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The Path to Community

This is the story of a small group who dared to confront Adolf Hitler and the entire Third Reich with the love of Jesus Christ. Even before Hitler seized power, they knew that the National Socialist ideology stood in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus, and they refused to participate in any way. They never said, “Heil Hitler.” They did not vote in the plebiscites in which all Germans were expected to express their support for Hitler’s actions. Their young men did not join the armed forces. But neither did they stage public protests nor conspire to assassinate Hitler. They believed that living in unity and humility was the only way to oppose party politics and the Führer cult. Only love could overcome hatred—even love of Adolf Hitler himself. In their own words, they were “less than a gnat to an elephant,” but that did not matter: the message of Jesus Christ needed to be proclaimed in Nazi Germany, even if that should mean death to the messengers.

World War I

Germany was in chaos after the First World War. Soldiers returned—beaten and humiliated—or failed to return. The country was starving. The Kaiser had abdicated and social conventions were crumbling. New world views were gaining momentum: pacifism, communism, anarchism, socialism. Adolf Hitler surrounded himself with disgruntled war veterans and began building up the National Socialist Party based on the anger and bitterness of a vanquished people.

At the same time, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold were struggling to find God’s purpose in the confusion around them. They were in their mid-thirties and had five young children. Eberhard, born on July 26, 1883, was a popular Christian speaker and author. He was on the board of the Student Christian Movement and was literary advisor of its magazine Die Furche. In his leadership role Eberhard had formed strong friendships with members of Germany’s upper class and academia: Karl Heim (who became a professor in Tübingen), Paul Zander (the surgeon who would perform the fatal operation on his leg), Georg Michaelis (who served as Germany’s chancellor for a few months in 1917), plus military generals and others.

As a theology student in Halle in 1907, Eberhard and Dr. Karl Heim had organized lectures for charismatic speakers, which sparked a revival in the town. He met Emmy in the home of a wealthy woman where an “impressive mix of artists, doctors, and military officers’ wives” had gathered to hear him speak.1 The two young people felt drawn toward each other immediately, and within weeks he had asked her to marry him. Their engagement and marriage were born out of this Christian revival, and from the beginning of their relationship they were determined to allow God to guide their lives and to live by their convictions, regardless of the cost.

When World War I was declared in 1914, the German Student Christian Movement was swept up in nationalist fervor. Die Furche began printing a special leaflet for soldiers on the front. To quote from its pages:

When war was declared, our circles were prepared, by the grace of God, and the call of our king and Kaiser was accepted and followed in a noteworthy way. God’s hand had suddenly brought the time of the seed, the long time of peace, to an end. Now we had to prove that the two things that stood side by side in our name, “German” and “Christian,” bound the hearts of our brothers to a higher unity.2

Eberhard himself wrote numerous patriotic articles. But when soldiers began to come home, wounded and tormented by the horrors they had witnessed, he began to question the Christian role in warfare. Years later he described his difficult years of questioning and seeking:

Groups of people often gathered around me, and I tried by means of Bible studies and talks to lead them to Jesus. But after a while this was no longer enough . . . I was deeply unhappy. I recognized more and more that a personal concern for the salvation of souls, no matter how dedicated it might be, did not in itself meet the demands of the life Jesus calls us to . . . I began to recognize the needs of people in a deeper way: the need of their souls and bodies, their material and social wants, their humiliation, exploitation, and enslavement. I recognized the tremendous powers of mammon, discord, hate, and violence, and saw the hard boot of the oppressor upon the neck of the oppressed . . .

Then, from 1913 to 1917, I sought painfully for a deeper understanding of the truth . . . I felt that I was not fulfilling God’s will by approaching people with a purely personal Christianity . . . During those years I went through hard struggles: I searched in the ancient writings, in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and other scriptures, but I also wanted to acquaint myself with the realities of working-class life, and I sought to share in the lives of the oppressed as they struggled within the present social order. I wanted to find a way that corresponded to the way of Jesus and of Francis of Assisi, not to mention the way of the prophets.3

Radicals

In 1910, Eberhard discovered Swiss theologian Hermann Kutter, one of the founders of Christian Socialism. In his book Sie Müssen (They Must) Kutter spoke sharply against the established churches and how they had aligned themselves with mammon at the expense of the poor.

