When Bonhoeffer entered the Basilica of St. John Lateran for the Saturday consecration of fire and water, he found the baptismal font lavishly decorated and ringed by “delightfully lively” priests in “joyous expectation.” The Gloria prayer of the Mass carried the promise but still not the fulfillment of the resurrection. It seemed an exquisite agony. As a child of the Reformation, he was unfamiliar with the long day of waiting, the no-man’s-land of Holy Saturday. Pondering the mystery of that singular place, he imagined two types of Christian. One stands always in the expectation of “that which is coming.” Gazing into eternity, he speaks eloquently of heaven’s glories and the streets of gold but stumbles in the here and now—and “thus loses the objectivity needed for the present moment.” The second type lives in the present moment “to an exceptional degree.” He might be called the Christian existentialist, pensive and brooding, but he braves the extremes and grasps at the infinite in the mundane.48 Bonhoeffer wanted to be in the company of the latter, immersed in the “objectivity of worldly grace,” to abide with those “profound individuals” who, realizing that they have no “ultimate escape from earthly tasks and difficulties into the eternal, drink the earthly cup to the dregs.”49
To Platte-Platenius, Bonhoeffer, with his insatiable appetite for dazzling religious spectacle, must have seemed ripe for conversion. He certainly treated him that way. But Bonhoeffer insisted that he was not on a search for greater religious authority. In fact he mentions church doctrine in his journal only to lament how Catholic dogma veils the beautiful and “ideal.” Even a personal exchange with Pope Pius XI (although what Bonhoeffer called a “personal meeting” was in fact a chance encounter during a public audience) earned a dismissal: “Nothing special.”
Nor was he enthralled to spectacle as such. At the city’s Armenian church, the impression “was that of an eastern fairy-tale play.” The whole ceremony proceeded with “enormous pomp,” “skillful display,” and dazzling colors. And the ritual of opening and closing the altar’s curtain proposed yet another way of seeing the Easter story. But he was simply not transported as he was at any of the Catholic churches. On Easter Sunday, he attended the High Mass at St. Peter’s with Platte-Platenius, marveling at the choir of the Sistine Chapel which was singing in full Paschal splendor. “One can hardly conceive of anything so magnificent.” But after days of so many magnificent moments, Bonhoeffer realized with a heavy heart that Holy Week had drawn to an end, and with that time had come to leave Rome, this city that had grown “dearer and more familiar to me than any other.” He would be returning in two weeks to settle in for another month, but for now he would venture on to Sicily. Following an afternoon performance of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 5, the Spring Sonata, Bonhoeffer returned to his room at Signora Joccas’s to pack.50
He would depart the Eternal City feeling “supersaturated.” But in the light of morning, and with his brother Klaus seated alongside him on the train, hunched over his maps and legends, Bonhoeffer’s appetite for new prospects was whetted. Sipping a cup of coffee from his thermos he resolved that though the cupolas, twisted spires, and domes of Rome were now behind him, he must content himself with whatever delights and surprises might await him. He would not be disappointed. On April 28, 1924, he wrote Sabine to say that he and Klaus had reached Girgenti: “the temples situated by the sea,” the sunsets “completely red” and “magnificent blue,” the “sumptuous garden[s] filled with fruit trees,” the “colossal cacti” overhanging the cliffs above the water, and “a sea, ranging in color from sky- to steel-blue,” ever shimmering in the background—he gave it all its due.51
But even two days earlier while still in San Giovanni, tip of the boot, he wrote his twin of basking in the “unbelievably alluring sweet scents” of the gardens there, of feeling as if the “old veils” had been lifted from his mind and “much more beautiful things [had] become real.” As if a new world had been “born in oneself.”52
“Magnificent fog heralds the coming of the sun in fantastic colors,” he wrote, “but it only heralds it. Quietly, but only in the remote distance, one anticipates what will be,” until “finally the sun is there in all its magnificence.”53
Before the end of the first day in Sicily, Dietrich and Klaus were swimming in the Africanuum with some other young men they had met on the way. “How sad that we can stay in one place for only 2 days,” Dietrich wrote. “One could live here a long time.”54
In Syracuse, older brother Klaus had struck up a conversation with an Italian soldier who said he could get the brothers “a visa to visit the colonies.”55 After perusing a map, Klaus, animated by “imaginative thoughts and thrilling travel prospects,” persuaded Dietrich to join him on an unscheduled excursion to North Africa. On April 29, 1924, the brothers climbed aboard a freighter for Libya.56 Neither had bothered to inform Karl and Paula of the plan.
