God experience of, 204, 226, 227,

Prague, 90 343-47, 359, 360, 372, 567, prayer(s), 46, 74, 146, 179, 204, 569

269, 276, 296, 322; 365, 373, fellow prisoners, 3, 187, 188, 380, 389, 397, 491, 499, 505, 196, 200, 202, 203, 205, 206,

511, 515, 517, 519, 571, 577, 223, 232, 233, 569, 584

585 food/parcels, 3, 360, 553, 555,

and action, 389, 513, 514 567, 570

church intercessions, 577 guards, 459, 462, 561, 57]

740 Index of Subjects infirmary 201, 204 See also church; Luther;

library, 136, 175, 345 Lutherans

344 568, 457

prisoners on death row, 179, psychological deprivation, 228,

psychosis, 111 psychology, 216, 220, 221, 339, 460 rations, 187, 316, 343, 345 psychotherapy, 415, 427, 450, 457 reading in, 128, 154, 158, 161, purgatory, 319 169, 173-76, 182, 209, 232,

237, 245, 282 quality, 47, 48, 351, 388, 415, 543 reports on, 201, 202, 205, 206,

343-47, 567, 602 Rackow language school, 165 solitary confinement, 344 radicalism, 40 visits (Sprecherlaubnis), 58, 91, Radicofani, 313 108: 115. 116; 121, 1350. ist. radio broadcasts. See BBC 134, 138, 143, 144, 147, 148, rations. See prison 154, 158, 162, 163, 166, 171, reality, 304, 358, 513 172, 176, 177, 186, 191, 200, reason, 38, 388, 421 204.207, 208; 212. 2167222. rebirth, 373, 389 235, 243. 245. 247,248, 255, recapitulation. See restoration 262-64 266.2 722.2 74: 280. reconciliation, 389, 502 283, 292, 293, 302, 311, 315, Red Cross, 267, 498 317,318, 324,334, 335.338, redemption, 389, 422, 447, 448 339, 342, 385, 378, 381, 383, Reformation, 317, 337, 428 390, 392, 396, 399, 401, 403, Reformation Day, 172, 174 404, 408, 411, 418, 423, 554, Reformed/Lutheran controversy,

598, 600, 601, 602, 603, 605 502

See also Berlin prisons; Tegel refugees, 335, 386, 557, 607

military prison Regensburg, 563, 607

private sphere, 455 Reich, Das (National Socialist

privilege, 586 newspaper), 187, 337

proletariat, 227, 255 Reich Central Security Office, promotion (Bethge), 403, 444, 454 293, 541, 552, 555, 563,

prophet, prophetic, 413, 414 583, 605-7. See also Prinz-

prosperity, 492 Albrecht Strabe prison prostitution, 263 Reich Church, 399. See also

Protestant, Protestantism, 268, church; Confessing Church;

415, 426 German Christians;

and Catholicism, 189, 213 Ministry for Church Affairs church, 27, 28, 500 Reich Ministry of Aviation, 283

Reformers, 189 Reich War Court, (Reichskriegs-

youth, 190 gericht);.68,-75, 111, 122,

Index of Subjects 741 129, 139, 142, 156, 157, 161, Repentance Day, 177 163, 168, 221, 222, 234, 317, rescue. See Operation 7 319, 372, 377, 434, 570, 571, resignation, 39, 51, 180, 272, 323 574, 583, 598, 599, 602, 604 resistance, 2, 4, 8, 11, 17, 21,

Reich War Court prosecutor, 156 187, 298, 303, 304, 474,

157, 161, 191, 570, 582 497, 552, 565, 566, 567,

Reichstag fire trial, 100 581, 583, 584, 604. See also reign of God. See God, kingdom of July 20; Military Intelligence

religion, 24, 214, 425, 428-30, Office; prison

482, 586, 587 responsible action, 30-32, 40-42,

age of, 362 45, 46, 48, 49, 82, 235, 387, Barth and, 23, 364, 373, 429 406, 456, 513, 596

cultured despisers of, 272 restoration (recapitulatio), 230,

definition of, 586 231, 575, 576

discrediting, 490 resurrection, 213, 389, 430, 485 end of religion, 363, 366 belief in, 367, 447

