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Overview
An astonishing historical novel in the tradition of Schindler's List--evoking powerfully the danger and heroism of the Nazi resistance.
What is the price of acting morally in a time of great evil, when sin and necessity seem twinned? Saints and Villains is a strikingly resonant novel that dramatizes this painful dilemma through the fictional re-creation of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This emblematic figure risked his life--and finally lost it--through his participation in the failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple the Nazi regime. In a gripping and sweeping narrative that moves from Berlin to London to New York City, encompassing shattering historical events, clandestine meetings, perilous missions abroad, and eventual imprisonments and death, Denise Giardina brings to life an instance of shining courage in the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War. A novel that is bold in conception and utterly convincing in its powers of fictional re-creation--a literary event.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780393081664 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 10/25/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 487 |
| File size: | 745 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
"Sorry, Mother. But you don't go to church either."
"Still I pray every night," she said. "And I read scripture. Certainly you've been taught it is rude to mock religion. Has he not, Father?"
"He has," Dr. Bonhoeffer agreed. "I myself participate in Mother's devotions out of respect for her, though I admit to knowing little of such matters myself."
"Or caring little," Karl Friedrich whispered beneath his breath so that only Sabine heard.
"If theology seems irrelevant," Dietrich said to a parsley potato stuck on the end of his fork, "then it is because it has been improperly presented. I shall change that."
Then everyone laughed, except Sabine. And Karl Bonhoeffer. After considering his son for a time he said, "I'd hate to see you waste your years at university. There was a time when theology and philosophy and science were one. But that hasn't been true for centuries. The best minds of our time concern themselves with the latter two disciplines, because there lie the most possibilities for the improvement of humanity."
"There's von Harnack," Dietrich said.
Adolf von Harnack was the leading Protestant theologian in Germany, and the next-door neighbor of the Bonhoeffers, an elderly man pitied by the other intellectuals in the Grunewald because his field was archaic and his nephews were rumored to be Bolsheviks.
"That's it," Karl-Friedrich said. "Old von Harnack's got hold of you."
"I haven't spoken to him," Dietrich said. "I didn't tell anyone until today, when Herr Heininger asked us in class to declare a field of study." He looked around the table. "I said 'theology.' It just came out suddenly, but I realized I'd beenconsidering it quite a while."
Sabine nudged his leg beneath the table and smiled at him. He smiled back.
"What did your classmates say?" Christel asked.
"They looked at me as if I'd said I was going to take up big game hunting."
"At least with big game hunting you'll have a chance at some solid results," said Karl-Friedrich. "A theologian is about as useful as a maker of paper airplanes."
"Dietrich," said his father, "you suffered a very great disappointment when a musical career no longer seemed likely, and I'm sure you're not yet over the hurt. Still you will need to make a decision soon, and I urge you not to be rash."
"But why shouldn't Dietrich study theology?" Paula Bonhoeffer asked. "After all, my side of the family includes a number of distinguished clergymen."
"Great men in their day," agreed Karl Bonhoeffer, "but it was a different time, a less sophisticated time."
"When we were small," Sabine said, "Dietrich used to speak of God to me nearly every night when we went to bed. And we used to talk about eternity before we fell asleep."
"Eternity!" said Karl-Friedrich. "Now there's a sleep-inducing subject for you."
"Karl-Friedrich, that is quite enough!" his mother admonished.
But Dietrich was looking at his father as though no one else had spoken.
"It's what I want," he said. "And I don't care about the disappointment of not studying music. That sort of life would have been too easy. Not this. This will be the hardest thing in the world."
He asked to be excused and went to his room.
Dietrich and Sabine celebrated the passage of their school-leaving examinations with a hiking trip through the Thuringer Wald. They began at Meiningen on a spring day so warm their blouses were damp beneath their backpacks, and for sheer joy they clopped through mud puddles in their heavy boots. But though they spent their vacations at the Bonhoeffer summer home in the Harz, they were children of the city, unused to the vagaries of nature. On the Inselberg they climbed into a blowing snowstorm and lost their way. Their light jackets were not much use against the cold, and they stopped often so Dietrich could kneel in the drifts and knock crusts of ice from the skirt of Sabine's dress. Then they floundered on, arms around each other's waist, free hands clutching walking sticks that propelled them along, a single creature, like some huge ungainly snowbird.
With no clear path, and night coming on, they thought it best to simply go down. This way took them through stands of dark green fir that forced them time and again to alter their course. Night fell. They sang, Dietrich booming out Horch, was kommt von drauBen Rein? in his fine voice, Sabine Heula hie, heula ho! Their feet were numb and each step jarred them to the teeth, and they were happy, and pressed on, Hansel and Gretel in search of a hearth.
