Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold - Plough

Sannerz 30his camera in the street surrounded by army men, commanding the general,“Stand up smartly!” “Dish it up yourself!” When all the food had been distributed,the general pulled Hans aside to retrieve the footage. Hans-in-Lucksnapped open the camera. It was empty. “My goodness, I must have forgottenthe film at home!” he protested. The general and his staff were livid, butHans-in-Luck had the crowd on his side.To accommodate guests, especially during weekend retreats or conferences,Eberhard converted the barn behind the villa into a youth hostel. Almostevery evening Heiner talked with the young men and women staying there asthey mingled outside, cooking on an open fire or trying out new melodies ontheir guitars and violins. From them he got an education in a wide variety ofworldviews. He listened and argued with vegetarians, nationalists, and communists;artists and seminarians; yogis, anarchists, and proletarians.The last two types were Heiner’s heroes, and one of them, Christel Girbinger,became his best friend. Heiner had met him at a conference, when, boredby the endless discussions, he had wandered away to look for someone to playwith. Christel had been sitting at the edge of the woods, and with his bushybeard and eye glasses, Heiner assumed that he must be an old man—at veryleast, thirty. He was actually much younger, as Heiner found out after challenginghim to a game of tag. That night Christel brought Heiner home onhis shoulders—and stayed on as a member of the household.Christel was a printer, but first and foremost a proletarian printer. “Lookhere,” he advised Heiner, “Don’t learn too much in school. If you learn toomuch, you will become like your father. He means very well and wants to beone of us, but he will never be able to understand the working class. He’s fartoo educated.”One day Heiner told his teacher, Trudi, “Christel says that if I can learn tobe a good carpenter, I don’t need to learn anything else.”“But if you can’t do arithmetic you can’t measure the wood.”Homage to a Broken Man