Bruderhof

Origin of the Bruderhof Movement

The Bruderhof took form in Germany following World War I among those seeking to make sense of the bankrupt German political, religious, and social life following 1918. It formed around a dedicated couple, Eberhard Arnold (1883–1935) and his wife Emmy Arnold, née von Hollander (1884–1980). Arnold had originally studied theology, but he came to reject the state church system and was blocked from finishing his degree. He therefore switched to philosophy, receiving his doctoral degree with highest honors in 1910.

His military service in 1914 was brief because his health was poor; he had spent much of 1913–1914 in the South Tyrol to heal a case of tuberculosis. In 1915 the Arnolds moved to Berlin, where he became a leader in the Student Christian Movement, serving from 1916 to 1919 as editor of its journal. He became known as a prophetic and powerful leader, and many young adults flocked to hear him. They gathered in the Arnold home in Berlin for intense discussions on how to shape their future lives. In their disillusionment with traditional society, they were open to radical ideas, such as Christian Socialism.

The Sannerz Community and the Hutterian Brethren

In 1920, the Arnolds and several young colleagues decided to break with bourgeois society and make a new beginning. Leaving Berlin for the country (a reflection of the return-to-nature theme of the German youth movement), they founded a small intentional community in the small village of Sannerz, near Fulda. A crisis in 1922 over the economic basis of the community split the group, leaving Eberhard and Emmy Arnold with five others to begin again. This they did at a nearby farm, in what became the Rhönbruderhof. The major innovation was that the Arnolds and their followers now placed their communal movement squarely within the Anabaptist tradition.

A product of the Reformation tumult of the sixteenth century, the Anabaptists were radical dissenters who demanded a separation of church and state, complete religious liberty, and disciplined adherence to the demands of Christian discipleship. Because they rejected the age-old practice of infant baptism, contending that baptism was only for adults, they were called Anabaptists (“re-baptizers”). Some found a haven in Bohemia and Moravia, where under the pressure of refugee status they began communal ownership of property. They were called Hutterian Brethren after an early leader Jakob Hutter (d. 1536).

The Arnolds were convinced that communal life following Hutterian principles provided the only possible basis for Christian life with integrity. To their surprise, they learned that not all Anabaptists had been killed off as heretics in the sixteenth century; instead, many of their descendants had survived in western North America, both in the United States and Canada.

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