At last they slid down an icy funnel and landed in a heap at the edge of an open meadow. Through the white curtain of snow a warm light glowed in a cottage window. They sat in a drift and knocked snow each from the other, pointing at the light and whispering.
At the door, Sabine stepped forward first and knocked, then Dietrich pulled her back to the shelter of his arm. They waited, faces turned to the single ice-glazed window. The door opened. A table, and the faces that hovered around it, seemed a great distance away. The large man who had opened the door leaned forward and blocked their view.
"Ja?" the man said.
"Pardon," said Dietrich, "we have lost our way in the snow. May we find shelter here? A bit of food, perhaps?"
He stepped away from the door and ushered them inside. The faces still watched them, then moved off, accompanied by a strange and comforting clatter of clogs on the stone floor. The man led them to a bench. Wooden bowls and spoons appeared, then ladles of potato soup. The soup was lukewarm, with thick, milky bits as though the bottom of a pot had been carefully scraped to find enough for them. Wedges of goat cheese and heels of black loaves daubed with pork fat were laid beside their numb hands.
They ate slowly while the faces retreated to the hearth and began murmuring. There were as many as in the Bonhoeffer family, but they seemed more worn and brown around the edges. At first Dietrich's eyes felt frozen but then seemed to melt and it was easier to look about. Every wall of the cottage was covered with implements, pruning hooks, blunderbusses, washboards, clocks, crucifixes, salt shakers, bric-a-brac shelves, jars of flour and beans and preserves, mattocks.
Sabine leaned against him and whispered, "It's like living inside a drawer." He nodded and smiled.
When they had done eating, the old woman of the family approached, pulling her shawl about her shoulders.
"Come, children," she said, "and sit by the fire. The young ones want stories. "
She placed warm cups in their hands, and they sipped rich homemade beer.
"A story," the youngest girl said. "A story."
Sabine was truck dumb. But Dietrich pulled his knees to his chin and looked into the fire. "Shall I tell of the Wild Swans?" he said.
"Ja, ja," the children chorused.
He began, "Once upon a time, a king hunted in a dark forest."
Of course they knew it, as well as he did. And still Dietrich held them. He told of the widowed king who lost his way in the Thuringer Wald and was tricked into marrying the daughter of a witch.
"Once the wedding was performed," Dietrich said, "the king's eyes were opened and he saw what he had done. He feared at once for his children, six boys and a girl, and sent them away to live in this very forest, at the foot of the Inselberg. But the wicked stepmother found them out. She wove six blouses of white silk, enchanted blouses with the power to transform Seeking out the young princes, she threw the blouses over them, and each in turn was changed into a white swan, and flew away. Only the witch did not know of the girl child, who hid and then ran away deep into the forest.
"One night, as the girl huddled hungry and frightened beneath a giant spruce, the six swans found her. In their beaks they carried blankets and baskets of food, which they laid about her. For a moment they were changed back to their human forms. And they told--"
"Pardon!" A small girl tugged at Dietrich's arm. "How were they changed back? Why did the witch allow it?"
Dietrich thought a moment. "Perhaps the witch didn't allow it," he said. "Perhaps it was their care for their sister which broke the spell ever so briefly."
"Of course," said the old woman. "Go on with your tale, go on."
"The brothers asked their sister to weave them shirts of thistle and thorns," Dietrich continued. "Only in this way would the spell be broken for good. And she must not speak to a soul until the task was completed.
"The girl set about her work. Think how painful it would have been to weave thistles and thorns, day in and day out."
"Her fingers would bleed," a boy said.
"They would not stop bleeding," Dietrich agreed.
"Like the hands of our Lord," the old woman said from her corner.
Dietrich looked startled but went on with the story, told how a handsome prince married the girl, who remained mute, and how many began to accuse her of witchcraft because of her silence. At last her enemies prevailed and she was to be burned at the stake, but even as the pyre was built, the swans swooped from the clouded sky to the prisoner's balcony. One by one the girl threw the blouses over the swans, who became her brothers once more. At last she could speak in her defense, and so was saved. Only one blouse was not finished, so the youngest brother kept the wing of a swan for the rest of his days.
They heard Dietrich out in silence, the youngest with her thumb firmly in her mouth.
"Well told," the man said at last. The woman nodded, and set down her darning to refill their cups.
"Where from?" the man asked.
"Berlin," they answered.
"Ah. Ah. Are there any stories worth telling about Berlin?"
"Nein." The woman paused in her pouring. "They will not have good stories about Berlin. Too many Jews there."
Dietrich sat up. "Why do you say that? Do you know any Jews?"
