“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “Why are you angry with me?” And went inside at Sabine’s welcoming gesture, crossed to the old man’s bedside and said, Shalom, Herr Leibholz.
When the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested in Berlin and charged with burning the Reichstag, all Europe took note. Van der Lubbe was a vagrant, an unemployed bricklayer whose eyes had been injured when lime splashed into his face. In the newsreels which flickered on movie screens around the world, he was seen to have a perpetual squint, and to shield his eyes with a hand held tight against his forehead as though he perceived all the world to be aflame.
When he was sixteen, van der Lubbe had joined the Communists in his native Netherlands. Then he left the Communists for the anarchists. Such shifts of allegiance suggested a young man’s dabbling in politics. In fact, Marinus van der Lubbe was searching for someone to stop the burning in his eyes. On the last day of January, when he heard of Hitler’s accession to power, he knew at once who was responsible for his terrible pain. He determined to go to Germany and warn everyone about Adolf Hitler. Once in Berlin, he came under the scrutiny of the SS, who could not help but notice the scruffy foreigner who muttered to himself about the Führer. Especially when he bought naphthalene-and-sawdust packets from street vendors—packets used to start fires in coal furnaces—and proceeded to set small ineffectual blazes at the state welfare office in Neukölln, the Schöneberg town hall, and the Bellevue palace.
When Marinus van der Lubbe was charged with setting the Reichstag fire as part of a Communist plot, political lines were quickly and efficiently drawn. The Left from Birmingham to Barcelona saw van der Lubbe as a fall guy, a stooge to cover fascist crimes. The Right from Madrid to Milan boasted that the Bolshevik menace would now be laid to rest once and for all. Dr. Karl Bonhoeffer, as the leading psychiatrist in Germany, was assigned the task of determining the sanity, or insanity as might be, of this dangerous Bolshevik who according to the prosecution had masterminded the infamous attack on Germany’s hallowed symbol of democracy.
Both Left and Right deposited messages inside the iron gate of Wangenheimstraße 14. The offerings of the Left were quasi-literary. Each morning, the maid Elli opened the front door to find pamphlets rolled and stuffed between doorknob and lock. These were earnest appeals, badly written and printed in almost unreadably dense typeface, to protect the working class from its fascist persecutors.
The Right was more imaginative, as Karl-Friedrich dryly noted. At the bottom of the steps of Wangenheimstraße 14, piles of human excrement were placed delicately on sheets of newsprint bearing van der Lubbe’s picture, accompanied by a sign that read BOLSHEVIK FILTH. Skinned rats were arranged on sheets of stained paper, and the sign THUS TO ALL RED SYMPATHIZERS. Then the body of Widow Harnack’s old tabby cat, garroted with a twisted clothes hanger, appeared with a similar warning. (Paula Bonhoeffer, unable to tell the entire truth to her neighbor, removed the metal and went next door to say that the old cat had been run over by an automobile.)
In the midst of these upsets, Uncle Rudi came to call.
General Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz, husband to Paula Bonhoeffer’s sister, had not set foot in Wangenheimstraße 14 since the marriage of his niece Sabine to a Jew. Suse was stretched across a bed reading when Elli knocked at the door and informed her of the visitor’s arrival. Suse sat up and slammed her book shut.
“Good God, whatever is he doing here? I suppose I must go down?”
“Your mother is asking for you,” Elli agreed.
“Oh, Lord,” Suse moaned.
She met Dietrich on the stairway. He was hastily knotting a tie beneath his chin.
“Interrupted your writing, has he?” Suse said. “Poor Dietrich. Don’t tell him you’ve been hunched over your desk all day or you’re in for one of his lectures on the joys of the military life.” She puffed out her chest and lowered her voice. “‘The army, my boy,’” she proclaimed. “‘That’s the life for you!’”
Dietrich rolled his eyes. “Think he’s come to gloat over the election results?”
“What else?”
“I wonder if he still has that ridiculous monocle.”
Suse laughed. “Do you recall how he always fidgeted with it while he sipped his coffee? Karl-Friedrich said he was afraid it would fall into his cup. But Christel said the monocle was a spigot and if he turned it the wrong way, he’d suck the coffee up his nose!”
