They reached the courtyard and slowly walked across the lawn to the door of the house.

“Thank you, Herr von Dortmann,” said Matthew. “I’ve never had such an interesting conversation with anyone in my whole life. I won’t forget what you’ve said.”

“It’s a pathway, Matthew,” the baron added, “a lifelong pathway of continuous discovery.”

Little did seventeen-year-old Matthew McCallum realize how prophetic his words were. For in after years, this day in the garden of Lebenshaus and this conversation with Baron von Dortmann would always come back to him as the time—though he had no foreshadowing inkling of it at this moment—when he first began walking through the door into the house and presence of his Father.

After their remarkable conversation in the garden, the three went inside the house. Thaddeus McCallum was in the courtyard parlor, where he had been visiting with Frau von Dortmann since his arrival about half an hour before.

He remained the rest of the day and spent the night, and midway through the next morning, he and Matthew returned to Berlin.

PART III: The Mystery of the Fellowship-Fall, 1937

PART III

The Mystery of the Fellowship—Fall 1937

28 Finkenwalde

28

Finkenwalde

Baron von Dortmann always enjoyed the drive down through the countryside to Finkenwalde. He only wished the circumstances of these times were more pleasant so that he would be free to enjoy his friend’s lectures on the Sermon on the Mount and the book he was compiling from them. Dietrich was a fearless man.

The seminary had first begun at Zingsthof on the Baltic, but had quickly moved south to its present location at an abandoned private school in Finkenwalde near Stettin. Several hastily built houses in addition now housed his friend and the twenty-five or so young vicars and clergymen and ministerial candidates under his tutelage.

The place was a bold experiment not only in independent non-Nazi training for ministry, but also in community living. For those who were part of it and their few visitors and friends, such as the baron, it was a haven of peacefulness, spiritual growth, freedom, and deepening relationships of practical unity among believers committed to a common cause.