THE BRUDERHOF’S
“FIRST LAW OF SANNERZ”

A Good Idea Unbalanced
By Other Good Ideas

 Copyright 2004 © Barnabas D. Johnson

Prepared for presentation by Ruth Lambach at the 31st annual conference of the Communal Studies Association, held at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, September 30 to October 2, 2004[1] 

See, generally, Framustans, regarding the unarticulated, unenumerated, and (arguably) unarticulable major premises of global constitutional jurisprudence.

***

 The Bruderhof, a “utopian society” founded in 1920, asserts that it is governed by a no-gossip rule which it calls (in English) “the First Law of Sannerz.” In the original German, it was titled “Law of Sannerz — Open Word of Love.”[2] Note, however, that it was (and remains) the first and only such law.

The following English translation of the German text (plus accompanying material in italics) was obtained off the Bruderhof’s website:

Written by Eberhard Arnold five years after the founding of the Bruderhof, in 1925, our only written rule has proved easier to post than to practice. Yet without it, our movement would have collapsed long ago. For as Arnold writes, without openness and honesty there can be no loyalty, and thus no real community.

 

There is no law but love. Love is joy in others. What, then, is anger at them? Words of love convey the joy we have in the presence of our brothers and sister. It is out of the question to speak about another person in a spirit of irritation or vexation.

 

There must never be talk, either in open remarks or by insinuation, against any brother or sister, or against their individual characteristics — and under no circumstances behind their back. Gossiping in one’s family is no exception. Without this rule of silence there can be no loyalty and hence no community. Direct address is the only way possible. It is a service we owe anyone whose weaknesses cause a negative reaction in us.

 

An honest word spoken openly and directly deepens friendship and will not be resented. Only when two people do not come to an agreement quickly is it necessary to draw in a third person whom both of them trust. In this way they can be led to a solution that unites them in the highest and deepest levels.

 

Hang this reminder at your place of work, where it will always be before your eyes. EA, 1925

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I was born in the Bruderhof, but was expelled at age 14 in 1958. Ex-members[3] of my generation recall that this no-gossip rule was something we “children of the Bruderhof”[4] absorbed by osmosis, as part of our general acculturation. We never saw the text, as such, during our upbringing. However, some of us, myself included, vaguely recall learning that our no-gossip rule had a name, “the First Law of Sannerz”; others do not recall this. Perhaps different hofs varied slightly on how this law was inculcated. Following the “Great Crisis” of 1959-61,[5] during which over a third[6] of the Bruderhof (adults and children) were expelled, this rule became text-dependent. I recall seeing it — as presented above — prominently displayed during my visit to a Bruderhof in Connecticut around 1968. I also recall being surprised at how much the Bruderhof had changed. Most significant, it now had an “Elder” — a term I’d never known as a lad. This leader, the founder’s second son, who died in 1982, is now venerated by the Bruderhof in ways that many ex-members consider historically inappropriate and utterly insulting to the victims of his zeal.

By most reliable accounts, this leader precipitated the Great Crisis in a power struggle with his siblings and in-laws, and most of those who were expelled as a consequence have never come to terms with his (in their view) brutal indifference to the suffering that he and his henchmen[7] caused. He always struck me as being power-hungry, spiritually-overwrought, and in delicate mental health.[8] The “youth sub-culture” I grew up with — especially young men — feared his explosive temper. My contemporaries and I witnessed incidents when he was frothing at the mouth with fury. Regrettably, we were often unkind to his son, whom we called Tehdel  (Tadpole) and considered a tattle-tale and mildly retarded. We never thought he would amount to much. I shall discuss these two men further in due course.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s my interest in this communal experiment was primarily scholarly, stemming from my comparative-law research on systems of governance, both primitive and advanced. My interest in the Bruderhof’s no-gossip rule was triggered by my study of cybernetics[9] — a theory regarding “self-corrective processes” undergirding the governance of mechanical, biological, intellectual, and societal systems. I was particularly impressed by Gregory Bateson’s book, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), which examined problems associated with clogged or tangled “feedback processes” — including individual and social pathologies of a kind which, I then suspected and am now convinced, bedevil the Bruderhof. In pondering all this, I came to believe that the First Law of Sannerz — as interpreted and applied — propped up a flawed system of governance by insulating leaders from accurate membership feedback and protecting them from organized membership opposition. In short, this rule — which on its face seems benign, indeed commendable — supported an increasingly unaccountable leadership which, starting in the late 1950s, was becoming what many ex-members believe it has now become: an abusive dictatorship.

