Our community was founded in 1920 in Germany by the Protestant theologian Eberhard Arnold, his wife Emmy, and her sister Else von Hollander. Appalled by mounting social injustice and the horrors of World War I, they sought answers in Jesus’ teachings, especially his Sermon on the Mount. Through this search they felt a call to radical discipleship: to give up everything for Christ.1 They moved from their Berlin townhouse to a remote village, Sannerz. There, with a handful of like-minded seekers, they began to live in community of goods after the example of the first church in Jerusalem. Soon they adopted the name Bruderhof – literally, “place of brothers.”
Over the next fifteen years, the community’s ranks swelled with young people from all over Europe, eventually numbering 150. After Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, however, the community became a target of National Socialist oppression because of its stand of conscience. For instance, members refused to use the Heil Hitler greeting, serve in the German army, or accept a government teacher in their school. In 1937, the secret police dissolved the community at gunpoint, seizing its assets, imprisoning several members, and giving the rest forty-eight hours to leave.
With the help of Mennonite, Quaker, and Catholic friends, all members were eventually reunited in England, and by 1940 the refugee community had doubled in size through an influx of English members. Meanwhile, World War II had broken out, and the British government advised the group either to accept the internment of its German nationals or to leave the country. Determined to remain together, almost all members of the community – mostly city-raised Europeans – emigrated to Paraguay. There they spent the next twenty years as pioneer farmers in a harsh, unfamiliar climate, while also founding a hospital that served thousands of local patients. Three members remained in England and soon were building up a new community there as dozens of newcomers continued to arrive.
In 1954, the first American community was founded in Rifton, New York. Today there are Bruderhof communities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Paraguay, and Australia.