God of, 25, 26 See also Jesus Christ historical critique revelation, 362, 364, 406, 414. oriental, 501] See also Jesus Christ; God; questions of, 426, 427, 450, theology 499, 507, 577 Rhineland, 294 religious being, 586 righteous action, 389, 373. See also rcligious blackmail, 455, 569 responsible action

renewal, 430 righteousness, 28, 390, 395, 540, See also faith; nonreligious 588. See also God; Jesus

language; religionless Christ Christianity; theology; ritual, 364

unconscious Christianity Roman Catholic Church, 24, 304,

religionless Christianity, 20, 25, 503 26, 362-64, 367, 372, 327, Roman Catholic(s), 81, 254, 298,

429, 444, 475, 490, 577, 586, 308, 323, 415, 426, 503

588, 602 celibacy, 308

religiosity (homo religiosus), 189, confession, 392

210, 569 ethics, 120, 357

586 habitus, 298 religious socialism, 428 Propaganda fide, 223, 270, 298

religious a priori, 24, 362, 363, First Communion, 357

Remembrance Sunday, 188 respect for, 254 Renaissance, 23, 319-21, 355, 457 ritual, 414 repentance, 181, 373, 416, 478, spirituality, 81, 298, 414

480, 486, 502, 589 Romanticism, 314

742 Index of Subjects Rome, 208, 223, 233, 260, 265, science, 21, 192, 193, 285, 406, 270, 271, 285, 298, 304, 305, 424-296, 477, 500, 587 310, 340, 351, 361, 417, 449 scientific work, 334

fall of, 603 See also knowledge; physics field hospitals, 443 Scotland Yard, 263

Royal Prussian Academy, the, 279, Scriptures. See Bible; New

316 Testament; Old Testament;

Russian war front, 14, 185, 336, sermons

361, 474, 487, 506, 544, seasons, 110, 142, 145, 162, 294,

556, 562, 600, 603, 604, 351, 359

606, 608 SECrECY,:. 229

secular, secularism. See world

Sachsenhausen 18, 141, 496, 542, come of age; worldliness

563, 605, 607, 608 seeing, the gift of, 507

sacrament, 107, 329, 503, 570. self See also baptism; Holy deception, 71, 216, 573

Communion development, 358

Sactince,: 46,527, p41 knowledge, 221

saint, 1, 486 love, 375

Sakrow, 21, 59, 109, 128-30, 133, pity, 71, 228 137, 138, 146, 148, 149, 151, preservation, 45, 46 153, 191, 207, 211, 243, 244, righteousness, 34 946, 253, 261, 273, 292, 307, senses, the, 293, 420, 421, 437,

318, 322, 398, 422, 439, 440, 507, 512, 521

496, 595 sensual, 394, 221, 578. See also salvation, 198, 366, 373, 450, 500, love, earthly 532, 536, 541, 549, 586 seriousness, 495

San Gimigniano, 499 sermon(s), 333, 361, 364, 374, San Polo d’Enza, 519, 523, 531, 380, 392, 396, 398, 411, 458,

541, 542, 604, 606 481

sanctification, 373 Sermon on the Mount, 50, 456 Sanctorum Communio, 20, 21, 27 seventeenth century, 317, 426

Satan, 38, 302 sex, sexuality, 214, 500. See also

Saxony, 544 love, earthly

Schlawe (Pomerania), 250 shame, 201, 216, 467, 541, 584 Schlonwitz, (Pomerania), 201, Sheol, 447

289, 313, 431, 524 Sicily, 155, 449 scholarly work, 257, 482 Sigurdshof (Pomerania), 201, 236, Schonberg (Bavaria), 17, 553, 607, 289, 385, 431, 524

