The son’s decision to become a theologian came as no great surprise to the mother. Paula had long recognized his attraction to ultimate questions. A family photograph captures the younger children “playing at baptisms” in the garden at Breslau. The face of the “wispy headed toddler in linen white knickers” seated beside his governess registers intense concentration, almost as if to say, What a fine and solemn occasion. Sabine marveled at how ceremoniously her twin conducted himself, and compelled others to behave likewise, at their pretend church.71 As mentioned, a very real religious inheritance was bequeathed Dietrich on his mother’s side, his grandfather having been court chaplain to Wilhelm II at Potsdam, and his great-grandfather, the aged theologian in the painting, a colleague of Hegel’s who was ever true to “the old true covenant of freedom and Christianity.”72 And at the Breslau salons hosted by Clara Kalckreuth von Hase, Paula’s mother, theologians were as prized as artists and other scholars. Even in Bonhoeffer’s paternal line, there were churchmen, some Swedenborgians, among the military officers, painters, sculptors, doctors, mayors, and counts.
None of this, however, mattered to Dietrich’s older brothers when they learned of his plan. Not only was Karl-Friedrich by now an avowed socialist, but Klaus had become an ardent Weimar liberal, befriending Russian émigrés and writing treatises on international law. Both found religion a distraction from the urgent work of promoting equality and human rights. They were not merely surprised but also mortified at the news and, sounding very much like their father’s sons, they warned that becoming a theologian would amount to a retreat from reality.
“Look at the church,” they insisted. “A more paltry institution one can hardly imagine.”73
Unmoved, Dietrich replied, “In that case, I shall reform it!”74
In 1921, at the age of fifteen, he read Eduard Meyer’s two-volume Origin and Beginning of Christianity—with such excitement that he began signing his name, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theol.”
Karl’s salary in Berlin had permitted not only the country house at Friedrichsbrunn but also holidays for the entire family in resorts fashionable among the upper middle class. In Boltenhagen, a spa town on the Baltic Sea the Bonhoeffers particularly liked, Dietrich would play in the shallow waters near Breaker’s Bridge, count jellyfish, build elaborate sandcastles with ramparts and moats. One summer afternoon in 1918, his attention was drawn by two seaplanes flying low, returning from patrol in the waters between Germany and Denmark. He was captivated by the sight and the roar of the engines as the two planes made their parallel ways beneath the midsummer sun. Suddenly the one nearer the coastline pulled up sharply, while the one farther at sea continued over Gross Schwansee toward the landing strip near the Pohnstorfer Moor. At first Dietrich thought that the first pilot was attempting some acrobatic maneuver, a stunt of the kind he had seen at the Grunewald air show. In fact, something had gone wrong. Not far into its steep climb, the first craft sputtered and stalled before entering into a wild downward spiral, finally crashing in a ball of flame only ten meters offshore.
With the other onlookers, Dietrich ran toward the crash site. Sections of the shattered wing, fuselage, and cockpit lay scattered in the shallow waters; soon, rescue workers arrived to carry away the pilot’s gnarled and burned body.
