Eberhard Arnold

Present Stand of the Neuwerk Movement

[Arnold, Eberhard and Emmy papers – P.M.S.]

[Draft Translation by Bruderhof Historical Archive]

EA 22/4

Das Neue Werk, June 1922

Present Stand of the Neuwerk Movement

According to a Discussion on Whit Tuesday, 1922

During the Schlüchtern Whitsun conference in Wallroth a concern for clarity regarding the present phase of the development of our movement could be felt in many who stand in close contact and fellowship with the Neuwerk movement. It proved necessary for all the different groups to share what the unity and solidarity of all (of our members) means, and how then from this unity freedom and diversity of expression and activity results from the same spirit. Each individual can only say how he sees and must see everything only from his personal point of view. It is only possible to grasp the tangible reality to the degree that one approaches the whole picture from all angles. The statement made here is only meant as a beginning, in response to the request of several, emphatically only meant as the personal expression of one individual, in order to stimulate all of us to come to an open exchange about what we have in common and what are the different characteristic traits of the New Work movement today.

At Whitsun 1919 a conference took place in Marburg on the Frauenberg, which became one of the starting points for our book Junge Saat and for our later Schlüchtern conferences. Young students, men and women, of the German Christian Student Movement and its corresponding women's group of all shades of opinion had met there.

The meetings were characterized by liberation from traditions and by reflecting on the decisiveness of Jesus in regard to all questions, including those concerning public life. So for the first time the conference began with circle dances and with the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus. The following points were decisive for the discussions: joy in nature, and in this context the questions arising from the Russian and German revolutions and from voluntary communistic settlements in Germany and Siberia and the community of all men, the questions of making no legal claims and of nonviolence, the realization that we are a part of God's creation, and that we feel full trust in the intervention of His Spirit, all in the sense of one basic concern. The Sermon on the Mount gave decisive, serious significance to our common joy. The common impressions under which our circle in Berlin-Steglitz found itself during the winter of 1918/1919 had their lasting significance only in this, that Christ himself had spoken His Sermon on the Mount there and on the Frauenberg, and, what is more, in the New Testament. The same Christ who was crucified and rose again and who sent His life-giving Spirit (Romans 8) into dead mankind (Romans 7).

If one spoke of a "movement" from the beginning of this period, which coincided with the founding of the "Christian Democrat", the Neuwerk Publishing House, and the call to the early Church from Schlüchtern and the Vogelsberg, those who felt joined together for a joint move forward were not concerned whether this movement embraced many or only a few people.

Only one thing mattered to them, that it was a movement originating from Christ, a movement of both protest and surrender. The only thing that mattered was love as the turning upside down of all present conditions and circumstances, the breaking in of the completely different nature of God.

It can only be indicated here in a brief succession of words what has shaken and gripped us unitedly since that time. It did not matter from which people or groups of people the call emanated to an undivided life of following Jesus in absolutely unconditional community of heart and work, the call to the final realization of the Sermon on the Mount. What had been represented or said here and there by some people over shorter or longer periods now became the common war cry of a united front pressing forward; enmity against the anti-god gold and his terrible liege man, war; voluntary poverty; a completely free hand to live in accordance with one's conscience; a life determined by the absolute; a "must" prompted from above, particularly in regard to social democracy; to be continually moving; fellowship with every movement arising in men's consciences against all injustice, hate, and mammon; freedom from any kind of commitment to a fixed program; freedom for service in the love of Christ; a missionary task, particularly in fellowship with Free German and Socialist circles; brotherliness and mutual trust; a testimony for the living Savior as personal Redeemer and the only One who fulfills all mankind's ideals; a coming close to the early Christian community of goods; faith in the coming Kingdom of justice and peace. One could continue indefinitely with this short listing, to show the urge of a common enthusiastic expectation, in all its aspects. Often this expectation seems to lead us close to many Free German, pacifist, social democrat, communist, and anarchist ideals, and yet it always remained different from them, because it was directed entirely towards Christ and His coming, toward the manifestation of His Spirit. For this realization we had a common faith: "However convincingly one wants to prove the impossibility of such a life in keeping with the Sermon on the Mount, we believe nevertheless in the impossible: Jesus makes the Kingdom of God a reality."

