Letters and Papers From Prison (34 page)

I’ve just been told about Ursel’s visit. I hope she’s bringing Renate with her. You will know that Maria is in Bavaria for a few weeks. She’s helping to teach the children of her cousin von Truchsess there. It will soon be more than enough for her. Her mother was here again recently; really very touching, on the way from four in the morning to eleven at night!…

Once again I’m having weeks when I don’t read the Bible much; I never know quite what to do about it. I have no feeling of obligation about it, and I know, too, that after some time I shall plunge into it again voraciously. May one accept this as an entirely ‘natural’ mental process? I’m almost inclined to think so; it also happened, you know, during our
vita communis.
¹⁷¹
Of course, there’s always the danger of laziness, but it would be wrong to get anxious about it; we can depend upon it that after the compass has wobbled a bit, it will point in the right direction again. Don’t you agree? Did that reading Genesis 41.52
¹⁷²
recently do you as much good as it did me? I hadn’t come across it before. It’s now a year since we spent those last days and did those last things together, and since I was able to be witness at your engagement. I keep being amazed that I was able to be with you on that day…I’m curious as to how the future will lead us on, whether perhaps we shall be together again in our work – which I should very much like, or
whether we shall have to be content with what has been. They really were quite wonderful years. If only I could hear something in detail about your present impressions. It would be very important to me! God bless you, Eberhard.

Faithfully, your Dietrich

When do you get leave? I won’t be able to get away from here before the middle of May.

To his father

[Tegel] 23 April
¹⁷³
1944

Dear father,

The splendid memory of your seventy-fifth birthday a year ago must now last for this year as well. Today it seems almost incredible that only last year we were able to have such a happy gathering of family and friends. We oughtn’t to allow ourselves to be deprived of the inner possession of a splendid past by a temporarily troubled present. The great cantata ‘Praise the Lord…’ which we sang on the morning and in the evening of your birthday and the picture of the many children making music together will be very present to us all as a real joy during this year. And the harsh impressions of the past year will only have strengthened what we thought there, adults as well as children. I expect that in the meantime the voice of Christoph, who sang you a couple of Hugo Wolf spring songs in the morning, will have broken, and thanks to Renate you became great-grandparents a few weeks ago. My fate has perhaps brought your future daughter-in-law nearer than would otherwise have been the case and the events of the war have scattered the family during the course of the year. But despite all the changes of an external kind, we’ve experienced the strong ties that bind our large family probably more stronger this year than ever. The quite decisive reason for this is that you and mother have remained the unchanged centre of the family. There can be no doubt of that, and I’m particularly grateful to you for it today. I also think that you would agree if I told myself to forget the
reproach that I’ve caused you so much trouble in the past year. Certainly, thinking of me has deprived you of a good deal of peaceful work. But as I know from your letters and visits that you accept and regard the adversities of the past year in the same way as I do, I will continue to be quite calm about all these things. I live daily in the confidence that better days will come again and that the day when we meet again in freedom will be a very splendid one.

I’m very glad that you’ve gone into the country at least for a couple of days, and very much hope that you find it refreshing; I’m now eagerly awaiting what you have to tell me. I wonder what you took with you to read? If this letter reaches you while you’re still in Pätzig, please give them warmest greetings from me. The one pity is that Maria isn’t there. She wrote to me that she was staying in Bavaria over Easter. It’s surely better for her not to be torn in several different directions, but to have some peace and quiet. Still, even that is hardly possible as long as my business has not been cleared up and decided.

Will Hans-Walter be able to visit me before he goes off to the front? You told me that he asked to, and I would very much like it. I would also very much like to see one of my brothers or sisters again. But I’m particularly looking forward to my next meeting with you.

I wish you, dear father, a better and more peaceful new year, that will bring us all together again.

With love and many thanks.

Your Dietrich

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 24 March 1944

Dear Eberhard,

It was a very great joy to hear so much from you. It’s really quite wonderful that the dialogue remains intact, and I feel that it’s always the most fruitful that I have. I feel that it’s one of the laws of spiritual understanding that one’s own thoughts, when they are understood by others, at the same time always undergo a trans
formation and liberation through the medium of the person. To this degree letters are really always ‘events’, as you write…I would understand well if there were only three problems for you at the moment, war, marriage and the church; it’s a great joy and a proof of your unchanged frame of mind that the scope of your observations and interests has been extended so much wider in a fine spiritual freedom. I know that for some brothers, doing guard duty at night has been most significant. Is it the same with you?…

I expect the question of the baby’s baptism is on your mind a good deal now, and that’s mainly why I am writing to you, as I think you may be troubled by a certain ‘inconsistency’ about it. We’ve sometimes urged that children should be baptized as soon as possible (as it is a question of a sacrament), even if the father cannot be present. The reasons are clear. Yet I’m bound to agree that you will do well to wait. Why? I still think it is right and desirable (especially as an example to the community, and in particular for a pastor) to have one’s child baptized soon, assuming that it is done with a sincere faith in the efficacy of the sacrament. At the same time, the father’s wish to be present and to take part in the prayers for his child has a claim to be considered. And when I examine my own feelings, I must admit that I’m chiefly influenced by the thought that God also loves the still unbaptized child who is to be baptized later. The New Testament lays down no law about infant baptism; it is a gift of grace bestowed on the church, a gift that may be received and used in firm faith, and can thus be a striking testimony of faith for the community; but to force oneself to it without the compulsion of faith is not biblical. Regarded purely as a demonstration, infant baptism loses its justification. God will not fail to hear our prayers for the child when we ask him to send the day soon when we can bring him to the font together. As long as there is a justifiable hope that that day is not far off, I cannot believe that God is concerned about the exact date. So we can quite well wait a little and trust in God’s kindly providence, and do later with a stronger faith what we should at the moment feel simply to be burdensome law…So I should wait for a while (without any scruples!); we shall see our way more clearly later. I think it will be better for the actual baptism; what
is more important than any purely legal performance is that it should be celebrated in the fullest possible faith.

