. . .May, 1944 to Eberhard Bethge on the baptism of Dietrich W.R. Bethge
Eberhard Bethge had married Bonhoeffer’s niece Renate, and their first child was born while the father was stationed in Italy and the great-uncle was in prison. Dietrich was deeply moved that Eberhard and Renate had chosen to name the boy after his great-uncle, who had greatly wished and hoped to be released and be able to baptize the child. The two men exchanged a few letters on the topic; Bonhoeffer did not wish the event to be delayed on his account. This letter is addressed to the infant Bethge.
The three names which you bear point to the three houses with which your life is and will remain inseparably bound. The house of your grandfather on your father’s side was a village parsonage, simplicity and health, collected and multifaceted intellectual life, joy and unpretentious goodness, natural and unself-conscious life together with the people and their work, the possibility to help oneself in the practical things of life, and the simplicity which has its basis in inner contentment, are the lasting inner values which were resident in that village and which you will encounter in our father.
I wish you could be able to grow up on the land; but it will no longer be the land on which your father grew up. The great city from which people expected all the provisions of life and the fulfillment of all their pleasures, and to which they streamed as to a festival have pulled death and dying and every conceivable horror into themselves, and the wives and children have left these places of horror as in flight. The time of the great city on our continent seems now to have expired. According to the biblical verdict, Cain was the founder of the great city.