The same God who works in the inmost hearts of men, shall He not also change the outward aspect of man’s life? He who dries up the root of sin in the heart by the power of His word, shall He not also use His power where sin flourishes like the green bay tree in the industrial world? Does God distinguish between inner and outer? Does not His energy work in every nook and corner of His vast creation? . . . And ye would deny Him the power to burst the bonds of a society in which sin has bound men by a false tie, and to create a new humanity in which righteousness dwells? He must stand quietly by and see the soil, this inexhaustible earth which He has given men for their joyous occupation, become the monopoly of a class living in luxury, while their brothers beg bread from their hands!4

If the poor victim himself cannot declare this war against evil, why do you not rise up for him as did the prophets of old, as did Jesus and his Apostles?

Why is one constantly hearing from your lips the one message and not the other? Why always the comfortable, the bourgeois deliverance, that every disturbance of our present social order is dangerous and unsound; and never the sharp, decisive summons that we cannot serve God and Mammon? Why is it that you always console the poor with the future coming of the Lord, but never terrify the rich with the same theme—as Jesus did? Why never a complaint against the rich for their avarice, while you warn the poor so solemnly against covetousness?

I think that your Christianity is a Christianity of the rich, not of the poor. If so, it has no part with Jesus—for Jesus “preached the good news to the poor.”5

As time went on, Eberhard began to use Kutter’s ideas more and more in his discussions of radical Christianity and the Sermon on the Mount. His views began to raise some eyebrows in the Student Christian Movement.

To the end of his life, Eberhard sympathized with socialist ideals. He said in September 1935 to some newer Bruderhof members:

Hermann Kutter proclaimed that the worker’s heart and soul, the worker’s concern, is the fight for God’s justice. I stand with Hermann Kutter! Today as always! I appeal to true socialism. The root question of Religious Socialism is innermost, essential justice, which is not a moral justice but a divine justice.6

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By 1917, Germany was tired of the war. Hunger protests were staged in Berlin, and munitions workers went on strike. Eberhard grappled with the changes that the world was undergoing.

As a result of this war, the European civilization in which we live is going through a tremendous upheaval that brings what is lowest to the top and the uppermost to the bottom. It brings judgment and chastisement from God over everything that men thought they had so firmly under control. It is an upheaval that has cast the European down from the heights of his presumption and pride. We feel that the greatest changes are taking place in the economic area and that the expected peace treaty will only make these changes deeper and more fargoing. Now too a new wave of social upheaval has started in Russia, and we cannot foresee the consequences of these events. We have no idea what sweeping changes must still take place in the distribution of wealth between rich and poor, in trade and commerce, in buying and selling. We cannot yet foresee how far this revolution in outward things will affect everything else. But one thing is certain: the whole of humankind has recognized that we need an upheaval. What the Social Democrats, the anarchists, and related movements have always had on their banners has grown into a general conviction: humankind needs an upheaval.7

By now, he felt clearly that a Christian could not take part in violence. He became acquainted with pacifist English Quakers who provided daily meals to hungry children in Berlin. One of them, John Stephens, joined the discussion evenings in the Arnolds’ home and became a lifelong friend.

Eberhard sympathized with movements that were dissatisfied with the status quo. Unafraid of labels, he looked for the heartfelt ideals in widely varying world views, focusing on the positive without being blind to inherent dangers. This was true for the left-wing movements and would be true later for the right-wing National Socialist movement.

By 1920, his views were causing tensions in the Student Christian Movement and its publishing house, and he was forced to resign. With a number of like-minded friends he then began a new magazine, Das neue Werk (The New Work), which became the nucleus of a Neuwerk (New Work) movement—aligning itself with the poor and the radical left, but centered on Jesus Christ. Here, among other things, he published select writings of anarchists and communists such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, founders of the Spartacist League, which was the forerunner of the German Communist Party. He planned to publish some of the writings of the anarchist Gustav Landauer as part of his Innenschau (Looking Inward) series. Not surprisingly, such publications drew criticism. Eberhard answered a man who criticized his publication of a letter by Rosa Luxemburg:

