Reading Dietrich Bonheoffer’s The Cost of Discipleship and I am struck with the magnitude of horror that was experienced by so many thinkers and artists during WWII; and the subsequent outpouring within their work. Bonheoffer’s writings and poetry offer a great insight.
A German national and well-travelled intellectual and theologian, he was part of a group who attempted to assassinate Hitler. Many such dissenters took the opportunity to save their lives through exile but Bonhoeffer felt he could do more from within than without. The conspiracy was discovered and all were arrested. Bonheoffer was hanged in the concentration camp at Flossenburg a few days before it was liberated by allied forces. He was put to death alongside two of his brothers-in-law and several of his close associates at the age of 39, leaving behind a devoted fiancé and countless who loved him. Within the prison his indomitable character and unswerving kindness won him many friends; including the two Gestapo prison guards who so admired him that they smuggled his writings and poems to the outside.
There are numerous recently written works about him. The copy I am reading includes a memoir by G.Leibholz, which outlines this man’s courageous stand and includes some of his poetry:
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!
March 4,1946
The painting is by Wassily Kandinsky: Composition X (1939) who’s teaching post at the Bauhaus was closed down by the Gestapo in 1933; the same year that Bonhoeffer denounced the political system on the wireless, though he was not expelled from his lecturing position at Berlin University until 1936.