Letters and Papers From Prison Read Online Free PDF

a gain. Good-bye for now.
    I’m thinking of you and the rest of the family and my friends with gratitude and love,
    your Dietrich
    When you have the chance, could you leave here for me slippers, bootlaces (black, long), shoe polish, writing paper and envelopes, ink, smoker’s card, shaving cream, sewing things and a suit I can change into? Many thanks for everything.
    Front the Judge Advocate of the War Court to his father
    The Judge Advocate of the War Court Berlin-Charlottenburg 5, StPL. (RKA)III 114/43
    20 April 1943
Witzlebenstrasse 4-10
Telephone: 30 06 81
    To
Professor Dr Bonhoeffer
    In the action against your son Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you are informed, in reply to your letter of 17 April 1943, that the application for permission to visit is refused.
    Stamp of the War Court 18
F.d.R.
Signature
Army Inspector of Justice
    By order
signed Dr Roeder
    From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer 5
    Leipzig, 23 April 1943
    Dear Dietrich,
    One doesn’t always think of the most obvious things first. I’ve only just learnt in Berlin that it is possible to write to you and in this way at least to give you an indication in your isolation that people are thinking about you. One has a great many heartfelt questions, but this note cannot be more than the need to tell you all kinds of inconsequential matters. Of course we all very much hope that by now you will soon have the time of testing behind you and will soon be released again. I’ve often been in Berlin during the last two weeks. You need not worry about the parents; of course they are very shaken, but full of confidence and trust that the matter will soon come out all right; a substantial part of our conversations has been concerned with what you are to do when you come out. But you will have to talk about the question, too…
    I’m brooding on a manuscript which I really wanted to get ready for publication in the Easter holidays, but my thoughts often go astray and end up with you. Keep your spirits up. All the best.
    Ever your Karl-Friedrich
    From Hans von Dohnanyi 6
    Sacrow bei Potsdam 7
Good Friday [23 April] 1943
    My dear Dietrich,
    I don’t know whether I shall be allowed to send you this greeting, but I want to try. The bells outside are ringing for worship, and memories flood back of the marvellous, profound hours that we spent together in the garrison church, and those many joyful, happy, untroubled Easters with children, parents, brothers and sisters. You will feel the same, and one needs a great deal of strength to master these memories. You cannot know how much it oppresses me that I am the cause of this suffering that you, Christel, the children, our parents now undergo; that because of me, my dear wife and you have been deprived of freedom. Socios habuisse malorum may be a comfort, but habere is an infinitely heavy burden. 8 And that mistrustful question ‘Why?’ keeps forming itself on my lips. If I knew that all of you, and you in particular, were not thinking of me reproachfully, a weight would be lifted from my spirit. What wouldn’t I give to know that the two of you were free again; I would take everything upon myself if you could be spared this testing. It was marvellous that I could see you; 9 I have also been allowed to speak to Christel, but what can one say in the presence of other people? How immeasurably difficult, impossible it is to open one’s heart…You know me well. We are, I feel, more than ‘just’ relatives by marriage, and you know what my wife is to me. I simply cannot be without her, when she has shared everything with me hitherto. That I am not allowed now to endure what has been laid upon us with her - who can fathom what that means? It certainly does not further the case; I am completely taken aback.
    I’m reading the Bible a good deal now; it is the only book that does not keep making my thoughts stray. This morning Matthew 26-28, Luke 22-24, Psalms 68 and 70. I have never before been so struck by the remarkable divergences between the