Faithfully and quietly surrounded by good powers

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Of good powers , autograph Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Typewriter copy from 1945, the text of which was considered authentic until 1988

A spiritual poem by the Protestant theologian and Nazi resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer is loyally and quietly surrounded by good powers . Written in December 1944 in the Gestapo custody, it is Bonhoeffer's last surviving theological text before his execution on April 9, 1945. Today it is a much sung sacred song . The last stanza, Wonderfully Rescued by Good Powers , is also common on greeting cards, candles and other piety objects and as a funeral motto .

Emergence

As a prominent opponent of the regime, Bonhoeffer had been imprisoned in various prisons since April 5, 1943. His notes in custody show a new dimension in his theological thinking. In the summer of 1944, around the time of the July 20 assassination attempt , he also began writing poetry.

On October 8, 1944, in connection with July 20, he was transferred to the basement prison of the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin , Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse  8. From there he wrote to his young fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer on December 19, 1944 , adding “a few verses that came to mind in the last few evenings” as “Christmas greetings for you and your parents and siblings”. This poem also referred to his own situation - he had to face execution - and that of his family against the unspoken background of Nazi rule and the war. His brother Klaus and his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher were imprisoned, brother Walter had died, and his twin sister Sabine had gone abroad with her Jewish husband Gerhard Leibholz . His engagement relationship practically consisted only of sporadic and censored correspondence. At the beginning of the letter, Bonhoeffer wrote:

“It is as if the soul forms organs in solitude that we hardly know in everyday life. I haven't felt alone and abandoned for a moment like this. You and your parents, all of you, the friends and students in the field, you are always very present to me. Your prayers and good thoughts, words from the Bible, conversations long past, pieces of music, books come to life and become reality like never before. It is a great invisible realm in which one lives and of whose reality one has no doubt. If the old nursery rhyme of the angels says: 'two who cover me, two who wake me', this preservation in the evening and in the morning by good, invisible forces is something that we adults today need no less than children. "

The context of the letter explains why the poem begins in the interpersonal form of address ("I ... with you"), only to become a we prayer in the course of the second stanza . Although referred to as Christmas greetings, the text makes no reference to the birth of Jesus, but looks ahead to the turn of the year and the uncertain future, which, despite all the real danger, is determined by God's providence and love. The starting point and increased goal is the confession of trust in the “good powers” ​​with which God surrounds and comforts the believers.

Lore history

Bonhoeffer's letters to his fiancée were by their nature not intended for publication. Maria von Wedemeyer probably made a copy of the poem for Dietrich's parents and the rest of the family around Christmas 1944. This is the basis of a hectographed, typewritten copy, which was first published in the ecumenical commemorative publication Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Testimony of a Messenger , published in Geneva in 1945 , was included in Eberhard Bethge's famous Bonhoeffer letter collection Resistance and Surrender (1951) and was considered authentic until the 1980s . It differs from the original in four places (see below). All song versions then followed this text.

It was not until 1988 that Bonhoeffer's original letter became publicly available; it forms the basis for the publication in the critical Edition Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, Volume 8 (1998). Starting with the Evangelical Hymnbook from 1993, most songbooks have since contained the text version of the autograph .

shape

The poem is strophic , unlike other poetic texts by Bonhoeffer from this period. The seven stanzas are numbered in the autograph like a hymn book song, but possibly only to ensure the correct order in the scarce space on the sheet. The meter - four fünfhebige , iambic , alternating female and male rhyming lines - does not match any then in use hymn tune. The personal beginning interferes with a communal use. The earliest setting (Otto Abel 1959) only referred to the last stanza (originally with repetition of the second pair of lines). Nonetheless, when singing all stanzas together, the general confessional quality, into which Bonhoeffer allows his individual, unrepeatable experience of torment and consolation, to prove itself.

text

The text version of the Evangelical Hymnal is, with a few deviations in punctuation, that of Bonhoeffer's autograph:

1. Surrounded by good powers, faithfully and quietly,
wonderfully protected and comforted,
I want to live
with you these days and go with you into a new year.

2. The old one still wants to torment our hearts
, and bad days still weigh heavily on us.
Oh Lord, give our frightened souls
the salvation for which you made us.

3. And if you hand us the heavy chalice, the bitter one
of suffering, filled to the highest edge,
we will gratefully take it
from your good and beloved hand without trembling .

4. But if you want to give us joy again
in this world and its sunshine,
then we want to remember the past,
and then our life belongs entirely to you.

5. Let the candles burn warm and bright today
that you brought into our darkness
, bring us together again if it can be.
We know that your light shines in the night.

6. When the silence now spreads deeply around us,
let us hear that full sound of
the world that expands invisibly around us,
all your children's high praise.

