Emmy Barth, the senior archivist for Church Communities International (formerly the Bruderhof Communities), has produced a highly engaging and well-detailed account of the Rhön Bruderhof under National Socialism. Primarily using the papers and memoirs of leading Bruderhof figures, especially founder Eberhard Arnold, Barth convincingly recreates the community's apocalyptically tension-filled existence as Nazi state and police officials incrementally limited its freedoms.
Originally founded in 1920 in the village of Sannerz in Hesse, the Bruderhof community was rooted in Eberhard Arnold's profound and personal postwar experience that led him to question Christianity's support of war and its failure to align itself authentically with the poor and marginalized. For Arnold and his wife Emmy, there was “no law but that of love” (p. 18). This statement became the core value of the Bruderhof community and the lens with which Eberhard and his followers challenged National Socialism. By 1926, the community outgrew its original space and purchased a new home in the Rhön region. In 1930, Eberhard traveled to the United States and Canada and tied his community with the Hutterites who accepted Eberhard as a minister in their tradition and assigned him to missionary work in Germany.
In January 1923, Eberhard had already criticized the völkisch world from which National Socialism originated by stating, “And yet it seems that these so-called nationalistic and swastika circles have no real content. It is again merely love to those nearest, and hatred against those further away” (p. 23). When Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany, Eberhard already had the foresight to remark, “The president has no idea what demons he is conjuring up” (p. 28). Such an outlook quickly brought the Bruderhof into conflict with the state. Little more than a month into Hitler's rule, a local police officer was dispatched to the Bruderhof to inform the members of “complaints” the local government had received of “communist” activity within the community. At first, long-standing state officials shielded the Bruderhof from persecution; however, such individuals were soon replaced with those officials more in line with National Socialist principles. Before its dissolution in 1937, the Bruderhof had endured at least four raids by the SA, SS, Gestapo, and local police. At no time did this diminish the community members’ witness to their Hutterite principles. Rather, as Barth writes, it seems to have only strengthened them in their witness. For example, in April 1933, Eberhard sent a chapter of his work, Innerland, directly to Hitler in which he wrote, “Christ does not repay evil with evil . . . The swastika . . . is the common property of all peoples . . . All descendents, without distinction of race and blood, have a right to it . . . the community of fire belong[s] also to the Jewish inhabitants of Canaan” (p. 50). Similarly, during each plebiscite or election, the Bruderhof members wrote directly to local officials to explain why their principles did not allow them to cast their ballot.
Despite such stances, Eberhard was under the naïve belief that he could reason with Hitler, especially since his religious outlook did not allow him to exclude anyone from his circle of love. As Barth recounts, “Eberhard hoped most of all for a personal encounter with Adolf Hitler.” Eberhard even dreamt about such an encounter and recorded the words that he might have spoken: “My dear Adolf Hitler, this can't go on much longer; you yourself can't possibly take any more pleasure in all this killing, that you murder evil men instead of making them better” (p. 233). This refusal to condemn Hitler directly or to challenge his leadership distanced the Bruderhof community from similar groups, such as the Swiss Werkhof led by Leonhard Ragaz, who urged Eberhard to take a much more critical view of the legitimacy of Hitler's rule.
State persecution eventually led members of the Bruderhof to seek shelter outside Germany, thus splitting up the membership into three sites. At first, Eberhard approached the Swiss government; however, this effort quickly failed when Swiss officials learned that the Bruderhof's men refused to serve in the military. Thereafter, in mid-1934, the Liechtenstein government agreed to allow the Bruderhof to found a community in its tiny principality. There the Alm Bruderhof was founded in a primitive mountainous hotel. Finally, in 1936, as many of the Bruderhof men faced military conscription, a number of them left for England where they established a community in Cotswold.
The Bruderhof's stance, especially in regard to military service, was too radical for most Protestants. For example, when they approached the Swiss Religious Socialists, the German Mennonites, and the Lutherans, they received no support. Even the famous Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, refused to have anything to do with them because they were “not obedient to the government's order to do military service” (p. 124). Certainly Eberhard and his fellow members must have realized at that point the radicalness of their witness. The rebuff, however, did not deter him. On the contrary, they led him to be quite critical of those churches that worked with the state. Eberhard wrote, “The Pope signs one concordat after another with Hitler. Raids on the bishops’ palace, the murder of two of the most outstanding priests, priests arrested and taken to concentration camps—none of this prevents the Pope from dealing reasonably and respectfully with Hitler again and again. The Protestants are led by a cleric [Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller] with an ignorance unprecedented in thousands of years . . . It seems that one established church after another is succumbing to brutal violence and base deceit” (p. 178).
In April 1937, the Nazi state finally ran the Bruderhof members out of Germany and confiscated all their property and most of their common possessions. Eberhard Arnold, however, did not have to experience that day. He had died earlier on November 22, 1935—the victim of the medical care of his day after a severe leg fracture that never healed properly. The Gestapo jailed the three remaining Bruderhof leaders for a short period before a clever Dutch lawyer arranged for their release. Unlike the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Bruderhof members did not choose to remain in Germany and continue to endure persecution and imprisonment in concentration camps. Instead, their beliefs and Christian principles placed the Bruderhof members outside the mentality of traditional citizenship. Their home existed in the Bruderhof wherever it settled.
In her acknowledgements, Emmy Barth shares her indebtedness to Hugo Brinckmann who both compiled the book's evidence and translated all of Eberhard Arnold's correspondence with Nazi state officials. Such extended excerpts from primary source material make up the core of the book. Nevertheless, Barth does a fine job of weaving together this documentary evidence into a captivating narrative. This allows the reader to encounter Eberhard's personality in his letters and to savor his remarks directly. Clearly, the author is sympathetic to her subject matter—a sympathy that seems warranted by the quotes brought to notice. Yet, such a work seems incomplete without the inclusion of a wider array of sources to tell this extraordinary story. Similarly, Barth's bibliography in certain areas is dated with the neglect of newer works, especially in the German language. These concerns aside, Barth has produced an engaging history that will prove quite useful in courses involving moral choices under dictatorial rule.
