Abstract
The final letters between Helmuth James and Freya von Moltke are one of the twentieth century’s most moving and powerful exchanges between a husband and wife. Since the death of Freya von Moltke in 2005 her eldest son and her youngest son’s widow have edited the correspondence for publication and their outstanding edition appeared last year. 1
Helmuth James von Moltke was at the centre of a circle of German left-leaning intellectuals during the Second World War who met to plan for a post-war and post-Nazi Germany and Europe. They met occasionally at the von Moltke family estate at Kreisau, from which their particular resistance Circle took its name, though in fact they met more often in Berlin, where most participants worked. The group included Jesuits and Protestant clergy, one of whom, as chaplain at Tegel prison, smuggled the correspondence in and out of von Moltke’s cell at great risk. Though von Moltke – a lawyer specializing in international law – was not a great churchgoer, he was keen to rebuild in ways that drew on the best of Europe’s inheritance, envisaging a post-national European union based broadly on (ecumenical) Christian principles. Crucially, most of the Kreisau Circle did not seek to promote a coup d’état, because they felt a complete collapse of Nazism would serve Europe better than a change of leadership while Germany still retained some bargaining power.
Much of this is already well known and, from the earlier correspondence between Helmuth James and Freya, the extraordinary strength of their relationship in the midst of the confusion and danger of resistance was also appreciated. But this newly published correspondence sheds light on two aspects of the von Moltke’s story that are theologically profound and startlingly beautiful.
The first is the quality and depth of the Christian faith that they shared. As it became clear that Helmuth James faced execution they oscillated between acceptance and hope of reprieve: even following the judgement condemning him to death on 11 January 1945, there is still talk of an appeal. But one senses that they knew really that the game was up and are driven to work out together what the basis of their love can be when they are separated by distance, and when, soon, death will separate them. They discuss not only Christian values, of course, but also prayers and hymns. In this short-lived correspondence (it lasted only 4 months) the letters make reference to 30 hymns. They also frequently discuss particular biblical books and texts. One text, cited more than once, seems to speak God’s promise to them in spite of death: ‘If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s’ (Rom. 14.8). I can think of no book that better illustrates what it means for a married couple to share a deep Christian faith.
This leads neatly to the second theme that the letters illuminate that is of deep theological significance: this is what it means to stand and to believe on the eve of death. Both Helmuth James and Freya, in spite of their reasonable tendency to hope for an unlikely reprieve, consider death and what follows it. Even in letters where the possibility of some ‘miracle’ might yet intervene there is a sense of faithful acceptance of death. The only other close encounter with death I know of narrated with such unsentimental lucidity and power is by the novelist Dostoyevsky, whose letter to his brother on 22 December 1849 details his own experience of being lined up before a firing squad, expecting death in a matter of minutes, before Tsar Nicholas I’s decree commuting the sentences to imprisonment was read out. This made such an impression on Dostoyevsky that he puts a version of the story in the mouth of Prince Myshkin, the meek, Christ-like figure at the centre of The Idiot.
In his review of the letters in the Time Literary Supplement (16 September 2011) Christophe Fricker displays historical amnesia when he writes that ‘The collection is unique: no other member of the resistance was able to write such a substantial number of letters from prison.’ In another part of the same Tegel prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer was also writing to his friend Eberhard Bethge and to his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer. This new publication begs for someone to compare the Christian faith of two of Tegel’s late-wartime inmates, who both suffered death at the hands of a failing Nazi regime. This wonderful book makes far clearer than it was before that for a brief period Tegel prison housed two ‘saints’ in its cells.