Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Wind
harmony from thE outSEt
On Palm Sunday, March 24, Bernhard Kühn began a series of meetings. Emmy
did not miss either the afternoon or the evening sessions. Eberhard was also there
that first evening. They exchanged only a few words. Then, on Monday evening,
they spoke again. On Tuesday he accompanied her home. Love was yet to be
mentioned. Instead, the two discussed what had been said at the meetings. They
talked of their earlier years, of what they hoped for in a life with Jesus, and of the
future. They understood one another immediately – there was no difference in
their views.
On Wednesday evening Eberhard escorted Emmy to the meeting, where, to his
joy, she publicly declared that in the past few days she had decided for a life with
Jesus. On the way home he expressed his certainty that God had led them together
and told Emmy that he wanted to visit her parents on Good Friday.
At that time the von Hollanders lived in a newly built town house, Dessauer
Strasse 8A, on the eastern edge of Halle, only a few steps away from the water
tower – an imposing structure even today. The family was not exactly proserous
or, better said, they were no longer proserous. Emmy’s father, Johann Heinrich
von Hollander, was the son of the last German Mayor of Riga, a major city in
northern East Prussia. Her mother, Monika, was the daughter of Piers Otto, who
had been pastor of the German Lutheran Church of St. Gertrude’s in Riga. The
von Hollander-Otto family tree had roots extending all the way back into the
1700s and was replete with councilors, patricians, and knights of the German
Order. However, all this would only have had significance until the first Russian
Revolution, 1904 –1905, at the very latest.
Emmy’s father, a lawyer, had moved his family to Germany in 1890 to avoid
the russification policy of Tsar Alexander III and to provide a German education
for his children. Repeating his bar examinations had cost Johann Heinrich von
Hollander the greater part of the family’s resources. He had hoped to qualify as
a university lecturer in Jena but could not make any headway in his profession
there. A suitable opening did not appear until 1896 at the university in Halle. The
family’s first home in Halle was in Giebichenstein; later, they moved to the suburb
of Ammendorf. When Eberhard met Emmy, the von Hollanders lived on Dessauer
Strasse. There were seven in the family; the two youngest of Emmy’s six siblings
had died early. Still living with their parents were her older sister, Olga; Else, who
was only eleven months younger than Emmy; her brother, Heinrich (“Heinz”);
and the youngest, Monika (“Mimi”). 23
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