608 silence, 171, 351, 463

Schweidnitz, 133 Silesia, 379, 381, 415

Index of Subjects 743

510 state, 267

simplicity, 294, 295, 315, 384, 507, St. Peter’s Basilica, 298, 304

sin(s), 214, 296, 366, 450, 456 and church, 472 double-mindedness, 278 “Stations on the Road to

greed, 533 Freedom,” 17, 461, 489, 493,

Jesus and, 450 495, 512-14, 518, 520, 523,

lust, 447 526, 528, 540, 541, 605 original, 330 Stawedder, 497

of others, 456 steadfastness, 503 pride (hubris), 205, 266, 437, Stellvertretung (vicarious

447, 456, 503, 509 representative action), 548

weakness, 286, 516 Stettin, 69, 153, 255, 330, 544

See also guilt; virtues students, Bonhoeflfer’s, 3, 4, 544

sinner(s), 468, 480 deaths of, 136, 150, 185, 301 table fellowship with, 481 stupidity, 43, 44

sixteenth century, 317 Stuttgart, 354 smoking (cigarettes, cigars, success, 41, 42

tobacco), 71, 98, 107, 111, Sudeten mountains, 90 120, 136, 150, 170, 171, 176, suffering, 45, 47, 51, 70, 322, 337,

187, 199, 202, 208, 220, 241, 406, 468, 513, 550

253, 397, 446, 518 and action, 493, 513

social class, 48 and blessing, 492 society, 425, 587 of Christ 49

institutions, 388 and freedom, 493, 513, 514 rebellion of the inferior, 455 love, 227

See also culture; education See also God; Jesus Christ; pain

Sofia, 51] suicide, 74, 180, 567

solitude, 43, 49, 50, 101, 240, 386, supernatural 322, 437

506 superstition, 207, 322, 337, 577

“Solveig’s Song,” 407 Sweden, 54, 117, 288, 389, 599

soul,.221,387,500;.512,-523 Switzerland, 187, 220, 294, 598

South Africa, 26, 593 Sydenham, 159, 231 Soviet offensive. See Russian war sympathy, 48 front

Spain, 24,127, 162, 225 table fellowship, 189, 481, 570. See

Speyer, 354 also Lord’s Supper

spirit, 429, 528, 529 Tatras, 138 spiritualized, 492 technician, 305 Steglitz, 162 technology, 334, 426, 449, 500 St. Mary’s Church, 341 Tegel. See Berlin prisons

St. Matthew Passion, 177, 341 Tempelberg, 103, 115, 116, 12]

744 Index of Subjects temptation, 79, 227, 568 sense of, 79, 95, 98, 113, 163, Ten Commandments, 45, 446, 181, 368, 574

476, 539, 604 tolerance, religious, 308, 453

Fourth, 472 Torgau, 142, 163, 191, 317

Fifth, 439 torment, 418 Theologia crucis. See cross, theology tragedy, 40

OE 25 transcendence, 28—30, 362, 364, theologians, 233, 252 367, 459, 490, 589 theological existence, 304 epistemological, 367 “theological letters,” 2—4, 11, 15, Experience o1,25 16, 18, 19, 31, 458, 579, 584, Trappist, 81

585, 587, 602, 604 Trent, 159

continuity with earlier Treseburg, 294 theology, 592 trial, Bonhoeffer’s, 6, 7, 168, 169, fragmentary character, 592 226, 578, 602

interpretation of, 593 delay of, 161, 166, 186, 189, 207,

theology, 1, 15, 234, 251, 266, 317, 222. 224. 226; 296, 301,305,

313, 330, 372, 411, 482-584, of362, the485cross 13 600 history of, 445 family involvement, 168, 186, liberal, 22, 365, 373, 413, 234, 235, 583

