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Society of Brothers in Review
By Marlin Jeschke
Arnold, Emmy, Torches Together: The Beginning and Early Years of the Bruderhof Communities. 2nd edition, Rifton: Plough, 1971. P. 231.
Mow, Merrill, Torches Rekindled. Rifton: Plough, 1989. Pp. 309.
Bohlden-Zumpe, Bette, Torches Extinguished. Carrier Pigeon Press, 1993, Pp. 300.
The Society of Brothers, often also called the Bruderhof because of its origin in Germany,next year can celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding by Eberhard Arnold. Arnold died in 1935 at the age of only 52, possibly because a Nazi surgeon under orders saw to it that Arnold never woke up from an operation for a gangrenous broken leg. Perhaps because of Arnold's early death, but also definitely because of the buffeting of circumstances--escaping to England from persecution in Nazi Germany, then, unwelcome as Germans in England and forced to go to the primitive Paraguayan Chaco--the Society has lurched unsteadily from crisis to crisis. Many of these crises revolved around the problem of leadership succession.The story of the Society has been told in several books. In 1964 Emmy Arnold, widow of founder Eberhard offered her version of its history up to that time in Torches Together. Her version came out of direct personal experience and focused upon its earliest and most visionary years. In 1989 Merrill Mow, a Church of the Brethren convert, presented an officially sanctioned updated account, Torches Rekindled. It was calculated to explain--and to justify the outcome of--the leadership struggle and upheavals of 1959-1961, when Eberhard's son Heini replaced Eberhard's son-in-law Hans Zumpe. In this struggle over 600 members of the community were purged in the exposure of Hans Zumpe's adultery and the dissolution of the England and Paraguay colonies in consequence of the establishment of the Wooderest colony in New York State and the concentration of power there.
Mow's history prompted Bette Bohlken-Zumpe, daughter of Hans Zumpe and granddaughter of founder Eberhard Arnold, to make what she considers a much-needed corrective. Her book, being reviewed here, is entitled Torches Extinguished (edited by Gertrude Enders Huntington, and published by Carrier Pigeon Press, 1993). The title obviously suggests that the early vision of the Society has been lost. Bohlken-Zumpe resents what she considers her father's portrayal as the essence of evil--his adultery notwithstanding--and Heini's leadership as the triumph of righteousness.
Her story ends up more an autobiography than a history of the Society, however. Even though she is an Eberhard Arnold granddaughter, she was only a child during the Paraguay years and was not in on the leadership struggles. Much of her account therefore is about her relatively carefree growing up and later personal struggles while away from the colony in going through nurses training in England and America. Her rather intensely subjective description of these years and her inner turmoil during that time does not so much throw light on what was happening in the leadership power struggle as it does on what trauma the Society kind of life had on individuals subjected to an imposition of guilt feelings, efforts at attitude control, and punitive measures used to attempt to gain that control.
Bohlken-Zumpe by her own admission was very much torn between, on the one hand, adoration of her uncle Heini and his efforts to subject her will to the Society's control and, on the other hand, growing outrage at the Society's hypocrisy and determination to become her own person free of the Society's domination.
In all three books mentioned here some basic facts are clear. At founder Eberhard's death his young son-in-law Hans Zumpe, married to the oldest Arnold daughter Emi-Margret, was already entrusted with much responsibility in the community, whether because Eberhard found in him a capable and trustworthy assistant or because the Arnold sons were too young at the time to be given much responsibility. Eberhard is alleged to have said that in the event of his death Zumpe should become leader and in due time bring his sons into leadership responsibilities also.
What is not clear revolves around the question of whether Zumpe arrogated to himself too much power or misused his power as leader from 1935 to 1941 and during the Emavera, Paraguay, years (1941-1959) and/or tried to keep the Arnold sons out of power. Bohlken-Zumpe claims the sons engaged in angry shouting at some Paraguay meetings, and it is a fact that Heini was placed in "exclusion" for a considerable period of time during the Paraguay years.
The Mow version of the Society's history depicts the victory of Heini Arnold and Wooderest in the early '60s as the vindication of what Eberhard-and the Spirit--intended: the restoration of the right leadership and recovery of the original Eberhard Arnold vision, hence the title Torches Rekindled. The Bohlken-Zumpe version depicts the victory of her uncle Heini as a departure into autocratic and even "cultic" rule. She claims that the purge of over 600 members in the early l960s was Heini Arnold's revenge against those who had endorsed his exclusion in Paraguay and who were unwilling to do adequate repentance for it.
