Letters and Papers from Prison DBW Vol 8

By Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Despite Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prior theological achievements and writings, it was his correspondence and notes from prison that electrified the postwar world six years after his death in 1945. The materials gathered and selected by his friend Eberhard Bethge in Letters and Papers from Prison not only brought Bonhoeffer to a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781451406788

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau in 1906. The son of a famous German psychiatrist, he studied in Berlin and New York City. He left the safety of America to return to Germany and continue his public repudiation of the Nazis, which led to his arrest in 1943. Linked to the group of conspirators whose attempted assassination of Hitler failed, he was hanged in April 1945.

Book preview

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS, VOLUME 8

Letters and Papers from Prison

This series is a translation of

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WERKE

Edited by

Eberhard Bethge†, Ernst Feil,

Christian Gremmels, Wolfgang Huber,

Hans Pfeifer, Albrecht Schönherr†,

Heinz Eduard Tödt†, Ilse Tödt

This volume has been made possible through the generous support of the Lilly Endowment, Inc.; Thrivent Financial Foundation for Lutherans; the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Charitable Foundation; the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia; the Goethe-Institut; the gifts of numerous members and friends of the International Bonhoeffer Society; and is dedicated by a gift from Nancy J. Farrell to the ministry of future pastors and scholars.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS

General Editors

Victoria J. Barnett

Barbara Wojhoski

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS, VOLUME 8

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Letters and Papers from Prison

Translated from the German Edition

Edited by

CHRISTIAN GREMMELS, EBERHARD BETHGE,

AND RENATE BETHGE,

WITH ILSE TÖDT

English Edition

Edited by

JOHN W. DE GRUCHY

Translated by

ISABEL BEST, LISA E. DAHILL,

REINHARD KRAUSS, AND NANCY LUKENS

After Ten Years

Translated by

BARBARA† AND MARTIN RUMSCHEIDT

Supplementary Material Translated by

DOUGLAS W. STOTT

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS, Volume 8

Originally published in German as Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, edited by Eberhard Bethge et al., by Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus in 1998; Band 8, Widerstand und Ergebung, edited by Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Tödt. First English-language edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8 published by Fortress Press in 2010.

Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft first published in German by Christian Kaiser Verlag in 1951, expanded edition 1970. Original English-language edition published as Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison, edited by Eberhard Bethge; translated by Reginald H. Fuller by SCM Press, London, 1953, and the Macmillan Company, New York, 1954; revised and expanded editions as Letters and Papers from Prison, copyright ©1967, 1971. Touchstone edition from Simon and Schuster, 1997.

Copyright: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8: Letters and Papers from Prison copyright © 2009 Augsburg Fortress. New Dietrich Bohoeffer Works English-language translation of material first published as Letters and Papers from Prison copyright © 1953, 1967, 1971 SCM Press, London. All rights reserved. All other material original to Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works edition of this work: copyright © 2010 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.

Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/ or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Jacket design: Cheryl Watson

Cover photo: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1939, outside the house in Sigurdhof. © Chr. Kaiser/Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh, Germany.

Book design: HK Scriptorium, Inc.

Typesetting: Ann Delgehausen, Trio Bookworks

eISBN 978-1-4514-0678-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906–1945.

[Widerstand und Ergebung. English]

Letters and papers from prison / edited by Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge, with Ilse Tödt; English edition edited by John W. de Gruchy; translated by Isabel Best … [et al.]. — 1st English edition.

p. cm. — (Dietrich Bonhoeffer works)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-0-8006-9703-7 (alk. paper)

1. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906-1945—Correspondence. 2. Prisoners of war—Germany—Correspondence. 3. Theologians—Germany—Correspondence.

I. Gremmels, Christian, 1941– II. Bethge, Eberhard, 1909–2000 III. Bethge, Renate. IV. Tödt, Ilse, 1930– V. De Gruchy, John W. VI. Title.

BX4827.B57A4 2010

ISBN 978-0-8006-9703-7

CONTENTS

---

General Editor’s Foreword to Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works

Abbreviations

Editor’s Introduction to the English Edition

John W. de Gruchy

Letters and Papers from Prison

Prologue

An Account at the Turn of the Year 1942–1943: After Ten Years

Part 1

The Interrogation Period: April–July 1943

1. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, April 11, 1943

2. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, April 14, 1943

3. From the Senior Reich War Military Prosecutor to Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, April 20, 1943

4. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, April 23, 1943

5. From Hans von Dohnanyi, Berlin-Moabit, April 23, 1943

6. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, April 25, 1943

7. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, April 28, 1943

8. From Rüdiger Schleicher, Berlin-Charlottenburg, April 29, 1943

9. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, May 4, 1943

10. To Hans von Dohnanyi, Tegel, May 5, 1943

11. Notes I, Tegel, May 1943

12. Notes II, Tegel, May 1943

13. From Karl Bonhoeffer to the Senior Reich Military Court Prosecutor, Berlin-Charlottenburg, May 9, 1943

14. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, May 9, 1943

15. From the Senior Reich Military Court Prosecutor to Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin, May 10, 1943

16. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, May 15, 1943

17. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, May 15, 1943

18. Wedding Sermon from the Prison Cell, May 1943

19. From Susanne Dreß, Berlin-Dahlem, May 15, 1943

20. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, May 16, 1943

21. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, May 25, 1943

22. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, May 25, 1943

23. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, May 30, 1943

24. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, June 2, 1943

25. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, June 4, 1943

26. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, June 8, 1943

27. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, June 10, 1943

28. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, June 12, 1943

29. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, June 14, 1943

30. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, June 15, 1943

31. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, June 24, 1943

32. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, June 27, 1943

33. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, July 3, 1943

34. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, July 11, 1943

35. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, July 11, 1943

36. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, July 14, 1943

37. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, July 24, 1943

38. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, July 28, 1943

39. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, July 30, 1943

Part 2

Awaiting the Trial: August 1943–April 1944

40. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 3, 1943

41. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 7, 1943

42. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, August 8, 1943

43. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, August 11, 1943

44. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 17, 1943

45. From Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, Sakrow, August 22, 1943

46. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 24, 1943

47. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Friedrichsbrunn, August 30, 1943

48. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, August 30, 1943

49. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, August 31, 1943

50. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, August 31, 1943

51. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, September 3, 1943

52. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, September 3, 1943

53. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow, September 4, 1943

54. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, September 5, 1943

55. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow, September 7, 1943

56. From Renate Bethge, Sakrow, September 8, 1943

57. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, September 13, 1943

58. From the Senior Reich Military Prosecutor, Torgau, September 16, 1943

59. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, September 20, 1943

60. Last Will and Testament, Tegel, September 20, 1943

61. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, September 25, 1943

62. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow, September 28, 1943

63. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, October 3, 1943

64. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 4, 1943

65. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 13, 1943

66. From Karl Bonhoeffer to the President of the Reich War Court, Berlin-Charlottenburg, October 17, 1943

67. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 22, 1943

68. From Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, October 23, 1943

69. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, October 31, 1943

70. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, November 5, 1943

71. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, November 9, 1943

72. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, November 17, 1943

73. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, November 18 and 20–23, 1943

74. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, November 21, 1943

75. Last Will and Testament, Tegel, November 23, 1943

76. Prayers for Prisoners: Morning Prayer, Tegel, November 1943

77. Prayers for Prisoners: Evening Prayer, Tegel, November 1943

78. Prayers for Prisoners: Prayer in Particular Need, Tegel, November 1943

79. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, November 26–30, 1943

80. Report on Experiences during Alarms, Tegel, November 28, 1943

81. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, November 28, 1943

82. From Eberhard Bethge, Berlin-Charlottenburg, November 30, 1943

83. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Sakrow, December 5, 1943

84. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, December 5, 1943

85. From Susanne Dreß, Friedrichsbrunn, December 14, 1943

86. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, December 15 and 16, 1943

87. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, December 17, 1943

88. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, December 18, 19, and 22, 1943

89. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, December 24–26, 1943

90. Christmas Letter, Tegel, December 1943

91. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Sakrow, December 25, 1943

92. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, December 25, 1943

93. From Christoph von Dohnanyi, Sakrow, December 28, 1943

94. From Eberhard Bethge, Lissa, January 2, 1944

95. From Eberhard Bethge, Berlin-Charlottenburg, January 8, 1944

96. From Eberhard Bethge, en route to Munich, January 9, 1944

97. From Renate Bethge, Sakrow, January 10, 1944

98. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, January 14, 1944

99. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, January 15, 1944

100. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Sakrow, January 16, 1944

101. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, January 18, 1944

102. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, January 23, 1944

103. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, January 25, 1944

104. From Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, January 27, 1944

105. From Renate Bethge, Sakrow, January 28, 1944

106. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, January 29 and 30, 1944

107. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, February 1, 1944

108. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 1 and 2, 1944

109. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Leipzig, February 4, 1944

110. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 4 and 5, 1944

111. To Renate Bethge, Tegel, February 5, 1944

112. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 12–14, 1944

113. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, February 15 and 17, 1944

114. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, February 20, 1944

115. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, February 21, 23, and 25, 1944

116. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, February 22, 1944

117. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 1, 1944

118. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, March 2, 1944

119. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, March 2, 1944

120. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, March 3 and 4, 1944

121. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 9 and 10, 1944

122. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 19, 1944

123. To Karl Bonhoeffer, Tegel, March 23, 1944

124. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, March 24, 25, and 27, 1944

125. From Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, March 26, 1944

126. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Pätzig, March 27, 1944

127. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, end of March, 1944

128. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 2, 1944

129. From Rüdiger Schleicher, Berlin-Charlottenburg, April 7, 1944

130. To Ruth von Wedemeyer, Tegel, April 10, 1944

131. Report on Prison Life after One Year in Tegel, April 1944

Part 3

Holding Out for the Coup Attempt: April–July 1944

132. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 11, 1944

133. From Ursula Schleicher, Klein-Krössin, April 18, 1944

134. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, April 21, 1944

135. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 22, 1944

136. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Tegel, April 26, 1944

137. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, April 30, 1944

138. From Eberhard Bethge, Rignano, May 5 and 8, 1944

139. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 5, 1944

140. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 6 and 7, 1944

141. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 9, 1944

142. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 16, 1944

143. To Ursula Schleicher, Tegel, May 1944

144. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 18, 1944

145. Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of Dietrich Wilhelm Rüdiger Bethge, Tegel, end of May 1944

146. To Eberhard and Renate Bethge, Tegel, May 19, 1944

147. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 20, 1944

148. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 21 and 22, 1944

149. To Renate and Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 24, 1944

150. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 26, 1944

151. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 27, 1944

152. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, May 29 and 30, 1944

153. To Hans-Walter Schleicher, Tegel, June 2, 1944

154. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 2, 1944

155. From Eberhard Bethge, Sakrow, June 3, 1944

156. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 5, 1944

157. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 5, 1944

158. The Past, Tegel, June 1944

159. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 6, 1944

160. From Eberhard Bethge, Sakrow, June 6 and 7, 1944

161. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 8 and 9, 1944

162. From Eberhard Bethge, en route and in Munich, June 8–10, 1944

163. From Eberhard Bethge, Munich, June 16, 1944

164. Notes I, Tegel, end of June 1944

165. Notes II, Tegel, end of June 1944

166. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 21, 1944

167. Fortune and Calamity, Tegel, June 1944

168. From Eberhard Bethge, Montevettolini, June 26, 1944

169. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 27, 1944

170. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, June 30 and July 1, 1944

171. Notes, Tegel, July 1944

172. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 8 and 9, 1944

173. Who Am I? Tegel, summer 1944

174. Christians and Heathens, Tegel, summer 1944

175. Night Voices, Tegel, summer 1944

176. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza, July 8, 1944

177. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 16 and 18, 1944

Part 4

After the Failure: July 1944–February 1945

178. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 21, 1944

179. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 25, 1944

180. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 27, 1944

181. Notes I, Tegel, July–August 1944

182. Notes II, Tegel, July–August 1944

183. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, July 28, 1944

184. Miscellaneous Notes, Tegel, summer 1944

185. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge, Sakrow, July 30, 1944

186. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 3, 1944

187. Outline for a Book, Tegel, August 1944

188. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 10, 1944

189. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 11, 1944

190. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 14, 1944

191. Stations on the Way to Freedom, Tegel, August 1944

192. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 21, 1944

193. To Eberhard Bethge, Tegel, August 23, 1944

194. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza, August 24, 1944

195. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza, August 26 and 29, 1944

