Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [4]
Deeply convinced that he was responding to a divine call to unmask the anti-Christian character of Nazism, he fully realized that in so doing, he would have to abandon the intellectual joy of his heart; his philosophical and religious writings. He felt very keenly the sacrifice that responding to this mission entailed, and yet he never hesitated for a moment. For he was convinced that any religious writer worthy of the name was now called upon to be in the forefront of a combat waged against an anti-Christ.
Since his conversion, von Hildebrand’s greatest joy had been to meditate and to write about the new world of Christianity which he had discovered in reading the lives of the saints. Now, in Vienna, plunged into an anti-Nazi political fight which to him was a hairshirt, Dietrich von Hildebrand lived under such pressure that—apart from his courses at the University—he was forced to devote all his time and all his energies to his task as a journalist.
Moreover, after the assassination of Chancellor Dollfuss in July 1934, the new government headed by Schuschnigg adopted a policy of détente with Hitler, and refused to help finance von Hildebrand’s anti-Nazi weekly. Fundraising was added to his list of onerous duties.
To make matters worse, only a few people understood and agreed with his primary purpose of showing the intrinsic incompatibility of Christianity and Nazism. Von Hildebrand was persecuted by the pro-Nazis; he was flouted by the anti-Catholics (who resented the deeply religious tone of his weekly); and he was rejected by the anti-semites who refused to acknowledge that anti-Semitism was, to quote Léon Bloy, a slap in the face of the Holy Virgin by the hands of the Christians.
Dietrich von Hildebrand stood alone.
Moreover, he was warned by the Chief of Police that the Nazi underground planned to assassinate him and he lived constantly under this sword of Damocles. Harassed by financial difficulties, forced to spend much of his time and energy fundraising (a work for which he was the most untalented of men), von Hildebrand knew little respite.
Two brief moments of peace were given him, however. During the months of August 1936 and 1937, a group of German friends (who missed terribly the lectures von Hildebrand used to give them in his house in Munich) invited him to Florence to give them a series of lectures on spirituality; they rented his sister’s villa for that purpose.
What a joy it was for him to put down temporarily the crushing burden he was carrying and, once again, surrounded by friends whom he could trust, breathe the pure, spiritual air of prayer and contemplation.
Transformation in Christ is the fruit of these eighteen lectures given in the city of his birth. Too soon thereafter—when he escaped from the clutches of the Gestapo by taking the very last train leaving Austria for Czechoslovakia before the Nazi takeover—he was forced to live the painful life of a refugee: first in Switzerland, and then in France.
In the midst of this turmoil, he decided to publish his eighteen lectures from Florence, and confided them to Benziger Publishers in Switzerland. At that time von Hildebrand’s works were forbidden both in Germany and Austria (possession of any of his writings could send a person to a concentration camp). Therefore, Benziger Publishers insisted that Transformation in Christ be printed under a pseudonym: Peter Ott. The book was an immediate success. It was only after the war, when the nightmare of Nazism was over, that a second edition of Transformation in Christ appeared, published under von Hildebrand’s own name.
From reading it, no one could ever guess that this great book on spirituality was written under such dramatic circumstances.