Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
journey also bore fruit. In it he applied for permission to make a fundraising
journey through all the Mennonite churches in the Netherlands, and while it is
true that he was never able to make the journey, his appeal for generous help and
support was favorably received and rewarded two years later. 15 In October of 1935
Eberhard would still have time to seak personally with the Masons and Winifred
Bridgwater to prepare them for a return to England to look for a suitable location
for the community. 16 A year later the new place would actually exist. 17
ConSumEd by hiS taSk
“I would not find it too hard to give both eyes and more for the sake of insuring 198
the inner and outer life of our Bruderhof for the next fifty to a hundred years.”
Eberhard had written these words in a letter home from Canada at Christmas
1930. 18 In fact, he would sacrifice more than his eyes for the survival of the
community. When he broke his leg in October of 1933 the conflicts between the
Bruderhof and the violent National Socialist state allowed him no time for recovery.
In January of 1934 he still felt weak and was struggling with heart trouble. But
in February of 1934 he limped through the Alps, leaning on two sticks, with his
leg in a walking cast, on the journey that would lead to the esablishment of the
Alm Bruderhof. “The call to freedom is the call to a spiritual campaign that never
slackens, to a spiritual battle that allows no one time to recuperate,” he wrote
in May 1934. 19 How true! And the brothers and sisters in the brotherhood, in
particular the young ones, were not always esecially considerate of his physical
condition. Consequently, Eberhard remained responsible for many tasks that
could have been spared him, and he had to deal with petty daily concerns to the
very end.
But some of his tasks could only be done by him. At age fifty-two, a grandfather
several times over, handicapped and weakened, he covered as much ground as
he had in the two previous decades of evangelizing and lecturing. Now, however,
it was begging journeys to Brandenburg, Breslau, and Switzerland. These
were emergency missions – for fire fighting and disaster service, as it were – to
negotiate, to patch up, to piece together, and to clear away misunderstandings. To
persuade officials, to talk to deaf ears. He grew well acquainted with the inside
of administrative offices in Fulda, Kassel, and Berlin. In late October of 1934
he visited half a dozen Reich ministries, trying to induce them to recognize the
Bruderhof as a charitable institution for the public benefit. He attempted to gain
exemption from agricultural taxes. He limped straight into the lions’ den – into