428-30, 499, 502 interrogations, 204

585, 600 482 Pauline, 365 See also investigations; July 20 “new,” 7, 20-30, 362, 569, 584, lawyer, 127-29, 133, 182, 224,

radical, 565 Trinita del Monte, 305

theomorphism, 438 Trinity, 196, 373. See also God; Third Reich, 8, 337, 374, 528. See Jesus Christ; theology also National Socialism tristitia. See acedia

587 503, 529, 596 Thirty Years War, 472 and free thought, 529

thirteenth century, 319, 337, 425, trust, 46, 47, 70, 196, 216, 223,

“Thoughts on the Baptism of truth. 172 182.215.216.235: Dietrich Bethge,” 15, 377, 385, 390, 413, 429, 452, 383-90, 413, 422, 508, 588, 467, 468, 542, 571. See also

603 “What Does It Mean to Tell

Thuringian forest, 254, 294 the Truth?” time, 3, 37, 71-73, 80, 196, 229, Tunis, 80

311 Tuscany, 443 as enemy, 573, 582 tyranny, 537 as gift, 37 Tyrol, 281]

Index of Subjects 745 UK classification, 13, 55, 158, 186, Warmbrunn, 554, 555 223, 368, 398, 518, 583. See Warsaw, 184, 214, 219

also military Ghetto uprising, 597

Ukraine, 185 wealth, 447

unconscious Christianity, 13, 489, wedding, 75, 78, 82, 88, 89, 179,

491, 522, 604 190, 210, 326, 598 uniformity, 388 plans, 184, 474, 578

universe, infinity of 477 sermon, 12, 82-87, 90, 189, 210, 219, 255

Vatican, 584 songs, 89

museum, 219, 270 See also marriage See also papacy; Rome Weser Mountains, 294, 314

Verona, 256, 257, 262, 264, 443, West, the, 172, 321

446, 454 “What Does It Mean to Tell the

Via Appia, 309 Truthe 182.215, 216; 223.

Via Cassia, 313 571, 600

Via Flaminia, 337 White Sunday, 357

“view from below,” 26, 52 Whit Monday 107 violence, 301, 358, 467 “Who Am I?” 188, 221, 362, 457,

virtue(s), 40, 45 459, 480, 490, 505, 593, 604 chastity, 495, 512 “Who is Jesus Christ for us?” 5, 25,

contentment, 503 362, 428, 588, 593. See also patience, 157, 164, 171, 177, Christology; Jesus Christ; 190, 195, 257, 287, 388, 503 rcligionless Christianity selflessness, 325, 407 whole person, 456, 457. See also See also faith, hope, Joy, love human; wholeness “Visible Church in the New wholeness, 278, 324, 394. See also

Testament,” 500 restoration

vocation, 41 Widerstand und Ergebung. See Letters Volkischer Beobachter, 187 and Papers from Prison Volksgericht. See People’s Court will (Bonhoeffer’s). See last will

Volksmission bible weeks, 544 and testament wisdom, 45, 47

waiting, 73, 155, 227 Wittenberg, 454 war, 14, 278, 309, 328, 329, 388 women, 283, 309

criminal code, 122 Word of God, 457, 535, 540 daily life during, 595 proclamation of, 390, 535 thoughts about, 398, 426 See also Bible; Jesus Christ;

See also air raids; Allied sermons

offensive; German army; work, 70, 74, 267, 268, 272 military service; World War I blessing of, 164, 385

746 Index of Subjects Bonhoeffer’s “proper work,” World View of Physics, The, 21, 401,

161, 248, 257, 259, 288, 405

01 World Alliance for Promoting

See also scholarly work International Friendship working class. See proletariat through the Churches, 233, world come of age, 5, 16, 234, 511. See also ecumenical

23-25, 426-28, 450, movement

451, 457, 461, 475, 476, World Council of Churches, 18 478, 500, 585-89, 604 worship, 179, 201, 223, 242, 373,

Jesus Christ and, 451, 588, 413 See also Lord’s Supper;

