Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
At the conference Stählin addressed his theme to a Neuwerk movement that had
shifted its emphasis following the Marburg conference of 1920. “Reality” was now
the buzzword. It was time to say good-bye to utopia and to move back into the
encrusted movements of the past, where they could act as a leaven. Or at least that
was the viewpoint of people such as Otto Herpel and the Swiss pastor Emil Blum,
who had recently become leader of the Habertshof community settlement. 21
At this, Eberhard – never lacking a flare for the dramatic – declared the Neuwerk
movement dead. The wedge (the movement) had not been able to split the rotten
tree (the state church, traditional Christianity, middle-class materialism) and, in
the process, had split itself. As for bowing to the status quo, however piously it
might be disguised, Eberhard branded it as idolatry. The discussion prompted
much contradiction and head shaking, and the fiery debate only raged hotter
following Eberhard’s article in the June issue of Das Neue Werk, “On the Present
Situation of the Neuwerk Cause.” But in the Sannerz community household itself
there was unity about the direction taken – at least for the time being.
It took only a few days for the seeds sown at Wallroth to sprout in some peoples’
minds. In June of 1922 the Dutch pacifist Kees Boeke put a considerable sum of
money, 180,000 marks, at the community’s disposal for the purchase of a larger
property. Members went to view the Scheuermühle in Franconian Ruppoden,
about thirteen miles from Sannerz, a place easily large enough to allow the
expansion of their work with children. But the community could not reach
agreement among themselves, and this was the sole reason no purchase took place.
Should they simply proceed with the purchase and take in orphans, regardless of
the risk? (Such leaps of faith had been their modus operandi until now.) Or should
they first thoroughly plan the project, arrange financial backing, and secure future
operating funds? In its very essence this disagreement illustrated that some had
already relapsed into the old concern for security, a concern that could not abide
the confident trust required by the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not worry. See
the birds in the skies – they do not sow, they do not harvest and carry grain to the
barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.”
There were other warning signs: In the household community, which at times
numbered as many as twenty-three adults, no one took responsibility for urgent
household tasks. Some people’s dedication to the community had noticeably
slackened. As can be verified by their letters, both Eberhard and Emmy had
detected these danger signs. But the same letters are also a testimony to their
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