:::::: © Nueva Germania: Hutterite Ambitions © ::::::

The motive for my writing the following is an essay, "A Trip on the River", written in 1937 by my brother August Pleil, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Nueva Germania. The essay appeared in a new book, Paraguay, edited by Mr. Victor Martens. Frau Elfriede Eitzen asked me to write something about the Pleil genealogy, as it is an unusual surname, for possible publication in The Mennoblätt. Here I would add that my great-grandparents on my mother's side were involved in the founding of Nueva Germania, under the leadership of Elisabeth Nietzsche and her husband Dr. Förster, arriving there in July of 1882.

Let me say something about my great-grandparents on my mother's side. My grandfather Emil Schubert and my grandmother Maria both arrived with the first group of pilgrims from Saxony. At this time, ships were propelled by steam and sail. On their way over, my grandmother lost four of her five children. I was never told of what they died. In Paraguay, my gran dparents were given another seven children. My mother Dora was the next to the last of these children. My grandparents were involved for about a year in the settlement of Nueva Germania. After that year, supplies were just about exhausted and everything went wrong—due to inexperience in living in a subtropical, primeval forest.

When the food was nearly gone, my grandfather took his rifle and went out into the woods to hunt some meat. In the woods, he saw a big black bird sitting on a branch. He fired, and the bird dropped. He took the bird and promptly went home, believing that he had shot a wild turkey. He gave the bird to my grandmother to cook. She put him in hot water, and a strong nasty smell rose up with the steam. She went ahead and plucked him all the same, put him in the pot and cooked him. But that old boy didn't get tender and couldn't be eaten. It turned out this bird was an old vulture. Along with everything else that went wrong, the little boat called Hermann, which was to bring them food and other necessities, sank because it ran into the shore of the Jejui River. The story goes that the crew were drunk.

Around this time, they left the Colony simply to survive. My grandparents moved to San Pedro, where my grandfather found work as a blacksmith. Here my mother was born, in the year 1905. The land and some of the buildings are now the hospital in San Pedro. My grandfather donated them for that purpose. I would like to add that those who remained behind in Nueva Germania later experienced financial success—as one of them, I wasn't told exactly which, discovered how to cause Yerba Maté seed to sprout: by letting the seed lie for a number of days in ash water. Up to that time, this process was done in the bellies of birds and so the only Yerba to be had was what grew wild in the woods. That made it pretty expensive, since the trees had to be hunted up to one by one and the leaves transported out of the forest. Through this discovery, Yerba Maté could be cultivated in big fields. And since those in the Colony were the first to do so, they enjoyed the high price of Yerba and achieved considerable prosperity. For example, they were among the first in Paraguay to buy automobiles. There was just one problem: there were no roads for these cars to drive on. But the prosperity didn't last long, because everybody began to cultivate Yerba Maté, and when they began to do it in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, the price dropped so that Yerba Maté production in Paraguay went bankrupt.

I'd like to write something about my parents and family. My father Otto Pleil was from Berlin. He emigrated to Argentina before the first World War. He had an uncle there, name of German Pleil. When the First World War broke out, he returned to Germany to fight for his German Fatherland. There he ended up in a French prison camp, where the prisoners suffered terribly from the cold rain, having to sleep in the mud and sometimes having nothing to eat for days on end. Many of his comrades perished.

When the war was over and Germany was in terrible shape, and there was no work to be had, he went back to Argentina, and then Paraguay, where he met my mother, and married her. They bought a Yerba Maté plantation in Yatebo, where I was born as their third child. When I was five years old, we moved to Rosario Loma, where my father had a position as teacher in the German school for nine years. When World War II ended, and all the German schools in Paraguay were closed down, and all German activities were prohibited by the government, we moved back to Yatebo to our plantation, and spent four years there building everything up again. We then moved to join the Hutterites in Primavera, called "barbudos" by the Paraguayans because they had beards, or "Sociedad de Hermanos", or the "Society of Brothers" in English. On the west side, Primavera bordered Friesland, where the Mennonites have their villages.

