Letters and Papers from Prison

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Contents

Preface to New Edition

Prologue

After Ten Years. A Reckoning made at New Year 1943

I:    Time of Interrogation. April to July 1943

Letters from 11 April to 30 July 1943

Notes, May 1943

A Wedding Sermon from a Prison Cell, May 1943

Outlines of letters. To the Judge Advocate, Dr Roeder, during the interrogations

II:    Waiting for the Trial. August 1943 to April 1944

Letters from 3 August 1943 to 10 April 1944

Testament of 20 September 1943

Testament of 23 November 1943

Prayers for Fellow-Prisoners, Christmas 1943

Report on Experiences during Alerts

Report on Prison Life after One Year in Tegel

Lance-Corporal Berg. A narrative

III:    Holding Out until the Overthrow. April to July 1944

Letters from 11 April to 18 July 1944

Thoughts on the Day of the Baptism of Dietrich Wilhelm Rüdiger Bethge, May 1944

The Past. A poem

Notes: June 1944

Sorrow and Joy. A poem

Notes: July 1944

Who am I? A poem

Christians and Pagans. A poem

Night Voices in Tegel. A poem

IV:    After the Failure. July 1944 to February 1945

Letters from 21 July 1944 to 28 February 1945

Stations on the Road to Freedom. A poem

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Notes: July/August 1944

Outline for a Book

The Friend. A poem

Jonah. A poem

Powers of Good. A poem

Epilogue

Memories of a Survivor. Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer to his children, June 1945

Appendix

The Other Letters from Prison by Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller

Family Tree, showing the relationship between members of the Bonhoeffer family

Maps

Index of Biblical References

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Preface to New Edition

I have delayed a long time before interfering with the make-up of Letters and Papers from Prison as it was planned and brought into being in 1950-1. 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.

Nevertheless, I was extremely cautious about including passages about personal relationships or relationships within the family and about deciphering any such references. Thus, for example, to begin with hardly a single reference to Bonhoeffer’s fiancée appeared. The decision whether or not to publish accounts of this aspect of the period in Tegel had to be left to her. Of course, even then the fate of the author of the correspondence from Tegel and his attitude towards it played a decisive part in the selection of passages from the letters which did not have an immediate bearing on theology.

Whatever I expected to happen as a result of the publication of the letters has meanwhile been completely put in the shade by the reception that has actually been given to them throughout the world. The situation to which the book is addressed has now undergone a fundamental change. When a short while ago the English publishers of Letters and Papers from Prison undertook a complete revision of the translation, the reason they gave for this expensive course of action was that the book was now included among the ‘religious classics’.

In the two decades since the book was planned, there have been increasingly urgent inquiries as to whether it would not also be possible to make available any objections, counter-questions or suggestions that Bonhoeffer may have received by letter while he was in Tegel. Such requests have so far remained unfulfilled, because I have felt that the replies to Bonhoeffer’s correspondence which have been preserved are seldom on anything like the same level as Bonhoeffer’s own theological reflections. There is good reason for this point of view even today. Nevertheless, those who seek a more complete picture are probably right, particularly now that there is an increasingly clear recognition that Bonhoeffer’s theology is interwoven with the course of his life and that the forces which gave rise to it are being studied much more deeply.

The new edition called for on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death, on 9 April 1970, finally led me to propose a considerable expansion. After a quarter of a century, personal and family considerations have retreated into the background. The significance of the action and thought of this man has long since left the private sphere.

Bonhoeffer’s own letters to his family and his friend now appear in much greater detail than hitherto, and for the first time extracts have been printed from letters written to him by his family and his friend. Finally, the volume puts in context notes on the interrogations, hitherto inaccessible, on which a first commentary has been made in my biography.¹ The sketch of the last days of Bonhoeffer’s life, a preliminary study for the biography, which appeared at the end of earlier editions, is now to be found in the biography itself; in this new edition it has been replaced by Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer’s reminiscence of the time spent in prison by members of his family. This and some other pieces give aspects of Bonhoeffer’s experience, as well as the historical and theological passages, a new setting in the context of the war years.

