Bonhoeffer's Question in the Dark

In the winter of 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat in a concrete cell in Tegel Prison, Berlin, and wrote the poem that would outlast his captors. "Who am I?" he asked. The guards called him cheerful and steady. Fellow prisoners said he walked the corridors like a country squire visiting his estate. But alone in his cell, Bonhoeffer confessed he felt restless, sick with longing, trembling with anger, weary of praying.…