Bohlken-Zumpe admits her own complicity in this retaliation against some members at a time when her own standing in the Society was precarious and she seemed to be trying to ingratiate herself with her uncle's leadership. When one couple at Oak Lake "mentioned that in 1944 there had been so much disunity, so much shouting in the brotherhood (especially by the Arnold sons), that they felt relieved when, after the Arnold exclusion, everything returned to normal," Bohlken-Zumpe jumped up and shouted, "I feel the coldness of your spirit filling this room and it makes me shiver!" The next day the couple was asked to pack their bags and leave.
The reader of Torches Extinguished is inclined at points to sympathize with its author for unfortunate influences she encountered in her growing up years in the Society. For example, when she was only six and playing with another child, balancing on some logs, some adult members of the Society made some ugly accusations for which she was grilled by older women of the community. "They questioned me and kept saying that it was better to tell the truth right away.... I searched my mind to find something they would want to hear. Finally, with a trembling voice I whispered..., 'We played soldiers.' That was the only thing a pacifist-educated child could think of!
" 'No,' she said. 'No, that is not what you did. Now for punishment you will have to sleep outside and go to bed without food....' Next morning they started again, this time hitting me on my legs with very thin sticks,... repeating over and over again that I should tell the truth." Finding a moment to consult with her playmate, she asked, " 'What do they want to hear?' 'It's easy,' she said. 'Just tell them that we looked at each others bottoms."'
"So I promptly confessed to something that we never did, never thought of and did not even think an interesting thing to do! So we were excluded from the other children for ten days and worked in the laundry. We were both six years old."
At one point the reader is inclined to raise some questions about Bohlken-Zumpe's description of another personal experience, this one while in nurses training in New York. She claims, "At a hospital party they served a lot of punch, and I did not realize how much alcohol was in it. I had never had--or even like --alcoholic drinks. But the punch was good, very sweet, and I drank it like lemonade. I became drunk and was raped by a young doctor." One wonders whether the author should not accept a little more responsibility for this incident, even though, as she claims, she had received a far too inadequate sexual education in the Society.
It turned out to be one of the things the community put her into exclusion for, though other issues such as her attitude entered into the picture. For nearly a year at one point she was isolated by the community, made to live by herself in a cabin at the edge of the colony and given the job of cleaning the colony toilets day after day. She confesses that at this point in her life she still had feelings of loyalty to her uncle Heini and struggled to subject herself to the will of the community, and to cultivate the desired attitude of nenitence and self-abnezation.
Whether because she was an Arnold, or because of the persistence of German romanticism and idealism in the community from its German Youth Movement days, or because of the persistent emphasis in the community on attitude and mind-control--or all of the above--Bohlken-Zumpe exhibits a mercurial temperament and rides a roller-coaster of moods throughout her youth. Even in her adult life, after getting married to a Dutch man-apparently fairly happily so--she admits to a persisting love-hate feeling for the community in which she grew up. She found a closeness and security there she still misses but also a stifling suppression of personal rights she is glad to have escaped.
In an appendix the author establishes to this reviewer's satisfaction that Hans Zumpe attempted numerous times in 1960, following his excommunication for adultery, to seek forgiveness and reconciliation with his wife, but community censorship intercepted the letters. His wife never received them. Bohlken-Zumpe claims that her uncle Heini decided that her father should never be allowed back into the community and given even a chance to challenge Heini Arnold's leadership. According to the author, Heini was afraid that his own power and control might be dislodged the way he and some other dissidents, members at that time on the outs, had once walked into a colony in England and taken it over in a coup.
Readers of the several histories of the Society have a right to doubt if they will ever get an objective and unbiased factual account of the Society, especially since so much of it hangs upon "attitude"--whether this or that individual sufficiently surrendered his or her will to the community, or showed the right spirit in one or another crisis. So much seems to depend on who was in power. Bohlken-Zumpe claims that "the Bruderhof worships men
to such a degree that God becomes smaller and smaller. The Bible is not as important as the writings of their leaders. That is what is known as A CULT."
Something seems to be fundamentally questionable and even wrong in a movement in which 623 members were purged at one juncture, many of whom were deeply and sincerely committed to life in the brotherhood and wanted to, even begged, to stay in it. Something seems wrong in a movement marked by a fruit basket upset round of exclusion after exclusion of mature members and leaders, including at one time even the elderly widow of founder Eberhard Arnold.
I am sure the present leaders of the Society are not happy with Bohlken-Zumpe's book. Heini Arnold died in 1989, and his son Christoph is now the Society's head. But then Bohlken-Zumpe was not satisfied with Mow's book. We are justified in keeping on the lookout for further information on the history of the Society--and to watch with interest its future development.
-- Marlin Jeschke is retired from teaching at Goshen College and is living in Berlin, Ohio.
Mennonite Historical Bulletin, July, 1995
Last updated 7 September 1999