27 Sep Alfred Delp SJ

Move to Tegel Prison

On September 27, 1944, Alfred Delp and several of his companions, after standing for hours, were hustled into a prison vehicle, and driven from the Gestapo prison, Moabit, to Tegel Prison in north Berlin. Tegel was a prison for criminals.  It was unusual for political prisoners to be incarcerated there, although the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been imprisoned there since April, 1943 (he was soon to be moved to the Flossenberg concentration camp).

The prisoners were met by the foul smells of generations of inmates and they were kept in handcuffs at all times. But Tegel was run by ordinary prison staff, not the Gestapo.  For the time being, there would be not be the terror of Gestapo interrogations.

Soon a routine was established by two friends of Delp, Marianne Hapig and Marianne Pünder, known as the Mariannes. These two women brought Delp clean laundry and buried inside the folds were pen, ink and paper.  When they picked up his outgoing laundry, inside the folds were letters he had written.

Gestapo alert calling for the high-priority arrest of the Jesuits Augustin Rösch (far right) and Lothar König