Incidentally, Reisert has been sentenced to five years for failing to report my actions, even though he didn’t know, and couldn’t know, that anyone else was involved, and even though it was certain that he was not questioned by me about state administrators. So this is a sign of what would await Carl Dietrich [von Trotha] and Einsiedel if they were indicted.—I am simply overjoyed about Eugen. After all, I’ve always taken the view that it is possible that he received a real divine promise for himself. The only thing I always disputed, with him and Delp, was that one could obtain a divine promise of this kind by sheer stubbornness. Eugen was quite upset, far more than Delp and I.
I’m in shackles again. I’m also doing much better, almost well, so I don’t want to pester the nasty doctor again, but rather just stay in shackles. It’s only for a few days, and if it should go on longer, well, then I’ll endure that, too, although that’s already far too big a word.
As long as I stay in my current condition, that is, as long as God has the ineffable grace to let me know at all times that He is looking after me, nothing bad can happen to me, absolutely nothing. That is what I have to pray and beg for.
Today we’ll start the Epistle to the Galatians, my love. I have nothing more to write than the same thing again and again, my dear, my love. How many final letters have I written you already? Well, here’s yet another one. But it is in God’s hands whether this is actually the last, and we have every right to say:
“My times are in Thy hand.”
“Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.”
J.
1. See Appendix: Additional Documents.
2. Playing dumb was Gerstenmaier’s strategy. It is believed that Freisler was also influenced by pressure from unknown persons to spare Gerstenmaier, who was directly implicated in the plot of July 20.
HELMUTH JAMES TO FREYA, JANUARY 12–13, 1945
Tegel, 12 Jan 45
My love, a leaden weariness came over me now at 3:30, and I’ll be happy to go to bed at 6. The constant high over the course of three days has worn me out, particularly as I’ve been sleeping only with the help of pills for three nights because I kept drinking coffee all day long, and eating caffeine and coffee beans, so I didn’t even try to sleep without pills but rather always took one when I went to bed. Now I’m yearning for a long uninterrupted night.
My poor dear, your letter of last night and this morning shows me how exhausting all this has been for you. It’s much harder to look on than to be affected directly. Now, I hope, you’re past that. The trial is over, and so I can calmly think about the issue of clemency and help you with it. Now I’ll begin to write down everything that crosses my mind.
1. Carl Viggo [von Moltke] and Jowo [von Moltke] should see whether they can get a face-to-face meeting for me—no, with me—that does not include witnesses, in order to discuss the issue of clemency. Maybe that will be authorized for Carl Viggo in his capacity as head of the district court.
2. The fact that a seizure of assets has not been mentioned is a favorable indication, because that was proposed, and Hercher had also expected it to be a matter of course. I can’t imagine that Freisler would simply have forgotten to announce that, so I consider this a certainty.—If I’m killed, my will can take effect.
3. The verdict rests on two claims: a. that I didn’t report my discussion with Beck–Goerdeler in January ’43, b. that I myself engaged in high treason.
4. For a. The verdict doesn’t yield any substantial factor for the clemency process. But there is this, from the proceedings: I have believed all along, and continue to believe, that the police and the Abwehr knew about Goerdeler, especially because my news came from them. I previously communicated that in a written document, and I informed the Gestapo about it again. The Gestapo told Hercher in an official capacity before the beginning of the trial that it did not want its knowledge to be a subject of discussion. Consequently, during the trial I began to speak only about the knowledge on the part of the Abwehr. Freisler did not permit that to be mentioned in the trial and cut me off from using this defense. That the Abwehr did know, however, is indicated by the execution of Hansen (head of Abwehr I), which has already taken place, and the arrest of Canaris, Oster, etc., whom I saw in prison.
During the trial it was established that I stood up to Goerdeler in very harsh terms, and constantly warned all my friends not to get involved with him; no, it was more than that, not to get involved with any meetings that aimed to overthrow the government.
