Scene from Tegel Prison
In addition to his continuing work with the Confessing Church and his theological writing, Bonhoeffer became a part of the political conspiracy during the first year of the war. He was associated with the conspirators who used the Abwehr, the intelligence agency of the German army, as a cover. Hans von Dohnanyi, Dietrich’s brother-in-law, was a high official in this agency and a leader among the conspirators.

Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo on April 5, 1943, on a minor charge but on suspicion of larger involvement. He spent the next 18 months in the Tegel military prison in Berlin. Because guards came to appreciate the sort of man he was and some broke rules in his favor, he had opportunities to receive books and personal items from his family and to correspond with family and friends. His Letters and Papers from Prison, composed mostly of letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge, is the best known of several things he wrote during this period. A writer in the New York Times (July19, 1994) wrote that it is “among the most compelling literature in the German language.”

The conspirators’ failed attempt to assassinate Hilter on July 29, 1944, meant that Bonhoeffer’s fate was sealed. After October 8, 1944, he was moved to a series of Gestapo prisons and finally, on Hitler’s personal orders, was executed by hanging April 9, 1945, at the Flossenbrug concentration camp in south Germany. Eleven days later American troops captured the prison area.

Who Am I?
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
Equably, 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 neighborliness,
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, O God, I am Thine!

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Tegel Prison
Summer 1944