You are completely right: it cannot be possible to construct an identity between a life in Christ lived from grace, and a party socialism. Yet we feel very strongly that many demands of conscience raised by socialists and pacifists indicate the same longing as that in the eschatological atmosphere at the time of John the Baptist and the early Christians. We are convinced that everything in socialism, communism, and pacifism which comes from a movement of conscience, everything directing itself purely from the heart against the rule of mammon and bloodshed, against class distinctions and individual possessiveness, comes from God. At the same time that does not prevent us from seeing how strongly satanic and demonic powers are at work in those movements. What we need today, and what none of us yet has to the degree that our times demand, is a simple discipleship of Jesus, springing from the longing of the present day.8

Eberhard spoke similarly about Kurt Eisner, a member of the Social Democratic Party, who led a revolution at the end of 1918 to overthrow the monarchy in Bavaria. Eisner was shot at point-blank range in Munich on February 21, 1919. In 1924, Emmy Arnold included his song “Wir werben im Sterben um ferne Gestirne” in her songbook Sonnenlieder. The reference note reads: “Text by Kurt Eisner, murdered 1919, sung at the first Munich revolution.”9 Years later Eberhard said about it:

We have just sung a song that was composed in Munich by people who were seeking a new life. The writer of the words of this song fell by a murderer’s hand. The meaning of the song—to translate it from poetry into ordinary language—­is this: humankind struggles to grow better; humankind fights for people to be more just and fair to one another. Humankind wants freedom from all servitude and slavery. The writer of the song says that true freedom arises in fellowship of action, and the world will not be free until people join hands in working fellowship.

There was a time when this incisive call was heard throughout the land: “Arise to freedom, the freedom-alliance of workers!” Jesus Christ has shown us that we do not need money and goods to become human; rather, we need to work together. For this we must join forces and combine all our energies. Only then will people find justice.10

With his frank, open-minded approach, Eberhard was able to bring opposing factions together. At the time of the Spartacus Revolt in Berlin in 1919, the most varied assortment of people met in the Arnolds’ home: members of the Student Christian Movement, anarchists, artists, officers, and Quakers. During the short-lived Kapp Putsch the following year, Eberhard was offered a position at the head of the new Department of Youth under the rebel government. He wrote: “My house became a kind of headquarters for influential people. As I was constantly in touch with both warring parties, I had the opportunity to use my influence to a certain degree—not strongly enough to make our spirit victorious, but not without a certain effect . . . We were able to come to an understanding with the communist party leaders that led to a significant reduction of the so-called black list—the list of officers to be killed.”11

But although he sympathized with their ideals, Eberhard did not join any of these movements. Rather, he tried to direct them to God and his kingdom, where a complete answer to injustice and suffering could be found. As he wrote in 1921:

It is of great importance that Christians discern the awakening for God, and that they witness to Christ in the midst of the socialist, pacifist, and communist movements of conscience. Since no party as such represents the pure idea of the kingdom of God, we do not belong as a whole movement to any party, neither democratic, socialist, nor communist. But we rejoice when individuals take up the fight within a party, also within the most radical revolutionary groups, against greed for possessions, against bloody force, against the increasing immorality in questions of sex, against lying in all forms. Whoever, as a Christian, places himself with the tax collectors and sinners, the social democrats and communists, feels solidarity with their need and guilt.12

Free German Youth

Although they were in their late thirties, Eberhard and Emmy felt increasingly close to a movement of young people, the Free German Youth. Men and women exchanged conventional mores in clothing and personal relationships for a more down-to-earth lifestyle. The girls put on simple dresses, braided their hair, and decked themselves with flowers; the young men cut off their pants and put on berets and Russian-style tunics. They set out into the fields and woods with violins and recorders, held long discussions around camp fires, ending with spirited folk dances. Eberhard and Emmy’s son Heiner remembered the change in the family household:

When Papa came actively into contact with the youth movement, I noticed a change in our house, although I was only five or six years old. Even we children noticed that he had definitely been middle class, but left wing. At that time most people on our street wore the colors of the German flag (black, white, and red) in their lapels, but my father wore a red ribbon; and we were called communists or anarchists by the other children. Papa was working for a publishing house, and he and Tata [Emmy’s sister Else] left together for work punctually every morning, always in a certain hurry, afraid they might be late. And Papa was always very neatly dressed. One day, at the time my father was expected home, we were on a balcony on the second floor—Mama, Tata, and we children—and suddenly we saw Papa. And how Mama and Tata laughed! Papa had cut his trousers short and was barefoot in his shoes, and they just doubled up with laughter! From then on Papa never wore his good suit again.13

