Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof - Plough

Against the Windown home. Little Karl was four years old and apparently got along quite well withEmy-Margret. A little later the oldest daughter, Luise, came to the Arnolds too.Eberhard and Emmy’s involvement with this family lasted several months, untilthe family moved to Chemnitz. In the summer terrible news arrived: collectivesuicide – the husband and eleven-year-old daughter shot dead, the wife andanother son seriously wounded. The Arnolds were especially horrified at sixteenyear-oldLuise’s passive acceptance of this news. Later, when it was clear that Emmywas expecting a second child, little Karl was taken in by friends of the Arnolds, butLuise remained for more than two years in the Arnold household.Even at this early stage in their family life, the Arnolds clearly felt that their homewas not just theirs alone, but that they, as followers of Christ, had a task to provideshelter for needy children. The Halle institutions of August Hermann Francke,who had dedicated his life to such children, were familiar to the Arnolds, andEberhard took a special interest in this man’s activities. 2 Eberhard found a spiritualrole model in another “father of orphans,” George Müller, who had esablishedfive orphanages that cared for over two thousand children in Bristol, England. 3Eberhard was too young to have met Müller, but he was deeply impressed by thisman’s faith. While still a student, he had read Müller’s biography and had writtento Emmy in 1908 that “the reality of the prayer of faith has never come hometo me so strongly as through this book.” 4 Now, over three years later, Eberhardand Emmy were confronted by desperate need. Though they certainly had nointentions of founding an orphanage, they had simply taken practical steps toalleviate the social deprivation of at least one child.53hErmann kuttEr and thE SoCial iSSuEWith increasing frequency the fate of destitute and neglected people forcedEberhard to seek for answers as he traveled and preached. The contrasts were tooglaring: on the one hand, the upper class (titled people with spacious homes, maids,and a telephone) and the middle class (officers’ families and university scholars),and on the other hand, the miserable living conditions, poor wages, and illiteracyof the working class. None of these impressions was particularly new to Eberhard;he knew of his uncle Ernst Ferdinand Klein’s struggle for the Silesian weavers andhad himself encountered injustice through his work with the Salvation Army. Infact, something of a social conscience had long been stirring in him, spurred onby the life of George Müller and the writings of the American visionary CharlesG. Finney, whose fight against slavery particularly appealed to Eberhard. Though