196. The Friend, Tegel, August 27 and 28, 1944

197. The Death of Moses, Tegel, September 1944

198. From Eberhard Bethge, San Polo d’Enza, September 21 and 30, 1944

199. Jonah, Tegel, October 1944

200. By Powers of Good, Berlin, December 1944

201. To Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin, December 28, 1944

202. To Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Berlin, January 17, 1945

203. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, February 2, 1945

204. From Karl Bonhoeffer, Berlin-Charlottenburg, February 7, 1945

205. Maria von Wedemeyer to Ruth von Wedemeyer, Flossenbürg, February 19, 1945

206. From Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, February 28, 1945

Epilogue

The Survivor Looks Back: Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer to His Children, Leipzig, June 1945

Editor’s Afterword to the German Edition

Christian Gremmels

Appendices

1. Chronology 1942–1945

2. Bonhoeffer Family Tree

3. Texts Published in DBWE 8, and in Letters and Papers from Prison and Gesammelte Schriften

4. Unpublished Material from Bonhoeffer’s Literary Estate, 1943–1945

Bibliography

1. Archival Sources and Private Collections

2. Literature Mentioned by Bonhoeffer and His Correspondents

3. Literature and Printed Music Consulted by the Editors

Index of Scriptural References

Index of Names

Index of Subjects

Editors and Translators

GENERAL EDITOR’S FOREWORD TO DIETRICH BONHOEFFER WORKS

---

The German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become one of the most influential Christian thinkers of all time. Barely twenty-seven years of age when the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, Bonhoeffer emerged immediately as a radical Protestant voice against the ideological cooptation of his church. He was one of the earliest critics of the Nazi regime and an outspoken opponent of the pro-Nazi German Christians. From 1933 to 1935, he served as pastor of two German-speaking congregations in England, leading them to join the Confessing Church—the faction within the German Protestant Church that opposed the nazification of the Christian faith. He returned to Germany to become director of a small Confessing Church seminary and, after the Gestapo closed it, continued to work illegally to educate Confessing clergy. Throughout the 1930s he attended ecumenical meetings, effectively becoming the voice of the Confessing Church throughout the European and American ecumenical world. In 1939, his ecumenical friends urged him to accept a position in New York. Rejecting the security of a life in exile, Bonhoeffer chose instead to join the ranks of the German conspiracy to overthrow the regime, like his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher. He was arrested and imprisoned in April 1943 and executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in April 1945.

In a eulogy published shortly after Bonhoeffer’s death, his former professor and friend Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that Bonhoeffer’s story is worth recording. It belongs to the modern acts of the apostles.… Not only his martyr’s death, but also his actions and precepts contain within them the hope of a revitalised Protestant faith in Germany. It will be a faith religiously more profound than that of many of its critics; but it will have learned to overcome the one fateful error of German Protestantism, the complete dichotomy between faith and political life.¹

In the ensuing decades, Niebuhr’s prescient insight that Bonhoeffer’s life and work offered lasting insights for modern Christian experience and witness has been more than fulfilled. Bonhoeffer wrote hundreds of letters, sermons, and biblical reflections in addition to his published theological works. After 1945, Bonhoeffer’s former student and close friend Eberhard Bethge worked with publishers to reissue and translate the books that Bonhoeffer had published in his lifetime. In translation these works—Discipleship, Ethics, and Letters and Papers from Prison—became classics, finding a wide readership among Christians throughout the world.

Yet there was a growing sense that these works should not stand alone, a realization of the significance of the biographical and historical context of his thought. Bonhoeffer’s papers also included lecture notes that had been made by his students, documents from the German Church Struggle and ecumenical meetings, circular letters that were sent to his seminarians, sermons, extensive correspondence with theologians and religious leaders in Europe and the United States, and prison writings. Bethge published several early compilations of some of these documents (Gesammelte Schriften and Mündige Welt) and incorporated additional material into his magisterial biography of Bonhoeffer, which first appeared in English in 1970 and then, in a revised and unabridged edition, in 2000.

Bethge and leading Bonhoeffer scholars in Germany decided to publish new, annotated editions of Bonhoeffer’s complete theological works, together with most of the documents from the literary estate, including historical documents and correspondence to Bonhoeffer. The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke series was published by Chr. Kaiser Verlag, now part of Gütersloher Verlagshaus. The first German volume, a new edition of Bonhoeffer’s dissertation Sanctorum Communio, appeared in 1986; the final volume, Bonhoeffer’s complete prison writings, appeared in April 1998. Volume 17, an index for the entire series, appeared in 1999; this volume also includes documents discovered after their respective volumes had been published. Whenever possible these documents have been included in the appropriate volumes of the English edition; documents that continue to be discovered are published in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Jahrbuch, a series published by Gütersloher Verlagshaus.

Discussion about an English translation of the entire series began as soon as the first German volumes appeared. In 1990 the International Bonhoeffer Society, English Language Section, in agreement with the German Bonhoeffer Society and Fortress Press, undertook the English translation of the German Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke. The project began with an initial grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities with Robin Lovin serving as project director, assisted by Mark Brocker. An editorial board was formed for the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, staffed by Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. as general editor and Clifford J. Green of Hartford Seminary as executive director. Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., at that time director of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Center at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, served as general editor from 1993 to 2004, overseeing publication of the first seven volumes as well as volume 9. Victoria J. Barnett, director of church relations at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, joined the project as associate general editor in 2002 and became general editor in 2004, joined by Barbara Wojhoski, a professional editor who prepared the manuscripts of the final volumes for publication.

The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition (DBWE), is the definitive English translation of Bonhoeffer’s theological and other writings. It includes a great deal of material that appears for the first time in English, as well as documents discovered only after the publication of the original German volumes. The DBWE is a significant contribution to twentieth-century theological literature, church history, and the history of the Nazi era. Particularly in their portrayal of the daily implications of the Protestant Church Struggle in Nazi Germany and the response of Christians outside Germany, these volumes offer a detailed and unique glimpse of Bonhoeffer’s historical context and its great challenges for the churches and for all people of conscience.

The translators of the DBWE volumes have attempted throughout to render an accurate and readable translation of Bonhoeffer’s writings for contemporary audiences, while remaining true to Bonhoeffer’s thought and style. Particular attention has been paid to the translation of important theological, historical, and philosophical terms. Bonhoeffer’s language and style often reflect the period in which he lived, particularly with regard to gendered language, and this is evidenced in the historical and church documents. Nonetheless, in the translations of the early volumes of his theological writings (DBWE volumes 1–7), the decision was made to use gender-inclusive language, insofar as this was deemed possible without distorting Bonhoeffer’s meaning or unjustifiably dissociating him from his own time.