These more comprehensive selections have been put as far as possible in strict chronological order. It seemed most natural to divide the imprisonment into periods, following the decisive points of the legal investigations. It was these that determined Bonhoeffer’s existence in prison. Thus we have:

I The phase of the preliminary investigations;

II The continually vain waiting for a date for the trial;

III The period of hope for the overthrow of Hitler and the ‘ditching’ of the charge;

IV The time after the catastrophe.

These developments are seldom alluded to directly in the material, but they form a continual background to the communications. Inside, in his cell in Tegel, Bonhoeffer was able to do nothing; but outside, the family was able to exert its influence by constantly interfering secretly with the course of the investigation or trying to have it dropped. None of this, of course, was put on paper. The new basis for division is not a theological one. In this book, such a division cannot either be extracted or established.

The reader should note how strongly the censorship of those letters which were not smuggled out has affected both the way in which they are written and what they say; this is true above all of the first months at Tegel. Thus, for example, in letters from Bonhoeffer’s mother there are sentences which she would never have written in normal circumstances, such as references to the age of Bonhoeffer’s parents, assertions of innocence, questions about imaginary attacks of asthma and other comments about aspects of illness.

Although the picture of the period of Bonhoeffer’s engagement is now much more vivid than it was before, his correspondence with his fiancée will still be missed. However, she herself has kept control over the disposal of the letters. In this respect, therefore, we are restricted to an attractive article, written in English, by Maria von Wedemeyer, which contains some quotations from letters written to her.²

Substantially extended notes have been provided for the new edition. They give information about family relationships, biographical details and the history of the time. They also decipher codes in the correspondence and add the words of biblical passages and hymns that are mentioned.

There can be no doubt that the expansion has noticeably shifted accents in comparison with the earlier edition. The private element has been heightened. This may even give rise to the impression that the period of the letters and some of the things that have been said in the meantime have been moved even further into the past. Nevertheless, the reader will also find that he can encounter at greater depth an authentically attested piece of the history of our time, which is also part of the history of Christian devotion and theology. Here is an account of the life lived by some conscientious Christians and others at a greater remove from belief, when the dilemma of both an external and an internal destruction came upon them. It was at precisely that point that Bonhoeffer’s visions of a future Christianity took shape.

Special thanks are due to Rotraud Forberg, who deciphered the whole of the Tegel correspondence for this new edition of the text and prepared the final typescript. Otto Dudzus, Ernst Feil and Ulrich Kabitz gave considerable advice about the selection. My wife shared the work of revising and editing.³

February 1970                                                       Eberhard Bethge

NOTES

1. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Collins and Harper & Row 1970. Hereafter referred to as DB.

2. Reprinted here as the Appendix, pp. 412ff.

3. In the text, insertions by the editor are marked by square brackets and omissions by triple dots.

Prologue

After Ten Years

A Reckoning made at New Year 1943

¹

Ten years is a long time in anyone’s life. As time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time troubles us whenever we look back. Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty. These last years have certainly not been like that. Our losses have been great and immeasurable, but time has not been lost. It is true that the knowledge and experience that were gained, and of which one did not become conscious till later, are only abstractions of reality, of life actually lived. But just as the capacity to forget is a gift of grace, so memory, the recalling of lessons we have learnt, is also part of responsible living. In the following pages I should like to try to give some account of what we have experienced and learnt in common during these years - not personal experiences, or anything systematically arranged, or arguments and theories, but conclusions reached more or less in common by a circle of likeminded people, and related to the business of human life, put down one after the other, the only connection between them being that of concrete experience. There is nothing new about them, for they were known long before; but it has been given to us to reach them anew by first-hand experience. One cannot write about these things without a constant sense of gratitude for the fellowship of spirit and community of life that have been proved and preserved throughout these years.

