Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
movement since 1920. He had already passed through several attempted
communities and communes before coming to the Bruderhof in 1929. He was
looking for “down-to-earth, joyful brotherhood in an early Christian way” – and
he found it at the Bruderhof. Walter was a skilled gardener, but he had a hard time
raising vegetables in the harsh Rhön climate. In December of 1931 Walter Hüssy
and Gertrud Dalgas were married by Eberhard. Theirs was the sixth wedding at
the Rhön Bruderhof.
Walter’s memories of Eberhard are happy ones: “He wanted the brotherhood to
keep awake and alive and to concern itself with contemporary questions as well
as with movements throughout the centuries. And that was immensely inspiring.”
Walter shared experiences with Eberhard that, even sixty years later, he could
not recount without a noticeable tremor in his voice. “The greatest thing is the
forgiveness that you could feel from Eberhard. I once hurt him very deeply, but the
way he could forgive is almost beyond description. It was overwhelming. He gave
up his own feelings completely.” 25
Irmgard Keiderling, Arno Martin, Walter Hüssy: three out of the total of
seventy-one people who shared their lives with Eberhard and Emmy and remained
true to the way of brotherhood.
frEE gErman brothErhood
Of all the relationships Eberhard had maintained since the early 1920s, his
friendship with the Berlin teacher Erich Mohr bore a secial quality. Both
thought highly of Gustav Landauer and his farsightedness, and they shared a
common love for the socially disadvantaged and a dedication to young people.
Like Eberhard, Erich Mohr had worked for postwar reconciliation since the early
1920s; reconciliation with France esecially concerned him. In the years after
the Free German Union was founded Mohr had received Eberhard’s ideas more
eagerly than anyone else. Eberhard had made sure that the Sannerz community
household, and then later the Rhön Bruderhof, participated as acive local groups
in the Free German Union. And Erich Mohr, for his part, had pointed to the
community as a working model for the Free German Union. At a January 1926
conference Mohr formulated this concept as a statement of shared conviction for
all Free German Union members:
We believe in the ultimate reality of the living Gemeinde. In and through this
Gemeinde we await the kingdom that is to come…It is essential to live with eyes fixed
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