Each volume includes an introduction written by the DBWE volume editor(s), footnotes provided by Bonhoeffer, editorial notes added by the German and English editors, and the original afterword written by the editor(s) of the German edition. Additions or revisions of the German editors’ notes are enclosed in square brackets and initialed by the editor of the respective volume. When any previously translated material is quoted in an editorial note in altered form—indicated by the notation [trans. altered]—such changes should be assumed to be the responsibility of the translator(s). When available, existing English translations of books and articles in German and other languages are cited in the notes.

Bonhoeffer’s own footnotes, which are indicated in the body of the text by plain superscripted numbers, are reproduced in precisely the same numerical sequence as they appear in the German critical edition, complete with his idiosyncrasies of documentation. In these, as in the accompanying editorial notes, the edition of a work that was consulted by Bonhoeffer himself can be determined by consulting the bibliography at the end of each volume.

Each volume also contains a list of abbreviations frequently used in the editorial notes, as well as a bibliography of archival sources, sources used by Bonhoeffer, literature consulted by the editors, and other works relevant to that respective volume. Each volume also includes a chronology of important dates relevant to that volume, an index of scriptural references, an index of persons with pertinent biographical information, and an index of subjects. Bibliographies at the end of each volume provide the complete information for each written source that Bonhoeffer or the various editors have mentioned in the current volume.

Bonhoeffer’s literary estate—the notes, sermons, correspondence, and other writings, as well as the personal library of materials that belonged to him and survived the war—was cataloged by Dietrich Meyer and Eberhard Bethge, and this catalog has been published as the Nachlaß Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Most of the documents cited in the Nachlaß are collected in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, although some documents remain in other archives. All documents listed in the Nachlaß, however, have been copied on microfiches that are now at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and in the Bonhoeffer collection at Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York. References to any of these documents are indicated in the DBWE by the abbreviation NL, followed by the corresponding catalog number. Books in the bibliography from Bonhoeffer’s own library are indicated by the abbreviation NL-Bibl.

Volumes 1–7 of the English edition, which contain only Bonhoeffer’s own writings, retain his original organization of the material, either as chapters or as sections or unnumbered manuscripts. Volumes 8–16 contain collected writings from a particular period of Bonhoeffer’s life, including correspondence from others and historical documents. With the exception of volume 8, these final volumes are divided into three sections, with the documents in each section arranged chronologically: (1) Letters, Journals, Documents; (2) Essays, Seminar Papers, Papers, Lectures, Compositions; (3) Sermons, Meditations, Catechetical Writings, Exegetical Writings. Documents are numbered consecutively within the respective sections. In editorial notes these items are labeled by the DBWE volume number, followed by the section number, document number, and finally the page number; for example, DBWE 9 (1/109), p. 179, ed. note 1, would refer to the English edition, volume 9, section 1, document 109, page 179, editorial note 1.

The DBWE also reproduces Bonhoeffer’s original paragraphing (exceptions are noted by a ¶ symbol to indicate any paragraph break added by the editors of the English edition or by conventions explained in the introductions written by the editor[s] of specific volumes). The pagination of the DBW German critical edition is indicated in the outer margins of the pages of the translated text. When it is important to give readers a word or phrase in its original language, a translated passage is followed by the original, set within square brackets. All biblical citations come from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) unless otherwise noted. When versification of the Bible used by Bonhoeffer differs from the NRSV, the verse number in the latter is noted in the text in square brackets.

The publication of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, would not have been possible without the generous support of numerous individuals and institutions. The verso of the half-title page of each volume provides a list of supporters of that particular volume. The series as a whole is indebted to many individual members and friends of the International Bonhoeffer Society, and to family foundations, congregations, synods, seminaries, and universities. Special thanks are due to the following foundations and donors for major grants: the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Lilly Endowment, Inc.; the Thrivent Financial for Lutherans Foundation; the Aid Association for Lutherans; the Stiftung Bonhoeffer Lehrstuhl; the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Charitable Foundation; and Dr. John Young and Mrs. Cleo Young. The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and its former auxiliary provided space and ongoing support. Particular thanks go to our publisher, Fortress Press, and its ever-helpful and skilled staff, particularly its editorial director, Michael West, and his predecessor, Marshall Johnson.

The existence of this series in English and other languages is testimony to the international community of those who have found Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be a profoundly important companion in their own journey. That community would not exist without the wisdom, generosity, and dedication of Eberhard Bethge (1909–2000) and his wife, Renate. Bethge was himself a pastor in the Confessing Church. After 1945, he was convinced that the future of a living church in Germany depended on its addressing its failures under Nazism and in a new understanding of Bonhoeffer’s lasting question, Who is Christ for us today?

The editors of this English edition are particularly grateful to the original editorial board of the German edition—composed of Eberhard Bethge†, Ernst Feil, Christian Gremmels, Wolfgang Huber, Hans Pfeifer, Albrecht Schönherr†, Heinz Eduard Tödt†, and Ilse Tödt. As liaison between the German and English editorial boards, Hans Pfeifer has given steadfast and congenial support to his colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. The editors of the individual German volumes have been generous with their time and expertise. As work on the DBWE has proceeded, a new generation of Bonhoeffer scholars in Germany has assisted us as well: Christine Kasch, Andreas Pangritz, Holger Roggelin, Christiane Tietz, and Ralf Wüstenberg.

We remain grateful to those whose original translations of Bonhoeffer’s words introduced most of us to his work. It is only fitting, however, that this English edition be dedicated, finally, to the remarkable group of scholars who over the years have devoted their time, their insights, and their generous spirit to the translation, editing, and publication of these volumes. That dedication should begin with a special acknowledgment of the capable editorial leadership of Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., who brought eight volumes to publication, and to Clifford J. Green, whose steady hand has guided the project throughout its existence and ensured the financial foundation for its completion.

The translators who have brought Bonhoeffer’s words to new life in these volumes are Victoria Barnett, Douglas Bax, Claudia and Scott Bergmann-Moore, Isabel Best, Daniel W. Bloesch, James H. Burtness†, Lisa E. Dahill, Peter Frick, Barbara Green, David Higgins, Nick Humphrey, Reinhard Krauss, Peter Krey, Nancy Lukens, Mary Nebelsick, Marion Pauck, Martin Rumscheidt, Anne Schmidt-Lange, Douglas W. Stott, and Charles West.

