Martyrs, maniacs, malts, and mosaics

    

        "We're brothers in Christ with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and are looking to find out where he was hidden". This is what I typed into my English-> German translator app in hopes that it could unlock a few doors for us. 

        Last week, my brother and one of my best friends, Matt, were staying at an AirB&B in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a skiing town in the German alps. We had one day left to spend in the beautiful region and no plan of what to do with it. I'd heard a couple times about this cool old monastery that was nestled in a valley 20 minutes away in the alpine village of Ettal. I thought it could be a cool thing to check out, but wasn't too motivated to go see it. I had done a 10 hour hike the day before, had a big breakfast, and was too busy enjoying gawking at the nearly 10,000 foot peaks around us to see another silent, ornate Roman Catholic building on top of the dozens we'd seen. Besides, it was only 700 years old, which is young by European standards.

        It wasn't until Matt did a little digging and reported that this very abbey sheltered Dietrich Bonhoeffer was I really interested. The second he mentioned that the Lutheran martyr was sheltered there during his run from the Nazis, I knew we had to see it. 

        I still haven't read his most famous book, The Cost of Discipleship, or possess a lot of knowledge of him, but I still had a burning interest in the guy. From everything I'd heard of Bonhoeffer, it seems his life and death were guided by the same principles mine was - Faith and courage in Christ. My relatively cushy, privileged, educated New England upbringing, and his death in a concentration camp in April 1945 both had a relationship with Jesus at the very center of it, making us go - and that's the amazing part about faith, and that's why I want and wanted to learn more about his time in Ettal.

        Here's the thing: Most people don't care. Most Germans in the area seemed vaguely aware the martyr stayed there, but it's not like there was enough interest to schedule weekly Bonhoeffer tours into active parts of this monastery. When we arrived, our options were very limited. We could go into the main sanctuary of the Monastery and pretty much nothing else. The rest of the place was being used as a boarding school, gift shop, brewery, distillery, restaurant, and again, an actual active monastery for the local monks. I knew I'd need to ask some questions before getting to see the real stuff. That's when I typed the pickup line: "We're brothers in Christ with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and are looking to find out where he was hidden" into Google translate and went looking for a monk.

        First, I stopped at the gift shop, awkwardly showed the lady the translated thing, only for her to report that Bonhoeffer did work at the monastery but stayed at the hotel across the street. Seeing this was my only lead, I walked out of the monastery to the hotel, and showed the front desk lady(notably, again, not a monk), my google translate pickup line. She was confused, asked another attendant at the hotel, who was equally confused. Fortunately, at that very moment, a very-much-monk Father Johann of the Ettal abbey strolled in the front door.

        Seeing this as my best chance, I walked up to him, excused myself, and showed him the "We're brothers in Christ with Dietrich Bonhoeffer and are looking to find out where he was hidden."

       AND IT WORKED!!

        And I had a hunch it'd work. Why? Because monks a) Probably don't give a crap about if what I was doing was "socially acceptable" b) Probably love curious young, visitors and most importantly, c) Just like me and Bonhoeffer, we have a tie that binds us(hopefully) of faith in the anointed king of existence.

        Anyways, I show him the google translate thing, and he asks in very good English:

        "You want to learn about Bonhoeffer?"

        "Yes, we'd love to." I say.

        "You want me to see if I can get you a tour?"

        "That would be awesome." Matt, Isaac, and I all nod.

        "One moment." Father Johann pulls an iPhone out of his robes(!) and calls someone on the phone, speaking in German. The only thing I can make out is "Dietrich Bonhoeffer".

        He hangs up, and says, "If you go to the gift shop, there will be a man, his name is Florian, he's a big man, he'll meet you there and show you where Bonhoeffer worked."

        We thank father Johann and strut out of the hotel lobby gleefully. It's a beautiful day in the alps and I'm joyfully fist pumping the air.

        10 minutes later, and we meet up with this dude Florian. Bro is big, tall, speaks great English, and essentially is a PR guy for the monastery. He takes us on a tour of the entire place. We encounter no monks, but we do see hundreds of years of some of the most beautiful artwork I've ever seen, where the beauty is expounded by the fact that what we're doing is entirely unconventional and I feel like I shouldn't be seeing any of it in the first place. It's not like we're in a public setting, and these works aren't on any internet art archive. I was, frankly, bugging.