Fritz Berber, a law student in Munich and a member of the Neuwerk Movement, corroborates Heiner’s memories:

Arnold was a highly educated theologian who had concerned himself particularly with the problems of original Christianity and who was trying to realize Christian and Tolstoian ideals in a life of simplicity and possessionlessness in a center in the village of Sannerz in the Rhön . . . He was a man who overflowed with love, but ignored outward conventions. When I arranged a lecture for him in the Maximum Auditorium of the University of Munich in winter 1921, he put me in a difficult predicament by appearing in shorts, despite the cold weather, displaying his naked, hairy legs before an academic world that had not yet grown accustomed to such things through the Beatles and hippies.14

The Sermon on the Mount

At the open evenings in the Arnolds’ home in Berlin, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount began taking on new significance. Emmy wrote about this time:

Our most wonderful meetings were those in which we read and discussed the message of the Sermon on the Mount, which dawned on us in a wonderful new way at that time. We felt it was not Eberhard himself who spoke, but that the words he spoke came to us directly from Christ. The beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, with the so-called Beatitudes; the words about loving one’s enemy; the Lord’s Prayer as Jesus teaches it to us; the urgently pleading words, “Ask, and it shall be given you”; the alms-giving in which the right hand should not know what the left is doing; the search for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the promise that through this search “everything else will be given you”—all this struck us like lightning. So did the end of the Sermon on the Mount: “Whoever hears these words and does them is like a wise man.”

Yes, something new and overpowering came over us: we felt it was a new period in our history, a part of God’s history we were experiencing, and we felt that the expectation of the coming kingdom of God must fill us. Finally we had found a place to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice. After the injustice of the war and the pre-war times, Jesus’ words burst in upon us with the power of a thunderclap. We felt we could no longer live the upper middle-class life we were used to and still proclaim the word of God. Faith had to become action, and we had to go new ways.15

In the Sermon on the Mount, Eberhard saw an answer to the questions of social justice and the radical movements of the time. If men and women could live according to these commands of Jesus, the kingdom of God would be among them.

The Neuwerk Movement

Neuwerk with its magazine Das neue Werk became a movement of which Eberhard Arnold was a central figure. Antje Vollmer writes in her thesis:

The beginning of the Neuwerk movement is unthinkable without Eberhard Arnold. He managed alone, within a short time, to set so many young people all over Germany on fire for his cause that as many as two to three hundred of them answered his invitation to the first Whitsun conference at Schlüchtern in 1920—the Neuwerk movement’s hour of birth.

All who knew Eberhard Arnold speak of the extraordinary strength his person radiated, of his enthusiastic faith, which was the faith of the Sermon on the Mount, and of his radical way of carrying out the task he knew himself called to. H. J. Schoeps conveys the following ecstatic impression of him: “I remember a very tall man of about forty-five in a corduroy suit, with radiant brown eyes, which gazed down at you in a friendly but also challenging way. He looked unusual in every respect. Once when he was standing in front of the National Library in Berlin, curious Berliners formed a proper circle around him and just stared at him.” About the Sannerz community, Schoeps goes on: “I state without hesitation that powers from another world were at work here, and Eberhard Arnold was their chosen instrument. If he had lived a few centuries earlier and as a Catholic, he would now most likely have a place assigned to him in a saints’ calendar.”16

One Neuwerk member was Norman Körber, who spent many hours in the Arnolds’ home in Berlin. He and Eberhard co-edited a book, Junge Saat (Young Seed), that contained articles bursting with the enthusiasm of the youth movement:

The time is fulfilled. Throughout the youth movement we clearly sense a secret excitement, just as was felt in Israel when a man sent by God came to the Jordan and called, “Repent, the kingdom is at hand!” . . .

The strongest spiritual yearning moves us to the core; it leads us most deeply to unity and whispers to us timidly of “community.” We have been gripped by the infinite. The spirit of God stirred us; it worked in us and brought us a restlessness that caused both happiness and pain. Some secret wellspring within us broke open never to dry up; something came alive in us and will never wither. Like the boy Samuel, a voice called us by night, and we had no choice but to obey.

