Word: maria
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...auburn-haired Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller, 43, who came to the U.S. in 1948 on a graduate fellowship in mathematics at Bryn Mawr, and now lives near Boston, where she works as a computer systems analyst. In all, she received more than 40 letters from Bonhoeffer while he was in prison; the 38 she was able to keep when she fled East Germany during the Russian invasion have been given to Harvard's Houghton Library, with the stipulation that they not be published without her permission during her lifetime. In an article about Bonhoeffer in the current issue...
Confirmation Flunked. There was an element of incongruity in their relationship. Bonhoeffer was a mature intellectual with a passionate commitment both to Christian theology and the anti-Nazi underground; Maria, half his age, had no zest for either theology or politics. The two first met in 1936; Bonhoeffer was 30, she was twelve. At the time, he was operating an underground seminary for anti-Nazi divinity students in Finkenwalde; Maria, member of an aristocratic, landed family, was living nearby with her grandmother, who asked Bonhoeffer to include the girl in a confirmation class for Maria's older brother...
...friendship of Maria and Bonhoeffer blossomed into romance in 1942, after her graduation from high school. "The rapport," she remembers, "was immediate. He was able to transform the fumblings and erratic emotions of a young girl into the assured certainty that this was an addition and a source of strength to his own life." Following their engagement, Bonhoeffer initially accepted the prospect of a lengthy betrothal out of respect to Maria's family. "But soon," she writes, "he objected clearly, decisively and repeatedly. When we succeeded in changing the dictum, it was too late; he had been imprisoned...
Picking Furniture. Jailed as an enemy of the Third Reich, in 1943, Bonhoeffer was allowed to receive visits by Maria, who took him books, laundry and food. She once arrived lugging a huge Christmas tree, causing considerable laughter among the guards. Bonhoeffer "remarked that maybe if he moved his cot out of his cell and stood up for the Christmas season he could accommodate the tree comfortably." Although suspected of treason, Bonhoeffer retained the hope that he would eventually be freed, encouraged Maria to plan ahead for their marriage. "It helped him to envision a specific piece of furniture...
...prospect of freedom dimmed, Bonhoeffer suffered moments of discouragement. "Slowly it gets to be a waiting whose outward sense I cannot comprehend," he wrote to Maria. "Your life would have been quite different, easier, clearer, simpler, had not our paths crossed." But the majority of his letters reflected overwhelming courage and inflexible faith. In his last message to Maria, written at Christmas time, 1944, he said: "What is happiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on that which happens inside a person." Four months later he was hanged at the Flossenbürg concentration camp...