They sailed into the Mediterranean among a “gaggle” of soldiers, immigrants, Turks, and Arabs, the cramped passenger quarters in steerage class a veritable traveling roadhouse. After a feast of meatballs and spaghetti, the men commenced a long night of merrymaking, with plenty of sweet wine, coffee, and cigarettes, and soon they had broken out in song. Dietrich strummed a guitar; Klaus took up someone’s violin; others played horns or hit sticks together. One of them worked over a lute. They belted out songs of the sea, of romance and adventures. Dietrich and Klaus had never before been in such rowdy company, Dietrich generally disapproving of that sort of ambiance. But on this overnight voyage to Libya, the Bonhoeffer brothers caroused with abandon and, it would seem, to excess.
During a stop in Malta, Klaus rushed to the deck and, steadying himself against the railing, puked into the sea. But he would have no regrets, eventually telling his parents that though their quarters had not been as comfortable as second class, they were “certainly 10 times more interesting.” Dietrich seemed to have fared better, or at least he kept the details to himself. At daybreak, he gazed toward the southern horizon until, as in a dream, the harbor of Tripoli appeared. Most biographers portray the fortnight in North Africa as an ordeal that Bonhoeffer sorely regretted. Disoriented and afraid in an unfamiliar culture, he returned to Palermo, it is said, as soon as possible, only then “able to breathe freely again.”57 It is also said that he never spoke about the trip to his family.
But letters and notes published in 2003—and photographs made public—reveal a less disagreeable experience. Bonhoeffer encountered a side of life on those distant shores utterly foreign to him, a whirlwind of strange impressions, sounds, and smells; but his responses to such novelties were those of an attentive, curious, and mostly generous observer, not the misgivings of a pampered tourist.58 In 1924 Libya remained under Italian occupation, enforced at times by brutal oppression, and Bonhoeffer’s comments are striking for their sympathy toward the native Muslims.
“What enrages most,” he said, “is that a people like the Arabs, who have such a well-developed sense of tradition and culture, are to be transformed into slaves. When one sees that [they] are treated with great brutality and vulgarity by the Italian soldiers, one can understand their bitterness and callous fear.” In Tripoli, the Bonhoeffers were picked up at the harbor by a fellow German. They were surprised to hear that news of their arrival had made the city’s Italian newspaper, Corriere di Tripoli. After checking into their hotel—an Arab building built in the European manner—the brothers, despite fatigue from the riotous night before, made their way through the sunbaked streets of the port city.59
PHOTO TAKEN BY DIETRICH BONHOEFFER OF CAMEL MARKET, TRIPOLI, LIBYA
That first morning they took a bus to visit an oasis market, where a “colorful throng of peculiar figures” and natives from the interior sold and traded wares. Impressed by the “incredible calm and precision” of the work and the unfamiliar rhythms of the place, Dietrich and Klaus appeared more intrigued than fretful, gamely absorbing the culture shock.60
“Even now it seems like a dream to me,” Klaus wrote. “Ar
abs, Bedouins, and Negroes sitting on donkeys in great, picturesque white cloaks or with laden camels. The houses are low and chalk-white. The living quarters open onto the street. The artisans live in certain streets according to their professions. The streets are narrow in the inner city, unpaved, and very dusty; yet they are not dirty as they are in Italy. It is also a lot quieter.”
Klaus continued, “The pictures of the market and of our walks to the sea were fabulously beautiful. Outside the city one sees Bedouin tents along with their inhabitants, to whose face and form the long white robes lend a brilliant appearance.”61
If an open mind can be indicated by a willingness to cross borders and observe with respect, the brothers’ notes from North Africa, despite the freight of some cultural bias, reveal something even more: a generous heart. Dietrich, no less than Klaus, allowed his intuitive judgments to be continually tested by strangers, and while their accounts may at times “mirror their ambivalent experience of both being tourists and acting as amateur ethnographers”—as the Bonhoeffer scholar Robert Steiner wrote in a fascinating analysis of the 1924 trip to Libya—they lack the defensive element, and, though written in a “telegraphic style,” lay open a world.62
“Day before yesterday we drove into the interior of the country for 2 days with our acquaintance from Stuttgart. By chance a troop of Italian soldiers drove with us. They even took us with them by car a good bit of the way, about 2½ hours, and provided us with lodging. We found ourselves at the end of the earth. The elevation was 600–700 meters.”