It was the faith of this expectation that led together people from many different regions of Germany and many different backgrounds of personal development, people who did not believe in the idolization of man, but in the coming of God.

During the winter of 1918/1919 a number of groups of friends had joined together in Schlüchtern and in the Vogelsberg around the Magazine The Christian Democrat who wanted to testify to the Gospel just as much to the people tending to the "left" politically as it is apt to be mostly represented to the circles of the politically "right." Out of this situation the Christian Democrat, now the "Neuwerk, a Service to the Future" came into being. So did the Neuwerk Publishing House with its yearbook The Plough. However, what was much more essential was that from this fact the question arose again and again, where the Christian proclamation has been guilty of the fact that today just the poorest and most disadvantaged masses seem to have the weakest contact with the Gospel. In the context of this question a growing influence led from the Democratic Party to the Biblical revolutionary movement of religious Socialist circles in Switzerland.

The Tambach conference in the fall of 1919 was strongly moved by the witness of the Swiss religious socialists. From the German side the same radical, early Christian protest was raised against the State institutions of the church and economic society, against all the sin of men. However, at that time a manifold spectrum was evident. On the one hand was a connection with the life witness of positive anarchists like Leo Tolstoi, Peter Kropotkin, and Gustav Landauer. On the other hand there was a general religious party socialism, and others again represented a certain connection with liberal Protestantism, and again a warmhearted testimony for the Gospel and the social work of the world churches. Yet in Tambach the only impressive and decisive factor was the Bible, the prophetic truth of the Kingdom of God and its future coming from God, in Christ alone.

Meanwhile in the middle-class Free German movement in more liberated Christian youth circles and in some working class groups many were struggling towards the ultimate question. Some of these people met on the Inselsberg in Thuringia at the beginning of March 1920. About one hundred people met there, filled with the bursting power of many different explosives, people from the most extreme forms of anarchism and communism, romantics with an immense and boundless emotional life, theologians and students whose heads were crowded with all conceivable and inconceivable political, economic, and educational problems, including those of the history of religion, and other problems. Yet all these lively people, about whom we can only give hints here, were filled with the same intense expectation of something entirely new, which no man and no group of men can achieve. It was clear to all that this new revolution in the sense of a radical overturning, of an out-and-out original regenerative act or new birth, must happen through an intervention from a completely other world. Therefore it was out of the question on the Inselsberg even to attempt any form of outward uniting or any accord. The deep common awareness that something tremendous is happening, immeasurably surpassing us, prevented any human pretense.

However, friendships were formed and opposing views became revealed, common ground was revealed, and tremendous tensions became evident; so many had been stimulated and stirred that several groups joined together for longer or shorter hiking trips at the end of this brief conference. One of these groups hiked from the Inselsberg to Marburg, through Schlüchtern and Frankfurt, carrying a white glove on a stick, symbol of both the outstretched hand of peace and the gauntlet against all manner of injustice. A red handkerchief was fixed underneath the glove.

Many small streams flowed to each other. Some gushed and splashed over the banks, but all of them originated in the same source and pressed toward the same sea. During the first Whitsun conference at Schlüchtern in 1920 the running waters seemed much quieter and flowing as one stream. To the question, what is the most decisive matter leading us together, there could be only one answer: It is Christ. From this recognition the distinctive task that arose from the first Schlüchtern conference, within the Church of Christ, was solidarity with the working classes, the revolutionary stand against mammonism and capitalism, and the unqualified will for peace against all forms of power and violence: the eschatological tension between the present age and God's eternal future, between this world and the future world, between human injustice and God's justice. Such a tension was bound to fill the first Schlüchtern conference with pain and need as well as with joy and expectation.

During those Whitsun days of 1920 the Neuwerk Publishing House found a home in Sannerz for the community that was slowly gathering around its co-workers. The inner certainty for a life in community of goods and work, for the open door and the autonomous freedom of this life in community had already been given to the growing circle in Berlin-Steglitz. In Sannerz they dared to take the first steps toward practical communal work. At the same time the community settlement of the Habertshof (near Schlüchtern) came into contact with the New Work movement through this first Whitsun conference. This had an influence on the future development of the Habertshof.

