Letters and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition - Softcover

Letters and Papers frrom Prison first appeared in English in 1953. A revised translation of the same material was published in 1967, but in 1971 this was replaced by an enlarged edition containing a great deal of new material released by Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer's friend and literary executor, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary in 1970 of Bonhoeffer's death at the hands of the Nazis. This new material - further letters and occasional pieces written by Bonhoeffer while in prison; the other side of the correspondence, from Bethge and the Bonhoeffer family; an article by Bonhoeffer's fiancee, Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller, describing unpublished letters to her - subtly alters the impression which this unique correspondence had made. The startling theology is still there, but it now emerges from a deeply moving story of a very human man deprived of his freedom indefintely; longing for freedom, pining for his fiancee, frustrated by forced inactivity, yet turning all these things into a triumphant expression of the power of human courage and the grace of God.