Dietrich fell asleep quickly that night, exhausted by the day’s events, but he woke up with a start sometime after midnight. He could not go to his mother—Paula had remained behind in Berlin, sending the three younger children on ahead in the care of their nurses. Outside, the dark sea churned in a violent gale. Sand blanketed the wicker chairs and tables, and the surf pounded the beach and surged over the castles and ramparts built earlier. As the wind caused an unfastened shutter to beat against the side of the house in loud, startling claps, the child sat up, as the image of the pilot’s singed eyebrows returned to him and troubled his thoughts.75
Notwithstanding the disturbing events of that spring and summer, by the fall of 1918 Dietrich’s journals and letters had once again become a chronicle of family contentment and privilege. He reports precocious reading—a Beethoven biography, Fontane’s Der Stechlin, Wilhelm Raabe’s The Black Galley, Hermann Hesse’s Knulp, Willibald Alexis’s Der Werwolf, Felix Dahn’s A Battle for Rome, J. Teneromo’s Conversations with Tolstoy, and Ferdinand von Raesfeld’s novel Hunting and War: A Novel from the Frontier, inherited from Walter. The letters written during the month-long vacation are full of ruminations on his carefree pursuits. On Saturday afternoons, he and Sabine joined their mother for musical performances at the Staatsoper on Unter den Linden; otherwise, he was content to go with his governess, Kathe Horn, to a museum or gallery.76
Bonhoeffer’s natural athleticism found an outlet in tennis, dance, and skiing, and he played the piano with vigor. But he had no interest in organized sports. Whatever their other rarefied tastes, most Grunewalders enjoyed the soccer matches of the home team, Berlin Hertha, as much as any of the thirty thousand who typically filled Gesundbrunnen Stadium (also known as the Plumpe, for the old-fashioned water pump that stood just outside the gates), singing beer songs and waving pennants. (Hertha had a good run from 1925 until 1933, playing in the national championship finals six times and taking home the Bundesliga title in 1930 and 1931.) The competitive streak Dietrich had shown from an early age, however, was not engaged by such spectacles.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER AT GRUNEWALD GYMNASIUM, FOURTH FROM THE RIGHT, 1920–21; MARIA WEIGERT IS FIFTH FROM LEFT, SEATED TO THE RIGHT OF THE TEACHER WILLIBALD HEINIGER
As a student he channeled his extracurricular energies into the arts more than sports. As a high school senior, he played the lead in Goethe’s Egmont, alongside Ulla Andreae, the niece of German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, playing Clärchen. Rathenau, who would be assassinated weeks later by ultranationalist military officers, attended the premiere. (Bonhoeffer reported to his grandmother how at school on the morning of June 24, 1922, he heard “a peculiar crack in the courtyard,” not knowing it was gunfire or that “a pack of right-wing Bolshevik scoundrels” had ambushed his neighbor en route to the ministry.)77 Theater remained a passion, as would any literary effort, studying languages (especially with his French teacher, Fräulein Lindauer) and sentimental novels.78 He was always physically game, but his greatest thrills were of the mind, the senses, and, ultimately, the spirit.
Paula’s schooling, with the help of some tutors, in the makeshift classroom off the kitchen, equipped each of her children admirably for the tumultuous years ahead. All excelled in high school and passed their college entrance exams before most of their classmates. But Dietrich was especially advanced, beginning secondary school at Friedrich-Werdersches Gymnasium before transferring to Grunewald Gymnasium in 1918 at the age of twelve. (When Sabine’s time came to leave her mother’s classroom, she would attend a small girls’ school run by Fräulein Adelheid Mommsen, the daughter of the great classicist and Nobel laureate Theodor Mommsen.)79 He proceeded to graduate from Grunewald by his seventeenth birthday, two years ahead of most in his class—German high schools typically take two or three years longer than the American system—and at a younger age than any of his siblings. Dietrich would complete his requirements for the Abitur, the national qualifying examination, in March 1923, receiving a diploma that guaranteed him a place at a German university. He scored high marks in all subjects except English and penmanship. Outside academics, he earned accolades in “Singing,” though his highest grades overall were in gymnastics and behavior.80 He had become fluent in Greek and Latin, competent in Hebrew and French. Over the next five years he would learn Italian, Spanish, and English. In his three-thousand-word matriculation essay, “Catullus and Horace as Lyric Poets,” he chose Catullus, “the son of a wealthy, aristocratic family in Lombardy,” who transforms “everything into passion,” as his favorite. “The most impressive thoughts fade away,” Bonhoeffer concluded, “but great emotions are eternal.”81
CHAPTER TWO
1923–1924
~
“Italy Is Simply Inexhaustible”
Dietrich hatched his plan to make the Grand Tour as he lay in bed recovering from a concussion: on his eighteenth birthday he had slipped while ice skating with friends. He lived now in the university town of Tübingen, in one of the newer dwellings comprising a neighborhood near the train station. Frau Jäger’s boardinghouse at 10 Uhlandstrasse had agreeably large windows and a garden.1
Though confined to his rooms, Dietrich appeared in good spirits when his parents arrived from Berlin, bearing gifts of writing paper, books, chocolates, tobacco, and an envelope of cash to spend as he wished. He had his sights set on a classical guitar at a music store in town. Still, there was something he had been wanting, “infinitely” more than even the “splendid instrument with the wonderful tone.” He wanted to spend the summer in Italy. He was besotted at the thought: “the most fabulous thing that could happen to me.” He allowed that “I can’t even begin to imagine how great [it] would be.”2 Indeed, he would never be daunted by the inconceivable.