5. For b. the following was determined at the trial: After very general, basic discussions of the question of how, in the case of enemy occupation of parts of the country or of the Reich as a whole, resistance could be organized and sustained, I said that one ought to think about what kind of men might be worth considering for a task of this sort in the individual regions, and as far as I was concerned, I regarded Lukaschek as a suitable person. It has been determined beyond any doubt that I never spoke to anyone—not even Lukaschek—about whether he wanted to become a state administrator. And there was not even a single word—in the verdict there is not a hint of it—about my having had thoughts of a new central government.
6. If I paid close enough attention, there was no mention of my aiding the enemy, which in other instances is always assumed to be the case.
7. The verdict made it quite clear that I am not a reactionary in the sense that we understand the term. But “a reactionary is anyone who wants something other than the National Socialism” (Freisler at the trial).
8. Schulze’s closing argument and the opinion of the court state quite clearly: Essentially this case has nothing to do with the July 20th plot, and it was pure coincidence that they were adjoined. Indeed, Schulze said: This case differs from all the others that have some connection to the July 20th plot.
9. The tone of the opinion of the court reveals a degree of sympathy, and its final sentence, pertaining to me—“that is why he wanted to get himself into a position of power”—came out of the blue and deviated from the text as a whole.
10. The issue of defeatism was not the subject of the trial. Maybe what I had prepared for the oral trial needs to be said at the clemency proceedings. You know my statement about the war situation from the December 8th pleading.
11. All in all: this is, so to speak, a death sentence with a C-. One of the major reasons I went along with Freisler’s wish to skip over my entire defense in the form of a written document—apart from what I wrote yesterday, that I didn’t want to overshadow the clear line of questioning and the decision: “we both demand the entirety of a person”—was that in view of his clear determination to arrive at a death sentence, I would only have forced him to bring in additional material and provide far more compelling grounds for the verdict and thus to preclude my introducing these arguments in the clemency proceedings.
12. Under this set of circumstances we need to check on:
a. whether I can speak to Carl Viggo so that he can bring up these things; or
b. whether I myself should write a petition for clemency, and to whom.
That is everything I can think of in the matter of clemency. I’m too tired for anything else. It’s about time for supper, and then I’ll go to bed. Good night, my love, sleep well. J.
13 Jan 45
Good morning, my dear love. I slept a good long time. Since I started at 6, I lay awake for a while toward morning. That was to be expected. But now I’m refreshed and can devote myself more tenderly to your grief than I could in the last few letters, when I was too overwhelmed with factual matters.
Yes, my love, it is sad that I’ll be killed, far, far sadder for you than for me. We don’t want to minimize that, and I don’t want to minimize it. It is absolutely no consolation for your pain to know that for me neither death nor dying nor the pain of parting will be difficult if the Lord remains with me as He does now. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you had to tend to my anxiety and my fear as exhaustively as you h
ave over the past few months, your grief might appear more minimal to you, whereas you can now succumb to it fully. You wrote me about your terrible Thursday, that you couldn’t find me when you searched for me with all your strength, and that you weren’t able to do so until you gave up the struggle. That is likely to be the right path. Once I have left this world, all your mortal qualities, all your mortal powers and abilities would not be able to work their magic to bring me back to you. They would yield no more than dreams or delusions. You’ll be able to find me only in the Lord. That’s where I’ll be, and I’ll want to beckon to you and call you and go to any lengths to have you find me there and to ensure that He holds His hand over you so that you’ll find me there. But I won’t be anywhere else from then on. And this will become quite clear at the time of my death, after which my ashes will be scattered to the winds:1 No grave, no slab, no part of my mortal remains will leave a trace behind for you; instead, I’ll be able to be found only with the Lord, and with Him I’ll be exactly as close to you afterward as I am to you now.—And in order not just to grasp that but to know it for a certainty, we need His grace, which cannot be wrested from Him. We can only pray for Him to bestow it upon us, and He will surely bestow it upon you when heeding your prayer and mine just as He has bestowed it upon me and continues to bestow it anew every second. For it’s not as though this is a possession that can be held and carried around; it has to be bestowed anew every second. In the words of Paul: “Be not highminded, but fear!”,2 namely when grace is bestowed upon us.—That has absolutely nothing to do with a clod of earth. We’re all, equally, clods of earth or earthen vessels; we’re all equally unworthy of His grace; we’re all equally lesser beings; any differences there may be between the earthen vessels are so utterly insignificant in proportion to His grace, to the treasure He may—that is, if He wishes to—pour into these earthen vessels that they don’t exist. There is no difference between the executioner, Herr Freisler, Adolf Hitler, a murderous robber, Poelchau, Eugen [Gerstenmaier], Delp, and me that could in the eyes of God provide a reason to bestow His grace on one of these and not on another.