A mighty experience empowered all of us when we each awoke to the fact: Now you are a member of a unique community of young people. We felt new strengths come alive when for the first time we tried to take control of our life, mystifying life, to take our progress into our own hands, and to form it according to our own will. We think back to that day when it overcame us like a holy wind, and we hardly knew what to do with our great exultation. We think back to that time when we explored our homeland for the first time, when on a long outing a new sense of life grew in us that made us one with the Almighty.17

But Körber also represented a certain nationalistic pride which would intensify in later years:

I believe that the road to other nations and to a new Christian Europe runs through our Volk, that all work for a new humanity runs through the one Volk. We have been born to this destiny. God laid into our cradle the disposition and gift to grasp that nation’s silent need and yearning, its wordless soul—and to express it. He has made us Germans—not just any kind of people! What ought to make us reflect deeply is the fact that all the unrelenting champions of international fraternization are either enthusiastic zealots or intellectuals totally out of touch with reality, or they are democratic business politicians, but in any case not true interpreters of German destiny, of our nation’s fettered will and bound soul.

When will our German Volk with all its depth and richness be given leaders again who are an expression of its better self, who will lead it back to its true self and will weld a confused mob once again into a Volk?”18

Church Community

After weeks of discussions and arguments, Eberhard and Emmy sold or gave away all they possessed and rented a large house in the village of Sannerz in Hesse. They were determined to put their words into practice and live in community with anyone who cared to join them. Although the house was not immediately available, they could wait no longer. In June 1920 they moved into the barn with their five children. Emmy’s sister Else and a few others joined them. The house became the Neuwerk Community, Sannerz. Emmy, who was a true partner to Eberhard, wrote of the reactions of their former friends:

There was no financial basis of any kind, either for starting this proposed business venture or for buying the villa at Sannerz and realizing our dream of a community house. But that made no difference. We decided it was time to turn our backs on the past and start afresh in full trust. Well-meaning friends shook their heads. What an act of rash irresponsibility for a father of five little children to go into the unknown just like that! Frau Michaelis, the wife of the former chancellor of the Reich, visited me and offered to help the children and me should my husband really take this “unusual” step. After talking with me, she reported to a mutual friend: “She is even more fanatical than he is! There is nothing we can do.”19

Eberhard and Emmy had left the Lutheran Church years earlier. During the revival in Halle at the time of their engagement, they had come to the conclusion that infant baptism, as practiced by the Catholic and Lutheran Churches, was not true baptism. At that time Eberhard had written to Emmy:

Today I prayed a long, long time, and this hour of dedication has brought me to a momentous decision, one which will give our life a clearly defined direction, laden with suffering . . . As of today, I have been convinced by God, with quiet and sober biblical certainty, that baptism of believers alone is justified. Taking Galatians 3:26–27 as a starting point, I persisted in reflecting on Jesus with simple, honest prayer, and have come to feel that scripture recognizes only one baptism: that of those who have become believers . . . I therefore regard myself as unbaptized and hereby declare war on the existing church system.20

On Tuesday I’ll briefly inform our parents of my conviction, according to which I must a) be baptized as a believer, since infant baptism is in opposition to what is meant biblically and is therefore not baptism; b) withdraw from the established church, since I consider it dishonest through and through and contrary to the spirit of the Bible; c) embrace as my ideal church communities of believing, baptized Christians who use church discipline and celebrate the Lord’s Supper . . .

I can’t postpone leaving the established church any more than I can postpone the actual baptism, since I regard the church’s deceitful system as Satan’s most dangerous weapon and the most treacherous foe of apostolic Christianity. Of course, I don’t fail to recognize the uprightness of many churchmen and the fact that they are serious Christians (used by the system to disguise its shamefulness).21

Now thirteen years later, in the budding community at Sannerz, Eberhard was developing a genuine alternative: a church community of believers. He, Emmy, Else, and the hundreds of visitors who passed through the house were overwhelmed by something beyond anything they had imagined possible, certainly not of their own making, which they could only define as the Holy Spirit. Eberhard described it in several letters.