They giggled all the way to the sunroom, then paused at the door to collect themselves. Suse straightened Dietrich’s tie, and they entered arm in arm. Paula Bonhoeffer and Uncle Rudi sat at a white wicker table which held a plate of pastries and coffee in a silver urn. Uncle Rudi, still monocled and wearing an impeccably tailored suit, stood at once and bowed at the waist over Suse’s extended hand. He then greeted Dietrich with a fierce handshake. (Suse later claimed she’d heard the crunch of metacarpals.)
“Susanne! What a beauty you’ve become. And Dietrich, good to see you, my boy. You’ve certainly grown into a strapping fellow.”
Suse plopped into an empty chair and mouthed at Dietrich the ar-my, then flashed her sunniest and most dangerous smile. He tried to ignore her and, after holding his mother’s chair, sat down.
Uncle Rudi placed a yellow napkin across his knee, and turned his full attention on Dietrich as a more appropriate person to address than the women. “Well, my boy, you see I’m in civilian clothes. Gave up my active commission. Had a good run, but I’m getting older. Time to practice law again, what with all the activity in Berlin. Found a spot in the Justice Ministry. Perhaps I’ll run into young Dohnanyi, eh?”
“Hans is at Justice, yes.”
“What about you? Still mucking about with philosophy?”
“Theology,” Dietrich said.
“Yes, yes. A bit slow, isn’t it? How old are you now, twenty-six, twenty-seven? Not too late to consider the military. Lots going on these days, and it would be a shame for a young man in his prime to miss out.”
“It’s too bad,” Suse interrupted, leaning forward, “that Sabine isn’t in Berlin just now. She’d love to see you.”
Uncle Rudi’s smile froze and his eyes were still.
Paula Bonhoeffer raised warning eyebrows at Suse, who ignored her and continued, “We don’t see much of Sabine ourselves. Her father-in-law is very ill.”
“Ah yes, Leibholz,” Uncle Rudi said. As though being ill was the sort of thing he had expected from the Jew Leibholz.
There followed an uneasy silence while Elli hovered over the table, pouring coffee from the silver urn. Dietrich pretended to watch a robin in the back garden as his mother handed round the cups and saucers. Uncle Rudi, after a nod of thanks, clapped his lips onto the edge of his cup and, as though turning a valve, grasped his monocle and in one smooth motion tipped his cup.
Suse covered her mouth and made a strangled noise.
Uncle Rudi looked at her uncertainly. “Gesundheit,” he said, lowering his cup.
Suse glanced at Dietrich and then began to giggle.
“Suse,” her mother said. She also looked imploringly at Dietrich, then at Uncle Rudi. “Really, I don’t know—”
Dietrich covered his face with his napkin. Something like a honk came from behind the thick linen.
Paula Bonhoeffer tried a diversion. “More coffee, Uncle Rudi?”
“I’m sorry,” Dietrich gasped, and dropped his napkin. His face was bright red. “Ever so sorry.”
Suse was leaning against the table, her face hidden in the fold of her arms. Her shoulders quivered uncontrollably. Then she gave up the effort and leaned back in her chair, crying with laughter. Dietrich turned toward the French doors and pretended to clean his eyeglasses. His lips were pressed together and he sucked his cheeks and bit hard on the soft flesh inside his mouth.
Paula Bonhoeffer turned to Uncle Rudi. “I assure you, Rüdiger, this is most unlike my children. They aren’t themselves these days, none of us is. The times are so distressing.”
; “The times!” Uncle Rudi bellowed. He stood and threw down his napkin like a gauntlet. “Nothing wrong with the times! Nothing except impertinent young females like the daughters of this house. No wonder, since you allowed one of them to marry a Jew, that the youngest is undisciplined as well!”
Dietrich stood as well. “How dare you insult this family! All because we don’t share your joy over this bunch of thugs who’ve taken over the country.”
“And how dare you insult the legitimate government—”
“A government which suppresses the freedom of its citizens can only be called illegitimate, however legal its institution.”
Uncle Rudi stepped so close Dietrich could count the hairs in his mustache. “Only those who would suppress freedom will have their freedom suppressed. So you should have nothing to fear. Or have you?”