589, 603 sermons

worldliness, 20, 26, 319, 337,

364, 373, 457, 480, 501, Yalta conference, 607

588, 591 younger generation, 72, 281, 283,

Christian, 320, 364, 480, 485, 290, 312, 324, 571 486, 589, 590, 604

and God, 501 “Zitz, 520, 521

World War I, 4, 271, 310 Zossen files, 17, 531, 583, 605, 607

EDITORS AND [TRANSLATORS

Victoria J. Barnett (MDiv, Union Theological Seminary, New York) is general editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, and director

of church relations at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She is the author of Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity during the Holocaust (Greenwood Press, 1999) and for the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest

against Filler (Oxford University Press, 1992) and the editor and translator of the new revised English edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, by Eberhard Bethge (Fortress Press, 2000), as well as And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Jews, by Wolfgang Gerlach (University of

Nebraska Press, 2000). In addition to numerous book chapters and articles, she is the author of the essay on Bonhoeffer on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site.

Isabel Best is a 1961 graduate of Oberlin College, where she studied English literature, French, and German. She has lived, studied, and worked in France, Germany, and Switzerland for over twenty-five years. She earned the Diploma in Translation from the Institute of Linguists, London, in 1996, while serving on the office staff of the Conference of European Churches in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then she has worked as a freelance translator for international organizations in Geneva, including the World Council of Churches, where her husband recently retired as an executive staff member. She has worked on several DBWE volumes and has also translated a forthcoming biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Bonhoeffer scholar Ferdinand Schlingensiepen. She now lives in Belmont, Massachusetts. Lisa E. Dahill is an associate professor of worship and Christian spirituality at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, in Columbus, Ohio. She is the author of Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation,

Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Pickwick Books/ Wipf and Stock, 747

748 Editors and Translators 2009), and the translator of DBWE 16, Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 19401945 (2006). From 2002 to 2008, she chaired the Bonhoeffer: Theology and Social Analysis group of the American Academy of Religion.

John W. de Gruchy was born in Pretoria, South Africa. He studied at the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University, Chicago Theological Seminary, the University of Chicago, and the University of South Africa. He holds doctorates in theology and the social sciences. An ordained minister in the

United Congregational Church, he served two congregations before joining the staff of the South African Council of Churches in 1968 as director of communications and studies. In 1973 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Cape Town, where he eventually became the Robert Selby Taylor Professor of Christian Studies and later the director of the Graduate

School in Humanities. He has authored or edited more than thirty books on the church and social history in South Africa, public and Reformed theology, Christianity and the arts, and Christian humanism. His books on Dietrich Bonhoeffer include Bonhoeffer and South Africa (Eerdmans, 1984), Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ (Collins, 1988), Bonhoeffer for a New

Day (Eerdmans, 1997), and The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Cambridge University Press, 1999). A member of the editorial board of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, he is the editor of DBWE 3, Creation and Fall (1997).

In 2000 he was awarded the Karl Barth Prize by the Evangelical Church of the Union in Germany. After his retirement in 2003, he was appointed a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Cape Town and an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch.

Reinhard Krauss (PhD, University of St. Andrews) began his theological education at the universities of Tubingen and Bonn. His doctoral research on Karl Barth’s concept of religion and its indebtedness to nineteenthcentury liberal theology was published as Gottes Offenbarung und Menschliche Religion: Line Analyse des Religionsbegriffs in Karl Barths Kirchliche Dogmatik mat besonderer Berucksichtigung f. D. E. Schleiermachers (Edwin Mellen, 1992). His

interest in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and thought is rooted in his own German background and the experience of growing up in postwar Germany. Since 1986 he has lived and worked in the United States. He teaches at the Center for the Study of Religion at the University of California Los Angeles and serves on the board of the Academy for Judaic, Christian and Islamic Studies at UCLA. He is also engaged in parish ministry as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. He is a member of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works editorial board and of the translation teams for Bonhoeffer’s Sanctorum Communion, Discipleship, and Ethics.