She crossed herself. "God forbid!"
Sabine caught Dietrich's arm and forced him to look at her, shook her head. "Leave it," she whispered.
"But it's wrong," he whispered back.
"Of course it's wrong. But they have taken us in and shared their food with us. And they have precious little for themselves. They're worn--out look at them--and so are we just now. You won't convince them. It isn't worth a row."
He leaned back against the leg of a table and shut his eyes. The children watched him carefully.
"Tell another story," the boy asked.
"Whsst," the man said. "'Tis past time for bed. Mother, see to the guests."
The old woman gave them a package of bread and butter for the morning, and refused their offer of pay. Then a thin boy of around fourteen carried a lantern before them to the barn and up a ladder to the loft. With apologies, he explained, "We've no more room in the house. But I sleep up here always and it is quite warm in the hay."
He helped them spread their blankets, then retreated to a far corner and was soon snoring. They wrapped themselves tight and burrowed deep, Dietrich with his back to Sabine. She knew he didn't sleep.
"What?" she asked after a time. "Is it because I asked you to be silent?"
"I don't blame you," he said. "But one never makes up for something like that."
"It's how human beings get on sometimes," Sabine said. "Who has the strength to always he right?"
At dawn the family went out for their day's work in the field. Though the ground was frozen, it was April, and they must begin to break up the soil. Through a crack between the boards, Dietrich and Sabine watched them go, clogs punching holes in crusts of ice, like gunshots, as they made their way clutching shovels and mattocks, and disappeared around the glazed curve of the meadow.
Reading Group Guide
1. This story raises important questions about personal responsibility in the face of inhumane behavior. What led Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a painfully shy and introspective man, to join the German resistance?
2. Why does Bonhoeffer refuse to conduct the funeral service for his sister's father-in-law? Discuss the impact this choice has on his life.
3. This story illustrates how some people found the courage to challenge a corrupt and brutal regime. What did you know of the German resistance prior to reading this book? What factors do you think led some people to resist in the face of almost insurmountable odds?
4. Bonhoeffer made great sacrifices yet he was always battling his fears and demons. As one reviewer has said: "Giardina makes [Bonhoeffer] the reportedly stiff, bespectacled intellectual . . . into a hero to whom any reader can relate." What does the face of courage look like in this book? How do you define courage and heroism?
5. "He who believes does not flee." Bonhoeffer has opportunities to escape Nazi Germany yet he chooses to remain and fight. Why do you think is this so? In his place, what would you have done?
6. As a religious leader, Bonhoeffer struggled to reconcile his faith with his eventual decision to join what was, in part, a conspiracy to murder. Did he rest easy with this decision? Under what circumstances, if any, is murder is justifiable?
7. Discuss the impact of Bonhoeffer's experiences in the United States on his later understanding of the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany. How is Bonhoeffer changed by his time abroad? How do his experiences in Harlem and on Gauley Mountain affect his actions upon his return to Nazi Germany?
8. This story recounts the Allied rejection of overtures by the German resistance. Why do you think the German resistance failed to get foreign assistance? What if the German resistance had received aid in time? Do you think the outcome might have been different?
9. Why do Elisabeth Hildebrandt and Bonhoeffer separate? What forces drive them apart?
10. Why do you think Alois Bauer ultimately tries to save Bonhoeffer? What might account for the very different paths these two men have chosen?
11. There are no simple villains in this story. How do you understand the very patriotic German couple that sent their son off to fight for Hitler, yet also befriended Elisabeth in her time of need?
12. As this story illustrates, the rise to power of Hitler and Nazi Germany was facilitated by compromise and accommodation in the international community. Why do you think this was so? Why did a dissenting voice such as Bonhoeffer's get lost or shouted down?
13. Many people would wonder what kind of God would allow something like the Holocaust to happen and would lose their religious faith in the wake of the Holocaust. How does Bonhoeffer address these issues and maintain his faith? How does the nature of his faith change over the course of his lifetime?
14. The tremendous scope of death and destruction in the Holocaust can be difficult to comprehend. How did this man's story help you to process such acts of unimaginable evil?
15. Bonhoeffer once said, "We must live as if God does not exist." What was this minister and theologian trying to tell us with this statement?
16. In this story, Mozart's Mass in C Minor (the original manuscript of which was lost during the war) plays a pivotal role. Recently there has been much news coverage of renewed attempts to retrieve art and money lost during World War II. How do we assess blame in such situations? Who should be held accountable for such losses?
17. Which characters, besides Bonhoeffer, did you find to be the most compelling and why?
18. Why did your group choose to read this particular work? How does this novel compare with other works your group has read?