“Your views are despicable,” Dietrich said. “They always were, and they haven’t changed.”
Uncle Rudi turned and fixed a stern eye on Paula. “My dear, your son needs a good thrashing! If he were mine, I’d administer it myself, by God!”
“Sir,” Dietrich said, “I am not your son. And now I must ask you to leave.”
Uncle Rudi stalked to the door, then turned once more. “Paula, I know you and Emilie meet often and talk. I shall forbid such meetings in the future. As for this afternoon’s events, of course you need fear no repercussions from this quarter. But I warn you, not everyone will be as tolerant of such unruly young people as I am.”
When he had gone, Paula sank back into her chair. “Dear God,” she said, “my sister’s husband.”
Dietrich knelt beside her chair. “I’m so sorry, Mother.”
“I’m not sorry,” Suse said. “Uncle Rudi hadn’t been here in years anyway. And Aunt Emilie will find a way to see you, Mother. Anyway, I thought Dietrich was magnificent.”
Paula sighed and touched her son’s cheek. “And so you were, Dietrich. I recall when you were children. If anyone dared bully Suse or Sabine, you were their staunch defender.”
“And he still is,” Suse said.
Which made what came next all the more inexplicable.
April in Berlin was cool and damp. It was too early for cafés to break out their sidewalk tables, but the air had grown clear and pale, as though drained of the heavier humors of winter. Dietrich, like many others, ventured outside more and more often. He especially enjoyed the walk from the university in Unter den Linden through the Tiergarten and home to the Grunewald. Street after street, square and park and market, all at odd angles and teeming with humanity, unfolded one after another like an inhabited kaleidoscope. Nothing, not even the swastika flags draped everywhere like a multitude of funeral palls, could quell the energy of Berlin.
Dietrich returned home from such a walk to find his mother in the garden, tending her flowers. She wiped her hands on her apron and held them out to him.
“Sabine telephoned. Papa Leibholz has died.”
“Oh, oh.” Dietrich held her close. “Poor Gerhard. I must call them back at once.”
“Yes. Sabine said Gerhard wants to speak with you. But they have gone out to make the funeral arrangements. They’ll ring us tonight. They’re bringing him back for burial tomorrow, and I believe they are going to ask you to help with the service.”
“But wouldn’t they want a rabbi?” Dietrich asked.
“Of course they would. But I gathered from Sabine that Gerhard has you in mind as well.”
“I’m very honored,” Dietrich said. He paused to kiss his mother’s cheek before dashing upstairs. “Now, I’m on my way to a meeting with Niemöller in Dahlem. He promises a large turnout of pastors to discuss the political situation.”
She patted his hand. “Go on then. You can talk to Sabine tonight.”
The meeting in Niemöller’s spacious study in Dahlemdorf drew three dozen pastors from around Berlin and as far away as Brandenburg. Niemöller himself served as chair.
“Everyone is of course aware,” he said, “of the latest measures concerning what the government calls ‘racial conformity.’ According to Pastor Bonhoeffer—” a nod toward Dietrich—“whose brother-in-law is highly placed in the Justice Ministry, the civil service is soon to be purged of Jewish employees. This will of course include our church employees who happen to be Jewish. And we are all aware of the call for a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. These measures are meeting with little resistance.”
“There is some resistance to the boycott,” Dietrich said. “Some women, I have heard, passed through the SA lines to shop without incident.”
“Yes,” said Paul Schneider, a young pastor from Potsdam, “but a woman has more freedom to be defiant. Of course the SA will not attack women. Have you yourself crossed a boycott line, Pastor Bonhoeffer?”
“No,” Dietrich admitted.
“Nor could any of us here without being beaten,” said Pastor Braun from Tegel. “I would suggest this group confine itself to matters we can address with some hope of success. In any event, the government will soon see that its more extreme measures, such as economic boycotts, are highly impractical, and will drop them.”
“I agree,” said Niemöller. “I would also suggest that as churchmen, our most pressing concerns are those which directly affect the church. I met yesterday with Pastor Müller, who as most of you know is leading the efforts of Christians who support the new government. Pastor Müller’s group plans to issue the following statement, which he was kind enough to share with me in advance.”