Another journey into the interior two days later by car took the brothers to the desert outpost of Gharyan, one hundred kilometers south of Tripoli on the edge of the Nafusa Mountains. Dietrich wrote,
As far as the scenery goes, the mountain range gives the impression of being very peculiar, but extraordinarily beautiful. Because a large group of Italians chanced to arrive on the same day as we did—I don’t know why—great festival performances by the native blacks, Arabs, and Bedouins had been planned. Some of the performances involved fabulously clever tricks. The Bedouins’ races with their amazing horses were very grand. At furious speeds they readied their rifles, shot, and then, as if it were all a game, hurled their rifles into the air and caught them. We took several pictures of this, as well as some of a very amusing Negro dance.
As the sun was setting we took a short walk. Several Arabs whom we met on our walk spoke to us. When they discovered that we were Germans they were incredibly friendly. They showed us a lot of things. Moreover, they said we were the first Germans who’d been there, and that was why they were so happy. It gets cold after sunset, especially compared to the day-time temperature, which is when the Gibli—the south wind—so hated by the natives—is blowing; [the temperature] has been known to reach 58 Celsius (136 F). In spite of the terrible heat one doesn’t feel ill. The air is very dry, never humid, always windy.
Dietrich found the southern night sky “truly magnificent.” The heavens “blazed in deep blues against the sharp contours of the mountains,” strewn with “a few isolated … olive trees.” When the stars appeared in “radiant light,” the night sky flared against the vast and brilliant blackness. It was “wonderful.”
In the early morning, he went to the window of his stone hut and watched as townswomen walked homeward in the “translucent” glow of sunrise. They had gone in darkness to milk the goats. Some men rode to the watering holes on donkeys, as caravans arrived with wares for the city markets. Crowds soon gathered there and in the tearooms, or stood around in the street, singing in monotone from the Koran to the accompaniment of tambourines. All the native people stopped and listened devoutly, Dietrich noted, and gave generously to the collection of alms that followed.
“I imagine that it was very similar in ancient Israel, where the situation was surely comparable.”63 After a full day in the Middle East, Dietrich said, “you are reminded in an astonishing way of Old Testament scenes and atmosphere.” It seemed to the theology student that in general “an immense similarity” existed between Islam and the lifestyle and piety recorded in the Old Testament.” In Islam, as in Judaism, everyday life and religion were not separated at all. “Even in the Catholic Church they are separated, for the most part.” German Protestantism, on the other hand, was defined by the separation. “At home one just goes to church. When one returns a completely different life begins. It is thoroughly different for the Muslims.”
After a brief meeting, Gharyan’s kadi, the local Muslim judge, finding the Bonhoeffer brothers sympathetic, gave them permission to step inside the Great Mosque, so long as they removed their shoes and observed custom. “It would really be very interesting to study Islam on its own soil,” Dietrich wrote later that evening, “to probe more fully the cultic and social aspects of the religion.” He had been happy to oblige the kadi on the former but remained frustrated that his access to the prayer rooms had been limited.
Before returning to Tripoli, Dietrich and Klaus received an unexpected invitation to a “princely reception” in the tent of a Bedouin chief. Details remain vague on the events that followed. They may have tripped over political issues or caused an unintended slight. Dietrich also came down with a violent stomach bug, which surely could have exacerbated the situation. Whatever the case, the desert excursion ended abruptly, with the two finding themselves whisked “away in an [Italian] officer’s car as unwelcome guests.”64 The diary offers no insight, though it is clear that Dietrich, in the end, could not fathom this new religious world, and to his great credit he would not pretend otherwise. Despite a habit, entirely contemporary, of trading in generalizations, he did not use his own misstep, whatever it may have been, as an excuse for blanket judgments. He remained instead a charitable if sometimes perplexed observer of the unfamiliar. He would leave under no illusion that his brief foray into Muslim lands had equipped him to understand.65 He felt he was but a “completely empty container” into which “enormous quantities of the heaviest materials had been thrown.”
