Letters Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Author:Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone
Published: 2011-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

Dear Dietrich,

I want to use the chance of a messenger to say thanks to you once again for your letters…It was very reassuring to me to hear so quickly that you’ve been kept safe in the alarms of these days. When I see and hear the gunfire at night on my occasional jour neys further south, 157 I’m especially reminded of Sakrow and all of you. It’s very much the same, except that it lasts longer here. So far, however, I’ve only experienced it rarely. Our people who’ve been there for a while and haven’t experienced the attacks at home are quite full of it and tell every detail again and again with exaggerations. Of course I wasn’t there for the worst part. Distant artillery fire affects one remarkably little. One knows what the range is, and a few kilometres beyond that the whine of shells doesn’t amount to much. Of course it puts one’s nerves on edge. I saw the [allied] fleet on the water in the distance; through glasses one could distinguish between large and small units, and occasionally broadsides flashed out and the noise could be heard clearly. I expect there’s some colossally savage fighting there. The wider surroundings, all the beautiful and well-known places on the Alban hills and even the Papal seats, look frightful and have been thrown into complete chaos by our fighting units. Any wandering cattle are shot and ‘devoured’ without further ado. In some houses they have a mad rampage of destruction which ends with people indecently immortalizing themselves in the middle of the room. First of all we had to clean the house for our people there carefully from these and other traces.

I have the shortest service of any of my comrades here…But I must say that by and large they all behave decently towards me. A false sensitivity about turns of speech and constantly recurring pornographic expressions is quite out of place. If the talk gets round to spiritual matters, prompted by my calling, the security here and the self-assurance of the old soldiers immediately produces a long and very wordy explanation of people’s own standpoint of a justificatory kind. ‘Each in his own fashion’ plays a large part. After an audience with the Pope, one person recently confessed to me that he was now changing from being a negative to a positive Catholic. The fact that I’m married plays some part with the Catholics; they think that it’s a good thing and see celibacy as a central source of ridicule. The whole thing always takes place before a large audience. I have the impression that it’s not a good thing to discuss self-justifications or contradict them too much. But there may be some false restraint here. Among them I am what I am. There’s a freethinker among us here; he never attacks me, and speaks only occasionally; he too is a soldier, and as far as I’m concerned he’s only a soldier. I contradicted him. Of course, everything that

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