During my childhood, I learned that our no-gossip rule meant the following: If I had a criticism of somebody, I should bring the matter to that person’s attention, one-on-one, rather than discussing it with others. Discussing problems “behind the back” of the person(s) one was criticizing was considered highly improper. Only when “direct address” failed was it proper (indeed necessary) for the disputants to bring in a “third party” to help resolve matters.[10]

The main problem with this rule is that it is the “First Law” … yet there is no Second, let alone Third, thereby allowing a harmonic convergence of “balanced rules” which recognize that sometimes it is good, indeed essential, for members to pool their observations and insights[11] — to “gossip” — especially about their leaders: to determine whether, and if so when and how, to speak truth to power, powerfully, and thereby to confront arrogant and erring leaders effectively.

As one of my childhood friends put it succinctly during a 1991 conference of ex-members: “We think about others behind their backs, so why can’t we think together about others behind their backs?” This is the crux of the matter. And, in my view, it goes very deep, implicating the essence of what it means to be Homo sapiens, fully human: a being who generates and shares information and wisdom and meaningful options, etc., thereby converting wisdom and choice into will and action in healthy colleagueship — dare I say “community”? — with others. A community without such wisdom-pooling colleagueship is a bird caught in a crazy-mirror vacuum-chamber: it cannot fly, and it would not know where to go if it could.

The “gossip” (godsyb) was in ancient times a “god-relative” who bore a special responsibility towards his or her “syb“; this responsibility was apparently taken on voluntarily, gossips being “sponsors” and helpers … as needed. Apparently, unlike god-parents, god-siblings were drawn from ones age group and gender; they were sand-pit play-mates; they were best buddies, true friends (friends in need, the best indeed). Thus, if the village was awakened night after night because Joseph and Mary were screaming at each other, their friends and neighbors and gossips would naturally discuss this troubling fact, trying to figure out whether, and if so when and how, to help Joseph and Mary resolve their problems and thereby restore the peace of the night.

True, Henry might (without consulting others) call Joseph aside for a little chat, one-on-one, and that course (a) might be good, and (b) would accord with the Bruderhof’s First Law. But, on the other hand, Henry and Tom might discuss the problem together first, and then discuss it with their wives, and then ask James and his sister for their input, before all decide to invite Mary and Joseph over for beer and a neighborly talk tonight, and (arguably, given the value of neighborly consultations, otherwise called “gossip”) that course (a) might be even better, but  (b) would violate the Bruderhof’s First Law. Life is complicated, human relationships are deeply textured, and “talking behind the back” can constitute a conspiracy against  but can also constitute a cooperation for … in this case, for the health of the village, which depends on Joseph and Mary to pull their weight, etc., and also depends on everybody getting a good night’s rest. 

Put differently, there is good gossip and bad gossip, just as there is good cooperation and bad cooperation. Wisdom lies in balanced judgment, in the wise equipoise of “love” and “law” and other precious values. In the Bruderhof, however, “love” and “law” are seen as Manichean opposites: never the twain shall meet, let alone intertwine. As a consequence, the “loving way” is decreed by a leader who is not bounded by the “lawful way”; he is theologically and factually unaccountable (except to “God” as he interprets same), and this leader can therefore dispense unequal justice, unchecked whim, and sheer favoritism, as the spirit (he would say “Spirit”) moves him. This is dysfunctional. 

