Letters and Papers from Prison

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"Resistance and Resignation" gathers the letters and other writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer from 1943 to 1945 while he was imprisoned in Berlin's Tegel prison. This nearly complete edition reconstructs the correspondence, alternating outgoing letters with writings sent to the prisoner by relatives and friends, primarily Eberhard Bethge, who has provided detailed explanatory notes. An appendix includes a valuable essay by Bonhoeffer's fiancée with excerpts from the letters addressed to her, as well as a lengthy unpublished piece by Bethge on the history of preserving this unique correspondence. The documents collected here testify to the engagement with a "mature world" that a Christian and theologian, actively involved in the struggle against Nazism, undertook with intellectual honesty. The result is a portrayal of a "non-religious" Christianity, characterized by a return to the original content of the Scriptures, rejecting any escape into the afterlife, and combining faith in the God of Jesus Christ with full fidelity to the earth and life.