Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
9 Among these reformers, Rudolf Steiner is first and foremost. Eberhard regarded Steiner’s anthroposophy
as a syncretic mixture of religions in which “a great deal that never belonged together was brought into
one big muddle” (according to minutes of a talk in August 1933, BA), and therefore he could not entirely
approve of the Waldorf theory of education. But Marianne Hilbert, who was a teacher at the Rhön
Bruderhof from 1932 on, recalled that Eberhard found Steiner’s concept of the three stages in a child’s
development (from ages one to seven, seven to fourteen, and fourteen to twenty-one) to be confirmed
by his own observations.
10 Eberhard Arnold to Gertrud Dalgas, May 25, 1932, BA.
11 Eberhard Arnold, in his fundraising leaflet “Die Kindergemeinde des Almbruderhofs und ihre Erziehung”
[The children’s community of the Alm Bruderhof and its education] (Eberhard Arnold Verlag, April
1934).
12 “Unser Weg zur Erziehung,” op. cit.
13 “Erinnerungen an Eberhard Arnold,” op. cit. 226
14 Cf. Eberhard Arnold, Gemeinsames Leben und Kindererziehung (Children’s Education in Community)
(Rifton, NY: The Plough Publishing House, 1977).
15 Johann Heinrich Pesalozzi: 1746–1827. Swiss educational reformer, primar-ily concerned with the
education of deprived children. Pesalozzi developed teaching methods based on concrete experience, as
opposed to learning by rote. His methods still influence modern educational theory.
Wilhelm August Fröbel: 1782–1852. A German educator, he founded the first kindergarten, in Bad
Blankenburg, Germany, in 1837.
16 “Der Kampf um die Kindheit,” op. cit.
17 Friedmann was a tolstoyan. Through his studies of Anabaptist history he gradually came closer to
Christian belief. For more on the tolstoyans, cf. chap. 8, n. 15.
18 These first letters between Eberhard Arnold and Elias Walter have not been preserved; the account is
based on Gertrud Dalgas’s recollections in Die Kinder im Bruderhofleben [The children in the life of the
Bruderhof], unpublished manuscript, BA.
19 Peter Riedemann: 1506–1556.
20 Andreas Ehrenpreis: 1589–1662.
21 German title of the newspaper: Rufer zur Wende.
22 Eberhard Arnold to Robert Friedmann, June 6, 1929, BA, regarding Hermann Buddensieg: “He goes so
far as to say that the testimony of our common life and our words is the only Christianity possible for
today. The Hutterian writings, too, made an extraordinarily strong impression on him. And yet he does
not see himself obliged to venture into the same life on the basis of the same witness to faith.”
23 Emmy Arnold, Eberhard Arnold: Aus seinem Leben und Schrifttum.
24 German title: Der Kampf um das Reich Gottes in Blumhardt Vater und Sohn.
25 Quoted from “Erinnerungen an Eberhard Arnold.”
26 Statement of the Free German Union, January 10, 1926.
27 According to Erich Mohr’s words in Circular Letter no. 3 to members of the Free German Union,
September 1926.
28 Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Rückblicke: “Although I was in a thoroughly rationalistic period of my life at the
time, I could not avoid the spiritual powers at work on the Bruderhof. They streamed through Eberhard