Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
21 The Sannerz “Statement of Faith.” Judging by the circumstances, this statement was formulated by
Eberhard; cf. Geschichtsband, vol. IV, bk. 1, no. 43.
22 Until the middle of 1921, when the community began to school its own children, Emy-Margret, Hardy,
and Heinrich attended the public elementary school in the village of Sannerz.
23 Cf. chap. 12, Distinguished Friends. The contact between Eberhard Arnold and Kees Boeke almost
completely evaporated after the “Christian Brotherhood” in Bilthoven disbanded in 1926 under
circumstances very similar to those in Sannerz in 1922. Subsequently Kees Boeke gave up pacifism, the
Christian ideal of community and, finally, his faith. In 1933 his express wish was to be “an educational
reformer and nothing more.”
24 Das Neue Werk, no. 3 ( June 25, 1922); cf. Kees Boeke in Wat wil libertair onderwijs? [What is the aim
of unencumbered education?] (1905): “The children must grow up to be individuals with their own
wills, full of initiative, to be people with strong characers, filled with distaste for superficialities.”
25 Eberhard Arnold to Siegfried Muschter, November 3, 1920, BA. 223
26 Cf. Gustav Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, 154: “Scattered here and there among all our desolation
are people who are living as children, and faith and certainty are alive in every one of them…” This
passage is heavily underlined in Eberhard’s copy.
27 In “Aufruf für unsere Kinderarbeit” [Appeal for our work with children], Geschichtsband, vol. IV, bk. 2,
no. 3a.
28 Eberhard Arnold, “Die innerste Wesenheit unseres Werdens” [The innermost essence of our growth],
unpublished manuscript, (May 1935), 22, BA; cf. Eberhard Arnold, “Unser Weg zur Erziehung” [Our
approach to education], Die Wegwarte (Apr. 1927), no. 7, 111.
29 Cf. Eberhard Arnold, “Unser Weg zur Erziehung.”
30 German title, in full: Sonnenlieder für Menschheitsfriede und Gottesgemeinschaft [Songs of the sun:
for the peace of humanity and God’s community].
31 German song title: “Brüder, zur Sonne, zur Freiheit.” In Sonnenlieder the original closing words of the
third verse, “Holy is the last fight,” are replaced by a new concluding sentence, composed by Erich Mohr:
“Holy is the power of love.”
32 Carl Franklin Arnold to Eberhard Arnold, May 18, 1924, BA.
33 In the summer of 1921 Heinrich Euler had conducted the first baptism in Sannerz; cf. Gegen den
Strom.
34 Held at the Breitewitzer Mühle, near Gräfenhainichen, Saxony. The Mennonite and Baptist preacher
Hans Klassen had built up the Neusonnefeld community settlement there after the original settlement
near Sonnefeld in Thuringia collapsed because of internal problems. Eberhard and Emmy knew Hans
and Wally Klassen even before the war; cf. chap. 4, n. 18.
35 His topic: the Sermon on the Mount; cf. Rose Kaiser in “Early memories of Sannerz and the Rhön
Bruderhof,” unpublished manuscript, BA.
36 Probably from Wolkan, Die Hutterer: Österreichische Wiedertäufer und Kommunisten in Amerika
[The Hutterites: Austrian Anabaptists and communitarians in America]. J.G. Ewert had drawn
Eberhard’s attention to this book in 1921. Another source familiar to Eberhard at that time was Loserth’s
Kommunismus der Mährischen Wiedertäufer [The communal life of the Moravian Anabaptists].
Eberhard only heard of other Hutterite sources through Robert Friedmann in 1926; cf. Die Wegwarte,
nos. 8 & 9, 1925.
37 According to notation by Gertrud Dalgas; cf. Geschichtsband, vol. IV, bk. 3, no. 13.