The following individuals serve on the editorial board of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition: H. Gaylon Barker, Victoria Barnett, Mark Brocker, Keith Clements, Peter Frick, Clifford J. Green, John W. de Gruchy, Barry Harvey, Reinhard Krauss, Michael Lukens, Larry Rasmussen, and Barbara Wojhoski. James H. Burtness†, Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr., Barbara Green, James Patrick Kelley, Geffrey B. Kelly, Robin W. Lovin, Nancy Lukens, Paul Matheny, Mary Nebelsick, F. Burton Nelson†, and H. Martin Rumscheidt all previously served on the board, and many of them continue to serve the project through its advisory committee.

In September 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his parents from prison: In normal life one is often not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give and that gratitude is what enriches life. One easily overestimates the importance of one’s own acts and deeds, compared with what we become only through other people.² Everyone who has worked on this project will, I believe, find meaning in those words and feel gratitude for Bonhoeffer’s life and witness. It is a privilege to have been part of this long, deep, and rich conversation with Bonhoeffer’s thought, and to extend that conversation to the readers of these volumes.

Victoria J. Barnett

General Editor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English Edition

[1.] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Death of a Martyr, Christianity and Crisis 5, no. 11 (1945): 6–7.

[2.] Letter of September 13, 1943, to his parents (2/57 in this volume).

ABBREVIATIONS

---

JOHN W. DE GRUCHY

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

---

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s status as a major figure in twentieth-century Christianity is well established. Few who are familiar with his legacy will deny its significance for theology, the church, the ecumenical movement, and the development of Christian spirituality along with the struggle for justice and peace in the world. Many would regard Bonhoeffer as a Protestant martyr and saint. Interest in his legacy has also spread well beyond the confines of Christianity. People of other faiths, secular humanists and scholars of various disciplines, musicians, dramatists, filmmakers and poets, along with people from all walks of life have found inspiration in Bonhoeffer’s life and work. But of all his writings, now collected in the sixteen volumes of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (DBWE), none has contributed more to this wideranging and global interest or to establishing Bonhoeffer’s stature than his Letters and Papers from Prison. Now, more than fifty years after its first publication as a slender volume of fewer than two hundred pages, it is widely hailed as a classic text of twentieth-century Christianity and literature. For that reason alone, this new English translation based on the critical German edition (DBW 8) has long been anticipated.

There will be many readers, probably the majority as the years pass, who will be reading the prison writings for the first time. They will want to know why the text in their hands is regarded as a classic and worth reading. Their knowledge of Bonhoeffer’s earlier life and writings, as well as their understanding of key terms and their significance both for him and his later interpreters, may be limited. There will be other readers who have long been acquainted with the contents as found in earlier editions. They will be interested in discovering what is different about this edition, and how it contributes to our knowledge of Bonhoeffer’s legacy and to its contemporary interpretation. Both types of readers have been kept in mind in preparing the introduction written especially for this new English edition.

Whereas the introduction has been written for this edition, the afterword is a translation of the German edition’s Nachwort. The latter provides an extended reflection on the content of the letters and papers that enables the reader to discern the dominant threads running through the material and to identify the key ideas and issues. The introduction is complementary to the afterword, and as such it does not try to cover the same ground, though some repetition has become inevitable. The introduction is intended to provide information that may be of particular help and interest for the English reader. Indeed, Letters and Papers from Prison has had a somewhat different history and impact in the Anglo-Saxon world compared to that in the German-speaking world or elsewhere. But wherever its influence has been felt, there can be no doubt that it is widely acclaimed as a classic. What this means and why it may be so are questions we now need to address.

Letters and Papers from Prison as Classic

Bonhoeffer did not plan or intend the publication of his letters and papers from prison. His close friend and confidant Eberhard Bethge undertook the task after Bonhoeffer’s death in order to share with a wider public the exciting new thoughts about the future of Christianity that Bonhoeffer had shared with him. These thoughts were expressed in a series of letters from April 30, 1944, onward, which are usually referred to as the theological letters. The decision to publish these letters determined the original structure and content of the first edition of Letters and Papers from Prison and has generally influenced the way in which the volume has been received and understood. These theological letters remain central to the prison writings, and many readers will regard them as the core of its contents. But it should be kept in mind that they represent but a handful of the letters in the book, and that they only begin toward the end of Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment. There is, in other words, a great deal more in this volume than the reader might have anticipated, just as there is a range of genres other than letters: poetry, meditations, prayers, reports, a book outline, and some pithy, cryptic notes.

The correspondence in DBWE 8 recounts the remarkable story of a distinguished German family closely connected to the conspiracy against Hitler during the months that culminated in the collapse of the Nazi regime and the fall of Berlin. It is a story about relationships, friendship and love, anxiety and hope, set in a city under virtual siege, in a military prison where Bonhoeffer and others awaited trial, and on the Italian war front, where Bethge was stationed. From the outset, the reader enters into the daily life of the extended Bonhoeffer family as its members try to cope with the increasingly immense challenges confronting them. Night after night they take shelter from the bombs raining down on their city. Yet daily life continues as they seek a semblance of normalcy by attending school, going to work, repairing bomb-damaged homes, planting gardens, and celebrating birthdays, weddings, and holy days. Yet there is always an ominous cloud hovering over everything else, defined by the increasing destruction around them and, above all, by the imprisonment of Dietrich, his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, and several coconspirators in the plot against Hitler.

At the center of this unfolding drama, the reader, already aware of its tragic outcome, encounters Bonhoeffer himself—a man of faith, prayer, and probing intellect, hoping against hope that the plot to assassinate Hitler would succeed, struggling with his doubts, fears, and loneliness, aching to be reunited with his fiancée, his family, and his friend Eberhard Bethge. Day by day he is conscious of the suffering of his former students, many of them now on the battlefield, some of them already dead. He is mindful of the needs of his fellow prisoners and warders who seek his counsel. Above all, he is concerned about the welfare of his parents, his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, and his extended family, trying to hide from them the worst of his experiences and the deepest of his fears. All of this is captured in his letters like images on a photograph. If in his other writings we encounter the student, pastor, theologian, and teacher, in DBWE 8 we meet Bonhoeffer also as the human being and become party to both his strengths and his weaknesses. Out of his experience of isolation, interrogation, and uncertainty come remarkable insights, then, into what it means to be human as well as Christian, as in his comments on friendship and music or his reflections on time. Memories of the past along with anticipations of the future connect his daily experience of prison life to the world he loved and the love he longed to experience more fully. Another sense of time, that of the passing seasons and the seasons of the Christian year, provide the markers that enable Bonhoeffer to give order to his life in prison as reflected in his daily reading from the Bible and the recalling of favorite hymns. And all the while, he looks forward in anticipation to the all too infrequent visits of his aging parents and his fiancée, the parcels of food and other provisions, of books and even some cigars left for him, and, of course, the letters that keep him in touch with his family, Maria, and his friend Eberhard.

