Letters and Papers From Prison (43 page)

We thought we could make our way in life with reason and justice, and when both failed, we felt that we were at the end of our tether. We have constantly exaggerated the importance of reason and justice in the course of history. You, who are growing up in a world war which ninety per cent of mankind did not want, but for which they have to risk losing their goods and their lives, are learning from childhood that the world is controlled by forces against which reason can do nothing; and so you will be able to cope with those forces more successfully. In our lives the ‘enemy’ did not really exist. You know that you have enemies and friends, and you know what they can mean in your life. You are learning very early in life ways (which we did not know) of fighting an enemy, and also the value of unreserved trust in a friend. ‘Has not man a hard service upon earth?’ (Job 7.1.) ‘Blessed be the Lord, 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 and he in whom I take refuge’ (Ps. 144.1f). ‘There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother’ (Prov. 18.24).

Are we moving towards an age of colossal organizations and collective institutions, or will the desire of innumerable people for small, manageable, personal relationships be satisfied? Must they be mutually exclusive? Might it not be that world organizations themselves, with their wide meshes, will allow more scope for personal interests? Similarly with the question whether we are moving towards an age of the selection of the fittest, i.e. an aristocratic society, or to uniformity in all material and spiritual aspects of human life. Although there has been a very far-reaching equalization here, the sensitiveness in all ranks of society for the human values of justice, achievement, and courage could create a new selection of people who will be allowed the right to provide strong leadership. It will not be difficult for us to renounce our privileges, recognizing the justice of history. We may have to face events and changes that take no account of our wishes and our rights. But if so, we shall not give way to embittered and barren pride, but consciously submit to divine judgment, and so prove ourselves worthy to survive by identifying ourselves generously and unselfishly with the life of the community and the sufferings of our fellow-men. ‘But any nation which will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will leave on its own land, to till it and dwell there, says the Lord’ (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, and his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning’ (Ps. 30.5).

Today you will be baptized a Christian. All those great ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be spoken over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out on you, without your knowing anything about it. But we are once again being driven right back to the beginnings of our understanding. Reconciliation and redemption, regeneration and the Holy Spirit, love of our enemies, cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship – all these things are so difficult and so remote
that we hardly venture any more to speak of them. In the traditional words and acts we suspect that there may be something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet grasp or express it. That is our own fault. Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action. By the time you have grown up, the church’s form will have changed greatly. We are not yet out of the melting-pot, and any attempt to help the church prematurely to a new expansion of its organization will merely delay its conversion and purification. It is not for us to prophesy the day (though the day will come) when men will once more be called so to utter the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming – as was Jesus’ language; it will shock people and yet overcome them by its power; it will be the language of a new righteousness and truth, proclaiming God’s peace with men and the coming of his kingdom. ‘They shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it’ (Jer. 33.9). Till then the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair, but there will be those who pray and do right 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 light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter till full day’(Prov. 4.18).

To Renate and Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel 19 May 1944]

Dear Eberhard and Renate,

I can’t tell you how delighted I was with your visit; and your courage in deciding to come in, just the two of you together, was splendid. If Maetz wasn’t such a pedant, it might perhaps have lasted even longer. But even so it was quite marvellous … To talk to you again was glorious. I would like to know whether two other people could say as much and make themselves understood as well as the two of us in an hour and a half; it takes practice, which is now entering its tenth - I’m right, it
is
the tenth - year; I’m really proud of that.

I’m deeply moved by what you told me about your recent experiences. I’m in too great a hurry to go into details today. Above all, I hope you will find the peace, both within and without, that you need after your upsetting experiences. I’m so sorry that the alert was on just when you came, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the commandant brought your telephone message. The question of the ‘meaning’ of things is often burdensome; but don’t you think it is very important that we at least know
why
all this is necessary and has to be endured, although the ‘what for’ is problematical? That is clearer for me here.

The person who brings this letter
²⁴
will also bring you my warmest greetings for the day of the baptism and instructions for a baptismal present - perhaps even the present itself. I’m very glad that this is possible and you will certainly get on very well with the friendly messenger. Just tell him a great deal and let him make notes, so that I can learn everything. He will also be glad to tell you about me and my life here. I think that it’s very nice of him to arrange this contact between us on this particular day. By the way, he is a great musician. Perhaps you can arrange something together. (Later I would very much like to see the ‘Schütz’ which pleased you so much.) …

I’ve always been eager for the day when you came home for the first time from the front, and I never doubted that you would come back the same person who went and that we would
understand each other in everything without any change. That this is really the case is a quite indescribable joy to me.

I wonder whether it will be possible to arrange a second meeting on the grounds that today’s had to be broken
off
because of airraid warnings (Maetz certainly doesn’t know how long it lasted; he was much too agitated for that!). It would be quite marvellous if it came off. There is still so much to discuss.

That’s all for today. I’ve had to write very quickly in the sickbay. That’s how it got rather messy. So, once again, much love to all and good wishes for you, your son and a fine day …

With all my heart, Dietrich

I’m colossally pleased about your position over the Catholic confessor.

How good that you’re baptizing him yourself. I would very much like to have the sermon!

