Anni: Letters and Writings of Annemarie Wachter (Bruderhof History) - Hardcover

What is the purpose of my life? What is friendship? What is faith? These universal questions, which are especially relevant to young adults, form the heart of this compelling story, told through real letters and diary entries. Anni, who grows from her teenage years to adulthood over the course of the book, is passionate about life and unsparing in her search for authenticity. Articulate and probing, her words have a contemporary ring as she plumbs the reality of her doubt and sense of spiritual loneliness. Then she experiences a call from God - and finds a life of purpose, faith, and joy. In Anni's own words: "It is infinitely reassuring to know that there is an absolute truth, an infinitely great love. It is wonderful to know that one does not have to squander one's life, one does not need to ask anymore what life is really for, what its purpose is." Heightening the drama of this coming-of-age memoir is the historical setting in 1920s Germany, as the specter of Nazism looms ever larger over the world of Anni and her friends, giving their questions about life's meaning a special poignancy.

Annemarie Waechter was born in 1909 in the village of Keilhau in eastern Germany. She left home at the age of fifteen to attend preparatory school in the town of Naumburg, and then studied to be a kindergarten teacher at a women's college in Thale. While at college she was introduced to the Christian communal movement known as Church Communities, and in 1932 decided to become a member of this church. She was married to Heinrich Arnold in 1936. During their forty-four years of marriage, they had nine children, including two daughters who died in infancy. Their family lived in Liechtenstein, England, and Paraguay, before settling in upstate New York, where she spent the last twenty-five years of her life. She died in 1980 at the age of seventy.