The Elder is apparently empowered to expel any member for good cause, bad cause, or no cause.[12] As members have no private property, no savings, no resumes, no references, and often no knowledge of the “outside world” (as members call it), they are reluctant to criticize the Elder one-on-one because, face it, he always wins such face-offs. Yet if two or three gather together to discuss their errant Elder, and then perhaps discuss and strategize with another ten or even hundreds before confronting the Maximum Leader, what can happen? He can cut off the first speaker in mid-sentence and toss him out for having violated the First Law! There is no Second Law. Is there a second speaker? 

As noted, as a lad I never saw a formal text associated with “the First Law of Sannerz”; children learned this no-gossip rule by osmosis until around 1960. Indeed, an ex-member (recently deceased) who was once a “Servant of the Word” or minister, was adamant that he had never even heard the term “Law of Sannerz” (or “First Law of Sannerz”) until after the Great Crisis. I find this claim hard to believe, as his wife was a Bruderhof child in the late 1920s when this no-gossip rule was almost certainly known — and named — and displayed (in German). But the fact that I cannot find this claim impossible to believe speaks volumes: the First Law clearly took on a new significance — becoming almost the Eleventh Commandment — following the Great Crisis. As we shall see, whether or not the First Law was born  out of the first crisis of 1922, it most certainly was elevated out of the Great Crisis of 1959-61, and (many ex-members believe) the First Law’s implementation since then has been focused on averting crises or, more precisely, protecting the dictatorship from successful challenges.[13]

When I visited a Bruderhof in Pennsylvania for several weeks in 1973, my main purpose was to probe Bruderhof governance. By then I had read everything I could find by and about the Bruderhof, and I was therefore not surprised to see the First Law displayed in living rooms and work places throughout the hof. And I knew this accorded with the explicit instructions of the founder, Eberhard Arnold (hereinafter, “Eberhard”). The fact that during my childhood I had only learned this rule by osmosis was offered by members in 1973 as evidence that the Bruderhof I had grown up in had degenerated following Eberhard’s death in 1935. Indeed, I was told, the Great Crisis — which I had long considered a calamity — was in fact a “rebirth” during which the founder’s second son, Heini,[14] had wrestled the community back to its original, Christ-centered foundations.

Everybody seems to agree that Heini brought about major changes, starting around 1956-57, which precipitated (a) many expulsions or departures, (b) closing of all Paraguayan hofs and the main British hof, (c) major leadership upheavals, (d) elevation of the First Law of Sannerz, explicitly thus named, to its current textual (as distinct from “osmosis”) form, and (e) elevation of Heini to the new position of Elder. Members and ex-members disagree, naturally, as to whether these changes were good. Members’ adulation for their beloved “Opa Heini” balance evenly, it appears, with ex-members’ bafflement that “history” seems thus far to be getting things so absurdly wrong. To ex-members, Bruderhof “histories” are insulting idealizations — hagiographies — that raise up Heini by trampling upon his victims.[15] 

Such ex-member bafflement pales, however, in comparison to the bemused amazement many express that Heini’s son Christoph, who replaced his father as Elder following Heini’s death in 1982, seems to have become something of a hot item, having apparently written numerous books — one of which is reportedly referenced favorably in President Clinton’s autobiography. Christoph’s ex-member contemporaries (myself included) have long felt confident in predicting that Christoph would make an awful mess of things; indeed, we think he has; but, to date, on member-waxed wings, he rises undaunted by our doubts, flying ever higher, ever more spectacularly, now as “Senior Pastor” (another term we never knew in the Bruderhof of long ago). 

So, how does all this relate to the First Law of Sannerz?