The importance of Bonhoeffer’s letters and papers has attracted the attention of many, not only in the aftermath of the Second World War but in many other contexts since then. Bonhoeffer’s letters express the fears, hopes, and courage of someone who increasingly came to accept the inevitability of his own death. This was not a meek resignation to fate, however tempting, but a learning to trust more deeply in God despite his circumstances. Always affirming life in its fullness, his constant thought as his life drew to its untimely close was the meaning of hope. Bonhoeffer had reflected on death since childhood after his brother Walter died from wounds on the western front during the First World War.[¹] He was acutely conscious of the death of his students on the battlefield, of the many civilians who had needlessly died, and of the Jews and others who were perishing in concentration camps. Now he had to face the likelihood of his own death. Yet despite the fear of being cut down in the prime of life, with love unfulfilled, friendship denied, and much yet to be done, he came to accept his destiny, whatever it might be, submitting to the God he had come to know in Jesus Christ. Nowhere is this more poignantly expressed than in his prison poetry, in which death becomes the last station on the road to freedom.[²]

The structure of DBWE 8, which will be examined in detail later in the introduction, hinges on the conspiracy against Hitler. Although this can never be openly stated in the letters because of the dangers involved, the reader can sense the expectation of success mingled with the fear of failure. But after July 20, 1944, the day the plot failed and reprisals began, the mood changes even though nothing as yet could be pinned on Bonhoeffer by the Gestapo. It is during this period, anticipated in the letter of April 30, that Bonhoeffer wrote his celebrated theological letters, which describe the direction in which his thought was moving as he pondered, albeit tentatively, the contours of Christianity in a postwar Europe and, by extension, in our contemporary world. Bonhoeffer was not yet forty years of age, so how his life would have played itself out and his thought developed if he had survived is not an easy question to answer. But as we reflect on the totality of his legacy, we can discern how so many of the trajectories in the earlier phases of his life and theology found their final though still fragmentary expression in these letters.

As already intimated, the theological letters are only part of DBWE 8, and its status as a classic is not confined to them. But they remain in many ways the core and the main reason why the prison writings continue to attract so much attention, even though we can now appreciate more the volume in its entirety. So what is it about these particular letters that is so significant? Why is it that they have made such an impact on Christian theology and practice over the past decades since they were first published? Why are they so important, creative, and exciting for those who have responded to them with such enthusiasm? The short answer to these questions is that in them Bonhoeffer helps many who may have become disillusioned with Christianity as a creed, and dismayed by its failures in serving the world, to think in fresh ways about faith in Jesus Christ and what it means to be the church today. In doing so, Bonhoeffer does not propose trite or easy answers—no one who had previously written so powerfully about costly discipleship or the ethics of free responsibility could do that—but he does speak clearly and provocatively to people living fully in the modern world who are seeking to be truly Christian and fully human, people who are fully engaged in the life of the modern world but also open to the possibility of an authentic faith in the God of Jesus Christ.

But who is Jesus Christ actually for us, today? That is the question that Bonhoeffer eventually poses for the reader in these letters, a question that had previously informed much of his theological work, but which in prison takes on a new urgency for him as he turns to ponder anew the future of Christianity in today’s world. Bonhoeffer’s probing toward answers draws the reader into the text, for these are the very questions that prompt many to turn to the prison writings in the hope of finding answers. What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in what Bonhoeffer described as a world come of age? We will engage this question later in the introduction.

Enough has been said to establish why the prison writings have acquired the status of a classic—not one narrowly conceived as a spiritual classic, as if it were only a book of prayers and theological insights, but a classic that embraces life in its many dimensions, challenging and delighting us at the same time as we are invited to enter its world, share its pains and joys, and learn more about being human and Christian. With this in mind, we turn then to address especially those readers, but not only them, who have previous knowledge of Letters and Papers, but who wish to know what is different about this edition. In discussing this and providing comments on the structure of the volume, we can then return to the theological letters with a better appreciation of the context in which Bonhoeffer wrote them.

This Edition

The first German edition was published in 1951 as Widerstand und Ergebung (Resistance and Submission), compiled and edited by Eberhard Bethge. It was translated into English by Reginald H. Fuller and published by SCM (London) in 1953 with the title Letters and Papers from Prison. An American edition, published by Macmillan in New York, appeared the following year as Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison. These slim volumes were compiled by Bethge in order to make Bonhoeffer’s prison reflections more widely available to those interested in his theology. For various personal reasons and publishing considerations, it was deemed inappropriate and unnecessary to publish all the material that Bethge had collected and preserved since the end of the Second World War. But he did include some of this material to provide the context within which these reflections developed. A second edition published by SCM in 1956 added a report on prison life by Bonhoeffer, Bethge’s essay titled The Last Days, and an index. But there was more material in Bethge’s possession waiting to be published.

A new, greatly enlarged edition of Letters and Papers from Prison appeared in 1967, published jointly by SCM in London and Macmillan in New York. Commenting at the time, the American theologian John Godsey declared it so superior that in his judgment all copies of previous editions should be gathered together and burned.[³] Godsey’s severe judgment was also an implicit warning to all would-be translators to recognize the difficulties involved in such a task and to proceed with due modesty. Based on the work of Fuller, Frank Clark, and others, the 1967 edition provided the foundation for subsequent English versions, notably the fourth edition, published in 1971, which included additional material translated by John Bowden. Writing in his introduction to that edition, Bethge indicated that for the first time material from friends and family had been included in much greater quantity and detail, as well as previously inaccessible information regarding Bonhoeffer’s trial.[⁴] That edition has been regularly reprinted and widely used since it first appeared, published by SCM and Macmillan, and then, in the United States, by Simon and Schuster since 1997. In this volume, all citations and cross-references to the previous translation of Letters and Papers refer to this fourth edition of the new, greatly enlarged edition of Letters and Papers from Prison.