During the whole summer following this first Schlüchtern conference a small, slowly increasing number came to Schlüchtern on their long wanderings, so that during the summer of 1920 hardly a day went by without celebrating a reunion or a first acquaintance.

The second Whitsun conference in 1921 was appreciably quieter than the first Schlüchtern gathering had been. The tension between the inner freedom of the Spirit and the binding responsibility to the serving of love and of practical cultural mission came to a definitely more moderate expression. Through one of our guests—and I am still thankful to him for this even today—our common need came most passionately to expression. However, in all our meetings and above all in the "quiet hours" at Whitsun 1921, our thoughts were already directed far away from the Neuwerk movement itself to that which is alone decisive and which has come to us, as we are unable to go to it ourselves. The witness of waiting for Christ was decisive for this Whitsun. The certainty given in this that one cannot drown in relative things when God comes became clear in the address by our friend Wilhelm Hauer, who already at that time expressed that it is necessary for the youth movement to be bound to practical work and to be faithful also in small things. It became clear to all of us that any separation between nature and culture is questionable, and how impossible it must remain to separate spirit and matter. The new affirmation in Christ—but in Christ only—stood in opposition to the inevitable negation of man's culture.

Already as early as during the Marburg conference in the fall of 1920 a breaking apart of the various heterogeneous elements in the movement took place, which had been brought together by certain political and religious similarities. For the Neuwerk magazine the development of the movement beginning in Marburg resulted in an almost complete change in its circle of readers, which corresponded more and more to the development of the Schlüchtern conferences.

The long difficult year between the Whitsun conference of last year and the one of this year found such a characteristic echo in our magazine that there is no need to talk about it at all here. The conference in Wallroth has made the need and struggles of this past year evident, also especially what was fought through and given during this year. The conference could not and should not be different from the year from which it proceeded. What gives us joy is that the work of the magazine and our mutual contact has made the Christ-centered witness very clear, which is the main thing: Christ and His message is the only purpose that led us together and kept us together in Wallroth. This applies to the whole cause of the Neuwerk movement, and is not meant as an assertion that Christ's presence was particularly powerful among us, but rather it should be said that our coming together and our task in the Neuwerk movement loses all meaning unless and as far as it is not a witness for Christ.

In this sense we are glad about our Schlüchtern gathering in Wallroth. The forward driving effect of this testimony came to expression first of all in the sharpest rejection of all material and purely human concerns. Over and against this only one positive element remains from Wallroth: that Christ unfolds His life in His whole Church for all men. The urge of the all-embracing Spirit present in our movement from the beginning, the longing for the ecumenical, universal element of creation and redemption, the testimony: "The whole God for the whole of nature and the whole of mankind" came to expression in Wallroth. We are not concerned with a little sect or with an apparently ever so large world church; we are concerned with Christ and His Church, with God and His Kingdom.

The all-embracing will of God's love also urges the Neuwerk movement to take up the task to be there for all and for this reason to render service in such a way, in such a living and simple way, that all men can gain something from it. The divine task is unrestricted, this is clear to all. However, the people who receive this task are limited; this is just as clear. The result of this is clearly that the unlimited task given to the Church becomes split up and taken to pieces by the limitations of men. Because of this the Neuwerk magazine cannot actually fulfil its task for all. But it can become an alliance periodical serving its common, unlimited task as universally as is given to the whole staff of co-workers. Therefore it had to become evident in Wallroth what had taken place during the preceding year, that in the circles of Schlüchtern and the Neuwerk movement marked differences of expression and of attitude to life emerged from the same Spirit.

On the one hand strong misgivings were raised against every kind of extreme, revolutionary applications of the Sermon on the Mount. On the other hand there were equally strong objections to every kind of idolization of human thinking, particularly theological thinking, to every kind of resignation, to dependence on human conditions and on the order of society. Any submission to present conditions, however pious it may appear to many among us, appears as idolatry, which is satisfied that everything has to be as it is. The historical slackening of the revolutionary movement causing strong reactionary tendencies in Europe, is, in our opinion, the cause of retrogression for some of our friends.

