The New Age Pagans rule! In 1904 German author Richard Ungewitter wrote a book titled "Die Nacktheit" (nakedness) wherein he advocated nudism, abstention from meat, tobacco and alcohol. He had to publish it himself, but it quickly became a bestseller. The vegetarian aspect focused on the purity of the body and soul, with adherence to a regular program of fitness. The German attitude towards nudity has not changed too much in 100 years because even now on a warm summer day people along lakes and rivers can be found enjoying themselves in the sunshine without clothing.
* we know this won't excite old brummy, he's lost it long time ago...
Nude Bathing has been popular in Germany a long time. (1916) In the 19th century hiking societies proliferated in Germany. One group "Friends Of Nature" were into social hiking and used the slogan "Free Mountains, Free World, Free People".
Another group, called the "Wandervogel", was founded in 1895 by Hermann Hoffmann and Karl Fischer in Steglitz, a suburb of Berlin. They began to take some high school students on nature walks, then later on longer hikes. Soon a huge youth movement that was both anti-bourgeois and Teutonic Pagan in character, composed mostly of middle class German children, organized into autonomous bands.
Wandervogel, 1926
In 1896 Adolf Just opened his Jungborn retreat in the Hartz Mountains near Isenburg Germany, which was a model institution for the true natural life, and was meant to show how the most intimate communion with Nature could be re-established.
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Wandervogel members, aged mainly between 14-18 years and spread to all parts of Germany eventually numbering 50,000. Part hobo and part medieval, they pooled their money, wore woolen capes, shorts and Tyrolean hats and took long hikes in the country where they sang their own versions of Goliardic songs and camped under primitive conditions. Both sexes swam nude together in the lakes and rivers and in their hometowns they established "nests" and "anti-homes", sometimes in ruined castles where they met to plan trips and play mandolins and guitars. |
