Free Letters and Papers From Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer Page B

of love andremembrance, and then material things become the vehicles of spiritual realities. I think this is analogous to the need felt in all religions for the visible appearance of the Spirit in the sacrament. Special thanks to Renate for this great delight; every day I wish her much joy in her marriage and in her work. It’s splendid that they’ve got a piano; one of the specially fine moments of being free will be to make music with them again. I’m most grateful for anything that one can smoke.
    Now let’s hope very much that everything will soon be finished. Love to Maria and the family.
    I’m always thinking of you in love and gratitude.
    Your Dietrich
    From his mother
    [Charlottenburg] 15 June 1943
    Dear Dietrich,
    …None of us can imagine how you could have got into such a position when you are so outspokenly law-abiding in your attitude. We just cannot find any solution to the riddle. So we keep returning to the comforting conviction that everything will soon have to be cleared up and that you will be with us again.
    We’re going to ask for another permission to visit today; we very much want to see you again and find out how you are bearing your long imprisonment, especially because of your asthma. I hope that we shall get the permission. We are quite old people, and the pressure on father in addition to his strenuous work is rather a considerable one. How could we ever have imagined the evening of our life, after so much work in the profession and in the family, in this way… 40
    This time I will bring you grandfather Hase’s Ideals and Errors. I’ve asked grandmother for the book about the old Kleist-Retzow.
    Now God bless you; we all send our love. You’re always in my thoughts. Your Mother
    Outlines of Letters
    To the Judge Advocate, Dr Roeder, between the interrogations 41
    [On his own exemption]
    Please allow me to take up your time once again in this way, chiefly so that I shall really have done everything possible for a speedy clarification of my case. I would like to try once again to put my views on what seems to me to be the very important question of my exemption through the Abwehr. Perhaps I will succeed better, writing quietly, in stating matters clearly; in the interrogation I sometimes forget to say important things. I would also like to add a few points on this question which have not been discussed so far. Before I do that, I would like to tell you that I am grateful to you for describing the situation to me so openly in the last interrogation. The interlude with General Oster’s remark for a while must have put me in a quite dreadful light as far as you were concerned, and I am glad that everything has now been sorted out. Perhaps there are other things that I do not know which still stand in the way of clarifying the proceedings over my release and burden me so much. I am the last person to want to dispute that in an activity as strange and new to me as Abwehr service, and as complicated, mistakes could creep in. You will therefore, your honour, understand that it is very important to clarify whether mistakes have really been made here, and if so, who has made them. It is not only a personal concern, but also involves my relatives and my profession.
    In your words, there is a suspicion that my exemption was procured in order to extricate me from the Gestapo who, in September 1940, prohibited me from speaking in public and required me to report regularly. If I have understood you rightly, this would be supported by: 1. circumstances of time; 2. remarks of mine concerning Dibelius; 42 3. remarks made by my brother-n-law. I would like to reply to these in turn.
    First, a general comment: if I had been afraid that after the impositionof the prohibition against speaking and the requirement to report, the Gestapo would want to take still further measures against me, and if I had wanted to avoid them, then it would not have been exemption but call-up that would have been the appropriate