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 20 May [1944]

Dear Eberhard,

Once again this letter is intended only for you … I must say to begin with that everything that you told me
²⁵
has moved me; so much that I couldn’t stop thinking of it all day yesterday and had a restless night; I’m infinitely grateful to you for it; for it was a confirmation of our friendship, and moreover reawakens the spirit for life and for battle, and makes it stubborn, clear and hard. But I can’t completely escape the feeling that there is a tension in you which you can’t get rid of completely, and so I would like to help you as a brother. Accept it as it is intended. If a man loves, he wants to live, to live above all, and hates everything that represents a threat to his life. You hate the recollection of the last weeks, you hate the blue sky, because it reminds you of them, you hate the planes, etc. You want to live with Renate and be happy, and you have a good right to that. And indeed you must live, for the sake of Renate and the little - and also the big - Dietrich. You haven’t
the right to speak as your chief did recently. On the contrary, you couldn’t be responsible for that at all. Sometime you must argue it out with him quite quietly; it is obvious what is necessary, but you mustn’t act as a result of any personal emotion. There’s always a danger in all strong, erotic love that one may love what I might call the polyphony of life. What I mean is that God wants us to love him eternally with our whole hearts - not in such a way as to injure or weaken our earthly love, but to provide a kind of
cantus firmus
to which the other melodies of life provide the counterpoint. One of these contrapuntal themes (which have their own complete independence but are yet related to the
cantus firmus)
is earthly affection. Even in the Bible we have the Song of Songs; and really one can imagine no more ardent, passionate, sensual love than is portrayed there (see 7.6).
²⁶
It’s a good thing that the book is in the Bible, in face of all those who believe that the restraint of passion is Christian (where is there such restraint in the Old Testament?). Where the
cantus firmus
is clear and plain, the counterpoint can be developed to its limits. The two are ‘undivided and yet distinct’, in the words of the Chalcedonian Definition, like Christ in his divine and human natures. May not the attraction and importance of polyphony in music consist in its being a musical reflection of this Christological fact and therefore of our
vita Christiana?
This thought didn’t occur to me till after your visit yesterday. Do you see what I’m driving at? I wanted to tell you to have a good, clear
cantus firmus;
that is the only way to a full and perfect sound, when the counterpoint has a firm support and can’t come adrift or get out of tune, while remaining a distinct whole in its own right. Only a polyphony of this kind can give life a wholeness and at the same time assure us that nothing calamitous can happen as long as the
cantus firmus
is kept going. Perhaps a good deal will be easier to bear in these days together, and possibly also in the days ahead when you’re separated. Please, Eberhard, do not fear and hate the separation, if it should come again with all its dangers, but rely on the
cantus firmus.
- I don’t know whether I’ve made myself clear now, but one so seldom speaks of such things …
²⁷

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 21 May 1944

Dear Eberhard,

I’ve just written the date of this letter as my share in the baptism and the preparations for it. At the same moment the siren went, and now I’m sitting in the sick-bay and hoping that today at any rate you will have no air raid. What times these are! What a baptism! And what memories for the years to come! What matters is that we should direct these memories, as it were, into the right spiritual channels, and so make them harder, clearer, and more defiant, which is a good thing. There is no place for sentimentality on a day like this. If in the middle of an air raid God sends out the gospel call to his kingdom in baptism, it will be quite clear what that kingdom is and what it means. It is a kingdom stronger than war and danger, a kingdom of power and authority, signifying eternal terror and judgment to some, and eternal joy and righteousness to others, not a kingdom of the heart, but one as wide as the earth, not transitory but eternal, a kingdom that makes a way for itself and summons men to itself to prepare its way, a kingdom for which it is worth while risking our lives. -

The shooting is just beginning, but it doesn’t seem likely to be very bad today. I should so like to hear you preaching in a few hours’ time … At eight this morning I heard a chorale prelude; on ‘What God does is well done’ - a good beginning to the day; as I listened to it, I thought of you and my godson. I hadn’t heard an organ for a long time, and the sound of it was like a refuge in time of trouble. I’m really very sad indeed that your letter to me; as godfather has gone astray. I’m sure that you will have said a few very good and beneficial and encouraging words to me in it, and I would have been and am very grateful for them. Will it still be possible to find it? And will you write me a few words instead? I suppose you’ll have to make an after-dinner speech today, and that you’ll be thinking of me as you do so. I should very much like to hear what you said. The very fact that we so rarely say such words to one another makes one long for them from time to time. Do you understand that? Perhaps one feels it all the more strongly through being cut off from other people here. I used to take such
things for granted, and in fact I still do, in spite of everything. Did you find here recently that it’s now ‘harder to speak’ than before? I didn’t. I only ask because you said this in a recent letter.

Perhaps you were surprised that yesterday’s letter was on the one hand intended to say something to
you,
but on the other was itself so helpless. But isn’t this what happens? One tries to help and is oneself the person most in need of help. What is said about the
cantus firmus
was written more for Renate’s sake than for your own; i.e. for the sake of your shared life rather than because I felt that you didn’t know it all well enough. The image of polyphony is still pursuing me. When I was rather distressed today at not being with you, I couldn’t help thinking that pain and joy are also part of life’s polyphony, and that they can exist independently side by side. The day before yesterday you said something to the effect that perhaps I had things better than I knew. Certainly, Eberhard, I’m in much less danger than you, and I would therefore give a great deal to be able to change places with you in this respect. That’s not just empty speaking; it keeps entering into my prayers quite automatically; I’ve already seen more of life and experienced more than you … but perhaps that is precisely why I’m more ‘tired of life’ than you may be. So the advantage that you see in my position is relatively small. Isn’t it rather the case that you experience life in all its sides, in happiness and in danger, and that that is better than when one is to some degree cut off from the breath of life, as I am here? I certainly don’t want to be pitied, and I don’t want to grieve you in any way, but I do want you to
be glad
about what you have: it really
is
the polyphony of life (excuse this riding round on my little invention!).