Bonhoeffer saw very quickly that his intention for the preacher’s seminary to constitute a community living and learning together could not be carried out if all members of the community except the director and his assistant left Finkenwalde at the end of half a year and were replaced by a new group of ordinands. He therefore reminded the Confessing Church’s Council of Brethren that it consented, after he returned from England, to allow him to found a House of Brethren as a spiritual centre.

Of his first group of students, six wanted to stay and were allowed to do so, and with them Bonhoeffer was able to pursue the ideas inspired by his visits to the Anglican monasteries…The chief task for all members of the House of Brethren…was to maintain their “life together” with firm rules. Thus, as each new group of ordinands arrived, they found a monastic community life already established, and did not have to be persuaded to adapt themselves to it.

(Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance, 182).