No ground under our feet

One may ask whether there have ever before in human history been people with so little ground under their feet - people to whom every available alternative seemed equally intolerable, repugnant, and futile, who looked beyond all these existing alternatives for the source of their strength so entirely in the past or in the future, and who yet, without being dreamers, were able to await the success of their cause so quietly and confidently. Or perhaps one should rather ask whether the responsible thinking people of any generation that stood at a turning-point in history did not feel much as we do, simply because something new was emerging that could not be seen in the existing alternatives.

Who stands fast?

The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.

The ‘reasonable’ people’s failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naïve lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has got out of joint. In their lack of vision they want to do justice to all sides, and so the conflicting forces wear them down with nothing achieved. Disappointed by the world’s unreasonableness, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness; they step aside in resignation or collapse before the stronger party.

Still more pathetic is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. The fanatic thinks that his single-minded principles qualify him to do battle with the powers of evil; but like a bull he rushes at the red cloak instead of the person who is holding it; he exhausts himself and is beaten. He gets entangled in non-essentials and falls into the trap set by cleverer people.

Then there is the man with a conscience, who fights singlehanded against heavy odds in situations that call for a decision. But the scale of the conflicts in which he has to choose - with no advice or support except from his own conscience - tears him to pieces. Evil approaches him in so many respectable and seductive disguises that his conscience becomes nervous and vacillating, till at last he contents himself with a salved instead of a clear conscience, so that he lies to his own conscience in order to avoid despair; for a man whose only support is his conscience can never realize that a bad conscience may be stronger and more wholesome than a deluded one.

From the perplexingly large number of possible decisions, the way of duty seems to be the sure way out. Here, what is commanded is accepted as what is most certain, and the responsibility for it rests on the commander, not on the person commanded. But no one who confines himself to the limits of duty ever goes so far as to venture, on his sole responsibility, to act in the only way that makes it possible to score a direct hit on evil and defeat it. The man of duty will in the end have to do his duty by the devil too.

As to the man who asserts his complete freedom to stand foursquare to the world, who values the necessary deed more highly than an unspoilt conscience or reputation, who is ready to sacrifice a barren principle for a fruitful compromise, or the barren wisdom of a middle course for a fruitful radicalism - let him beware lest his freedom should bring him down. He will assent to what is bad so as to ward off something worse, and in doing so he will no longer be able to realize that the worse, which he wants to avoid, might be the better. Here we have the raw material of tragedy.

Here and there people flee from public altercation into the sanctuary of private virtuousness. But anyone who does this must shut his mouth and his eyes to the injustice around him. Only at the cost of self-deception can he keep himself pure from the contamination arising from responsible action. In spite of all that he does, what he leaves undone will rob him of his peace of mind. He will either go to pieces because of this disquiet, or become the most hypocritical of Pharisees.

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God—the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?

Civil courage?

What lies behind the complaint about the dearth of civil courage? In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among our selves. To attribute this simply to personal cowardice would be too facile a psychology; its background is quite different. In a long history, we Germans have had to learn the need for and the strength of obedience. In the subordination of all personal wishes and ideas to the tasks to which we have been called, we have seen the meaning and the greatness of our lives. We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing in our tasks a call, and in our call a vocation. This readiness to follow a command from ‘above’ rather than our own private opinions and wishes was a sign of legitimate self-distrust. Who would deny that in obedience, in their task and calling, the Germans have again and again shown the utmost bravery and self-sacrifice? But the German has kept his freedom - and what nation has talked more passionately of freedom than the Germans, from Luther to the idealist philosophers? - by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community. Calling and freedom were to him two sides of the same thing. But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends. When that happened, the exercise of the calling itself became questionable, and all the moral principles of the German were bound to totter. The fact could not be escaped that the German still lacked something fundamental: he could not see the need for free and responsible action, even in opposition to his task and his calling; in its place there appeared on the one hand an irresponsible lack of scruple, and on the other a self-tormenting punctiliousness that never led to action. Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men. Only now are the Germans beginning to discover the meaning of free responsibility. It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith, and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.