About a decade ago, another of Eberhard’s grandsons, now an ex-member, suggested a very different purpose undergirding the First Law and Heini’s elevation of it. According to this account, the Bruderhof, which started in Germany in a rented “guest-house” called Sannerz[16] in 1920, experienced its first crisis in 1922 when participants rebelled against Eberhard while he and his wife were vacationing in Holland.[17] He returned, a showdown ensued, the “plotters” departed, and only a small core of mostly Eberhard’s immediate family remained. According to this account, the First Law was the founder’s means of ensuring against any repetition of such “disloyalty” by forbidding others from discussing him and his leadership behind his back. That is, the First Law was (according to this grandson) intended  to protect Eberhard from members’ pooling of information, sharing of insights, comparing of grievances, and strategizing on remedies. This interpretation is arguably buttressed by the (otherwise somewhat obscure) phrase in the First Law: “Without this rule of silence there can be no loyalty and thus no community.”  

Now, upon examining this matter, I have come (on balance) to doubt this grandson’s explanation. I do not believe, all things considered, that this was the First Law’s original purpose. Yet I have become convinced that this was its result — and possibly, indeed quite probably, was also Heini’s purpose in “resurrecting” and elevating the First Law as part of his 1961-63 effort to consolidate his power after he had wrested control of the Bruderhof from his brothers, his brothers-in-law, and other Bruderhof leaders, including those non-Germans who in the 1930s were instrumental in “rescuing” the German members and helping them relocate first to England and then, after World War II started, to Paraguay.

This view of matters will doubtless be contested by the Bruderhof, for which Eberhard and Heini and Christoph have attained saintly, even semi-divine, status. So be it. Past is prologue. Bruderhof members are indeed “loyal” to a fault. Their loyalty to their trinity has trumped their capacity for loyalty to that “true openness” which “true community” implies. In this connection, I recall the name their First Law first had: “Law of Sannerz — Open Word of Love.” The Bruderhof’s interpretation of this “law” has contributed mightily, I believe, to creation of a closed society in which an “open word” — indeed, a simple friendship[18] — among ordinary members is often dangerous. Arguably, however, the Bruderhof is correct in asserting, in its preface to the First Law (as interpreted and enforced by its leaders), that “without it, our movement would have collapsed long ago.” The question asks itself: Would the “collapse” of this dysfunctional society be a bad thing?

I have devoted my professional life to understanding and advancing Open Society values, including freedom of expression and association, periodic elections for choosing accountable governments, and equal justice under history-illuminated law. Working for the past 15 years on law reform and legal-education reform in the former Soviet Union, I have come to treasure the lessons of history — true history, warts and all, told with fidelity. I shall leave hagiography to others. It is worthless for purposes of building healthy, accountable governments that cultivate and harvest “self-wisdom” — the good, the bad, the ugly, the true, and hence also the transforming.

As modern Russia shows, merely turning away from something bad is not enough; there has to be something better to turn towards. And that is complicated because “the good society” is less a noun than a verb. It is not a “plateau of perfection” ever reached, it is a process of reaching, of becoming, of coevolving. It is — to the extent that words can suffice — a constitutional democracy, a learning organism, an activity, a gerund.  

 

Balancing majority rule with minority rights, balancing individual opportunity with equal justice, balancing, ever balancing … it seems to me that an evolution-affirming good society “reveals itself best” as it becomes a self-rediscovering, self-governing experiment in which ordinary people — no less than extraordinary people — can speak truth to power, powerfully.

A true utopia is never finished, is always young. It is interesting, filled with good gossip. It is not what the Bruderhof has become. The Bruderhof I grew up in might have had the potential of becoming truly interesting. Now it is merely a boring example of a good idea unbalanced by other good ideas. That is a terrible idea!

The worst enemy of democracy is a lousy “conception” of it which, when tried, fails, thereby causing people to give up on “democracy” without having ever tried a competent conception of it. The same might be said of any “utopian society” conception.

To those who would improve our world, I would propose that you balance “love” with “law” — focused on doing justice, focused on enhancing Open Society values, and focused on learning from history … told with unvarnished fidelity.