Book Review: Against the Wind

Title: Against the Wind 

Author: Markus Baum

Date: 2002

Publisher: Plough

ISBN: 0-87486-953-6

Length: 305 pages with 6-page index

Quote: "Eberhard Arnold figured out for himself the meaning of 'born again'..."

His family were already good Lutherans. His father encouraged him to study theology rather than medicine (some nineteenth-century German snobbery may have been involved). Even as a teenager, though he was a lively little fellow who enjoyed music and belonged to a relatively innocent "gang," Eberhard Arnold showed some inclination to become a more radical sort of Christian than most other nice white-collar Lutherans. He once complained that his elders couldn't explain more of the Bible to him. He once traded caps with a homeless man, and, though he got both a scolding and a nasty infection, he wanted to break through that genteel snobbery and work directly with and for poor people, too.

He had the great blessing, toward the end of his student years, to meet a girl who shared his idea of being more like Jesus than ordinary ministers' families were. After some family opposition he married Emmy von Hollander. They became ministers, though it was clear early in their career that they were destined to break out of the somewhat stultifying state-church mold. Eberhard was an early ecumenist; he worked with the Salvation Army, read and promoted Catholic books, and formed a bond with Hutterites in North America that helped to save his flock from the Nazis--after Eberhard's lifetime.

While preaching and writing (he was quite a prolific writer; he spoke other languages but always wrote in German), the Arnolds took children (in addition to their own brood) and homeless people into their home until it could fairly be called a commune. 

People who lived between 1883 and 1935, as Eberhard did, could hardly have failed to hear and think a good deal about the idea of Christian communitarianism. In German, as (in some places) in English, before the Russian Revolution it was all called communism--sometimes, later, "with a lower-case c" to distinguish this idealistic, voluntary communitarian lifestyle of religious groups from the "godless" or Marxist versuib, 

(It's not what either of them deserved to be remembered for, but yes, in the United States my grandfather was interested in the kind of Christian "communism" that allowed him and several siblings to live communally in one house until their children overflowed out into separate houses. My father never quite gave up all hope of reclaiming "communism with a lower-case c" as a Christian concept. I think the two things that have been called communism are so irreconcilable that  the clunky word "communitarianism" is necessary...but I mention this to explain why I knew, but you might not necessarily know, why Arnold's writing about Kommunismus was anything but Marxist. Though it could fairly be called revolutionary--for hidebound middle-class churchgoers.)

As their flock grew, Eberhard travelled. He visited the United States and Canada; most people laughed at him, but the Hutterites recognized him as a soul brother, even though he disagreed vigorously with them on such things as whether Christians ought to sing and play musical instruments. Hutterites sing in their Sunday meetings, but don't allow instruments, because some sensitive young soul thought the sensory pleasure of music distracted person from "pure" prayer. The Bruderhof group, perhaps recognizing that most people are probably incapable of "pure" prayer, encourage music, and travel and education and treating even non-Christians as if each one were Christ. The groups never merged but became recognizable, to each other and to outsiders, as part of the same faith tradition. Eberhard insisted on keeping art, music, and literature as part of his flock's community life, but there is photographic evidence that Emmy at least tried wearing a head scarf at all times, as Hutterite women did. 

The Arnolds and their flock were attracted to the idea of socialism in government. One of the peculiar features of their group's present-time heirs is that members in good standing can hold any political position, however far Left or Right, as long as they can either debate with good will or set their differences aside. In the 1920s Germany was floundering, and many people saw some form of socialist government as a possible answer. Where that led them, it was perhaps better that Eberhard Arnold never knew, although he had recognized some problems with socialist government before 1935. 

As a religious community people joined by completing a novitiate period and taking formal vows, the Arnolds' Bruderhof ("brotherhood") still requires believers to renounce owning private property. However, they brought up their children in houses they bought for themselves. Eberhard Arnold did not say that all Christians were called to sell their homes and join religious communities. What he did say was (in German): If you are not called to join a religious community, how are you called to live?

Like many radical religious movements they lurched off to a somewhat bumpy start. While Seventh-Day Adventists weren't subjected to the melodrama of the Mormons' journey westward, they too tell stories of the mid-nineteenth century when early church members, having organized schools, hospitals, printing presses, food processing companies, and all their other enterprises by selling their valuables, got through the slow economic periods: "For lunch they ate beans and porridge. For supper, more beans and porridge. For breakfast, for a change--porridge and beans!" Emmy recalled that, in Germany, her household ate potatoes and sauerkraut/ 

In the early 1930s Eberhard Arnold, like many church members, hoped that Hitler might be made a real Christian. Minority denominations like the Baptists and Seventh-Day Adventists were tolerated by the Lutheran majority, and by Hitler whose Christianity turned out to have been one of his big lies, as long as they didn't criticize the regime. It must be remembered that, although ordinary Germans certainly were told that some of their neighbors were being deported just for not being "pure Aryans," in the 1930s people could believe in good faith that German  Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other dissidents were likely to get rich in countries with better economies...which some really did. Accounts of the atrocities in the prison camps trickled out slowly and could for a while be disbelieved. People motivated to help minority-type neighbors thought for a long time that they were saving people from financial loss, social embarrassment, or separation from their families--not from torture or death. 

Arnold, however, knew a clash was inevitable. For some Protestants, like the Lutherans and Adventists, decisions about military service are left to the individual conscience. Most young men in these groups either negotiate terms on which they can "serve but not kill" by doing specialized work in support of the war effort, or persuade themselves that they have no choice but to kill as ordered by their government. The Bruderhof, like the German Anabaptists who came to America but preserved some sort of German immigrant community here, did not give themselves those options. They had to refuse to bear arms. Hitler didn't want them in Germany any more than he wanted the Jews.

Eberhard Arnold had walked with a limp from an old leg injury for years. As he reached middle age the pain did not fade, but worsened. Whatever it was, it was not something that any combination of bathing, stretching, massage, or exercise could cure--Germany and Switzerland were where the world's best practitioners of those treatments were active. The pain grew bad enough that, in his early fifties, Eberhard Arnold agreed to try a primitive surgical operation. He died almost immediately.

But Emmy, their children, and their friends carried on the Bruderhof, and when they were ordered to leave Germany, Eberhard's contacts overseas could offer them places to go. Bruderhofs now eiist as recognized denominations in several countries. 

Markus Baum originally wrote this biography of Eberhard Arnold in German, in 1996. The Bruderhofs then set about translating it into the languages of all the countries where they have set up communities; it's been available in English since 2002. 

Against the Wind is recommended to anyone interested in the Bruderhof, and to anyone interested in the lives and work of radically religious people generally. It is well and simply written, free from the awkward English that is so easy to produce by translating German too literally.