Except in a very few places, this edition (DBWE 8) is a completely fresh translation based on the new, thoroughly revised, enlarged, and critical German edition of Widerstand und Ergebung (DBW 8), first published in 1998. There are several good reasons to believe that the outcome is a significant improvement on previous editions.

First, this edition is roughly double the size of the 1971 edition of LPP, in part because it includes significant additional primary material discovered in the intervening decades. It also includes other material now considered important because of more-recent scholarship and global developments in Bonhoeffer reception, and virtually all the correspondence that was previously excluded for personal reasons. Although the letters make up the bulk of the material in Letters and Papers from Prison, the papers are of equal importance and, as previously indicated, embrace several genres: sermons and meditations, poetry, notes, and prayers.

When he originally compiled Widerstand und Ergebung, Bethge modestly excluded much of his own correspondence. Understandable as this was at the time, it prevented the reader from discerning how much the letters between the two friends belong together, and how much Bethge, as partner in dialogue, contributed to the development of Bonhoeffer’s theological explorations.[⁵] Bethge’s role not only in the preservation and publication of Letters and Papers but also in the development of the correspondence itself was important. As Bonhoeffer himself indicated, Bethge was able to see things differently, and it was that gift that lay at the heart of their intellectual-spiritual kinship.[⁶] Equally important was Bethge’s role as posthumous interpreter of Bonhoeffer’s prison experience and theology, which has shaped much of its reception.

Apart from the correspondence with Bethge, this new edition also includes letters, some first published in DBW 8, from Bonhoeffer’s aging parents, Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer; from his elder brother Karl-Friedrich, his niece Renate Bethge and his nephew Christoph von Dohnanyi, and from his brothers-in-law and fellow conspirators Rüdiger Schleicher and Hans von Dohnanyi. Undoubtedly there would have been many more letters written and received if not for the prison restrictions on the number of letters and on who was permitted to write and to receive letters. As the letters to his family were all sent legally through the censors, the correspondence between them was virtually confined to personal and family matters, with the occasional oblique and coded reference to more sensitive issues such as Bonhoeffer’s trial. The correspondence with Bethge, by contrast, was illegal, smuggled in and out of prison by sympathetic guards, and so contains much more than could be included in the censored letters.

Readers familiar with earlier editions of Letters and Papers should note that some material originally found there has been published in other DBWE volumes. The messages that Bonhoeffer wrote his interrogator Manfred Roeder (published on pp. 56–70 in LPP) can now be found as document 1/288 and its subdocuments in DBWE 16:411–27. The fiction fragment titled Lance Corporal Berg (published on pp. 253–60 in LPP) now appears in DBWE 7:183–94.

Second, the size and scope of this edition is chiefly due to the inclusion of extensive editorial notes, both those translated from DBW 8 and those deemed appropriate to add for a twenty-first-century English-speaking readership: bibliography, indexes, a chronology, an introduction, and an afterword. The bibliography, divided into three sections, includes all the books referred to by Bonhoeffer and his correspondents and an extensive list of books and articles that have been used in the preparation of this volume. When English translations of material originally published in German exist, these have been listed in the bibliography, referred to in the footnotes, and used, unless otherwise indicated, where quoted in the text. The footnotes also include additional information that might be of help to English readers. The index of names provides a brief note on all the persons mentioned in the letters and papers, many of whom will be unfamiliar to English readers. In addition to the three indexes (names, scriptural references, and subjects) and a chronology, which provides an overview of the events relevant to the narrative, there is also a list of relevant unpublished material not included in this volume and a synopsis of the texts previously published in an early collection of Bonhoeffer’s works, the Gesammelte Schriften, and in the 1972 edition of LPP.

Third, the publication of Bethge’s monumental biography of his friend, now revised and translated in full in English,[⁷] along with other material of biographical and historical relevance, has given us a much greater knowledge of Bonhoeffer’s life story than when the first edition of LPP appeared, including information about his family relationships and friendships, his engagement to Maria von Wedemeyer, and the circumstances that led to his imprisonment and death. We also know a great deal more than previously about the final days of the Third Reich and, in particular, about the Holocaust, the conspiracy against Hitler, the Allied landing and advance in Italy, as well as the war on the eastern and western fronts, the bombing of Berlin, and the collapse of the Nazi regime. All this formed the wider context in which Bonhoeffer wrote his letters and in which his family, fiancée, and friends lived in increasingly desperate and dangerous conditions beyond the walls of Berlin’s Tegel military interrogation prison.

Fourth, the remarkable florescence of Bonhoeffer research during the past forty years has found expression in numerous monographs, journal articles, and conference proceedings. Virtually every aspect of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought has been explored in considerable depth. As a result, Bonhoeffer’s theology and the terms he used to express it have been clarified in relation to his own theological development, the wider theological environment of which he was a part, and the historical context within which he lived and worked. The footnotes in this volume include references to several key studies in English on Bonhoeffer’s theology in general and on his prison theology in particular. There are, of course, many more English-language studies that are pertinent to these themes; in addition to those included in this volume and other volumes in the DBWE series, several bibliographies exist, both in print and online, that are essential resources for further study and research.[⁸] Also, some of the most seminal German and a few French studies on Bonhoeffer have become available in English translation. Equally important to note is that new studies on Bonhoeffer’s theology continue to be published, indicating that interest in the subject has not diminished but has become the passion of a new generation of scholars.

Fifth, this edition is, as already indicated, part of a much larger project, namely, the new critical edition of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke and their translation into English as well as other languages. Based on the wholly revised and expanded version of Widerstand und Ergebung, it has benefited immensely from the knowledge and scholarship of the German editors Christian Gremmels, Eberhard and Renate Bethge, and Ilse Tödt, and the extensive critical apparatus and related material they included in the new text. Work on DBWE 8 also benefited from the other volumes of the Werke that have already appeared in English translation. Among these, special note should be taken of DBWE 16, Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945, which, as its title suggests, deals with the period of DBWE 8 and, as such, provides important background information. It clearly shows that the prison letters between Bonhoeffer and Bethge were part of an extensive correspondence that had begun much earlier during the time when they were first separated after the forced closure of the collective pastorates in Pomerania in 1940.

