From Budding Nazi to Veteran Peacemaker
Tyler Hofer
Picture the happy marriage of two young schoolteachers, Alfred Hugo Brinkmann and his wife Elfriede, in a small town in Germany. Their wedding day is in April, 1914, just four months before the outbreak of the First World War. Jump to August, and Elfriede – now expecting her first child – is waving goodbye to Alfred as he heads off to war in a peasant wagon.
Only months later, Alfred failed to return from an assault on the French lines. And so it was that Heinz Hugo Brinkmann – my grandfather – was born a war orphan on January 12th, 1915. His father never returned, and Hugo grew up the only son of a single mother.
Dearly loved but lonely, he spent much of childhood at home. His mother did her best, taking him on long walks outdoors, to the seaside for vacation, and to the opera house for Wagner – but the void remained.
It is no wonder, then, that the few instances of joy and community Hugo experienced appear like bright points of light in an otherwise gray childhood. Take, for example, his description of Christmas at cousin Helmi’s house:
The two of us would eagerly wait in the living room for the sound of the bell which told us that the Christmas room was ready. Helmi and I would race in as fast as we could, but the Christ Child had always slipped away so quickly that we never managed to catch a glimpse of him. But the door of the Christmas room would be standing wide open, and the Christmas tree ablaze with burning candles. Later there would be the singing of many Christmas carols…
By all accounts his high school years were also lonely. Uninterested in the revelry and drinking bouts of the other boys his age, he earned the nickname “Pius.” Books filled the void, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina had a strong influence:
What captivated me most – much more than the central heroine’s tragic fate – were the ideals of social justice and of the brotherly working together propounded by that other central character in the novel, the young land-owner Levin. I copied out the relevant passages, and for a time I actually dreamt of doing rural settlement work of some kind.
Casting about for something to do after high school, he enrolled at the University of Munich. But there, too, loneliness became unbearable, and so he looked a student group to join. Soon he had moved into the fraternity house of the Untersberg, an offshoot of the German Youth Movement, where he and his fellow “guild brothers” spent evenings talking and singing, and weekends hiking in the mountains.
Then, as other young men his age were being called up to serve in Hitler’s developing army, Hugo received a scholarship to study geography in America. Two years at the University of Chicago opened his eyes to Hitler’s schemes, and he returned to Germany in 1939 – his student visa expired – with trepidation. Luckily, he secured another scholarship, this time to conduct research in Scotland. World War II broke out a week later.
Now an enemy alien in England, he was interned, and then transferred to a camp in Ontario, Canada. There he met Manfried Kaiser, another “enemy” German. Manfried was from a Christian community, the Cotswold Bruderhof, in England where everyone shared everything; he had been arrested for straying outside a restricted area. As Hugo learned more about him, it dawned on him that the community Manfried spoke of was a realization of all the ideals that he had groped for over many years. Here was community between people of different nationalities. Here the ideals of the Youth Movement and of Tolstoy were being lived out!
The war ended in 1945, and all the internees were shipped back to England. Now Hugo was free, and he went right away to Manfried’s community. About the last leg of this journey, he writes:
I made a beeline for the desired goal beckoning in the distance. I walked through fields and meadows until I arrived at a little point of high ground. There I halted to gather my thoughts and listen to the noises and voices coming from the community below. I told myself, “This is it! Here is the end of your wanderings. This is to be your life from now on!”
Hugo was welcomed warmly and he joined right in with the community. He had reached the fulfillment of all his ideals. But now he had to battle with his own heart. Was he ready to give his life in total surrender to Jesus, and to his coming Kingdom? Eventually, coming to know himself a sinner before God, he felt certainty in the call to live the brotherly life he had found, and could testify to an inner peace and joy he had never felt before. Months later he was baptized for the forgiveness of his sins and became a full member of the Bruderhof.
Hugo met his wife Margery soon after. They were married and raised a family of six children. Hugo lived a life of commitment to his family, his church, and ultimately to God. His love and thankfulness to Jesus was lived out vigorously in everything he did. The greatest challenge for those caring for him was to try and slow him down as he got older and less capable. Even at 96, he felt an urgency to contribute, and continued translation work with an assistant to replace his failing eyesight.
On December 15, after a morning of work, Hugo went home feeling unwell. A day later, he passed away. He was almost 97 years old.
