Bonhoeffer and the Anomaly

Bonhoeffer thought often about the anomaly, especially in the later  part of his life.

Dictionary.com defines an anomaly as follows:

A deviation from the common rule, type, arrangement, or form. an anomalous person or thing; one that is abnormal or does not fit in.

In the work of H.P Lovecraft (1890-1937), the American horror writer who was a rough contemporary to Bonhoeffer,  anomaly describes that which is horrific or monstrous. It is what we can not bear to contemplate because it stands outside the normal order of life as we understand it. It leads us to madness. 

A Lovecraft anomaly: a horror

This atavistic undertone informs the fear of the anomaly in Nazi Germany and our own times. Bonhoeffer, of course,  confronted the reality of what happened to those defined as "anomalous" within National Socialism. Those who were not perceived as part of the ethnic German volk faced imprisonment, torture, and genocide. As his own twin sister (not to mention two other of his siblings) were married to assimilated Jews, the question was not trivial to him. 

In his non-familial relationships, Bonhoeffer faced the anomalous nature of his friendship with Bethge, a friendship both men acknowledged as outside the norms of their society. Bethge, for instance, complained that he was not automatically passed Bonhoeffer's letters from Tegel prison from the Bonhoeffer family,  and both men mourned the inability of Bethge--because friendship had no standing--to visit Bonhoeffer in Tegel, a right afforded his parents and the fiancee he barely knew. Bethge appreciated, as he told Bonhoeffer, his marriage to Renate, in part because it was part of the normal "order" of family as envisioned by the Lutheran Church and German society. It was visible, not anomalous. (Of course, he also loved Renate in her own right.)

In sharp distinction to Lovecraft and Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer fought to reframe the anomalous into the beautiful, rather than reject it as the horrific. For Bonhoeffer, the lovely blue cornflower became the symbol of  the anomaly of close friendship. In Bonhoeffer's day, before the widespread use of pesticides and controlled farming, cornflowers grew as weeds between farmers' orderly rows of wheat. Bonhoeffer likened the cultivated wheat to the Lutheran social orders of family, work, church, etc, and appreciated these "grains" as useful and necessary. But he also celebrated the freedom, spontaneity, and beauty of the gentle and anomalous cornflower, which became his symbol of  friendship. Unlike the Nazis, he saw the creative potential in the anomalous: this humanity and generosity is perhaps what draws us most strongly to him--and is pertinent for our own times.

Cornflower amid wheatfield

Bonhoeffer drew around him women as part of his closest inner circle, and even for a brief moment had the anomalous Bertha Schultz as his "housekeeper" or secretary. She shared his attic home in South London, along with male and family visitors.  Bertha did not remain long in London--precisely from fears on the part of Bonhoeffer and his friends that she might be trying to cross the line from anomaly--single, highly intelligent and educated working woman--to Bonhoeffer's wife. (We have no idea if this was Bertha's plan or if this was merely projection).

Bonhoeffer's close friend Ruth von Kleist Retzow was a borderline anomalous women, though in a very different way from Bertha. Widowed early, she never remarried and, while staying respectable for remaining close to family and church, she also exhibited a high degree of independence. She protested at first taking six grandchildren into her Stettin apartment when their families wanted to remove them from local Nazi scrutiny. While she did supervise them for several years, and saw to it that they had contact with Bonhoeffer's seminarians, she lived much of her life independently, rotating between her Stettin apartment and her country cottage, very much in charge of both. However, she could feel anomalous--that she did not fit in--with Bonhoeffer's plans or life, noting he was too quick to dismiss seeing her and complaining at one point that she would not "beg" for his company.

How we treat the anomaly or outsider sheds light on who we are as people. Bonhoeffer showed his deep humanity in his concept of male friendship as a realm of freedom worth cultivating and in his close embrace of certain women as intimate platonic friends.