Niemöller cleared his throat and read a list of indictments against the liberal Republic, including economic chaos, the promotion of internationalism over patriotism, and the corruption of morals among the young, especially young women. “‘In conclusion,’” Niemöller read, “‘should the state find it necessary to use its ordained powers against those who undermine order—especially to oppose those who would corrupt marriage and the family, undermine the Christian faith, and mock dying for one’s country—then the state is acting in the name of God.’”
Niemöller folded the document and laid it on the mantel. “They’re calling themselves ‘German Christians.’ They intend to present candidates for all the most important church offices at the election, and they propose Müller himself as Reich Bishop. Müller also informs me the new civil service legislation would deny ordained ministry in the state church to any baptized Christian of Jewish ancestry. The German Christians agree with this position as well.
“As for myself, in my conversation with Müller, I assured that gentleman that those of us critical of his efforts are in no way unpatriotic; in fact the best way to ensure a strong Fatherland is to ensure a strong church.”
They were silent for a moment, then Paul Schneider said, “I’m as patriotic as the next man. But I’m concerned about such direct government interference in church affairs. A political test should not determine who leads the church. Nor should the government decide who we may or may not ordain.”
There was a murmur of assent. But Braun said, “I agree on the whole. But as to the question of ordaining baptized Jews, is it worth a schism? After all, we’re talking about how many clergy—perhaps a dozen in all of Prussia?”
Dietrich listened, tapping his fingertips together and thinking of Elisabeth. Then thinking of Papa Leibholz.
“Most Jews,” he said, “are not baptized, and yet they are bearing the brunt of these new measures. What of them?”
“As Pastor Niemöller has stated,” Braun said, “we must confine ourselves to church matters.”
After some discussion they agreed to produce a pamphlet to be distributed in churches throughout Germany taking issue with any attempt to interfere in church elections. Dietrich, acknowledged as the finest writer, would author the pamphlet. Then they shook hands all around and chatted over glasses of wine before departing. Dietrich was the last to leave. While a maid fetched Dietrich’s hat and overcoat, Niemöller said, “There is an opening for a pastor at Johanneskirche in Friedrichshain.
I’d like to put in your name. We need more energetic men like you out in the churches.”
Dietrich flushed with pleasure. “I’d be most grateful. I’ve decided to leave the university anyway. So many of the faculty and students support the German Christian movement it is becoming uncomfortable for me there.” He paused, then said, “I’ve something else on my mind, Martin, and would appreciate your advice. I received word from family in Göttingen. My sister’s father-in-law has died and I may be asked to conduct the funeral.”
“My condolences,” Niemöller said.
“The father-in-law,” Dietrich said, “was a Jew. Not a Jewish Christian.”
Niemöller shook his head at once. “No, Bonhoeffer. Oh, no no no no. It won’t do, not at such a critical time. In a few months perhaps, when all this foolishness has died down and we can go about our normal business, then there would be nothing wrong with it. Of course not. But the timing is wrong. Imagine if Müller and the German Christians learned that one of our members was participating in a non-Christian ceremony. They would certainly use that against us to sway opinion during the church election.”
“This,” said Dietrich, “is my family.”
“And I doubt any member of your family would wish to place you in such a difficult position, once they understand the circumstances.” Niemöller patted Dietrich on the back as they walked to the door. “Of course, do as you must. But think hard, and pray hard, my friend. There is more at stake here than a Jewish funeral, which after all is most properly performed by a rabbi, is it not?”
Outside a light rain had begun to fall. Dietrich buttoned his overcoat and put on his hat. Niemöller stood at the top of the flagstone steps. “I look forward to your pamphlet,” he said. “Your writing is always a joy to read. So lucid.”
At home in his room, he awaited with dread the ringing of the telephone. When he heard the faint jangling sound far below, he pretended he hadn’t, and continued to immerse himself in his work on the pamphlet. But then Suse was tapping on his door. “Dietrich, it’s Gerhard and Sabine. Of course, they want to speak with you—why haven’t you come down?”
Saints and Villains Page 18
