Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
Nevertheless, in an article for the SCM newsletter, Eberhard commented that
“deeply divided and fragmented as it is, the youth movement in all its sections lives
and continues as an arena where the ultimate powers strive for decision…Truly
the whole movement displays a religious striving and seeking.” He appreciated the
Free German creed of truthfulness: “There is no decision for truthfulness without
God himself having a part in it. A person who lives by the truth will experience
that moment when he hears the voice that is truth.” Eberhard felt certain that the
Free German movement was on a sound course. The “Communist drive for the
last battle” 13 had been rejected at the Meissner conference, as had the attempts of
“old leaders” to tie the movement down to a particular political agenda.
As an outcome of the conference a document was composed containing a
number of significant passages in Eberhard’s handwriting. “The Challenge to Us,”
as it was titled, voiced a call to acion in response to the need of the time:
We believe in a future of fellowship among nations and among all humankind
prompting a responsible freedom of the individual for the whole…We believe that
when all has been shattered, inner authority must be born from the ultimate depths
of existence, for without it our acivity is pointless and ineffective…We therefore
believe the most important task…of the Free German Movement is to live in the
light of eternal truth, even though it is as yet incomplete…It is vital that groups are
formed to go out to bring brotherly help wherever needed…and to proclaim the
coming eternal order! 14
Four other conference leaders signed their names to this “challenge” along with
Eberhard – but one organizer, Knud Ahlborn, did not. Ahlborn rejected the
call for a “different order in public life”; he wanted to hold a tight rein on the
younger generation as it surged ahead and to ensure that the influence of the
original founders – esecially his – remained intact. By the time Eberhard and
Erich Mohr, leader of the Free German Fellowship’s Berlin group, called a New
Year’s Day emergency meeting of the Fellowship’s executive committee, the battle
lines had been drawn. Ahlborn and his supporters boycotted the meeting. The
final act of this tragedy took place at Easter of 1924, when two Free German
Fellowship conferences met simultaneously: Ahlborn and his supporters gathered
separately, while Erich Mohr and the other “challengers” met on the Jugendburg at
Ludwigstein (about twenty miles east of Kassel). There on the mountainside the
Free German Union was born.
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