Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Windlarge number of friends and acquaintances – businessmen, SCM friends, and evenrelatives – in the Neuwerk cooperative enterprise. This brought in a sizable sum ofmoney, which he now put to good use.At his suggestion the design of Das Neue Werk was revamped, the layout madetidier, the typeface more reader-friendly. Editions would now appear twice amonth. (After 1921 this would be reduced to once a month.) Eberhard securedfunding for Das Neue Werk from the Quakers, who until this time had notpublished a magazine of their own in Germany. He revived his acquaintance withthe respected educator and author Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and convincedhim that his concerns could be well represented in Das Neue Werk. 4 At that timeFoerster already held a post as a university lecturer in Switzerland. His good friendin Germany, Pastor Alfred Dedo Müller, declared himself willing to work forDas Neue Werk. He offered his services free of charge and, together with Foerster,dropped the idea of publishing their own periodical in Germany. 5 Eberhardannounced this “important acquisition” to Otto Herpel with satisfaction. 6 He hadless luck in obtaining a leading editor. The Christian Jew Otto Samuel had alreadyaccepted his offer but refused to move to Sannerz, and so he was soon out of thepicture, at least as far as editors were concerned.Eberhard’s printing plans had always included special issues of Das Neue Werk.The first issue of this kind to be printed carried the title Die Flamme (The Flame)and appeared in September 1920. It was dedicated to working-class youth and wassponsored by a Breslau friend who was trying to bring Christ’s message to theseyoung revolutionaries. The issue was an enthusiastic, if somewhat bewildering,side-by-side compilation of Christian and socialist thought – Rosa Luxemburg andDostoevsky, Tolstoy and Kropotkin. Later special issues – the “Friedrich WilhelmFoerster issue,” for instance – were more unified and, not surprisingly, found wideracceptance.Eberhard’s plans for book publishing were even more ambitious than his goalsfor the magazine. He conceptualized three different series of books: Innenschau(Looking Inward), a set of titles for meditation containing testimonies of importantreligious and intellectually stimulating authors; a Neuwerk collection, whichwould showcase books offering practical solutions to real-life issues; and, finally, aset of heart-warming books on various regions of the homeland.In a letter to Otto Herpel on August 6, 1920, Eberhard told of no less thanfourteen planned books. Among these were anthologies and biographies ofLandauer, Sebastian Franck, Franz Baader, and important figures from the Quaker103