The nicotine journal

This summer I reread Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison in Fortress Press's extra­ordinary new edition of his collected works. Letters and Papers remains almost endlessly suggestive and stimulating theologically. But in this reading I noticed how often the imprisoned Luth­eran pastor mentioned tobacco. There are, in fact, no fewer than 20 entries in the index under "Smoking."

"I am very grateful for any smoking supplies," Bonhoef­fer mentions in one letter. In another he adds his "special thanks for the smoking supplies and to all the kind donors of cigarettes," and elsewhere he offers gratitude for "cookies, peaches, and cigarettes."

Bonhoeffer often re­inforces his gratitude with superlatives and exclamation points. "Maria's and Mother's cigarettes were magnificent," he writes. "I thank Anna very much for the cigarettes." And: "I thank you very much for everything, also for the cigars and cigarettes from your trip!" He praises a Wolf cigar for its "magical fragrance" and on another occasion declares, "I've lit the big cigar and am enjoying it immensely—thanks very much!" When his dear friend Eber­hard Bethge delivers a cigar sent by Karl Barth, Bon­hoeffer finds it so fine that he staggers at its "truly im­probable reality."