And on that note, I’m coming to the end of this part: For you there will be no earthly solace for my death. Anything one can say to that effect doesn’t seriously hold up, and ultimately comes down to this: It will be forgotten. And that’s exactly what should not happen, because it needs to bear fruit.—There is also a mystical solace, which can preserve the feeling of an inner bond. I think Marion [Yorck] has that—in any case, she has a penchant for mysticism.—But that is nothing for you, my love. You can do only one thing: Keep up your humble prayers that the Lord fills you with His grace, that He, as it says in John—I think 14—comes unto you and makes his abode with you. And then, my dear, you will find me there as well. You know that I am already ceaselessly praying to the Lord today for that and I will continue to do so, and why shouldn’t we believe that He will heed these prayers? It is crucial for us to believe this, and this very belief is one of the prerequisites for Him to come.
But enough of that. I, in any event, am against “composure.” Grief is grief and pain is pain, and we needn’t feel ashamed of feeling either of them. Composure can easily harden the heart, and for you that would be utterly impossible. You must never think that you “owe me good composure.” That is of no consequence.
This may all sound very pharisaical. My love, I truly don’t want to be pharisaical with you; my heart bleeds together with yours, and if I may say some things in a way that is colder, more matter-of-fact, cooler, less humane than I should, you must forgive me. I wrote you the day before yesterday that I carry chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians inside me through you, my love, through you, and not from myself. Farewell, my dear, I embrace you.
May the Lord watch over you and us.
J.
1. In August 1944, Himmler had given the order to burn the corpses of the executed and scatter their ashes on sewage fields in Berlin.
2. Romans 11:20.
FREYA TO HELMUTH JAMES, JANUARY 13, 1945
Saturday morning
My dearest, today I have to write about myself in detail again, if I can, because just as I am able to experience everything alongside you, you also have to experience it alongside me. You, my love, have stood completely in the light. Thank God things were the way they ought to be with you, my dear, very blessed and very beautiful, but I didn’t help you with that, even though I wanted to so badly. All this is very difficult to describe, because it isn’t clear enough to me for me to be able to describe it. I just have the distinct feeling that I didn’t do it right, that the peace during those three days wasn’t peace from the dear Lord, no matter how hard I tried. I spent every day, from morning to night, trying to be there with Him and for you, and all the effort we went to with all our beautiful texts, with all our precious experiences, has come to naught. People didn’t notice this on the outside, nor did I notice it myself; I don’t even know if Harald [Poelchau], for example, has picked up on it. But at midday on Thursday, when, in spite of it all, I was right up against my physical limits—in every way—and realized that I couldn’t manage to accompany you in my thoughts all the way to your death, yet wanted to so much, again and again, your letter arrived, and I saw that I’d done it wrong; it was quite clear that my letter couldn’t touch your heart, or—how should I put this—missed the mark, because I myself was off the mark. Then I grew quite small and poor, shattered and wretched, unlike any other time in my life, so small, so miserable—yet there you were, alive—what good fortune! All the activity with Carl Viggo [von Moltke] overshadowed that feeling during the day, but I was well aware of my puniness. By 5 I was here again, shattered in body and soul, and as I was lying alone on my sofa here, feeling totally exhausted, I suddenly knew the right way to go about it, and now I think I know it through and through, even though I tremble at this certainty, as you did about yours back in November,1 and even though I don’t yet dare bestir myself and am still walking carefully and as if in a new way. When I came out of my room this morning and Dorothee [Poelchau] saw me, she happily declared: Today you look altogether different again! That is true. How can I describe it. The difference between life before and life after death is truly not big, and even the step that seems so huge to us is small and so much more