Re: Against the Wind: Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof

Bruderhof Communities wrote:

> Bruderhof wrote:
> 
>> Megan R. wrote:
>> 
>>> "To hear and read the words of Jesus is dangerous."
>>> Eberhard Arnold, 1929
>>> 
>> 
>> Origins
>> Eberhard was born on July 26, 1883, in the farming country near
>> Königsberg. His full name was Eberhard Arthur Julius Arnold.3 He was
>> the third child born to Elisabeth Arnold née Voigt.4 His mother came
>> from a family of scholars. Her father was a professor of church
>> history and dogmatic theology at the Königsberg University. Her
>> grandfather and great-uncle on her mother’s side were also theology
>> professors and influential men in the Prussian Union of the
>> Evangelical Church. 
>> 
> 
> The family tree of Eberhard’s father is equally interesting. Carl
> Franklin Arnold was a doctor of theology and philosophy.5 At the time
> of Eberhard’s birth he was teaching at a high school in Königsberg.
> The son of American and German missionaries, Carl Franklin Arnold had
> grown up in Bremen in the care of an aristocratic family named
> Gildemeister. Eberhard’s paternal grandfather, Franklin Luther Arnold,
> had been pastor of a reformed Protestant church in the United States.
> He met his wife, Maria Arnold née Ramsauer, while he was serving as a
> missionary in Africa. Her family, of Swiss origin, claimed several
> generations of educators, lawyers, and theologians; Eberhard’s
> great-grandfather, Johannes Ramsauer, had worked closely with the
> famous Swiss educator Heinrich Pestalozzi. In short, Eberhard Arnold
> was born into an upper middle-class family, proud of its heritage and
> intellectually gifted. His brother, Hermann, was three years his
> senior. So Eberhard felt closer to his older sister, Clara, since they
> were only seventeen months apart. Two more children followed Eberhard:
> Elisabeth (“Betty”), born in 1885, and Hannah, born three years later.
> 

In 1888 Carl Franklin Arnold was appointed professor of church history at 
Breslau University. As a result, Eberhard’s world shifted from East 
Prussia to Silesia. He was a happy child (“sunny and harmonious,” his 
sister Clara described him),6 somewhat dreamy and inattentive in school. 
But already as a boy he showed a pronounced sense of justice and a 
sensitivity to the atmosphere emanating from other people. From the 
briefest encounter, he seemed able to discern the essence of a person’s 
nature. However, he preferred to share such observations with his sisters 
rather than his classmates.