Now I would like to say something about the reasons we joined the Society—not financial reasons but social ones. At the time, as I have already mentioned, German activities had been prohibited, and we older children were coming into the age when we wanted to have contact with other young people. As we had had a German education and German culture, we did not fit into Paraguayan society. My parents felt the same way—we felt like Robinson Crusoe on his island. We were also very much interested in community life, and we often asked ourselves why people couldn't live in community, that would be so much simpler and would be more fun. Then one day a German by the name of Fritz Muhldrechsler came to visit and told us about the Society, and we were very much enthralled. My father wrote the first letter and then there was a correspondence back and forth.

Finally, my father, my brother August and I paid a visit to Primavera. We were very much impressed by what we found, that so many people from various countries could live together in peace, and we were impressed with what they had been able to accomplish during their six years there. For example, they had a sawmill, a modern carpenter shop, a wood-turning shop, brick works, and all the various children's departments, and every house had electric light. My brother simply remained there, but my father and I had to go back to finish off everything at home. Brothers and sisters from the Bruderhof came to visit us, to talk with my mother before we gave everything up, and I knew that it was a serious decision for us to give everything up. My mother and my youngest brother, Arthur, who is now living in Paraguay again—he was at the time only a few months old—went with a married couple back to Primavera. When we had sold everything, and we followed them. I can still hear our neighbors saying, "You are crazy to give everything up, now that you have enough to eat."

Others asked, "Have you found a gold mine, that you're able to give up everything?" I simply said that it was a matter of a much higher calling.

Now something about my life in the community. I was 17 years old when we moved to the community, and I spent a total of 14 years there, one year as a guest, which meant that I could take part in the household meetings just as the children did. Then I entered into the novitiate. If you were a novice, then you were able to attend all of the church meetings—but you had to ask for that privilege, and the Brotherhood would then determine whether you were ready for it. I was a novice for one year, and then I asked for the firm novitiate. If you were a firm novice, you could then take part in the brothers' meet ing, where work questions were discussed. I was a firm novice for a year. After that, I asked to be baptized. To take that step, one had to ask the Servant of the Word—that's what they called their preachers—who at the same time was the boss of the village, and everything had to go through him. He had five or six brothers, commonly known as "witness brothers", whom he could also ask for advice. Every such request the Servant brought to the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood then determined what would happen.

During my time there, only baptized members could partake of the Brotherhood meeting. I was 20 years old when I was baptized and gave my life to God in faith in Jesus Christ, who showed me the way. It was a great joy to me that my parents were members of my baptism group, along with every other beloved figure from my life, and Hans Meier baptized us. With that, I became a full member of the Brotherhood. From then until the shutdown of Primavera, it was 11 years. In those 11 years, I held responsible positions in various work departments—and entered into the state of marriage with Ruth Martin, when I was 28 years old. Ruth had been born in the community. Two boys were given to us in Paraguay, Arno and Karl, and a third, Alfred, was on the way at the time that Primavera was dissolved and my wife and I left the community. We decided to go to Germany. The reason I left the community I shall soon explain in detail.

The society paid for our journey to Germany. Later, we were supposed to pay back with money received from the German government—emergency Compensation Money paid by the German government to those who had suffered under the Nazis. Basically we left the community with nothing, apart from four bags filled mostly with diapers for our two children, who were one and two years old at the time (diapers were then always made of cloth). We had nothing else, apart from a $400 US check—kindly sent to us from an American faction of the Brotherhood for our new beginning in Germany.

When we arrived at the airport in Frankfurt, my parents-in-law came and fetched us—they were at that time still at the Sinnthal Bruderhof in Germany. I gave the check to my father-in-law to cash, and when he came back he gave me DM 50 and said, "That will be enough for the next week. After that you're going to have a paycheck, be cause I've found a job for you at a sawmill, and also a place to live."

They brought us to Euerdorf—that was the name of the town. The rooms were in an old bar that was closed, two rooms in the second story. No heat, no bathroom, only a water faucet in the foyer and a toilet down on the first floor. At first it wasn't too bad because it was July, but by September, as Autumn came on, and our third son Alfred was born, it wasn't so nice anymore. Then, when winter hit, it was quite unbearably cold—with three little children, no heat and only a stove in the kitchen. Ice formed on the walls and under the beds, as the walls lacked proper insulation.