Of success

Although it is certainly not true that success justifies an evil deed and shady means, it is impossible to regard success as something that is ethically quite neutral. The fact is that historical success creates a basis for the continuance of life, and it is still a moot point whether it is ethically more responsible to take the field like a Don Quixote against a new age, or to admit one’s defeat, accept the new age, and agree to serve it. In the last resort success makes history; and the ruler of history repeatedly brings good out of evil over the heads of the history-makers. Simply to ignore the ethical significance of success is a short-circuit created by dogmatists who think unhistorically and irresponsibly; and it is good for us sometimes to be compelled to grapple seriously with the ethical problem of success. As long as goodness is successful, we can afford the luxury of regarding it as having no ethical significance; it is when success is achieved by evil means that the problem arises. In the face of such a situation we find that it cannot be adequately dealt with, either by theoretical dogmatic arm-chair criticism, which means a refusal to face the facts, or by opportunism, which means giving up the struggle and surrendering to success. We will not and must not be either outraged critics or opportunists, but must take our share of responsibility for the moulding of history in every situation and at every moment, whether we are the victors or the vanquished. One who will not allow any occurrence whatever to deprive him of his responsibility for the course of history—because he knows that it has been laid on him by God—will thereafter achieve a more fruitful relation to the events of history than that of barren criticism and equally barren opportunism. To talk of going down fighting like heroes in the face of certain defeat is not really heroic at all, but merely a refusal to face the future. The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is to live. It is only from this question, with its responsibility towards history, that fruitful solutions can come, even if for the time being they are very humiliating. In short, it is much easier to see a thing through from the point of view of abstract principle than from that of concrete responsibility. The rising generation will always instinctively discern which of these we make the basis of our actions, for it is their own future that is at stake.

of folly

Folly is a more dangerous enemy to the good than evil. One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defence. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved - indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel; we shall never again try to convince a fool by reason, for it is both useless and dangerous.

If we are to deal adequately with folly, we must try to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is a moral rather than an intellectual defect. There are people who are mentally agile but: foolish, and people who are mentally slow but very far from foolish - a discovery that we make to our surprise as a result of particular situations. We thus get the impression that folly is likely to be, not a congenital defect, but one that is acquired in certain circumstances where people make fools of themselves or allow others to make fools of them. We notice further that this defect is less common in the unsociable and solitary than in individuals or groups that are inclined or condemned to sociability. It seems, then, that folly is a sociological rather than a psychological problem, and that it is a special form of the operation of historical circumstances: on people, a psychological by-product of definite external factors. If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of the others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted or destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and - more or less unconsciously - give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves. The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent. One feels in fact, when talking to him, that one is dealing, not with the man himself, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which have taken hold of him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation that can do irreparable damage to human beings.

But at this point it is quite clear, too, that folly can be overcome, not by instruction, but only by an act of liberation; and so we have come to terms with the fact that in the great majority of cases inward liberation must be preceded by outward liberation, and that until that has taken place, we may as well abandon all attempts to convince the fool. In this state of affairs we have to realize why it is no use our trying to find out what ‘the people’ really think, and why the question is so superfluous for the man who thinks and acts responsibly - but always given these particular circumstances. The Bible’s words that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Ps.III.10) tell us that a person’s inward liberation to live a responsible life before God is the only real cure for folly.

But there is some consolation in these thoughts on folly: they in no way justify us in thinking that most people are fools in all circumstances. What will really matter is whether those in power expect more from people’s folly than from their wisdom and independence of mind.

Contempt for humanity?

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow-men. The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation. It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents. The man who despises another will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about man and his frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others - and especially to our weaker brethren - is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men’s sake.

