Strange Glory
Page 53
Over the past two decades an international team of scholars under the auspices of the English Language Section of the International Bonhoeffer Society, along with the German Bonhoeffer Society, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, and Fortress Press, has produced the sixteen-volume complete works in German and English. Graced with marginalia, editorial essays, and a veritable trove of new research discoveries, these volumes have fortified Bonhoeffer’s reputation as one of the most original religious thinkers of the modern age. Quite simply, this book could not have been written apart from the extraordinary accomplishments of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Project as well as professional friendships with members of the International Bonhoeffer Society. Names of theologians and scholars involved in these endeavors appear throughout the notes of this book, but I wish to offer special thanks to those who went beyond their own editorial duties to share additional notes and perspectives: Victoria Barnett, Clifford Green, Geffrey Kelly, Michael Lukens, John De Gruchy, Mark Brocker, Stephen Plant, Larry Rasmussen, Keith Clements, Wayne Floyd, Andreas Pangritz, Glenn Stassen, John Godsey, Ralf Wüstenberg, Christiane Tietz, Jens Zimmermann, Martin Rumscheidt, Reggie Williams, Guy Carter, Leroy Walters, Christof Gestrich, Robert Steiner, Hans Pfeiffer, Klaus von Dohnányi, Jürgen-Lewin Hans von Schlabrendorff, Ferdinand Schlingensiepen and his son the documentary filmmaker Helmut, and Renate and Eberhard Bethge, who long before I ever considered biography shared with me stories of their beloved Dietrich over a marvelous lunch of chicken curry and Riesling in their home in Villiprot-Bonn.
I must also offer a hearty vielen dank to my graduate research assistants at the Project on Lived Theology for their tireless and often heroic efforts in tracking down documents, gathering and checking facts, and engaging me as intellectual comrades. Kris Norris, Rachel Butrum, Tim Hartman, A. J. Walton, Kelly Figueroa-Ray, Philip Lorish, Kendall Cox, and Roger Connaroe—these gifted young scholars and edifying critics have surely made the book better than it otherwise would have been. Resourceful and meticulous as readers and editors, Kelly, Kris, and Rachel, along with Jennifer Seidel in Charlottesville and Theresa Clasen in Berlin, helped me to the finish line in the final arduous months. And hats off to the numerous undergraduates who photocopied and transcribed German documents without complaint and at work-study wages, brave souls all.
Many librarians and archivists kindly responded to my frequent and sometimes impatient requests. I am deeply grateful to these hard-working women and men, and to the libraries and archives that made historical documents and photographs readily available:
Ruth Tonkiss Cameron, at the Burke Library Archives, Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University Libraries;
Jennifer Belt, Associate Permissions Director, Art Resource, New York, and her colleague Gerhard Gruitrooy;
Sabine Schumann, at the bpk Photo Agency in Berlin;
Jutta Weber, mentioned earlier, who—among her many responsibilities at the Staatsbibliothek—curates the Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Bethge Papers;
Burckhard Scheffler, who magnanimously oversees research programs and events at the Bonhoeffer Haus in Charlottenburg-Berlin, even once allowing me to take a nap in Bonhoeffer’s upstairs bedroom on an afternoon when I felt suddenly overwhelmed by jetlag.
My agent, Christy Fletcher, spirited this project along with her unrivaled verve and resoluteness and provided all the right suggestions and reassurances at crucial stages in the writing. I’m grateful to Christy and her colleagues at Fletcher and Company, Melissa Chinchillo, Rachel Crawford, and Sylvie Greenberg, for their good energies and excellent representation.
A more generous and involved editor than George Andreou at Knopf is difficult to imagine; my debt to him is incalculable. George helped bring the story into focus, and with his eye for detail and close attention to the line turned an excruciatingly long and unwieldy first draft into a more coherent narrative. I wish also to thank Juhea Kim, George’s editorial assistant, for the carefulness and intelligence with which she helped move the manuscript through the various stages of editing. Together they gave me a new appreciation for the art of literary publishing.
My mother and father have spent much of the past twenty years serving English-speaking Protestant congregations in Europe, exemplifying in word and deed the “very profound compassion” of which Bonhoeffer wrote in his final prison letters. Their encouragement fills me with great gratitude and satisfaction.
Indeed I am blessed to have a family that not only indulged my writing and the selfish demands it inevitably makes, but joined me, when possible, in the adventure of research and travel. Henry Marsh, a tenth grader in the spring of 2007, has now embarked on a career in finance and economic development. Will flew the coop after his second Berlin residency to study English literature and write music. Still in high school, Nan, so beautiful, brilliant, and caring (if I might), keeps the home flames burning in her older brothers’ absence. My wife, Karen Wright Marsh, remains my most fierce and loving advocate, a beacon of light through the long haul of research and writing and in the seasons of self-doubt. I dedicate this book to Karen with love and admiration.
NOTES
~
CHAPTER ONE Eternity’s Child
1. Sabine Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, cited in Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 38.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. Sabine Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, cited in ibid., p. 38.
