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Authors: Mark Haskell Smith
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organized nudist clubs with cultish names like German Friends of the Light and Leipzig League of Friends of the Sun, as well as Orplid in Danzig and Ungewitter’s own club, the Lodge of Rising Life, a group with a stringent anti-Semitic admission policy that, according to Ross, “would remain an important presence in the nudist world for years.” 23
All that chatter about the German ideal of physical fitness and finding optimum health in the fresh air and sunshine had a dark underbelly. As Ungewitter wrote in Kultur und Nacktheit , he saw nudism as key to “bettering of the German race by promoting marriages between blonde-haired, blue-eyed types.”
Failed watercolorist Adolf Hitler was torn on the issue of nudism. Many of the nudist clubs that had sprung up, notably around Berlin, were popular with Marxists and artists and political agitators, while others were hotbeds of German nationalism and anti-Semitism. In case you’re just tuning in: Hitler preferred the latter. As Ross writes, “Given the constant, unavoidable viewing of participants at the nudist park and the racial anti-Semitism that permeated Nacktkultur , one is tempted to conclude that nudism was also a means of identifying otherwise well-assimilated Jews.” 24 You get the subtext, right? There is no better place to spot dudes with circumcised penises than a nudist camp.
Hitler’s advisers were equally ambivalent. Some believed that organized nudism would lead to moral decay. Hermann Göring declared that nudism “destroys women’s natural feeling of shame, and causes men to lose respect for women, thereby destroying the basis for any real culture.” Is he saying that real culture comes from women living in shame? What does that even mean? Others were less prudish, but feared that nudist camps were havens of communism and homosexual activity.
But what self-respecting Nazi wouldn’t be attracted to nudism as espoused by racist ideologues like Ungewitter? The more Hitler and his cronies looked at ideas like eugenics, clean living, and the romantic notion of pure-bred German volk frolicking in the Schwarzvald, the more appealing nudism became. Besides, it was popular. People enjoyed naked outings in the Black Forest and skinny-dipping in the Rhine. Hitler, being a political animal, decided to split the difference. In March 1933 he ordered all nudist clubs closed—especially ones with ties to Marxist and communist organizations—and in January 1934, he reopened Nazi-approved nudist clubs under the sponsorship of the National Socialist Party and the newly created Kampfring für Völkische Körperkultur, which was later renamed the Bund für Leibeszucht, which Google Translate regurgitates as “Confederation for Physical Breeding.”
…
But Germany wasn’t the only place where people were thinking of ways to congregate in the nude. In England, a man named Harold Clare Booth began promoting the nudist ideal, beginning pseudonymously with an article titled “The Nude Culture Movement” published in the health journal Physical Culture in 1913. Fads and fashion travel, so it’s no surprise that the idea of enjoying sunshine and fresh air unencumbered by clothing had drifted across the English Channel. Nudism was suddenly being discussed in magazines including the New Statesman and Health & Efficiency , a publication promoting healthy living, diet, and exercise. Booth continued to publish articles on the subject, and in 1923, perhaps influenced by the writings of Swiss physician Auguste Rollier on heliotherapy, he and a group of like-minded people founded the English Gymnosophist Society (EGS). Other groups began to spring up shortly after that, notably the Sunshine League and New Health Society organized by London physician and heliotherapy advocate Dr. Caleb Saleeby.
At the time in England, it was against the law to “conspire to outrage public decency,” so nudist groups tried to keep their activities as quiet as possible. But as the EGS
All that chatter about the German ideal of physical fitness and finding optimum health in the fresh air and sunshine had a dark underbelly. As Ungewitter wrote in Kultur und Nacktheit , he saw nudism as key to “bettering of the German race by promoting marriages between blonde-haired, blue-eyed types.”
Failed watercolorist Adolf Hitler was torn on the issue of nudism. Many of the nudist clubs that had sprung up, notably around Berlin, were popular with Marxists and artists and political agitators, while others were hotbeds of German nationalism and anti-Semitism. In case you’re just tuning in: Hitler preferred the latter. As Ross writes, “Given the constant, unavoidable viewing of participants at the nudist park and the racial anti-Semitism that permeated Nacktkultur , one is tempted to conclude that nudism was also a means of identifying otherwise well-assimilated Jews.” 24 You get the subtext, right? There is no better place to spot dudes with circumcised penises than a nudist camp.
Hitler’s advisers were equally ambivalent. Some believed that organized nudism would lead to moral decay. Hermann Göring declared that nudism “destroys women’s natural feeling of shame, and causes men to lose respect for women, thereby destroying the basis for any real culture.” Is he saying that real culture comes from women living in shame? What does that even mean? Others were less prudish, but feared that nudist camps were havens of communism and homosexual activity.
But what self-respecting Nazi wouldn’t be attracted to nudism as espoused by racist ideologues like Ungewitter? The more Hitler and his cronies looked at ideas like eugenics, clean living, and the romantic notion of pure-bred German volk frolicking in the Schwarzvald, the more appealing nudism became. Besides, it was popular. People enjoyed naked outings in the Black Forest and skinny-dipping in the Rhine. Hitler, being a political animal, decided to split the difference. In March 1933 he ordered all nudist clubs closed—especially ones with ties to Marxist and communist organizations—and in January 1934, he reopened Nazi-approved nudist clubs under the sponsorship of the National Socialist Party and the newly created Kampfring für Völkische Körperkultur, which was later renamed the Bund für Leibeszucht, which Google Translate regurgitates as “Confederation for Physical Breeding.”
…
But Germany wasn’t the only place where people were thinking of ways to congregate in the nude. In England, a man named Harold Clare Booth began promoting the nudist ideal, beginning pseudonymously with an article titled “The Nude Culture Movement” published in the health journal Physical Culture in 1913. Fads and fashion travel, so it’s no surprise that the idea of enjoying sunshine and fresh air unencumbered by clothing had drifted across the English Channel. Nudism was suddenly being discussed in magazines including the New Statesman and Health & Efficiency , a publication promoting healthy living, diet, and exercise. Booth continued to publish articles on the subject, and in 1923, perhaps influenced by the writings of Swiss physician Auguste Rollier on heliotherapy, he and a group of like-minded people founded the English Gymnosophist Society (EGS). Other groups began to spring up shortly after that, notably the Sunshine League and New Health Society organized by London physician and heliotherapy advocate Dr. Caleb Saleeby.
At the time in England, it was against the law to “conspire to outrage public decency,” so nudist groups tried to keep their activities as quiet as possible. But as the EGS
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