Letters and Papers from Prison (Widerstand und Ergebung)
The letters, notes and poems that Bonhoeffer wrote in Tegel prison between April 1943 and late 1944, edited by the friend to whom most were sent. They include the essay After Ten Years, written just before his arrest.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was allowed to write to his parents from the military prison at Tegel, and those letters passed the censor. After about half a year, Bethge writes, friends among the guards and medical orderlies made it possible to exchange uncensored letters with him, and it is in these that he works out his late thoughts on a “religionless” Christianity. The letters of his last month at Tegel were destroyed for safety when Bethge himself was arrested in October 1944.
Eberhard Bethge, the friend to whom most of the uncensored letters were written, published a selection with a foreword dated August 1951. The volume ends with an unsigned appendix, “Die letzten Tage”, which tells the story of Bonhoeffer’s last week from the reports of fellow prisoners who survived. The letters are Bonhoeffer’s own words, written in prison. The foreword and the appendix are the editor’s work, written years after the events from the testimony of others. See the Execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Cited in
- 9 April 1945, firm date