4. Bonhoeffer, “Literary Attempt on the Theme of ‘Death,’ ” in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 11, pp. 396–97.
5. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 32.
6. Sabine Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, cited in ibid., pp. 38–39.
7. Christian Gremmels, Renate Bethge, et al., in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 549.
8. Sabine Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, cited in Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 38.
9. In Martin Luther, Satan is everywhere, as readers of the sixteenth-century reformer can attest, lurking behind wayward thoughts, corrupt popes, perplexing sensations in the body, and other unknown and shadowy regions. With Bonhoeffer’s contemporary Paul Tillich, Satan has been slain by modern psychology, but the “demonic” appears throughout, in opposition to the divine, in a never-ending dialectic of creativity and destruction. In his youthful notes and letters, Bonhoeffer gives little attention to the devil, but later he will speak of Satan and his legions in reference to Hitler, who is also called the “anti-Christ.”
10. Bonhoeffer, “Sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:10, London, Repentance Day, November 19, 1933,” in Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 13, p. 330.
11. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 19.
12. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 19.
13. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, p. 90.
14. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 11.
15. Haber would later supervise Karl-Friedrich’s research at the Max Planck Institute.
16. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, pp. 21–23.
17. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 12.
18. Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin, p. 16.
19. My gratitude to Theresa Clasen, Kerry Moror, and Mark Rylander for architectural and historical detail on Berlin-Grunewald and fin de siècle Germany.
20. As was the case in the home of Max Planck, one block away on the same street. Herman, Max Planck Monographie, n.p.
21. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, pp. 89–90.
22. Ibid., pp. 85–87.
23. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 20.
24. Bethge, Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures, p. 14.
25. Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 19.
26. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 10.
27. Bethge, “Dietrich and Marie,” p. 14.
28. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 58.
29. Bethge, “Dietrich and Marie,” p. 14.
30. As a proponent of empirical psychology and neurology, Dr. Bonhoeffer remained cautious—“by nature astute and critical,” said his colleague Ro
bert Gaupp—in the treatment of addictions, depression, and hysteria. Sigmund Freud’s biographer, Ernest Stanley Jones, claimed that under Karl Bonhoeffer’s leadership, Berlin University became a “bastion against Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis.” But Karl Bonhoeffer appreciated certain insights from the practice of psychoanalysis: the dispassionate and concentrated attention to mental illness, “accompanied by scrupulous observation.” Like his mentor at the University of Breslau, Carl Wernicke, Karl Bonhoeffer focused on the symptoms of impaired consciousness such as hysteria and delirium. Karl Bonhoeffer, though, was not at all an impersonal and detached physician. Sabine was once struck by how much more freely her father revealed himself to his patients than to his own children. Kindly, demanding, and aloof with his own family, Dr. Bonhoeffer brought “empathy and understanding” to his clinical relationships, and affection as well, and was, in turn, loved by his patients.
31. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 36.
32. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 10.
33. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures, p. 14.
34. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” pp. 19–20.
35. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, pp. 8–9.
36. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 19.
37. Ibid., p. 40.
38. Bethge, “Dietrich and Marie,” p. 14.
39. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, p. 74.
40. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 18.
41. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, pp. 49–50.
42. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, p. 127.
43. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, pp. 29, 31, 33.
44. Teresa Classen, conversation with the author.
45. The Harz Journey was published in book form as part of Travel Pictures I.
46. Heine, The Harz Journey, pp. 65, 82.
47. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, p. 180.
48. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 25.
49. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, pp. 97–98.
50. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, pp. 33–34.
51. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 8, p. 294.
52. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 30.
53. Karl Bonhoeffer cited in Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 18.
54. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 28.
55. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, p. 93.
56. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, pp. 19–20. In a February 9, 1920, letter, he mentioned bread ration coupons and a bicycle stolen from the home in Friedrichsbrunn.
57. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 17.
58. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 13.
59. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 30.
60. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 13.
61. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 30.
62. Bethge, “Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition,” p. 228.
63. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 19.
64. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 7, p. 82.
65. In a curriculum vitae written for his fraternity at the University of Tübingen, where he spent his freshman year, Bonhoeffer wrote, “From the time that I was thirteen years old it was clear to me that I would study theology.” Cited in von Hase, “ ‘Turning Away from the Phraseological to the Real,’ ” p. 594.
66. Leibholz-Bonhoeffer, The Bonhoeffers, p. 34.
67. Translation mine. “The Gellert Lieder were composed during a tumultuous time in Beethoven’s life; in an 1801 letter to Dr. Franz Wegeler we find the composer’s first mention of the growing deafness that would eventually drive him into near isolation. This distress, combined with the disappointment of his unrequited love for a ‘dear charming girl’ (most likely the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, a student of Beethoven and the dedicatee of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, op. 27, No. 2) may have induced his temporary attraction to religious subjects such as the Gellert poems, or Christus am Ölberg (Mount of Olives), composed in 1803.” From “Ludwig Van Beethoven,” http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/4590.html#tvf=tracks&tv=about (accessed March 22, 2011).
68. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 25.
69. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 31.
70. Ibid., p. 46.
71. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures, p. 24.
72. Karl August von Hase had gained considerable renown for his massive The History of the Christian Church (Kirchengeschichte: Lehrbuch zunächst für akademische Vorlesungen, 1834), although his many writings also included popular and sympathetic biographies of St. Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Savonarola, and Thomas Münzer.
73. Eberhard Bethge, conversation with the author, May 1992.
74. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 36.
75. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, pp. 21–22.
76. Ibid., p. 46.
77. The “pack” was in fact two former military officers, members of the antidemocratic Organization Consul. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 49.
78. Ibid., p. 46.
79. Bonhoeffer-Leibholz, The Bonhoeffers, pp. 12–13.
80. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, pp. 53–54.
81. Ibid., p. 214.
CHAPTER TWO “Italy Is Simply Inexhaustible”
1. As of 1915, Dr. Simon Hayum and his family lived at 15 Uhlandstrasse. In the same building, he and his cousin Dr. Julius Katz ran the largest law office in town. In 1929 his son Dr. Heinz Hayum joined the office. Dr. Simon Hayum got involved in many cases with public life in town as well as in the self-administration of the Jewish community. Between 1924 and 1935 he was on the steering committee of the Israeli Assembly of Württemberg; from 1919 until 1933 he was chairman of the Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP) at the city council as well as in the steering committee of the Oberschulrat. His generosity toward people in need was well known in town, yet already in 1933 he was a victim of anti-Jewish bullying. Immediately after the Nazis rose to power, Hayum was pressured into relinquishing his honorary civic office. In 1939, he and his family were forced to sell their large house to the city and emigrate, via Switzerland, to the United States. See “The Uhlandstrasse Story,” http://www.tuebingen.de/19.html#142.243 (accessed May 2, 2013), my translation.
2. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 78.
3. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 21.
4. In the eighteenth century, Italy became the destination of choice for the “accomplished, consummate Traveller,” the high point of the Grand Tour for the English and northern Europeans—and remained so throughout the nineteenth century. German fascination boomed in the wake of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s best-selling Italian Journey, filled with beautifully rendered and inviting stories of his 1786 and 1787 travels. But after World War I, as a new German nationalism emerged, travels abroad lost their appeal, and all but the most devoted Italophiles vacationed within the fatherland. Even some members of the Bonhoeffer and von Hase families changed their routines, preferring instead such fine sights as the Cathedral of Doberan, the graves of the Huns in the Wilseder highlands, and the pine-covered slopes on Kickelhahn.
5. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 78.
6. Ibid., pp. 78–79.
7. Ibid., p. 79.
8. Ibid., p. 81.
9. Ibid., p. 78.
10. Only after the occupation did Cuno actively decide to renege on all reparation payments. Whether Germany intentionally defaulted before the occupation is uncertain.
11. Barth and Thurneysen, Revolutionary Theology in the Making, p. 119.
12. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, pp. 55, 64, 66, 61.
13. Ibid., p. 58.
14. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, p. 48.
15. Ibid., p. 49.
16. Wilhelm Dreier to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in DBW, vol. 9, p. 131.
17. Bonhoeffer did not withdraw his membership in the fraternity until the middle of the next decade. By 1935, the Hedgehog had embraced the Nazi Gleichschaltung, with members parro
ting the view that Hitler’s plan to “establish a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society and commerce” should be celebrated as the fulfillment of an ancient German ideal. Bonhoeffer’s resignation was noted in the 1936 fraternity bulletin. If he showed any sign of discontent in his student year, it was only in his slight impatience with provincial Swabia.
18. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 60.
19. Leibholz, “Childhood and Home,” p. 26.
20. Eduard Mörike, “Urach Revisited,” Friedrich Hölderlin and Eduard Mörike, Selected Poems, trans. and ed. Christopher Middleton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 137.
21. Robert Held cited in Pfeifer, “Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition,” p. 570.
22. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, pp. 51–52; Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, pp. 70–74.
23. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 74.
24. Goethe, Italian Journey, p. 128.
25. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 83.
26. Richard Francis Burton, Etruscan Bologna (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1876), p. 4.
27. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, pp. 83–85.
28. Ibid., pp. 83–84.
29. Ibid., p. 84.
30. Ibid., pp. 84–88.
31. Ibid., pp. 85–86.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., p. 87.
34. Ibid.
35. The church of Santa Prassede is “rich in treasures, but on entering it [it] is not so much this that strikes us, as the sensation of being in a well-loved parish church.” Georgina Masson, The Companion Guide to Rome (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 327.
36. Bonhoeffer, DBW, vol. 9, p. 103. He ridiculed the writings of Karl Scheffler and Wilhelm Worringer, two critics who wrote primarily on German art, and scoffed at most of the other critics he consulted as well.