Our communal household takes shape more and more definitely. The faithful cell group of an early Christian house church is coming into being. Yesterday, for the first time, the Lord’s Supper was held in the circle of those firmly committed. It was a glorious and festive hour of deep resolve and clearness.22

I wish we could describe how wonderfully our life is woven together and how many glorious high moments we find in our joy in community and in our love to one another. If we think of last Sunday, for instance, when we held the Lord’s Supper with the ten who are dedicated completely to life in community (had all been home we would have been twelve disciples), then the deep joy and unfathomable strength of this experience cannot be compared with anything we had before.23

Georg Barth, who came to Sannerz in 1925, remembered:

I felt at home there at once and inhaled deeply the spirit-filled air of the house. So strongly did I feel the nearness of the kingdom of God that I could physically taste it and smell it . . . The Sannerz house was filled with the atmosphere of the kingdom of God. Anyone in this house breathed a completely different air. Although I did not yet know who Jesus really was and what it meant to follow him, still I sensed this air of the kingdom powerfully.24

In 1934 Eberhard said about this time:

If in Berlin our activity was anchored more in literary things, in Sannerz it was anchored in something living. There was a wind that blew through our rooms. In every pore, through every wall, the lively spiritual movements penetrated. Fresh people came every day. We were prepared for this storm, and yet it was new because it brought something more alive than we had ever guessed at; it was plainer to see. Each day was lived at a high level of inner interest and suspense. Some of our meetings had no limits whatever. We met at seven o’clock in the evening, mostly until twelve, and often, too, from noon until two in the afternoon. This wasn’t because we wanted it that way, but because it was necessary inwardly in the powerful stirring of the exchanges of thought, in the explosive outward movement. Not a single day went by without the greatest agitation and excitement.25

Confronting Anti-Semitism

Many of the radical thinkers whom Eberhard respected after the First World War were Jews: Gustav Landauer, Rosa Luxemburg, and Kurt Eisner. In 1917, he wrote an article on the ideas of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber:

There is a Jewish movement that is stirring the innermost heart of Judaism anew. It is made up of two currents—one religious, the other nationalistic—that are deeply united in Martin Buber, their outstanding exponent. In his essays on the Jewish movement Martin Buber puts great emphasis on the national significance of Judaism. Like the Zionists, he hopes for a gathering of the Jewish people on their own soil, for the renewal of their historical continuity, for a healthy national organism; but in his striving for this nationalistic goal Buber seeks a liberation of his people through which “the transformed Jewish spirit” can be resurrected . . .

The expectation of the future Messiah is the sphere where the deepest encounter [between Jew and Christian] takes place. In the infinitely distant, infinitely near kingdom of the future, the Jew expects the Absolute, the tabernacle of God, the house of true life for mankind, the salvation of the world, and the redemption of man’s spirit. Martin Buber points out that early Christianity, too, in the expectation of its returning Lord, was filled with and given direction by this very idea of an absolute future. The early Christian belief in the return of Christ was not speculation or calculation; it was an inner attitude of faith, love, and hope; it was nothing less than the deep inner relationship of love to the Redeemer, through whom redemption must be consummated. In this belief we see the deepest means for a mutual understanding between Christianity and religious Judaism. For us too, preparing for his appearance means being prepared in unity and in the deed.26

After the war, Eberhard was concerned to counter the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Besides expressing in various ways his appreciation of the Jewish contribution to the Christian faith, he published books and articles by Jewish writers. One of these was the book Rasse und Politik (Race and Politics) by Julius Goldstein, published by the Neuwerk Publishing House.

The book is born of the fullness of a wealth of knowledge, a passionate justice and a serious, though joyful, hope for the future. Seldom have I read a book in which I had to put so few question marks. The sensitive feeling for reality, which plainly marks the book a classic against anti-Semitism, is heart-warming and gives the lie to those who say renewal-Christianity moves only on unreal, abstract heights (a belief that might rightly apply to some forms of religious socialism). Politics and religion belong together in a much deeper sense than the opponents of this statement imagine. They should have their source in what is eternal and flow into the great common tasks and creative forms of a new brotherly mankind, rich in content and on the way to full maturity. Goldstein has pointed this out in an unsurpassed way on the basis of reality and without the use of religious phraseology.27

Max Wolf was the wealthy owner of a soap factory near Schlüchtern. A practicing Jew, he was the only non-Christian on the Neuwerk board of directors, and he promoted its publications among Jewish circles. He wrote to a friend:

I asked Dr. Eberhard Arnold about his attitude to anti-Semitism, and he answered me literally: “There is no place in Germany from which the fight against anti-Semitism, with its irrational and anti-religious character, is waged so clearly as from the Neuwerk! Just because our fight for a reconciling, constructive spirit of the national and human community is tied to the championship of international reconciliation and for understanding between classes, the struggle against anti-Semitism will be all the more fruitful. For here it is not a matter of an isolated question but an all-encompassing outlook on life which is linked to a deep recognition of the religious spirit of Judaism.” It seems very important to me that the fight against anti-Semitism is being fought from a decidedly Christian point of view.28

