“Nor I for you, my friend Dortmann,” returned the young pastor. “Godspeed to you too, and his blessing upon this House of Life. May his life be transmitted to all who enter here!”

Yet a moment more they stood, holding one another’s eyes. Then quickly Bonhoeffer spun around and exited through the main front door. The baron followed him, standing in the open doorway until his car had disappeared from sight down the driveway.

He turned back inside and closed the door behind him.

Somehow sensing the finality of their parting, as well as the import of what was at hand for the world, he retraced his steps back up the stairs, tears now falling freely down his cheeks, and once again sought the privacy of his study.

He strode to the window and saw his friend’s car turn onto the main road, then head south into the gathering storm.

He watched it until it disappeared from sight, then turned back into the room, fell to his knees, and once more found himself praying for both himself and his friend, the nation they both loved, and God’s people everywhere in it, and asking God to reveal his way as the night closed in around them.

38 Irregular Correspondence

38

Irregular Correspondence

Throughout the politically tumultuous year of 1938, Sabina von Dortmann, young German maiden, and Matthew McCallum, son of the American diplomat, continued to maintain a scattered ongoing correspondence with one another.

At first, the letters came to and from Switzerland. Sabina’s return home coincided with another trip to the States by Matthew and his father, and so the two young people were unable to see one another when the baron and Marion drove to Berlin to meet their daughter’s train.

Every subsequent letter contained promises to write more frequently or mentioned proposed personal visits either to Berlin on the part of Sabina or to Niedersdorf on the part of Matthew. The convenience for the occasion of a visit, however, did not present itself to either of their fathers.

Time, as it has a habit of doing, passed more quickly than either realized, and suddenly the one year gave way to yet another, and all the while the drumroll of world events continued to accelerate.

The two youths were growing as rapidly inside as the matrix of European relationships was shifting all around them. Gradually the tone and content of their correspondence took on more subtleties and deeper patterns of thought, while they continued to discuss and probe between themselves what truth was and where the answers to life’s most difficult questions could be found.

Lieber Matthew!

Are you back in Berlin yet?