Not included in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke but equally significant collateral reading is the correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer, which was published in 1992 in German and then in English translation in 1994 as Love Letters from Cell 92.[⁹] There are also ten letters from the early years of their courtship from Bonhoeffer to Wedemeyer, though not those from her to him, now published in DBWE 16.[¹⁰] Maria von Wedemeyer gave some intimation of what was contained in these letters in a lecture at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1967, but it was already too late for this information to be included in the edition of the prison letters and papers published that year, though her lecture was added as an appendix to the 1971 edition. At the expressed wish of Wedemeyer, the entire extant correspondence was housed in Harvard’s Houghton Library and kept inaccessible to the public until its publication in 1992.

A further volume in the series that provides important collateral reading is DBWE 7, Fiction from Tegel Prison. Although Bonhoeffer’s attempt at writing fiction is often regarded as the least successful of his prison writings, the drama, novel fragments, and the unfinished story in DBWE 7 offer important insight into his thinking and experience. Bonhoeffer’s attempt at writing poetry in prison, in contrast to his fiction, was much more successful. All ten of his poems are published for the first time together in this edition.[¹¹] They give us a profound glimpse into his experience and reflections, especially as he became more aware of the fate that awaited him. Jürgen Henkys’s Geheimnis der Freiheit (2005), the first major study focused entirely on Bonhoeffer’s poetry from prison, postdates the new DBW edition of Widerstand und Ergebung but has been a great help in preparing this translation, thus adding further value.

Finally, this translation may claim some superiority over previous ones in that, as part of the much larger DBWE project, it has been subject to stringent measures that have been implemented to ensure more accurate and informed translations of Bonhoeffer’s works in English. Whereas previous translations were largely the work of individuals on their own, in this case the translators have benefited from one another; the expertise of various consultants, notably Hans Pfeifer and Ilse Tödt; the monitoring input of the editor and general editor, as well as from the collective experience of everyone who has been engaged in the DBWE project to date. In accordance with the policy adopted at the outset of the project, Tödt was designated the German reader of the translation as it progressed, a task she fulfilled with diligence, passion, and knowledge.

English, like all languages though probably more so than most, is always in the process of development and change. Inevitably, then, the language and style of editions of Letters and Papers from Prison become a little dated. This, we believe, has not given us a license to be trendy in our choice of words and idioms, but required that we strive for freshness as well as accuracy. We are mindful, of course, that previous translations often excelled in providing memorable passages and phrases of power and insight; we are also aware that sometimes translation blunders occurred. We hope we have avoided the latter, just as we have aspired to the former and sometimes made use of them. More will be said about translation issues later.

Structure and Content

There are many fine biographies of Bonhoeffer, chief of which is undoubtedly that written by Eberhard Bethge, to which we have previously referred. There is also a biography of Bethge that tells the story of his friendship with Bonhoeffer and provides information about the period during which the letters and papers from prison were written.[¹²] These resources make it unnecessary to provide a detailed historical background to DBWE 8. Nonetheless, because many readers may not be sufficiently familiar with the story or have the opportunity to gain such knowledge before engaging the text, we have woven key threads of the story into this section to help the reader understand better both the historical context and the content.

The Prologue, or After Ten Years

Bonhoeffer’s essay After Ten Years, written to Bethge, Hans von Dohnanyi, and coconspirator Hans Oster at Christmas 1942, a few months before his imprisonment, was included in the first edition of Letters and Papers from Prison as one of several papers. In subsequent editions, including this one, Bethge placed it at the beginning. Serving as a prologue, it bridged the gap between Bonhoeffer’s final months of freedom, and his arrest and imprisonment. Written as a New Year’s reflection on the events and issues of the past months as the conspiracy had gathered momentum, it revisits themes in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, quoting some passages from it, but it also prefigures much that became the substance of the theological letters written to Bethge, commencing with that of April 30, 1944.

In editing the 1971 edition of Letters and Papers from Prison, Bethge not only placed After Ten Years at the beginning, but he also restructured the volume into four chronological periods determined by the decisive points in Bonhoeffer’s legal investigation, interrogation, and trial. These four parts provide the structure for this new edition.

Part 1: The Interrogation Period: April–July 1943

Bonhoeffer became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer on January 17, 1943. On April 5, he was arrested, along with his sister Christine and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, charged with subversion of the armed forces,

Reviews for Letters and Papers from Prison DBW Vol 8

[Angel Ariel Ortiz Noble · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This work reveals Bonhoeffer's heart. One identifies with him in his sorrows and hopes. It also shows how much he cares for his parents and his humbleness.

[deusvitae · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very difficult work to get through emotionally, especially if you know the background of the circumstances. Bonhoeffer was part of a conspiracy against Hitler and was imprisoned in April 1943 on unrelated charges. This book represents the correspondence between Bonhoeffer and his family and friends, especially Eberhard Bethge, to whom he sent letters illegally. The book tells the story of Bonhoeffer's hopes and dreams along with this theological reflections in his circumstance.The personal information is quite interesting. Anyone who expects the book to be mostly about theology will be rather disappointed; nevertheless, the thoughts that Bonhoeffer does put down are quite good and worthy of consideration, especially in regards to the Christian's relationship to the Old Testament and what it means to be a Christian in a "post-God" world. A book worth reading if one has a good understanding of Bonhoeffer through other works.

[awhayouseh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bonhoeffer writes to his fiance, family, and friends with a deep sense of hope even when his days were getting darker.He mentioned at one point that the Nazi government's horrible crimes served as proof for the need of a theocracy. Bonhoeffer died as a supporter of the church and as a believer in the reign of God over and against evil.

[jontseng · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A seminal work. What happens when irresistable martyr meets immovable dictatorship. Notable for subsequent use and misuse by all ends of the theological spectrum.

[ltw_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Letters and Papers from Prison is a collection of notes and correspondence covering the period from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's arrest in 1943 to his execution by the Gestapo in 1945. The book is probably most famous, and most important, for its idea of "religionless Christianity"--an idea Bonhoeffer did not live long enough fully to develop, but whose timeliness only increases as the lines between secular and ecclesial life blur. Bonhoeffer's first mention of "religionless Christianity" came in a letter in 1944: What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience--and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by "religious."The pleasures of Letters and Papers from Prison, however are not all so profound. Occasionally, Bonhoeffer's letters burst into song--sometimes with actual musical notations, other times with unforgettable phrases. Looking forward to seeing his best friend, Bonhoeffer writes, "To meet again is a God." --Michael Joseph Gross