Much later, in August 1932, four young Zionists, training for life on a kibbutz in Palestine, visited the Rhön Bruderhof. In a meeting with them, Eberhard was interested to learn about their philosophical foundation and, as he did in every encounter, he urged them to appreciate more deeply their own heritage:

Eberhard: Are the Pentateuch and the prophets authoritative for you? What is the spiritual foundation of your outward structure?

Zionist: The old life no longer pleases us. We want something new. Only on the way of community have we found anything new.

Eberhard: Will that be in the sense of the Jewish prophets?

Zionist: There are two groups. One is loosely connected with communism, and the other is more inclined to socialism.

Eberhard: You will remember that we recently exchanged thoughts about Zionism and the driving force behind it. We sensed a strong urge to put socialist ideas into practice, and in that we found a comradely relationship with our movement.

Zionist: The majority stands on a socialist basis and is politically oriented. A smaller group takes its stand on the prophetic basis and emphasizes religion.

Eberhard: How is it with struggles within the community?

Zionist: When we arrive in Palestine we are already trained. We know there is nothing but community and we must surrender everything for it.

Eberhard: During the twelve years we have lived in community we have learned that it is not possible to avoid struggle. Each of us has to fight egotism.29

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Over the next twelve years, the community matured through struggles and crises. One thing became clear, particularly after a difficult time in the summer of 1922: in order to preserve love, joy, and unity it was essential to speak up if differences arose between people. At that time Eberhard formulated “the first law of Sannerz”:

There is no law but that of love. Love means having joy in others. Then what does being annoyed with them mean?

Words of love convey the joy we have in the presence of brothers and sisters. By the same token it is out of the question to speak about a brotherhood member in a spirit of irritation or vexation. There must never be talk, either in open remarks or by insinuation, against a brother or a sister, against their individual characteristics—under no circumstances behind the person’s back. Talking in one’s own family is no exception.

Without this rule of silence there can be no loyalty, no community. Direct address is the only way possible; it is the spontaneous brotherly service we owe anyone whose weaknesses cause a negative reaction in us. An open word spoken directly to the other person deepens friendship and is not resented. Only when two people do not come to agreement quickly in this direct manner is it necessary to talk it over with a third person who can be trusted to help solve the difficulty and bring about a uniting on the highest and deepest levels (Matt 18:15–16).30

The word “unity” became a watchword: the spirit of Jesus overcomes all differences and unites people. From a letter:

Doubtless you are right that in such a community life as ours, the light coming from Christ alone must again and again bring the decisive rescue and help. Congeniality and sympathy, mutual understanding, professional association, or unity of purpose cannot hold community together. If it is true community, then it can only be from Jesus Christ and the direct working of his Holy Spirit. As soon as this working is set aside, we can of course still come together, but true community will be impossible till once again the spirit of Jesus Christ clears away the hindrances and renews the unity.31

Personal salvation became secondary to a greater cause. Individuals looked beyond themselves to see the tremendous need of humankind and catch a vision of God’s kingdom. Eberhard expressed this to a former alcoholic who spent several years in Sannerz:

We are not a welfare or salvation institute. The saving of the individual soul is not our main concern. In this respect we differ from the Salvation Army. Certainly we too carry on good works, and certainly people are also saved, but that is not the first concern, not the most important thing. Our interest is in the great, holy cause, the kingdom of God, and mission to the world. Whoever comes into the brotherhood must be clear on this point: from now on I am no longer concerned with myself, but with the cause to which I have surrendered myself in self-forgetfulness . . . We must take a stand: “I will forget myself completely here. If only I could be a doorkeeper in the house of God, I would prefer that to sitting in the palaces of the rich.” . . . My interest is not in my personality but in Christ and his kingdom, in God’s glory, also among people.32

Unity with the Hutterites

Through his study of church history, Eberhard learned about the Hutterites, a branch of the Anabaptist movement that had begun in Zurich in 1525. He was moved by the witness of their martyrs: thousands had been executed because of their radical faith. They had begun living in community around 1530 and some communities were still in existence.