On the voyage back to Italy, Dietrich described feeling as if fetters had been removed from his limbs. It was as if he had dodged a great disaster.
From a café in Syracuse, he wrote in his diary on May 10, 1924, that should he ever return to Africa, he would need to bring a more precise measure, or be reduced once again to speechlessness and passivity. “Real reinforcement through extensive study will be necessary,” he allowed specifically of the Islamic world, “in order to avert the catastrophe, because what one has seen was enormous.” His “journey to the end of the earth” had led finally to a certain interpretive defeat, which he accepted with humility and as an invitation to further education and enquiry.
That night in Syracuse, Dietrich sat with Klaus “for a long, long time” behind the ruins of a Greek stage overlooking the “flawless” Mediterranean, “smooth as glass” in the last light of day. In the gentle air of the spring evening, and the wordless company of his brother, Dietrich relished the “indescribably harmonious quality” of the moment.
“When night had finally fallen and the stars came out, we went swiftly on the path to Giardini.… We were home again.”
The “European trees” and “the richness of the [Italian] soil” induced a “strange, happily excited mood.” As Klaus left for Berlin, Dietrich would return to Rome for another month, noting in his journal that he could feel his heart beat when he saw “the old water conduits accompanying us to the walls of the city for the second time.” It was good to be back at “the fulcrum of the European culture and European life,” and like a weary traveler sitting down to a generously prepared meal, he heartily indulged his appetite for Western humanism over the four languorous weeks to come. Not that he’d had his fill of Catholic Rome, but there was also so much yet to discover about “the Rome of Antiquity,” the “Rome of the Renaissance,” and the “Rome of the Middle Ages”—and “of the present day.66
He feasted on Raphael, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Caravaggio, Botticelli, Valázquez, a
nd Titian, on Guido Reni’s “enchantingly beautiful” Concert of Angels in a side chapel of the St. Gregorio and on all the mosaics at the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, the sacristy at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and at Santi Cosma e Damiano. Enraptured again by the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he was still unable, he said, “to move beyond Adam.” For in that immemorial icon, “man is about to awaken to life for the first time.” The ceiling held a mirror to Bonhoeffer’s own soul and body, coming to life in the glorious meadows and hills of Creation’s first morning. The painting was so very lush and pure, he said. “In short, one can’t express it.”67
He also found a piano to play. At the villa of Signora Jocca on the Corso d’Italia, he entertained his hosts with Bach, Brahms, Mozart, and the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi. (Hans von Dohnányi, son of the composer, would later marry Dietrich’s older sister, Christine.)
Toward the end of his stay, Bonhoeffer once again invited Maria Weigert to dinner, and the two precocious children of the Grunewald elite, Christian and Jew, eighteen and twenty years old, shared a bottle of white wine, a loaf of bread, and some cheese. There, in his “favorite trattoria” near the Trevi Fountain, listening to his former nemesis reflect on her own travels, and responding in kind, Bonhoeffer might have recognized that he too had traveled some distance in his emotional formation. Maria still came across as “a little too academic in her way of thinking,” Bonhoeffer would tell his mother, but “her idiosyncrasies” made her “only slightly unpleasant to be with.” He would allow that “Maria really seems to understand something about art,” but on second thought added, “or should we just say that she really enjoys it?”68 In any case, he probed the matter no further; his Italian journey had brought him many new insights, which for now he was content to enjoy as such. As for Platte-Platenius, who had begun his theological studies in Rome, there is no indication that Dietrich remained in touch with him. But the Catholic seminarian had correctly discerned the ultimate purpose of Bonhoeffer’s journey; it had always been a spiritual one. Bonhoeffer later told a friend that he had been “tempted” to convert to Catholicism, “to the Roman variety,” the one that meant beauty, exuberance, and grandeur.69 The depths as well as the heights drew him: the pageantry of life and death. The sacraments of the ordinary, and the extraordinary. The kind that is “simply inexhaustible.” “At end of my stay,” he said, “I saw what Catholicism is, and once again, I became truly fond of it.”70
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