Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8476 Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 B orn in a village in eastern Germany in 1909, Annemarie Wächter encountered ideas and people in her adolescence that unsettled her and disturbed the simple faith of her childhood. Like countless young people before and since, she spent her young adulthood trying to make sense of the world. Collected in the book Anni (ed. Marianne Wright and Erna Albertz, Plough), her letters and diary entries describe, with startling honesty and deep sensitivity, how a young woman who had been allergic to claims of absolute truth found her way to faith and a meaningful vocation within a Christian community. Anni’s roommate at college was Emi-Margret Arnold, who described to Anni the Bruderhof, a community that her parents, Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, had established near Fulda, Germany. Anni later recounted: E mi-Margret told me some of the inner back-ground of the community she came from, but I could not understand it. I sensed that she had a real belief in God, a firm basis, and that is what we mostly discussed, but I was afraid of it. I wanted to be very sure that this really was the truth and that I would not find out, after a year or two, that it Port r a i t Gripped by the Infinite A Young Woman’s Journey to Faith A N N E M A R IE WÄC H T E R All images courtesy of the family of Annemarie Wächter