When the house in Sannerz became too small and a larger property had to be purchased, Eberhard decided to establish it on the pattern of sixteenth-century Hutterian communities. They bought the neglected Sparhof in 1926 and named it “Bruderhof,” the word the Hutterites had used. It had a school, communal dining hall and kitchen, a print shop, and a farm, and eventually accommodated over 120 people.

Eberhard had seen enough communal attempts, both current and historical, to know the dangers such groups faced: some suffered shipwreck following false charismatic leaders while others became frozen in tradition. He did not wish his community to become merely another sect. It was to be and remain part of God’s great church, and as such, unite with any other groups who desired the same. In 1930 he took a long journey to the United States and Canada to get to know the Hutterites firsthand. He was moved by what he found:

When I compared their life with what we have experienced, and when I thought about our own attempt at community, I saw how the [Hutterites] were able to set us endless examples and give us invaluable help for our life and its organization . . . The Hutterian Bruderhofs convinced me most deeply that here the three articles of the Apostolic Confession of Faith had grown into a single unity: creative life, life redeemed by the full forgiveness of all sin and all error, and the good life of the Holy Spirit arising out of the powers from the future world. This was given among them in a wonderful unity such as I had never encountered at all in present-day Christian groups in Europe, a unity that does not depend on the spirit of the times.33

By uniting with this tried and established movement, Eberhard felt he was securing the future of his small flock beyond his own death. The Hutterite elders accepted him as a minister and commissioned him as a missionary in Germany. He felt strongly the responsibility of this spiritual authority. He wrote about the experience to Emmy:

The confirmation, a deeply moving act . . . is of the very greatest significance. My service has been confirmed on the basis of my insight into the history, faith, and life of God’s church during the last four centuries, on the basis of our own history in Sannerz and on the Rhön Bruderhof, but above all because our dearly beloved members of Sannerz and the Bruderhof have again and again born witness to faithfulness and unity. My confirmation gives me unlimited authority to establish a genuine Hutterian community life, both temporally and spiritually, to the best of my insight.

It means, too, that the brothers in America will fully and forever support our Bruderhof both in its inner life of faith and in its outward economic life, also when the two of us and all our older fellow fighters are no longer alive. Actually, that unspoken longing was one of the main reasons urging me to make this extremely burdensome journey. Our fellow fighters and fellow workers have shown unexampled trust and self-forgetfulness. For their sake, in place of the will a rich man would make, I want to establish our community life on as deep, strong, and firm a foundation as possible, to ensure its continuance beyond my death.

That applies, to begin with, to our own five children—our children in the flesh and in spirit, who justify such great hopes. It applies to the dear children of the other parents and mothers in the community . . . It applies equally and no less to the spiritual children of our children’s community.34

Eberhard hoped that unity with the Hutterites could provide the Bruder-hof with some spiritual and financial security for the community’s uncertain future. At the same time, he saw quite clearly that the growth and development of radical Christian discipleship would bring irreconcilable conflict with the established political and economic order. Words he spoke in 1928 were to prove prophetic:

All the various movements of the past decades will one day converge in a radical awakening of the masses that leads the way to social justice and to God’s unity—that is to say, to the church, to the kingdom of God, and to community in action . . .

What we need now is mission. Mission means reaching the millions who live in cities, the hundreds of thousands in industrial centers, the tens of thousands in medium-sized towns, the thousands in small towns, and the hundreds in villages—all these at once. Like a volcanic eruption, a spiritual revolution needs to spread through the country, to spur people to crucial decisions. People have to recognize the futility of splitting life up into politics, economics, the humanities, and religion. We must be awakened to a life in which all of these things are completely integrated . . .

When the movement has reached its peak, it will be so dangerous that capitalism will see itself imperiled by it. Wealthy landowners will see it as a threat to their position, and the state will see its existence endangered—for where shall the state get its income from if its members live in absolute propertylessness? It will foresee its own dissolution, and so it will have to call in the executioners . . .

Everything will depend on whether or not the last hour finds us a generation worthy of greatness. And the only thing worthy of God’s greatness is our readiness to die for his cause . . . Whether the twentieth century is shattered for God’s kingdom or simply passes by depends in part on us. We know what is at stake; we know the will of God. We have felt the power of the Holy Spirit and the powers of the future world. So let us get going; now is the time!35