Moabit Sonnets

These eighty sonnets were written by a man expecting to be executed for his resistance to the Nazi regime. Just before Christmas 1944, Albrecht Haushofer had been delivered to the Gestapo prison in the Moabit district of Berlin. In solitary confinement, fettered hand and foot, he awaited a show trial with a predetermined outcome. After a while he was allowed some sheets of paper and a pencil. He began to write sonnet after sonnet describing his days and nights in prison, shared with comrade...