I spent any spare time I had trying to find a place for us to live. No use. At this time in Germany there was a severe housing shortage, and it was even harder to find a place to live for a family with children. In December of 1962, I managed to find a place for us in Elfershausen, changed my job and found work at Kugel Fischer FAG, a ball-bearing factory. I worked there for seven years until we migrated to Stratford, Ontario, Canada, where I had secured a job with the same company at its local subsid iary. After that, I got myself an independent living in rental real estate, and at the present time we still have rental property in Florida. So, we spend the winter in Florida, and the summer in Ontario on our five acres along the Maitland River. O Heart, what more could you desire?

At this point, I'd like to mention what I was remembering when we had to begin in Germany with practically nothing. When we had been in the process of joining the Society, some of the Mennonites emphatically advised us against it—while other Mennonites merely advised that we stay with them. They said that if we joined the Society we would have to give them everything we had, and then if we were to leave, we would leave with empty hands. In the end, that's the way it was, but I was concerned with something higher than earthly goods. Even now, we're not bitter that we had to leave with empty hands. After all, we gave everything we had to God and his church, including our lives, to serve God and his church. If people then came to interfere—or, more precisely, robbers came and destroyed everything—that is their business. One day, they will have to give account to God for what they did.

Personally, I never regretted that we had joined the community. The wonderful time of my youth that I spent there is something that few people in the world enjoy, with our activities, the plays we put on, the singing and the folk dancing and so on. I am often sorry that my own boys cannot have it as good as we did, including all of the things I was able to learn there. Mennonites will understand what I mean, because it's like that with them as well.

Now I would like to tell why the Bruderhofs in Primavera, Paraguay, were dissolved, and how that came about. I will add that at that time, I was a full member of the Brotherhood, and I was present at every meeting up until its dissolution. What I am writing here I write especially for the Mennonites, who are fundamentally our brothers in faith. The Mennonites who were our neighbors used to say t hat we were one step ahead of them, because we lived in community and shared everything with each other. Many of them asked why we left Paraguay, and made inquiries, but in my opinion the correct answers were never given. The Mennonite journal had a story about this a few years ago.

Heavy emphasis was placed on economic reasons, followed by a bit of mention that there had also been inner difficulties. There was mention of Hans Meier, who at the time the community was dissolved had just been made a witness brother again. I still remember exactly why he had to leave the community and was sent to Buenos Aires, and was there for years alone. Later, he said "Yes and Amen" to everything, so that he could get back together with his wife, Margaret, at the Bruderhof. After all, Hans Meier was the father-in-law of Heini's son, who had taken over his father's position as Elder.

Now I come to why Hans Meier had to leave. That was because in the joint Brotherhood meeting in Ibate he said, "For us the important thing should be what someone said, and not who said it." That was all he said. Then Heini asked, "And do you mean Eberhard Arnold with that too?" Hans Meier repeated what he had just said and Heini decided that Hans Meier meant to include Eberhard Arnold among others. This was the entire reason Hans was sent away. Heini is the second son of Eberhard Arnold, the founder of the community. Many readers will find his decision quite petty.

I would like to mention here a few small examples, which can lead to exclusion and separation, if they are too big, or lead to ignoring the goal of the Christian life and service to God. For example among the Mennonites there have been exclusions because of tractors with iron wheels, or with rubber wheels and other things like that. Then among the Hutterites there are many other petty concerns such as buttons and buttonholes, or hooks and eyes on clothing. The main reason our community broke with the Hutterites in our time was on account of smoking or not smoking and so forth.

This petty thing that I mentioned with Hans Meier opened my eyes and let me see that this was about something else, and not about helping to deepen the inner life. After that I talked with one of the new Servants of the Word, since the old ones had all been fired from their service. At this time there were only newly installed Servants and their helpers. I asked one of them what was going on. He said he didn't know what was going on either. We just had to be open and hear what the brothers from the States were bringing us. So we just put our hands up and surrendered. And by the time we saw what was going on, it was already too late.