The question must arise in one or the other among us whether his compliance with the call of the conscience through the revolution was perhaps just as much determined by current influences as his present emphasis on the permanent and traditional. I see a prostration of the protest movement which took a stand originating from God's history, from the absolute, against all injustice, hatred and violence among men.

In Wallroth hardly a protest could be heard against war and capitalism, against the slave-like exploitation of the majority by the minority. And when this protest was raised by some, it did not find a strong echo anywhere. The Neuwerk challenge for a united front against the encroachment of privileged groups of men, against the hardheartedness of the rich and satisfied, the challenge to the surrendered love of Jesus in feeling one with the need and guilt of all men, receded in comparison with the other Whitsun conferences. Doubtless what is good here is that every kind of illusion that the direction from the (political) left, or towards the left alone was a true one, was out of the question and will remain out of the question. If some of the youngest among us ever fell prey to this illusion, they now have definitely been finally torn out or forced out of it.

It is good that in the periodical Neuwerk the true impulses of the middle classes, also the perspectives of the (political) "right", shall come to expression now, so that all of us will be more exposed to the full light of the whole truth than we have been up till now, of course in the sense that all that is "right" and all that is "left" stands under the same judgement and under the same grace. We are all convinced that this "service to what is developing" is a true expectation of what is coming, which is not bound to any human orientation.

However, we will not deceive ourselves: If that original protest movement of the revolutionary spirit of the Sermon on the Mount can be compared to a wedge driven into an obstacle, we are facing a very different situation at the end of this year, between Whitsun 1921 and Whitsun 1922. We believe that this wedge was driven by God into the great old tree trunk blocking the flowing stream of God. The tree is not split and could not be split by this wedge. However, this wedge is now forced out, broken to pieces and shattered—either as the result of a new blow or of the pressure of resistance. The specific united fighting task is no longer concentrated on the same point of resistance. The existing society in economics, state, church, and school—where you will—cannot feel the pressure of the wedge any longer as it did before. Thus the Schlüchtern movement in the sense of a forward thrusting wedge, as a passionate, closely knit movement of protest and uncompromising revolution, died and was buried in Wallroth. But the Spirit cannot be killed. What is absolute never succumbs to what is relative. The secret of this movement in our time, from the Frauenberg to the Inselsberg, from The Christian Democrat to Tambach and Schlüchtern, remains alive, and what is more: this secret is that dying always means resurrection.

The wedge is shattered, thrown in pieces into the running stream blocked by the age-old obstacle. The stream itself pushes—as always and everywhere, also here and now—this obstacle. One day it will happen that the stream will sweep away this obstacle. Whether it is a calm quiet pressure or a pushing, tearing onrush of infinite powers—the obstacle will be removed. This stream is the only "movement" that matters, because it is the superhistorical movement and growth towards the future. Only running water, blowing wind, blazing fire, and flowing blood bring life. Only what is streaming, blowing and burning, from God, redeems. In the stream of God there is life. Whoever becomes immersed in this flood, in this infinite watery grave will be lifted up to life again, renewed and reborn to new life by the same stream. But also the watery grave itself is life. Wherever the individual splinters of the wedge are buried, they will describe circles touching one another, circles kissing or pushing one another. The individual circles are not a "movement" in the same way as the wedge was a "movement." Therefore we should never speak of individual movements within the Neuwerk cause. They are only points, and points are infinitely small. Whether circles move out from them touching the circumference depends on the stream, not on the point. In contrast to the wedge, what matters here is that the quieter the water runs, the stronger is its effect on the concentric circles.

Hence here it is not a matter of evaluation. Whether the wedge was really thrust forward by God, whether the individual splinters really have fallen into the stream of God—this is a question we humans can only raise as a question of conscience.

For us, among ourselves, it can only be a matter of growing and developing honestly and faithfully in all the small things given to us here and there, in the very different, perhaps particularly disparate work responsibilities as given to us. What ultimately matters here is to go ahead without finding agreement in all the relative questions, as if the stream were so small that each splinter would have to fall into the same place as all the others. This would be unbelieving and godless. The only important thing is that we keep the "Neuwerk" open to the whole stream, that every point in this stream is given full scope. What matters is that the different splinters in the depth of the stream know themselves held together and are embedded together in the stream itself. Practically this awareness of mutual help, means help towards freedom and community. All should be aware that we are slowly learning to walk. We crawl and walk in different ways. But really, we all belong to one family: one for all and all for one. We cannot betray one another. We cannot pit one group of people against another, maintaining that one is right and the other wrong. On the contrary: we ask for reverence for the ultimate task, for that which has been entrusted to each one of us in his own particular way, that he—quite in a relative sense—does the service which is given to him in an absolute and direct sense. This freedom must be mutual because our service is mutual.

