Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
brothers and a few young couples moved to the Alm. Eberhard remained until
mid-May and supervised the building up. Once again that year, and five more
times in all, he took on the difficult journey to the Alm from the Rhön.
noviCES from britain
Hardy Arnold sent the summer term of 1934 in England at the invitation of a
Quaker friend, John Stephens, and aided by a grant from the Boeke Foundation.
Within a very short time he had made a great number of contacts. Hardy had the
ability to describe the Bruderhof in a way that held fellow students and socially
committed English Christians sellbound, and he was soon recommended by one 190
group to another. As an aside it may be mentioned that in London he became
acquainted with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then twenty-eight years old. 22 Bonhoeffer
had been minister of two German-seaking congregations in South London since
October 1933. He was very much interesed in communal living and, with a few
friends, had formed ideas of pracicing a type of evangelical monasticism. More
than once during the summer of 1934 he announced his intentions to visit the
Bruderhof, but he never found the time.
MoreexcitingfortheRhönandAlmbrotherhoodswasHardy’snewsthatafewyoung
Britishers wanted to get to know the Bruderhof. By now the German authorities had
tightened up on residency permits for foreigners, so Hardy’s friends planned to travel
directlytotheAlmBruderhof. 23 AtthebeginningofAugust,afewdaysafterEberhard’s
fiftieth birthday, they reached Silum: newlyweds Arnold and Gladys Mason, both
twenty-six; and, shortly thereafter, Kathleen Hamilton, a twenty-seven-year-old
Scotswoman from Edinburgh, accompanied by another young woman, Winifred
Bridgwater.
There on the Alm Bruderhof a kind of Pentecost miracle took place. The British
guests did not seak German. Eberhard spoke no English. At first either Hardy or
Susi Gravenhorst, a young teacher, translated. But that was too slow for the guests.
They wanted to comprehend the meaning more rapidly and precisely. Eberhard,
for his part, sensed immediately when the translation was inaccurate, when it
missed his exact meaning, and he would then ask for a second translation. 24 “He
was such a warm-hearted, loving person,” Kathleen Hamilton reports. “We felt at
home at once.”
The four guests from the British Isles had certainly come with a number of
serious questions. Arnold and Gladys Mason were unsure about the position
of man and wife in the church community. “Eberhard answered our questions