Johann Christoph Arnold

A writer whose down-to-earth perspective has helped his books sell more than a million copies in twenty languages, Johann Christoph Arnold offers sound advice on a wide variety of contemporary issues. An outspoken social critic, he has addressed gatherings from Sydney to London and visited hotspots around the globe, including Ireland, Iraq, Chiapas, and Israel/Palestine. His work has also taken him into hospitals, nursing homes, juvenile detention centers, and even to death row.

Born in 1940 to war resisters driven out of Nazi Germany, Johann Christoph Arnold’s parents fled Europe when he was a baby and settled in Paraguay. It was a childhood of dire poverty, but his upbringing gave him a special sensitivity for the downtrodden. At fourteen, he moved to New York, where he has lived ever since. In the 1960s, his interest in the Civil Rights Movement led him to the American South, where he met Martin Luther King Jr. and marched with him. The ensuing friendship was to impact him for life.

A father of eight with more than three dozen grandchildren, Johann Christoph Arnold and his wife, Verena, have always taken a lively interest in children and young people, and in family life. In 1999, in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre, they formed Breaking the Cycle, a program of nonviolent conflict resolution that has since been brought into hundreds of schools in the United States and England. Its essential message reflects Gandhi’s famed advice to “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Johann Christoph Arnold devotes time almost daily to corresponding with his many readers.