Dietrich had heard stories of his family’s journeys to Italy. His great-grandfather Karl August von Hase, a lifelong friend of the Nazarenes (the painters who had ensconced themselves on the Pincian Hill), had made some twenty voyages to Rome in the early decades of the nineteenth century. It was on one of these trips that Hase made the acquaintance of Goethe, who was so favorably impressed as to offer him the prestigious post at the University of Jena.3 Hase’s sketchbooks, travel guides, and journals would circulate among his descendants over the years, inspiring new generations of travelers. They had the same effect on Dietrich as the sketches of the Forum and Palatine hanging in Walther Kranz’s history classroom. Like most children of the Grunewald elite, Dietrich thrilled to the images of the sun-drenched South and treasures of antiquity. What’s more, young Dr. Czepan, under whose Latin tutelage the boy had so excelled, knew the Italian geography as well as his native Germany’s.
It was only a matter of time, then, before Dietrich had resolved to make an Italienreise of his own.4 And as he lay there convalescing, that resolution hardened.
“After thinking about it,” he told his sister, “I want to do it so much that I can’t imagine ever wanting to do it more than I do now.”5
Plans fell quickly into place. Dietrich would join his brother Klaus, who was celebrating having passed the bar exam with a summer in Italy. Axel von Harnack, a Grunewald neighbor and son of the famous theologian Adolf von Harnack, had spent the fall semester in Rome and was eager to offer suggestions. Sabine had never been to Italy either, and though she was not invited to accompany her brothers, Dietrich encouraged her to “shower him with advice.” But he also needed to enlist his twin for an urgent bit of business: persuading their parents that he was ready to travel on his own.6 As yet he had not asked Karl and Paula’s permission, let alone secured their support.
The moment of their visit was not the most opportune. Besides the skating accident and Dietrich’s feverish state of mind, there was the fact that he had not yet finished a single university term. But knowing the force of his will, they listened with an open mind as he made his case.
“It is strange that the fees are less expensive for foreigners,” he said. “Food and lodging are both very inexpensive and easy to find.” Studying in Rome would definitely “not be more expensive than studying here.… Furthermore, many Germans live there.” A fraternity brother was heading to Italy as well, and of course Klaus would never be far, whatever Dietrich got up to.7 Finally, having worked the idea from every angle, Dietrich sighed in feigned exasperation, “You know, I am in a great quandary about how to transport my lute.”
There was nothing he hadn’t thought of: he already had the necessary two suitcases and a backpack, which he would check all the way through to Rome, “so I won’t have to mail any packages” before leaving the country.8 Perhaps that degree of ordered thought moved Dietrich’s rationalist father. In any event, his parents agreed.
“Just think,” he told Sabine, exultant, “I will be studying in Rome!”9
It had continued to be true that Dietrich’s biggest concerns were not those of his nation. In the fall of 1923, when he matriculated at Tübingen, the German economy was succumbing to virulent hyperinflation. The French and Belgian armies had occupied the industrial Ruhr Valley after Germany had repeatedly defaulted on reparations for World War I, as agreed in the Treaty of Versailles. Food riots broke out when German farmers stopped delivering produce to the cities.10 Why should they bother, when paper money had become worthless? In turn, desperate urban workers looted the countryside, raiding farms to feed their families. Everywhere money disappeared like “water in the sand.” Businesses failed, unemployment soared. The middle class exchanged furniture, clothing, jewelry, and art—whatever they could muster—for food and provisions. Cultural centers and charitable institutions, churches and hospitals were forced to close their doors for lack of funds. Within a two-year period, a tuberculosis outbreak spread to epidemic proportions, killing record numbers of people, while malnutrition, mental breakdowns, and suicides left few towns and cities untouched. As their means dwindled, thousands of students left school to look for work, almost always in vain.11
Dietrich, meanwhile, was still settling into college life. Shortly after arriving in Tübingen he discovered that he had outgrown his trousers. At seventeen he still had two inches yet to grow before reaching his adult height of six foot one. “The first thing I did was go shopping,” he advised his parents, to whom, of course, the bills went. Not that he was ignorant of the national crisis; that would have been impossible. In the worst of it, a meal at the university refectory would cost a billion marks. For a loaf of bread he would need a half million. Dietrich would on occasion shell out fifteen billion marks to have a shirt laundered and starched. Saving where he could, he asked his older sister Christine, a student of zoology at Tübingen, to see to his routine laundry; she complied, though not happily. Nonetheless, he presented his mother with a wardrobe inventory to frame his requests for a new linen jacket and pants that might serve for warmer days in Friedrichsbrunn.12 As for shoes, he felt he could get by with what he had, his sturdy pair of Haferlschuhe, which would be his staple for the school year, being in “excellent condition.”
