An Embassy Besieged - Emmy Barth

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have lunch with us. You can tell us about Frankfurt and then we can chat.” The man who is speaking shakes my hand and slaps me on the shoulder as if we had known each other for years. Everyone laughs—including me. In their unrestrained, honest manner these people know how to win the friendship of strangers within two minutes. There are no conventions here.

      Meals are eaten together. The community numbers 108 members including 54 children and youth. Eighteen families live on the Bruderhof, but only half of the children belong to these families. The others were taken in by the community. During lunch I am told: “The Bruderhof is a social, educational community of work, made up of men and women who live in voluntary poverty. They dedicate all their physical, spiritual, and emotional energy for a life of active love.”

      At the Bruderhof there are no wages and no employers and employees as understood by capitalistic economy. Within the Bruderhof there is no exchange of money. The members lead a sharp inner battle against private property and against everything that can disturb the unity of their common life.

      We spoke little about religion. To summarize in one sentence: The Bruderhof believes that the solution to all the religious and social questions of our time can be found in original Christianity. It is independent of any church but is considered by all denominations to be an example of early Christian community. All the people I met at the Bruderhof are good Christians, but also ideologically good “communists.”8

      The name of the Bruderhof was here associated with communism in black and white before all Germany. The danger was obvious.

      Tübingen

      Eberhard’s oldest son Hardy was studying in Tübingen in southern Germany. One of his professors was Karl Heim, Eberhard’s friend from their years together in the Student Christian Movement. Because of this friendship, he invited Hardy to lunch once a week and every month gave him some pocket money. Heim was a popular professor of Christian ethics, and his lectures in the university’s largest hall were packed. Hardy recalled:

      Every student could present questions that he would answer. But so that there would be no chaos, the questions had to be presented in writing. He would read out the question and call the student up to the microphone to discuss the question with him.

      Professor Heim was talking about the Sermon on the Mount in this Christian ethics course. He represented that there were many different ways to interpret the Sermon on the Mount and that it was not valid for everyone. I was most surprised that what he said was absolutely different from what my father said. So I took a piece of paper and wrote down that I could not agree that the Sermon on the Mount was not for everyone. I believed that Jesus had taught the way of Christianity in the Sermon on the Mount, and that it was valid for us now. So he read this paper out and called me to the microphone, and we went into a discussion. He admitted that you could interpret the Sermon on the Mount the way my father did if you wanted to, but he said, “I have different interpretations.”

      This episode, which happened at the beginning of my first semester, made me known among the students. They came to me and wanted to discuss the Sermon on the Mount with me.9

      Another professor at Tübingen was Jakob Wilhelm Hauer who taught comparative religion. He had spent time in India and studied Sanskrit. He too knew Eberhard Arnold and was friendly to Hardy; in 1921, he had spoken at a Pentecost conference in Sannerz about “spirit and culture.” In 1933 and 1934, Hauer developed a new “German Faith Movement,” based on ancient eastern and Nordic religions, which became quite popular among young Nazis.10

      Edith Boeker was one of Hauer’s students, and she was deeply impressed: “I had never experienced anything like it. Everything was represented: anthroposophy, National Socialism, theology, and science.”11 She wrote in her diary:

      Last night Professor Hauer invited us to his house. He is the man of Indo-Germanic faith. One room has a whole corner consisting of windows without curtains, so one can see the trees. Many books, and a beautiful woman’s bust with big eyes and long hair. On the walls are Indian and Persian symbols. He is actually a professor of Sanskrit and is similar to Nietzsche with a large forehead and a hanging red-blonde mustache. He is very likeable, peaceful, going into everything calmly and clearly. I love the educated, artistic atmosphere.12

      Hardy shared several classes with Edith, and they talked about the world views presented by Heim and Hauer. As he wrote:

      There was a small group of students who met for lively discussions of essential questions of life, inspired by the points of view represented by the professors Karl Heim and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. One represented a rational, pietistic, protestant theology and the other a mystic, mythological Indo-Germanic heathendom. Several of us were deeply impressed, because what Hauer had to say seemed more truthful and honest than Heim’s theology. To me it seemed that what was important was to be genuine: honest paganism—that is, love to creation that is nourished by the primal, though unredeemed power of nature—was closer to God and to Christ than hypocritical Christianity that is marked by compromise and self-righteousness.

      On midsummer eve, 1932, we celebrated the summer solstice. Professor Hauer gave the fire speech. It was one of those occasions when the night seemed to breath and we humans felt closer to the source of nature than usual. After the celebration, some went to sleep next to the fire, and others talked until dawn . . .

      After Hauer’s classes, some of us would get together over cake and coffee and talk excitedly about the questions that concerned us. Why has Christianity failed? In what has it failed? We all recognized that Hauer’s attack on Christianity was justified, but we also saw that he only criticized the hypocrisy of the churches without understanding the joyful news [of the gospel.] Into these questions, the testimony of original Christianity fell like a bomb. Here was something alive and all-embracing that transcended the confused teachings of Hauer in its power and universality.13

      Edith Boeker and her friend Susi visited the Rhön Bruderhof in summer 1932, and early in 1933 they both decided to quit their studies and join the community. Edith wrote:

      It became clear to me that there are two powers, darkness and light, and that each person has to make a decision between them. At the Bruderhof light rules! Killing evil men will not decrease evil . . . I knew I had to stay. I went for one more semester to Tübingen. Hardy, Susi, and I met every day and spoke about the absoluteness of truth. It is impossible that there should be more than one truth, as Hauer says. It is impossible that there are two ways, as Heim says—one for the churches and another for the Bruderhof, for example, on the one hand to recognize that people can live together in love and on the other hand to say that it is impossible for the masses.14

      v

      At the end of February, Eberhard took the train to Tübingen. Hardy had arranged for him to speak at the university. They met in the YMCA building where two to three hundred students and several professors were gathered. Eberhard did not wish to advertise the Bruderhof as such, but spoke of the need for a Christian witness. The lecture lasted an hour and a half and was followed by a discussion. Here Eberhard got a sense of what young people were thinking. One student, dressed in an SA paramilitary uniform, picked up on what Eberhard had said about nonviolence. “Have you ever spanked a child?” he asked. A young woman who was studying theology quoted Matt 10:34: “Jesus said, ‘I have not come to bring peace but the sword.’” Another student asserted that the apostle Paul had claimed the right of Roman citizenship and thereby acknowledged the emperor’s use of military force.

      Clearly, the mood was already nationalistic and militaristic. Eber-hard countered all the arguments. “The followers of Christ have a special task, namely to live according to love, according to the heart of God.” Then he put forth an idea that would become a favorite theme of his:

      I must confess that I have a double set of ethics. For the followers of Jesus there is a different set of laws than for the world. Pharaoh was an instrument of God—not an instrument of his love, but of his wrath. Christians are not called upon to represent the wrath of God, but his love.

      One young man said, “Your community is a pest to the German people. You are refusing to help the Fatherland that is bleeding to death.”

      Eberhard

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