Letters and Papers From Prison Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 birthday 1 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 fiancé 2 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 means thatphysical things take a back seat and lose their importance, and it is something that I find to be a real enrichment of my experience. I am not so unused to being alone as other people are, and it is certainly a good spiritual Turkish bath. The only thing that bothers me or would bother me is the thought that you are being tormented by anxiety about me, and are not sleeping or eating properly. Forgive me for causing you so much worry, but I think a hostile fate is more to blame than I am. To set off against: that, it is good to read Paul Gerhardt’s hymns and learn them by heart, as I am doing now. Besides that, I have my Bible and some reading matter from the library here, and enough writing paper now.
    You can imagine that I’m most particularly anxious about my fiancée 4 at the moment. It’s a great deal for her to bear, especially when she has only recently lost her father and brother in the East, As the daughter of an officer, she will perhaps find my imprisonment especially hard to take. If only I could have a few words with her! Now you will have to do it. Perhaps she will come to you in Berlin. That would be fine.
    The seventy-fifth birthday celebrations were a fortnight ago today. It was a splendid day. I can still hear the chorale that we sang in the morning and evening, with all the voices and instruments: ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation…Shelters thee under his wings, yea, and gently sustaineth.’ That is true, and it is what we must always rely on.
    Spring is really coming now. You will have plenty to do in the garden; I hope that Renate’s wedding preparations are going well. Here in the prison yard there is a thrush which sings beautifully in the morning, and now in the evening too. One is grateful for little things, and that is surely