That economic difficulties led to the closing down of Primavera is absolutely untrue, because we had solved our economic difficulties already by that time. I will now tell what actually happened, and why the communities in Paraguay were closed down—and also those in Germany and England. Primavera was for a long time the mother church. This mother church was responsible for founding a community in England by the name of Wheathill, and later three communities in the United States, one in Uruguay (El Arado) and another in Germany called the Sinntalhof. All of this was done with heavy sacrifices on the part of Primavera, as we had to send our best people there. Many big families came from England to Paraguay, because in Paraguay housing for them was much cheaper, and there were no problems in acquiring building permits. W e also had the hospital, which was quite a financial burden, since the Paraguayan patients had no money (except for the few on Social Security) and would instead give us a few chickens or an old horse. But with such things we could not buy medicine, and the medical insurance did not pay much either. So, we sent brothers to the United States to beg for money to support the hospital, and this helped us quite a bit.

Well, that was just a small introduction—and now let me begin. One day, we received a letter from the steward at Woodcrest, our main community in the United States. Heini had been sent there from Primavera a number of years earlier to take over the position as Servant. This letter arrived via Heini's order, and it said that we shouldn't keep begging for money. We should see to it that we finally were able to stand on our own feet. Our answer was, "Okay, then we cannot keep sending more brothers and sisters to you to help you out." We then got busy in Primavera. We had many joint Brotherhood meetings, with various suggestions about how we might mend our position. We agreed that we would reduce Primavera's population, at least by a third, shut down the hospital, and concentrate on growing rice. With this reduction in our population, the leaders in the United States were very much in agreement. In the first place, they had more people, and Primavera was getting weaker.

In Primavera, too, the decision passed quickly through our Brotherhood meeting, as most of those who had come from Europe were homesick. So, some were sent to England, Germany and the USA to the communities there, and the community in Uruguay was closed down. A part of Primavera, where the Loma Hoby community was and the hospital, was sold to the Mennonites in Friesland. The Mennonites only bought the land. We tore down some of the buildings, while others were simply left standing. That's what happened with the hospital. As result of the reduction of our population, the closing down of the hospital and our good success in cultivating rice, our financial problems were solved. We had plenty of agricultural products. Here are a few examples. Through crossbreeding Zebus and Holsteins, and through the good meadows we planted, our dairy production was so high that some cows were giving up to 24 liters a day—and that is in the tropics! The success of our cattle breeding can be followed down to the present day out in the Chaco. And our hens produced so much that we could sell eggs to foreigners in Asunción and quite a few different kinds of vegetables. We didn't need to buy eggs and butter from the Mennonites in Friesland any more. It was the same with our hogs.

We no longer needed to ask for financial support, but that didn't suit Heini, either. We received letters from the States, criticizing us. They said that we were neglecting the inner life. They especially attacked the rice project, claiming that we were putting too much effort into the economic side of our life, among other criticisms. So, we sent our two chief Servants, Hans Meier and another brother, to the USA to clear these troubles up, so they could be gotten rid of. When the two brothers arrived at the airport in the USA, Heini put them straight into exclusion. They didn't even have a chance to present our point of view to the Brotherhood—and we put up with all of that. That's how Heini became top Servant.

After that, Heini came down with his new brothers who had just joined up. They came from various Christian groups who had also lived in community, and Heini straight off gave them leading pos itions. These people were supposed to bring us the New Spirit, which they had experienced in the States. At the start, we felt something of that spirit, also. We listened to what they had to say, put our hands up and surrendered. Heini took the opportunity to take power for himself. He went so far as to say that there had never been a true church community in Paraguay, and that all the people who had been baptized in Paraguay had come in by the wrong door—and thus we had all served the Devil.

Nobody protested, because the least little remark would get you excluded. Even the new brothers from the USA had to watch out or they would have got in trouble too. Everybody was trying to save their own skin. Each individual was called up and cross-examined, but if they had the least suspicion that somebody was not on their side, that person had to leave the place—because that person was 'dangerous.' To me it was like the Third Reich—"Whoever is not with us is against us and must be destroyed."