If I may here speak personally: The particular task of our community life in Sannerz will have to be hammered out much more sharply.

Solidarity with the proletariat, with the most oppressed and tortured people, must play a much greater, more living part. In particular we have to offer a right of domicile and the possibility of work to these people, because in some way or another, a home, a possibility to live and work has been taken from them. It is a matter of men becoming men again. This involves a special task with the children and young people. It will be our main task under the influence of the Spirit to give a free education to children, to equip them for life, and to help young people to educate each other, leading them into a free educational fellowship with all the members of the community, leading them to solid, manifold opportunities for fruitful work. We are not discouraged by the imperfect realization achieved up till now. The open door shall remain open for all. Our protest against the apparent advantages of intellectualism and wealth of every kind must come to a much sharper expression than it has done up till now. We long for community of goods without personal property and for freedom from all human authority more ardently than ever before. Fellowship with many rejected people or with people excluding themselves, who are coming to us on their long journeys must become more living among us. We can never suppress the witness of the Sermon on the Mount, the testimony of Jesus Christ on the way of peace and a truly surrendered, giving love, free from all property and opposed to all forms of economic capitalism, to the militarism of the State, to all education by violent means, and to all man-made religious dogma.

Yet we are clear that in all this, even if it has to emerge more grotesquely and sharply, nothing objective, nothing valuable in itself, briefly, nothing absolute, should be ignored. What we have to lay much more on our hearts has also been written on the hearts of those with apparently opposite one-sided standpoints, expressed only in different caricatures.

Hence we should be thankful for the fruits of this Whitsun year! Faith in the victory of love, the community of Christ's body, cannot be shattered. The Neuwerk periodical shall be the organ for all those who have this faith, however differently it may come to expression. To continue breathing, to be allowed to continue waiting, and to continue witnessing—this is the freedom of fellowship. This means trusting that each one in his place, in his own small circle, remains included in the stream.

This means that all is nothing unless God comes to us and unless His Spirit works wonders.

[Explanatory notes about Eberhard Arnold's statement: "Concerning the present inner situation of the Neuwerk movement."

Berlin-Steglitz: A suburb of Berlin where the Arnolds lived, holding Open House meetings in 1918-1920, prior to their move to Sannerz.

Frauenberg: A hill in the city of Marburg, where the Marburg conference of 1919 held their outdoor meetings.

Free German movement: A branch of the German Youth movement.

Hauer, Wilhelm: Leader of the Köngen group of the Youth movement, founder of the "Germanic-Indogermanic Faith Movement" in the early thirties. Professor in Tübingen.

Inselsberg: A mountain in the Thuringian Forest, where a conference took place in early 1920.

Marburg Conference: Meeting of leaders of the Neuwerk movement in the fall of 1921.

Schlüchtern: Town in Hesse where Georg Flemmig lived, who had a great influence on the early Neuwerk movement, also called "Schlüchtern Youth." In 1919 Georg Flemmig called seekers to join him in the "Urgemeinde," a group trying to recover the Spirit of the early Church in Jerusalem, with the symbol of the open ring. Eberhard and Emmy Arnold joined and moved to the Schlüchtern area in 1920, focal point of the Neuwerk Movement.

Tambach: A village in Thuringia, where a conference was held in 1919 with representatives of the Swiss religious socialists, including Karl Barth. Eberhard Arnold spoke here about the theme: "The Christian and Society" with Karl Barth.

Vogelsberg: Mountain range near Schlüchtern, where Otto Herpel and Heinrich Schultheis, early members of the "Urgemeinde," were pastors. Founded the "Christian Democrat" (later "Das Neue Werk") with Georg Flemmig. Heinrich Schultheis and his family lived in the community in Sannerz in 1922, helping in the Neuwerk Publishing House.]