Immanent righteousness

It is one of the most surprising experiences, but at the same time one of the most incontrovertible, that evil - often in a surprisingly short time - proves its own folly and defeats its own object. That does not mean that punishment follows hard on the heels of every evil action; but it does mean that deliberate transgression of the divine law in the supposed interests of worldly self-preservation has exactly the opposite effect. We learn this from our own experience, and we can interpret it in various ways. At least it seems possible to infer with certainty that in social life there are laws more powerful than anything that may claim to dominate them, and that it is therefore not only wrong but unwise to disregard them. We can understand from this why Aristotelian-Thomist ethics made wisdom one of the cardinal virtues. Wisdom and folly are not ethically indifferent, as Neo-protestant motive-ethics would have it. In the fullness of the concrete situation and the possibilities which it offers, the wise man at the same time recognizes the impassable limits that are set to all action by the permanent laws of human social life; and in this knowledge the wise man acts well and the good man wisely.

It is true that all historically important action is constantly overstepping the limits set by these laws. But it makes all the difference whether such overstepping of the appointed limits is regarded in principle as the superseding of them, and is therefore given out to be a law of a special kind, or whether the overstepping is deliberately regarded as a fault which is perhaps unavoidable, justified only if the law and the limit are re-established and respected as soon as possible. It is not necessarily hypocrisy if the declared aim of political action is the restoration of the law, and not mere self-preservation. The world is, in fact, so ordered that a basic respect for ultimate laws and human life is also the best means of self-preservation, and that these laws may be broken only on the odd occasion in case of brief necessity, whereas anyone who turns necessity into a principle, and in so doing establishes a law of his own alongside them, is inevitably bound, sooner or later, to suffer retribution. The immanent righteousness of history rewards and punishes only men’s deeds, but the eternal righteousness of God tries and judges their hearts.

A few articles of faith on the sovereignty of God in history

I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose he needs men who make the best use of everything. I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to help us to resist in all time of distress. But he never gives it in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves and not on him alone. A faith such as this should allay all our fears for the future. I believe that even our mistakes and shortcomings are turned to good account, and that it is no harder for God to deal with them than with our supposedly good deeds. I believe that God is no timeless fate, but that he waits for and answers sincere prayers and responsible actions.

Confidence

There is hardly one of us who has not known what it is to be betrayed. The figure of Judas, which we used to find so difficult to understand, is now fairly familiar to us. The air that we breathe is so polluted by mistrust that it almost chokes us. But where we have broken through the layer of mistrust, we have been able to discover a confidence hitherto undreamed of. Where we trust, we have learnt to put our very lives into the hands of others; in the face of all the different interpretations that have been put on our lives and actions, we have learnt to trust unreservedly. We now know that only such confidence, which is always a venture, though a glad and positive venture, enables us really to live and work. We know that it is most reprehensible to sow and encourage mistrust, and that our duty is rather to foster and strengthen confidence wherever we can. Trust will always be one of the greatest, rarest, and happiest blessings of our life in community, though it can emerge only on the dark background of a necessary mistrust. We have learnt never to trust a scoundrel an inch, but to give ourselves to the trustworthy without reserve.

The sense of quality

Unless we have the courage to fight for a revival of wholesome reserve between man and man, we shall perish in an anarchy of human values. The impudent contempt for such reserve is the mark of the rabble, just as inward uncertainty, haggling and cringing for the favour of insolent people, and lowering oneself to the level of the rabble are the way of becoming no better than the rabble oneself. When we forget what is due to ourselves and to others, when the feeling for human quality and the power to exercise reserve cease to exist, chaos is at the door. When we tolerate impudence for the sake of material comforts, then we abandon our self-respect, the flood-gates are opened, chaos bursts the dam that we were to defend; and we are responsible for it all. In other times it may have been the business of Christianity to champion the equality of all men; its business today will be to defend passionately human dignity and reserve. The misinterpretation that we are acting for our own interests, and the cheap insinuation that our attitude is anti-social, we shall simply have to put up with; they are the invariable protests of the rabble against decency and order. Anyone who is pliant and uncertain in this matter does not realize what is at stake, and indeed in his case the reproaches may well be justified. We are witnessing the levelling down of all ranks of society, and at the same time the birth of a new sense of nobility, which is binding together a circle of men from all former social classes. Nobility arises from and exists by sacrifice, courage, and a clear sense of duty to oneself and society, by expecting due regard for itself as a matter of course; and it shows an equally natural regard for others, whether they are of higher or of lower degree. We need all along the line to recover the lost sense of quality and a social order based on quality. Quality is the greatest enemy of any kind of mass-levelling. Socially it means the renunciation of all place-hunting, a break with the cult of the ‘star’, an open eye both upwards and downwards, especially in the choice of one’s more intimate friends, and pleasure in private life as well as courage to enter public life. Culturally it means a return from the newspaper and the radio to the book, from feverish activity to unhurried leisure, from dispersion to concentration, from sensationalism to reflection, from virtuosity to art, from snobbery to modesty, from extravagance to moderation. Quantities are competitive, qualities are complementary.