7. Wonderfully safe from good powers,
we confidently await what may come.
God is with us in the evening and in the morning
and most certainly every new day.

Melodies

According to GEMA's work database, the text was set to music by more than 70 composers (as of September 2017), e.g. B. by Joseph Gelineau 1971 or Kurt Grahl 1976. With the melody by Otto Abel from 1959, the song was under the number 65 (at the turn of the year) in the main part of the Evangelical hymn book and in the Mennonite hymn book under number 272 (Through the year - Turn of the year and Epiphany), included in individual regional editions of Ev. Hymnal also with the melody by Siegfried Fietz from 1970, which can be considered the most popular. The regional churches of Baden and Württemberg count the song among the 33 "core songs" in the Evangelical Hymnbook, which are to be used in all areas of church work. The song with Kurt Grahl's melody was also included in the Catholic hymn book Gotteslob as No. 430, and in some parts of the diocese it was also included with the Fietz melody. The Old Catholic Hymn Book, Tuned in from 2003, contains the song with the Fietz melody and the "old" (machine transcript ) text (No. 643).

Siegfried Fietz's melody "is not only enthusiastically received by the younger generation". That she was still not included in the regular part of the big church hymnals, looks Jürgen Henkys less due to the fact that they are "on the popular music -oriented" is, as in the use of Bonhoeffer's target statement as refrain that disturb the theological and poetic dynamics.

literature

Web links

Commons : From Good Powers  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In his great Bonhoeffer biography from 1966, Eberhard Bethge writes: "The parents only received two letters, one of which was written in a hurry for the mother's birthday on December 28, 1944 - the poem 'Von guten Mächten' was attached to it." ( Eberhard Bethge: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Eine Biographie , Munich, 4th edition 1978, pp. 1016f.)
  2. ^ Bridal letters, cell 92: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Maria von Wedemeyer 1943–1945. P. 208. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ^ Copy of Maria von Wedemeyer's
  4. ↑ Ecumenical Commission for the Pastoration of Prisoners of War (ed.): The testimony of a messenger: To the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Geneva 1945, p. 47.
  5. ^ Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Resistance and Surrender (= Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, 8). Chr. Kaiser, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-579-01878-7 , pp. 607f.
  6. ↑ "Luck and Unhappiness"; "Who am I?"; "The boyfriend"; "Past"
  7. ↑ Evangelical hymn book. Edition for the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Bavaria and Thuringia. 2nd Edition. Evangelical Press Association for Bavaria, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-583-12100-7 , p. 132 f.
  8. ↑ According to the original text as an adjective related to "year". In many older editions "the old" was understood as substantive .
  9. ↑ Resistance and surrender (old edition), according to the machine transcript: "aufgescheuchten"
  10. ↑ Bonhoeffer wrote capital letters in the autograph of the address from God “You, your” etc.
  11. ^ Resistance and surrender (old edition), according to the machine transcription: "prepares"
  12. ^ Resistance and surrender (old edition), according to the machine transcription: "still"
  13. ^ Resistance and surrender (old edition), after the machine transcription: "with"
  14. ↑ https://online.gema.de/werke/search.faces
  15. ^ Association of Evangelical Free Churches, Association of Free Evangelical Communities (ed.): Community songs. Oncken, Wuppertal / Kassel 1978 (1990 3 ), ISBN 3-7893-7812-7 ; Bundes-Verlag, Witten 1978 (1990 3 ), ISBN 3-926417-13-7 .
  16. ↑ Andrew Wilson-Dickson: Sacred Music - Its Great Traditions - From Psalms to Gospel. Brunnen Verlag, Giessen 1994, p. 236f.
    Praise to God: Catholic prayer and hymn book. Edition for the Diocese of Trier . Paulinus, Trier, 2013, ISBN 978-3-7902-1830-5 , no.430.
  17. ↑ Albrecht Schönherr (T.), Wolfgang Fischer (M.): 65 - Faithfully and quietly surrounded by good powers . In: Gerhard Hahn , Jürgen Henkys (Hrsg.): Liederkunde zum Evangelisches Gesangbuch . No. 4 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-50325-3 , pp. 36–41 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  18. ↑ regional edition Bavaria-Thuringia, number 637; Regional edition Württemberg, number 541 (verses 1, 5 and 6); Regional editions Rhineland-Westphalia-Lippe and Reformed Church, number 652. Hansjakob Becker: Geistliches Wunderhorn - Great German hymns ; C. H. Beck, Munich, 2001, ISBN 978-3-406-59247-8 , p. 460.
  19. ↑ a b c Henkys, p. 461
  20. ^ Evangelical Church in Württemberg: Our core songs (Advent 2006)
  21. ↑ z. B. Own part Austria No. 897, edition for the ecclesiastical province of Hamburg No. 858.