For a while Lothar keeps coming back to the Sermon on the Mount, as recorded in St Matthew’s gospel, and to the many commentaries on it, including that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship, published in Germany shortly before the Schmalkers were forced into exile and ended up in London. When Magnus reads out pages written by this author he knows Lothar is listening not merely to a text but to the words of a man he knew, respected and admired, a living being who paid with his life the non-negotiable price of ‘costly grace’. In his prime, at the peak of his intellectual powers, in the full vigour of love, he paid the uncompromising price of that grace with his life, on the end of a rope, on a gallows erected at dawn in a concentration camp, by order of the Führer holed up in the bunker where he was to kill himself three weeks later. Magnus imposes a neutral tone on his voice, effacing himself before the voice of the deceased writer, allowing Lothar to engage in a dialogue with his friend and master. And while concentrating on his reading, Magnus listens to the old man’s breathing, whose sound gradually alters in the course of listening, is punctuated with discreet sighs, revealing not so much an emotion, agreement or disagreement, as a mind keeping pace with that of the other, from time to time halting on the fringe of a word, an idea, a desire, an illumination. Or a dizzying insight, such as Bonhoeffer’s comment echoing the call not to set oneself up as judge: ‘If, in judging, what truly mattered to me were the destruction of evil, I would seek evil where it truly threatens me: within myself.’
Timeline
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
• Born 4/2/1906 in Breslau. Sixth child (one of eight siblings) of Karl Bonhoeffer, professor of psychiatry and neurology, and of Paula, née von Hase.
• 1923–27: theological studies at Tubingen, then in Berlin.
• 1927: presents his doctoral thesis in Berlin, entitled Sanctorum Communio: A dogmatic investigation into the sociology of the Church.
• 1928–29: curate in Barcelona of the German-speaking Protestant community.
• 1930: presents his Habilitationsschrift, allowing him to become a university teacher, entitled Act and Being.
• September 1930–June 1931: scholarship for post-graduate study in the United States (at Union Theological Seminary in New York).
• 1931: chaplain to the students at the Technical School of Charlottenburg. In September, takes part in the ecumenical conference in Cambridge (elected youth secretary of the World Alliance for Promoting Friendship through the Churches). On 15 November is ordained at St Matthaus church in Berlin.
• 1933: Hitler comes to power. D. Bonhoeffer immediately recognizes the fundamental evil of this Führer that Germany welcomes as a saviour, and publicly warns of the danger that ‘the image of the leader might slip into the image of the misleader … The leader and his office will be deified in a caricature of God’. He also condemns racial hatred and persecution of the Jews, extended to Christians of Jewish ancestry. ‘The exclusion of Jewish Christians from the community destroys the substance of Christ’s Church … The Church is not the community of those who are kindred, but the community of strangers who have been called by the Word. The people of God is a order that supersedes all others … “The Aryan Paragraph” [proclaimed 7 April 1933] is a heresy and destroys the substance of the Church.’ (Tract written in August 1933)
• October 1933–April 1935: serves as minister to a parish in London.
• 1935–37: runs one of the pastoral seminaries set up by the Confessing Church (separated from the German Church, which is completely compromised by its collaboration with the Nazi regime) at Zingst, then at Finkenwalde in Pomerania. Authorization to teach in university is withdrawn from him in 1936.
• 1937: publication of his work Nachfolge (The Cost of Discipleship). In October the Gestapo close down the pastoral seminaries; arrest of several former seminarists at Finkenwalde.
• 1938: first contacts with the Abwehr resistance circle that forms round Ludwig Beck, which is joined by Hans Oster, Wilhelm Canaris, Karl Sack … His brother Klaus Bonhoeffer, his brothers-in-law Rüdiger Schleicher and Hans von Dohnanyi also join the German resistance. ‘There is a satanic truth. Its nature consists in denying, under the guise of truth, everything that is real. It lives on hatred of reality and of the world created and loved by God. If we call one who is obliged by war to deceive a liar, the lie acquires a moral sanction and justification totally contradictory to its nature.’
• 1939: publication of the book inspired by his experience in the seminary at Finkenwalde — Life Together. Travels to London, then to the United States, but cuts short his stay and returns to Germany on the last ship to make the crossing, just before the declaration of war.
• 1940: banned from expressing himself in public and obliged to inform the police of all his movements. He works on his magnum opus Ethics, not to be published until after his death, by his friend Eberhard Bethge. Plays an active role in the political resistance movement.
• 1941–42: banned from publishing. As part of his resistance activities he makes several trips to Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden (within the context of ecumenical relations). In November 1942 he becomes engaged to be married to Maria von Wedemeyer.
• 1943–45: on 5 April 1943 is arrested by the Gestapo, along with his sister Christine and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, and incarcerated at Tegel military prison. Until August 1944 he continues to read, study, write — letters, notes, outlines for projects … ‘Now I pray simply for freedom. There is moreover a false resignation, which is not at all Christian. We need not as Christians be ashamed of some impatience, yearning, opposition to what goes against nature, and of a strong craving for freedom and earthly happiness and the power to act.’ (Letter from prison, 18 November 1943)
• After the failure of the Von Stauffenberg plot against Hitler on 20 July 1944, the Gestapo find documents proving his involvement in the conspiracy. His brother Klaus and his brother-in-law Rüdiger Schleicher are also arrested. On 8 October 1944 he is transferred to the Gestapo’s underground prison on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse in Berlin. On 7 February 1945 he is sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, then to Regensburg, and finally to Flossenburg
• 9 April 1945: he is executed along with General Hans Oster, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, lawyer Theodor Strünk, Judge Karl Sack and Captain Ludwig Gehre. Hans von Dohnanyi is killed at Sachsenhausen; Klaus Bonhoeffer, Rüdiger Schleicher and another accomplice, F.J. Perels, in Berlin.
‘The idea of death has become increasingly familiar to us in recent years … It would not be true to say we wish to die — although there is no one who has not experienced a certain weariness, to which on no account must we give way — we are too curious to give up or, to put it more seriously, we would like to have longer to see what meaning our broken life has. Nor do we sublimate death, life being too important and precious to us … We still love life, but I believe that death can no longer surprise us very much. After the experiences of war, we hardly dare confess our desire that it should not strike us down casually, suddenly, on the periphery of reality, but in the fullness of life and in the thick of the action. It is not outward circumstances but we ourselves who will make our death what it can be, a death that is freely accepted.’