His cozy room at Frau Jäger’s was always adorned with fresh-cut flowers. He liked the simplicity of his “four naked walls, table, bed, two chairs and two windows,” choosing to do most of his reading and writing there, because “everything is quiet and no one interrupts you.”13 He would need to give the work his full attention, having matriculated in a faculty whose distinguished graduates included Philipp Melanchthon, G. W. F. Hegel, and Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling. A century earlier, Ferdinand Christian Baur had founded the influential Tübingen School of Theology, which promoted a critical analysis of the Bible grounded in history, the method of interpretation often called “higher criticism.” By approaching the scriptures primarily as historical documents rather than revealed truth, the new critics sought to understand the biblical writings in their original contexts. As part of this modern perspective on ancient doctrine, Dietrich took classes with the New Testament scholar Adolf Schlatter, and with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, an Indologist who would go on to found the notorious German Faith Movement.
Intensive though his studies were, they did not keep Dietrich from extracurricular activities. Joining Der Igel—the Hedgehog—he followed his father and his uncle Otto, both natives of Tübingen, who lived at the same fraternity during their first two university semesters, having been proud “Foxes” (as first-year pledges were called). Founded in 1871, Der Igel was known as a “black fraternity,” since the first class of pledges had refused to take part in the elaborate ceremonies of the other associations or to don their garish attire. Rather than parade through the village in gowns of gold and purple like proud provincial squires of old, they sported robes “of black-grey, mouse-grey and silver-grey.”14 This dour preference notwithstanding, the Hedgehog�
�s membership was drawn from the same upper middle class as the rest of the university; all venerated the same ideals of Bismarckian nobility, which in 1923 were chiefly martial virtue and a united Germany under Prussian rule. For his “body guard,” which is to say, the upper classman who helped him navigate the complexities of pledge life, Dietrich was assigned Fritz Schmid, a student of natural science. Dietrich’s older brothers had each spent a year at Tübingen. But in 1919 Karl-Friedrich, who had flirted with communism since his return from the war, refused to join a fraternity upon learning that most of his prospective brothers thought the labor strikes in Stuttgart and Munich should be suppressed.15 Klaus condemned the student societies as undemocratic and woefully nationalistic, at best a distraction from his study of international law. But Dietrich didn’t seem to mind the conservative posturing; anyway, he would let his earnest siblings worry about politics and human rights. Still, there would be at least one young dissident voice at the Hedgehog. During the academic year 1923–24, a certain “Fox Kordau” resigned on the grounds that fraternity life ran counter to the “spirit of Christianity.” Kordau “had tried and had pretended” to meet expectations, but finally realized that his commitment to “practical Christianity” left him no option but to renounce “this painful compromise.”16
But Bonhoeffer did not see what the fuss was about.17 “I took the customary step for every dutiful son and became a Hedgehog,” he explained in his statement of initiation.18 And so, in Der Igel’s sprawling mansion (which had once been christened Die Bierkirche, “the Beer Church”) on the “hill behind the squared-stone walls of the castle Twingia,” with a fine view of the Neckar River at the southerly point where it encircled a trace of “beautiful green islands,” Bonhoeffer luxuriated in the well-appointed music rooms and parlors. In the afternoons, he would accompany the chamber music trio on the grand piano, teaching himself how to play the lute in the course of his first year.
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