ephosianmanifesto:The man in the picture – Richard Ungewitter – is probably the founde
ephosianmanifesto: The man in the picture – Richard Ungewitter – is probably the founder of modern nudism. People had experimented with nudity in normally clothed contexts before, particularly in the late nineteenth century, but Ungewitter’s self-published bestseller, Die Nacktheit (Nakedness), put the idea into the minds of thousands of Germans. A Schleswig-Holstein family who enjoyed living without clothing simultaneously opened their rural homestead to visitors, and a movement began.Ungewitter was a drummer for some kind of fire extinguisher, who had operated a whole-grain bakery. He was an advocate of “lebensreform,” or life reform, a German movement which included many programs for improving humanity’s lot. These included socialism, libertarianism, whole foods, vegetarianism, clothing reform (ditch the corsets and celluloid collars), free love, sexual purity, and abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. Obviously some are mutually exclusive, and each reformer probably had his or her individual list. Ungewitter claimed that social nudity was the umbrella at could unite the various threads and make reform a reality. (There is an English translation, but I have not read Die Nacktheit. Reportedly it has a racialist theme, and later Ungewitter books sound as though they fit with an unfortunate German trend that came to a head in WWII and the Holocaust.)A lot of lebensreform went by the wayside with the fossil fuel-subsidized wealth of the twentieth century. As we approach the planet’s Liebigian limits, perhaps we’ll embrace them again. In any case, social nudity seems like a prophylaxis against the conditioned alienation from our physical selves which persisted through the twentieth century’s great wealth. -- source link