Sympathy

We must allow for the fact that most people learn wisdom only by personal experience. This explains, first, why so few people are capable of taking precautions in advance - they always fancy that they will somehow or other avoid the danger, till it is too late. Secondly, it explains their insensibility to the sufferings of others; sympathy grows in proportion to the fear of approaching disaster. There is a good deal of excuse on ethical grounds for this attitude. No one wants to meet fate head-on; inward calling and strength for action are acquired only in the actual emergency. No one is responsible for all the injustice and suffering in the world, and no one wants to set himself up as the judge of the world. Psychologically, our lack of imagination, of sensitivity, and of mental alertness is balanced by a steady composure, an ability to go on working, and a great capacity for suffering. But from a Christian point of view, none of these excuses can obscure the fact that the most important factor, large-heartedness, is lacking. Christ kept himself from suffering till his hour had come, but when it did come he met it as a free man, seized it, and mastered it. Christ, so the scriptures tell us, bore the sufferings of all humanity in his own body as if they were his own - a thought beyond our comprehension - accepting them of his own free will. We are certainly not Christ; we are not called on to redeem the world by our own deeds and sufferings, and we need not try to assume such an impossible burden. We are not lords, but instruments in the hand of the Lord of history; and we can share in other people’s sufferings only to a very limited degree. We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not, from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behaviour. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.

Of suffering

It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than in the freedom of one’s own responsibility. It is infinitely easier to suffer with others than to suffer alone. It is infinitely easier to suffer publicly and honourably than apart and ignominiously. It is infinitely easier to suffer through staking one’s life than to suffer spiritually. Christ suffered as a free man alone, apart and in ignominy, in body and spirit; and since then many Christians have suffered with him.

Present and future

We used to think that one of the inalienable rights of man was that he should be able to plan both his professional and his private life. That is a thing of the past. The force of circumstances has brought us into a situation where we have to give up being ‘anxious about tomorrow’ (Matt. 6.34). But it makes all the difference whether we accept this willingly and in faith (as the Sermon on the Mount intends), or under continual constraint. For most people, the compulsory abandonment of planning for the future means that they are forced back into living just for the moment, irresponsibly, frivolously, or resignedly; some few dream longingly of better times to come, and try to forget the present. We find both these courses equally impossible, and there remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future: ‘Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land’ proclaims Jeremiah (32.15), in paradoxical contrast to his prophecies of woe, just before the destruction of the holy city. It is a sign from God and a pledge of a fresh start and a great future, just when all seems black. Thinking and acting for the sake of the coming generation, but being ready to go any day without fear or anxiety - that, in practice, is the spirit in which we are forced to live. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative.

Optimism

It is wiser to be pessimistic; it is a way of avoiding disappointment and ridicule, and so wise people condemn optimism. The essence of optimism is not its view of the present, but the fact that it is the inspiration of life and hope when others give in; it enables a man to hold his head high when everything seems to be going wrong; it gives him strength to sustain reverses and yet to claim the future for himself instead of abandoning it to his opponent. It is true that there is a silly, cowardly kind of optimism, which we must condemn. But the optimism that is will for the future should never be despised, even if it is proved wrong a hundred times; it is health and vitality, and the sick man has no business to impugn it. There are people who regard it as frivolous, and some Christians think it impious for anyone to hope and prepare for a better earthly future. They think that the meaning of present events is chaos, disorder, and catastrophe; and in resignation or pious escapism they surrender all responsibility for reconstruction and for future generations. It may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; in that case, we shall gladly stop working for a better future. But not before.