        We see a rapid fire of amazing works that each deserve paragraphs of detail, which I can't do. Sufficed to say, art is a lot more beautiful when you have a guide who knows the story behind it.

        Finally we get to the Bonhoeffer stuff, which honestly, after everything we'd discovered, not the coolest part of the tour. Very, very cool, don't get me wrong. We saw the library where he worked, his favorite chair(which I got to sit in), as well the room where he wrote music(more on this later).

        The coolest thing we saw in the library was a very particular book. Florian picked up a 400 year old book casually and led us in with "so typically, in Germany, we like to say that books are chambers of knowledge. This book, in particular, is a chamber for something else." He starts flipping the pages of the book, and as he does, I'm thinking "There's definitely gonna be a cut out hole in this book for something" and I was right! Cut into the thick pages this 400 year old liturgical book is a roughly 8 x 11 inch rectangular hole for something. The monks don't actually know where the missing liturgical pages are or what was stored in there. And I'm feeling more like Indiana Jones by the minute.

      Florian then promises us he'll show us the coolest piece of art in the monastery, but not before he gives us a mini-tour of the brewery, takes us to the bar, and starts throwing merchandise at us. The slogan for Ettaler beer is "So close to heaven." This is a presumptuous slogan for a loosely Roman Catholic adjacent brewery but it's good marketing and I'm here for it.

        We taste many beers and the three of us all get a little buzz on from sampling the abbey's fine selection of them - One of which won the Best beer of all Europe award in 2022. That sheer fact alone, along with the buzz, sent me reflecting again how it came to be that I'm here in Ettal getting to do any of this. All I wanted to do is learn about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and now Florian is giving us a tour, award winning beers and a bottle of expensive hay brandy for absolutely free. It's like a fever dream.

        The last, and probably best, room in the monastery is a music and event hall located on the end of the monastery's southeastern wing. Throughout history it's hosted numerous German royalty, politicians, and important clergy. It's got a beautiful jade colored stove, old cloth wallpaper, and the piano where Bonhoeffer wrote music as he was taking refuge in the place. Florian directed our attention to one piece of art in particular hanging on the wall. It was a still life of a vase of flowers. It was pretty and colorful, and was a gift for a super famous and beloved Bavarian princess.

        At first glance, it looks like a painting, but it's not. The texture of the pigments and how the light hits the strokes of color show you what the actual material the artwork is. It isn't paint on a canvas, but thousands of multicolored stones arrayed together.

        The whole thing is a mosaic! The three of us were astounded at the thing. Someone else who would've been astounded at it if they had the chance to see it was one Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and potentially the second highest ranking person in the Nazi regime. During the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Himmler visited the abbey. The monks present knew how voraciously the Nazis wanted precious art, and hid multiple pieces of art from them, including this one. Had Himmler, who would dine in the event hall, seen the mosaic and noticed it was a mosaic, he would undoubtably have stolen it from the abbey and it, by the end of the war, may have been destroyed.

        The monks' workaround to this was to take the mosaic down, hide it, and replace it with a painting that was pretty but no where near as valuable. They did so, and while Himmler was schnitzel snorfling in the event hall, he looked at their replacement painting, decreed that he was taking it, and stole it from the monastery. He took the bait. The monks absolutely pulled one over on Hitler's #2, and all I can say is a firm "well done, boys."

        A few years later, in the winter of 40-41, Bonhoeffer would take shelter at the abbey while on the run. He celebrated Christmas, wrote, and fellowshipped with the monks. By most accounts he was, understandably, unhappy with his predicament. His life was on the line, the faith of his country was dying, and his whole world, all of Europe, would soon collapse. I seriously doubt he knew the importance of what he was doing. I wonder if he knew that his choice to act in faith to his God and redeemer would do anyone any good at all. He was cloistered away, hunted by Nazis, and millions by this time were already suffering under their reign. I'm sure he questioned how on earth God was allowing any of it to happen, and if God really did have a plan for him, what was that plan? For him to stay here and hide?

        I've yet to do research into what his life and faith really were characterized as during this period, but in a real way, I think I get what he had to go through. Faith in the true God, regardless of where or when you are, is really, really, really hard to live out. It's what binds us to Him, and incidentally it's also what binds us to each other.

        This was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life, and all it took to kick it off was curiosity and a little good faith. If you've made it this far, thank you so very much for reading, and I hope that you can find yourself into a similar experience very soon.