I expect you say less about your immediate impressions of the war so as not to disquieten us. But I believe that nevertheless I can form an approximate picture, and I think of you every day with a prayer for your protection. Your activity is probably relatively interesting in itself; as far as the matter itself is concerned, it’s really the same thing whatever wheel of the great machine one is turning. I can imagine and well understand that interest in commercial concerns, which is so easily associated with it, is irksome to you. In the end, however, the one who is really intact as a person always has the greater authority. I find that here, too. How hard it is for some people really to separate the two spheres; I often feel that it’s almost tragic. You’re getting to know one of my favourite parts of the world much better than I know it myself. How I should love to sit with you in the car and see the Cecilia Metella or Hadrian’s Villa. I’ve never been able to make much of the Pietà; you must explain some time why it impresses you so much.

25 March

We had another very lively time last night. The view from the roof here over the city was staggering. I’ve heard nothing yet about the family. Thank God my parents went to Pätzig yesterday; but there wasn’t much doing in the West. It seems to me absurd how one can’t help hoping, when an air raid is announced, that it will be the turn of other places this time - as the saying goes, ‘Holy St Florian, spare my house, set others on fire’ - wanting to push off on to others what one fears for oneself: ‘Perhaps they will get no further than Magdeburg or Stettin this time’; how often I’ve heard that fervent wish expressed! Such moments make one very conscious
of natura corrupta
and
peccatum originale,
and to that extent they may be quite salutary. Incidentally, there has been a very marked increase in air activity during the last few days, and it makes one wonder whether it isn’t a substitute for the invasion that isn’t materializing.

I won’t be able to make any plans for the future before May. I’m gradually losing faith in all these forecasts about dates, and I’m
attaching less importance to them; who knows whether it will not then be ‘in July’? I feel that my own personal future is of quite secondary importance compared with the general situation, though, of course, the two things are very closely connected. So I hope we shall still be able to discuss our plans for the future, I’m amazed…at all the fantasies of these supposedly dry-as-dust jurists. The source of sober judgment and actions lies somewhere quite different.

The information that I gave you recently is out of date.
¹⁷⁴
Please write to home again. I’m still all right here. One gradually becomes part of the furniture, and sometimes actually has less peace and quiet than one wants.

You’re quite right about the rarity of landscape painting in the South generally. Is the south of France an exception – and Gauguin? or perhaps they weren’t southerners? I don’t know. What about Claude Lorrain? Yet it’s alive in Germany and England. The southerner
has
the beauties of nature, while we long for them wistfully, as for a rarity. By the way, to change the subject: Mörike once said that ‘where beauty is, there is happiness too’. Doesn’t that fit in with Burckhardt? We’re apt to acquiesce in Nietzsche’s crude alternatives, as if the only concepts of beauty were on the one hand the ‘Apolline’ and on the other the ‘Dionysian’, or, as we should now say, the demonic. That’s not so at all. Take, for example, Brueghel or Velasquez, or even Hans Thoma, Leopold von Kalckreuth, or the French impressionists. There we have a beauty that is neither classical nor demonic, but simply earthly, though it has its own proper place. For myself, I must say that it’s the only kind of beauty that really appeals to me. I would include the Magdeburg virgins and the Naumburg sculptures. May not the ‘Faustian’ interpretation of Gothic art be on altogether wrong lines? How else would there be such a contrast between the plastic arts and architecture?…

That must be all for today, or you would never get through this letter. I’m so glad to remember how you played the cantata ‘Praise the Lord’ that time. It did us all a lot of good!

Ever faithfully,

Your Dietrich

27 March

Perhaps I already ought to be sending you my special good wishes for Easter, as I don’t know how long it takes for letters to reach you and I would very much like you to know that in the weeks before and after Easter I know that I’m one with you in many good memories. In looking through
Das Neue Lied
these days, I’m constantly reminded that it is mainly to you that I owe my enjoyment of the Easter hymns. It’s a year now since I heard a hymn sung. But it’s strange how the music that we hear inwardly can almost surpass, if we really concentrate on it, what we hear physically. It has a greater purity, the dross falls away, and in a way the music acquires a ‘new body’. There are only a few pieces that I know well enough to be able to hear them inwardly, but I get on particularly well with the Easter hymns. I’m getting a better existential appreciation of the music that Beethoven composed after he had gone deaf, in particular the great set of variations from Opus III, which we once heard played by Gieseking:

By the way, I’ve sometimes listened lately to the Sunday evening concert from 6 to 7, though on an atrocious wireless set…

Easter? We’re paying more attention to dying than to death. We’re more concerned to get over the act of dying than to overcome death. Socrates mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as ‘the last enemy’ (I Cor. 15.26). There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection. It’s not from
ars moriendi,
the art of dying, but from the resurrection of Christ, that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world.
Here
is the answer to δòς μoì πoυ στŵ και κινήσω την γην.
¹⁷⁵
If a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be changed. To live in the light of the resurrection - that is what Easter means. Do you find, too, that most people don’t know what they really live by? This
perturbatio animorum
spreads amazingly. It’s an unconscious waiting for the
word of deliverance, though the time is probably not yet ripe for it to be heard. But the time will come, and this Easter may be one of our last chances to prepare ourselves for our great task of the future. I hope you will be able to enjoy it, in spite of all the hardships that you’re having to bear. Good-bye; I must close now, as the letter has to go.