At age 37, he abandoned middle-class life and the established church, believing it to be complicit in the atrocities of the war. In 1920, he moved with his wife and children to the village of Sannerz in central Germany, and founded the Bruderhof with seven adult members and five children. The community ethic was based on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and sought inspiration from the early Anabaptists. The community experienced both trouble and growth, but by the mid-1920s the Sannerz farm was too small. In 1926, they bought a farm in the Fulda district and established the Rhön Bruderhof. When Arnold discovered that Hutterite communities still existed in North America, he contacted them and engaged in a long period of correspondence. In 1930 he traveled to America and stayed for about a year, visiting all the communities of Hutterian brethren in the United States and Canada. In December of that year, he was commissioned by them as a missionary to Europe.