natural than we think. Now you’re still living with me, and one day you will suddenly go on living—no longer with me but only inside me,2 and in a different way—perhaps you will continue to live on next to us, but it is actually not so important what happens, whether you are killed or you remain alive, because what is important will remain, so I needn’t think and wish to be there, but instead live our life, which is why I needn’t seek to capture my closeness to you and to God from the precious books or through constant entreaties and prayers; instead, I have to live on serenely, in a self-evident, quotidian, and natural way, with my great love for you. Then He will be with me, for He has often, in fact mostly, been with me without my realizing it, but then I will also be with you, as I have always been. My love, my intercession for you is not my prayer, it’s my life, my being, my existence, my belonging-to-you in life, wherever life is lived. This has now become quite apparent to me, even though my whole life and every word I have directed at you over these past few months perhaps already showed you this, and it may have been completely clear to you. You are quite right, the omnipotence of God is demonstrated in my case precisely when I make pancakes for the little sons, precisely then. I know exactly how much He has blessed me in everything, including the gifts that are so well suited to this life, but now He also wants me to complete myself for Him and you in this way. That is why it was wrong and pretentious and arrogant to want to seize Him for your sake by force, you had no need of that since He lets my heart beat for you anyway, and it has been beating, but whatever else I’ve done beyond that was nonsense—and you didn’t die; instead, you are alive, still living here with me. We should no longer think about what is coming; at least I shouldn’t. I feel my love and
my closeness to you and when you’re dead, it will stay that way. Whether you die or whether you live, which I, just like you, consider equally possible, just as before, that would be good, but in neither case does much change. During these past months I’ve certainly come to understand all that already. That is why I was doing so well, as all this has become so clear to us as a result of divine providence, but over these past three days I’ve also lived it. How should I describe that? Do you understand me well? In spite of my inept description? As I live, I live in Him and for you. That is all I need to do. I will do that in the future, for Him and for you, whether you are alive or over there. Maybe you’ll be dead someday, maybe in two weeks, maybe in two years, maybe in twenty years, I now know that that doesn’t make much of a difference, no, I always knew that, but I have now experienced that it isn’t my task to trace this step in my thoughts but rather to be there in my life. I will do that, and that is what I am, my dear. Then it’s actually not at all difficult. The enormous burden of these three days showed me that what I was doing was not right. When it’s right, it is far more natural, far more tolerable, not as imposing, and this is how it will be, too, when I die. God requires of me only that I be devoted to Him, to you, and to many other people, and He will ordain all else in such a way that it is right and tolerable for me. You’ve seen for yourself the ease with which I’ve come through this year; that is how it should be, and that is how I will now also experience your death when it comes, and all that is only thanks to the kindness and help and grace He bestows on me without my having to ask for it. Along with you, I am His child, my heart is truly quite simple in that regard, and He wants to preserve me in this and possibly free me from any desire to tackle everything I have no need to tackle.—I will therefore now continue to live quietly, here and in Kreisau, day in and day out, and of course with you.—All this may strike you as nothing new, as something we both already knew quite well, but I have gained some added degree of certainty, which is why I had to report this to you as well as I could. Did you understand that, my dear! From now on no letter from me will be the last one, because I’ve already written all the last letters, and yet I may still be writing—just as God wills—many more letters.—So, all of that was about me, but everything that is about me is also about you!
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