An Embassy Besieged - Emmy Barth

Скачать книгу

and when I thought about our own attempt at community, I saw how the [Hutterites] were able to set us endless examples and give us invaluable help for our life and its organization . . . The Hutterian Bruderhofs convinced me most deeply that here the three articles of the Apostolic Confession of Faith had grown into a single unity: creative life, life redeemed by the full forgiveness of all sin and all error, and the good life of the Holy Spirit arising out of the powers from the future world. This was given among them in a wonderful unity such as I had never encountered at all in present-day Christian groups in Europe, a unity that does not depend on the spirit of the times.33

      By uniting with this tried and established movement, Eberhard felt he was securing the future of his small flock beyond his own death. The Hutterite elders accepted him as a minister and commissioned him as a missionary in Germany. He felt strongly the responsibility of this spiritual authority. He wrote about the experience to Emmy:

      The confirmation, a deeply moving act . . . is of the very greatest significance. My service has been confirmed on the basis of my insight into the history, faith, and life of God’s church during the last four centuries, on the basis of our own history in Sannerz and on the Rhön Bruderhof, but above all because our dearly beloved members of Sannerz and the Bruderhof have again and again born witness to faithfulness and unity. My confirmation gives me unlimited authority to establish a genuine Hutterian community life, both temporally and spiritually, to the best of my insight.

      It means, too, that the brothers in America will fully and forever support our Bruderhof both in its inner life of faith and in its outward economic life, also when the two of us and all our older fellow fighters are no longer alive. Actually, that unspoken longing was one of the main reasons urging me to make this extremely burdensome journey. Our fellow fighters and fellow workers have shown unexampled trust and self-forgetfulness. For their sake, in place of the will a rich man would make, I want to establish our community life on as deep, strong, and firm a foundation as possible, to ensure its continuance beyond my death.

      That applies, to begin with, to our own five children—our children in the flesh and in spirit, who justify such great hopes. It applies to the dear children of the other parents and mothers in the community . . . It applies equally and no less to the spiritual children of our children’s community.34

      Eberhard hoped that unity with the Hutterites could provide the Bruder-hof with some spiritual and financial security for the community’s uncertain future. At the same time, he saw quite clearly that the growth and development of radical Christian discipleship would bring irreconcilable conflict with the established political and economic order. Words he spoke in 1928 were to prove prophetic:

      All the various movements of the past decades will one day converge in a radical awakening of the masses that leads the way to social justice and to God’s unity—that is to say, to the church, to the kingdom of God, and to community in action . . .

      What we need now is mission. Mission means reaching the millions who live in cities, the hundreds of thousands in industrial centers, the tens of thousands in medium-sized towns, the thousands in small towns, and the hundreds in villages—all these at once. Like a volcanic eruption, a spiritual revolution needs to spread through the country, to spur people to crucial decisions. People have to recognize the futility of splitting life up into politics, economics, the humanities, and religion. We must be awakened to a life in which all of these things are completely integrated . . .

      When the movement has reached its peak, it will be so dangerous that capitalism will see itself imperiled by it. Wealthy landowners will see it as a threat to their position, and the state will see its existence endangered—for where shall the state get its income from if its members live in absolute propertylessness? It will foresee its own dissolution, and so it will have to call in the executioners . . .

      Everything will depend on whether or not the last hour finds us a generation worthy of greatness. And the only thing worthy of God’s greatness is our readiness to die for his cause . . . Whether the twentieth century is shattered for God’s kingdom or simply passes by depends in part on us. We know what is at stake; we know the will of God. We have felt the power of the Holy Spirit and the powers of the future world. So let us get going; now is the time!35

      2

      Hitler’s Rise to Power

      While the disillusionment following World War I had driven Eberhard and Emmy to find a positive alternative in a life of love and social justice, Adolf Hitler found scapegoats for Germany’s troubles in Jews and communists. By 1920 he was a star speaker of the National Socialist Worker’s Party, expressing the deepest fears and desires of his listeners and exuding confidence in his uncompromising, aggressive speeches. But his attempt to take over the government in November 1923 in the famed Beer-Hall Putsch came to an ignominious end, leaving him under arrest with a dislocated shoulder.

      However, Hitler was released on parole a year later and immediately began building up his party again. Fiery speeches, marches, and staged street fights gained the attention of the press and won new adherents. Hitler encouraged ambitious, ruthless young men to take leadership positions. As Max Amman, the publisher of Mein Kampf, said: “Herr Hitler takes the view today more than ever that the most effective fighter in the National Socialist movement is the man who pushes his way through on the basis of his achievements as a leader.” Ernst Röhm had built up the Nazi Party’s paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung (SA or storm troopers), before the 1923 putsch. Although it was declared illegal after the putsch, it continued to grow to thousands of members in the late 1920s and into the 1930s: street violence escalated.

      Eberhard Arnold wrote of his impressions of the mood of the country in a letter:

      Once again heavy clouds hang over Germany. The general crisis in world capitalism has oppressive consequences for us. I don’t mean the occupation of the Ruhr territory and the economic demands of France, etc., although this enslavement of a great working people is among the most terrible things in the history of humankind. But still more terrible is the repugnant contrast between the new wealth which, without the least refinement, takes possession of everything, and the new poverty which is increasing, with poorer nutrition and freezing conditions. I have heard of families who have introduced two days of fasting each week, simply lying in bed so they can spare the heating fuel. But it will get worse when, as a result of the scarcity of coal and the decrease of foreign trade, unemployment increases. Already now many factories work only three days a week or only half day, with half activity and half pay. Nevertheless the young workers with full working strength have on the whole enough to eat and to live on. It is more difficult for the older family fathers, and worst of all for families without a strong, healthy breadwinner. As a result the children and the old people suffer the most.

      In the heavy spiritual fight behind all these outward horrors that weigh us down, one can sense everywhere a deep disillusionment and a general depression, especially in socialist, communist, and pacifist circles and in the radical youth movement. There is a sharp increase of grim nationalism. The new bitterness over the world situation is expressed not only in helpless anger against fate, in a general apathy, or in anxiety over one’s own personal life. Rather it is expressed primarily in ever wider circles of young people in hatred against the French and the Jews, in tough preparations of new militaristic formations, which of course would be unthinkable without a military conflict in the Entente itself. 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, the common struggle for economic existence, a somewhat wider circle of empty egoism. Where are those people who, when the critical moment comes, will refuse to join in killing or harassing, who will rather be crucified and bear the sign of the crucified one? There is a great emptiness, a great vacuum. What will fill this void? Will it be the old filth again, the old consolation of degenerate nature, or a new fresh wind of purest air, the holy breath of God? Now is the moment to proclaim the truth everywhere, now more than ever! In speech, song, and speaking chorus, through pamphlets and books, above all in work and life, and through community of daily action, the one and only message must be spread abroad: Jesus. We believe in him, that his future will again become the present, that his power must

Скачать книгу