People were suffering terribly. Yo u Mennonites probably can't imagine how bad it was, but the ones who went through it, they know what I'm talking about and how terrible it was, especially for the ones who were born and grew up in the Community. Many of them had their own families by that time. It was their life, their home, their conviction about what life was. And suddenly everything was snatched away from under their feet. That happened to me, too, and my wife suffered particularly long.

My wife had a question for Heini. She mentioned a time when he was supervising recess in the school in Ibate, and he wanted to slap two girls in the face—but missed because they ducked. Because she had asked him about that, Heini quickly decided that she had to leave. He called her a vampire who sucked blood from the community. I looked him up an hour later and asked him if there wasn't some other solution, so that she could stay in the village. No, he said, she must go. I told him that I couldn't go along with that—she was in her fifth month of pregnancy and had never been in the outside world. Well, he said, then you will both have to go. That was fine with me, as I had lost my faith in the New Beginning. My fears were confirmed. It wasn't a new leading by God, it was a Heini-leading. He was the sole ruler, and so he took over the place of our guide and helper, Jesus Christ.

That was not all. He let himself be made a god by some of the people. What sort of New Spirit was ruling, you can see from two examples, among many others.

We had an excellent library, with thousands of books—most in German. The books which could not be sold were thrown down the outhouse pits, rather than given to the Mennonites. Another example involved a lot of the furniture. What they could not sell, they piled up and burned—instead of giving it to the poor Guaraní populace. I am just glad that I had no part in that.

It was at a joint Brotherhood meeting in Ibate that Heini dissolved our Brotherhood, so as to, as he said, found a new Brotherhood. He had a list of his Chosen Ones. The new Brotherhood consisted of thirteen people. Naturally, it was the people that totally danced to his fiddle. And then they really got going with getting rid of people. It was our turn, then. All those who had fallen from favor had to go to Ibate to wait to be transported away. We spent two months in Ibate, where Hanske Fros and I took over the dairy until we left, and then Peter Lowen, a Mennonite, took over.

Now comes how Primavera was shut down, and by whom. We had a house in Puerto Rosario, a place where our people used to stay before they went further on their trips. The decision to shut Primavera down was made in that house, under Heini's dominance. The only ones there were a handful of his people, and of course they had to agree. The "New Brotherhood" had no part in that. My brother Adolfo can testify to that, as he and his wife Eva—Dreher was her maiden name—were th e first who managed pretty quickly to get into the New Brotherhood. By the way, my brother is familiar to the Mennonites in Friesland, because he learned his trade as a blacksmith there and was known to them as the best truck driver of the Barbudos. Eva's father, Leo Dreher, will be remembered by Mennonites, too, because he worked for many years in Km 80, in the leper colony run by the Mennonites.

Primavera was shut down so that Heini no longer ran any risk of somebody disputing his place as the Number One Leader. For the same reason they shut down the Sinnthalhof in Germany, and Wheathill and Bulstrode in England. To do that, they used the same methods that they used in Paraguay. After Heini had managed all that, he was still not satisfied, so he joined up with the Hutterites again so that he could be the top Elder there, too. And that happened—he was the top Elder of "The East Hutterite Bruderhofs", as they were called.

In case anybody is interested in learning more on the whole subject, there is a monthly circular letter, KIT (Keep In Touch), put out by ex-Bruderhofers. Also, some books have been written: Torches Extinguished, by Bette Bohlken-Zumpe , Free From Bondage, by Nadine Moonje Pleil, Cast Out In the World, by Miriam Arnold Holmes, and Through Streets Broad And Narrow, by Belinda Manley.

What I particularly value in Belinda is the way she so clearly describes how the calling of God spoke to her, to follow Him, and to join in a Christian community. It shows that when a person follows God's call, you don't necessarily have to live in a community full of commodity. Everything she has written is very honest. I wish you all joy, and fun, and God's blessing.