Editors and Translators 749 Nancy Lukens is a professor emerita of German and women’s studies and a past chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Women’s Studies Program at the University of New Hampshire, Dur-

ham. Born and raised in Vienna, Virginia, she learned German as an exchange student in Graz, Austria, and during study in Berlin. In 1967, she

graduated from the College of Wooster (Ohio), with a major in German and French. She earned a PhD in Germanic languages and literatures from the University of Chicago in 1973. From 1973 to 1985, she taught at Wooster College, where she initiated a study travel seminar in resistance communities in Germany in 1975. As a Humboldt Scholar in Berlin (1979-81), she researched the German resistance to Hitler, and as a DAAD fellow in 1993 she studied the church-based opposition groups in the German Democratic Republic. She is the author of numerous articles and conference papers on Bonhoeffer and his contemporary Adam von Trott and on the literature and culture of the German Democratic Republic. She was certified by the American Translators’ Association in 1976 and currently works as a freelance translator. She is the coeditor and cotranslator of Daughters of Eve: German Women Writers of the German Democratic Republic (University of

Nebraska Press, 1993); cotranslator of Mystery of Death, by Dorothee Soclle (Fortress Press, 2007); cotranslator of DBWE 1, Sanctorum Communio (1998), and translator of DBWE 7, Fiction from Tegel Prison (2000). She served for many years on the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English editorial board and the steering committee of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society, English Language

Section. She lives in Dover, New Hampshire, with her husband, Martin Rumscheidt.

Barbara Rumscheidty (BEd, McGill University; MTS and MTh, Atlantic School of Theology) was a lecturer in pastoral theology, with a primary focus on feminist and contextual interpretation, at the Atlantic School of Theology. She is the author of No Room for Grace: Pastoral Theology and Dehu-

manization in the Global Economy (Kerdmans, 1998); and the cotranslator of Dorothee Soelle’s Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian (Fortress Press, 1999) and The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Fortress Press, 2001), Luise Schottroff’s Lydia’s Impatient Sisters: A Feminist Social History

of Early Christianity (Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), and Andreas Pangritz’s Karl Barth in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Eerdmans, 2000).

Martin Rumscheidt (BA, BD, STM, PhD, McGill University; DD, Victoria University) was a professor of historical theology at Atlantic School of ‘Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia, until his retirement. He has also taught at the University of Windsor, Ontario; Vancouver School of Theology; Toronto

750 Editors and Translators School of Theology; and Charles University in Prague. He has served on the editorial board of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English and is the translator of DBWE 2, Act and Being. He is also the translator or cotranslator of works by Karl Barth, Dorothee Soelle, Luise Schottroff, Andreas Pangritz, Werner Heisenberg, Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt, and Ernst Feil. He is the author of Revelation and Theology: An Analysis of the Barth-Harnack Correspondence of

1923 (Cambridge University Press, 1972). Ordained in the United Church of Canada, he has served congregations in Quebec and Ontario. Douglas W. Stott is a freelance editor and translator. A graduate of Davidson College, Northwestern University, and Emory’s Candler School of ‘Theology, he also studied in Germany at the Philipps University in Marburg and at the University of Stuttgart. His translation credits include several volumes of the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament and the Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament; commentaries for the Old Testament Library; DBWE 10, Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928-1931, and DBWE 14, Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935-1937, and F. W. J. Schelling’s Philosophy of Art. He was also on the translation team of volume 1 of Religion Past and Present.

He is currently preparing an annotated English edition of the correspondence of Caroline Schelling.

Barbara Wojhoski studied art history at New York University; ancient history at the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany; and anthropology at Georgia State University, and has participated in archaeological excavations of Late Woodland Period sites in Arkansas. She has been a full-time freelance editor since 1995 for academic and denominational presses and has worked on projects ranging from a dictionary of the Miami-I]linois language to contemporary fiction translated from German to theological commentaries and philosophical works.

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