Insecurity and death

In recent years we have become increasingly familiar with the thought of death. We surprise ourselves by the calmness with which we hear of the death of one of our contemporaries. We cannot hate it as we used to, for we have discovered some good in it, and have almost come to terms with it. Fundamentally we feel that we really belong to death already, and that every new day is a miracle. It would probably not be true to say that we welcome death (although we all know that weariness which we ought to avoid like the plague); we are too inquisitive for that - or, to put it more seriously, we should like to see something more of the meaning of our life’s broken fragments. Nor do we try to romanticize death, for life is too great and too precious. Still less do we suppose that danger is the meaning of life - we are not desperate enough for that, and we know too much about the good things that life has to offer, though on the other hand we are only too familiar with life’s anxieties and with all the other destructive effects of prolonged personal insecurity. We still love life, but I do not think that death can take us by surprise now. After what we have been through during the war, we hardly dare admit that we should like death to come to us, not accidentally and suddenly through some trivial cause, but in the fullness of life and with everything at stake. It is we ourselves, and not outward circumstances, who make death what it can be, a death freely and voluntarily accepted.

Are we still of any use?

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

The view from below

²

There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled - in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. The important thing is that neither bitterness nor envy should have gnawed at the heart during this time, that we should have come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perception of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, freer, less corruptible. We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune. This perspective from below must not become the partisan possession of those who are eternally dissatisfied; rather, we must do justice to life in all its dimensions from a higher satisfaction, whose foundation is beyond any talk of ‘from below’ or ‘from above’. This is the way in which we may affirm it.

NOTES

1. Given to Hans von Dohnanyi, Hans Oster and Eberhard Bethge at Christmas, 1942. One copy was kept under the roof-beams of Bonhoeffer’s parents’ house in Charlottenburg, Marienburger Allee 43.

2. This final paragraph was probably written at the end of 1942 (or in autumn 1943?), and is unfinished. It may well have been planned as part of’After Ten Years’. The German text does not appear in the new German edition of Letters and Papers, but in Gesammelte Schriften II, p. 441 (Miscellaneous Papers of Bonhoeffer, published in 4vols, 1958-61). It appears here at the suggestion of Eberhard Bethge and by kind permission of Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich.

I

Time of Interrogation

April to July 1943

From his father

Berlin-Charlottenburg 9,

Marienburger-Allee 43

II April 1943

Dear Dietrich,

I wanted to send you a greeting from us and to tell you that we’re always thinking of you. We know you, and so we are confident that everything will turn out well - and, we hope, soon. Amidst all our present disquiet, the cantata ‘Praise the Lord’ which you produced for my seventy-fifth birthday¹ with the two younger generations of the family remains a splendid memory and one that we want to keep alive. I hope that we shall be able to talk with you soon. Loving greetings from mother, Renate and fiancé² and

your old Father

After receiving permission we sent you on Wednesday 7th a parcel with bread and other food, a blanket and a woollen vest, etc.

To his parents

[Tegel] 14 April 1943

Dear parents,

I do want you to be quite sure that I’m all right. I’m sorry that I was not allowed to write to you sooner, but I was all right during the first ten days too.³ Strangely enough, the discomforts that one generally associates with prison life, the physical hardships, hardly bother me at all. One can even have enough to eat in the mornings with dry bread (I get a variety of extras too). The hard prison bed does not worry me a bit, and one can get plenty of sleep between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. I have been particularly surprised that I have hardly felt any need at all for cigarettes since I came here; but I think that in all this the psychic factor has played the larger part. A violent mental upheaval such as is produced by a sudden arrest brings with it the need to take one’s mental bearings and come to terms with an entirely new situation - all this