After four years of living in Berlin, I’ve learned to embrace the go-anywhere spirit of Germany and a more laid-back approach to nudity than where I grew up in the American Midwest.
You never forget your first time in public nudity
While nudity in mainstream American culture is generally considered sexual, here in Germany undressing is not uncommon in some everyday situations. I got used to nude saunas by default; took baths in swimming pools where the swimsuits were birthday costumes; and I surprised a massage therapist when I spontaneously undressed before a treatment, which led him to notice that Americans generally need to undress.
But, as the saying goes, you will never forget your first time faced with public nudity. My introduction came while jogging through Hasenheide, a park in the Neukölln district of southern Berlin, when I came across a group of naked bodies basking in the afternoon sun. Later, after talking with friends and gaining a fairly questionable Google search history, I found that stumbling in a natural enclave in a city park or beach is practically a rite of passage in Berlin.
Stripping oneself to one’s essence in the natural world has always been an act of resistance and relief
What I had seen, however, was not part of the hedonistic side of Berlin, but an example of Freikörperkulturor “free body culture”. FKK, as it’s generally abbreviated, is closely associated with life in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or “GDR”), but nudism in Germany as a public practice dates back to the late 19th century. And unlike, say, taking off your top on a beach in Spain, FKK embraces a larger German movement with a distinct spirit, where undressing in the natural world has historically been an act of resistance and relief.
“Nudism has a long tradition in Germany,” said Arnd Bauerkämper, associate professor of modern history at Freie University in Berlin. At the turn of the 20th century, Lebensreform (“Reform of Life”) was in the air, a philosophy that advocated organic food, sexual liberation, alternative medicine and a simpler life closer to nature. “Nudism is part of this larger movement, which was directed against industrial modernity, against the new society that emerged at the end of the 19th century,” said Bauerkämper.
According to Hanno Hochmuth, historian at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, this reform movement has developed particularly in large cities, including Berlin, despite its romanticization of country life. During the Weimar era (1918-1933), FKK beaches populated by “a very, very small minority” of tanned middle class members sprang up. According to Bauerkämper, there was “a sense of new freedom after the authoritarian society and stifling conservative values of Imperial Germany (1871 to 1918)”.
In 1926, Alfred Koch founded the Berlin School of Nudism to encourage mixed nudist exercise, continuing to believe that outdoor nudity promotes harmony with nature and the benefits of well-being. And while Nazi ideology initially outlawed the FKK, seeing it as a source of immorality, by 1942 the Third Reich had relaxed its restrictions on public nudity – although, of course, that tolerance was not extended to persecuted groups. by the Nazis, like the Jews and the Communists.
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But it was only in the decades following Germany’s postwar division between East and West that the FKK truly flourished, especially in the East – even if accepting undressing was no longer limited to the bourgeois class. For Germans living in the Communist GDR, where travel, personal freedoms, and sales of consumer goods were limited, the FKK functioned in part as a “safety valve,” according to Bauerkämper; a way to release tension in a deeply restrictive state by providing a bit of “free movement”.
Hochmuth, who visited nude beaches with his parents while growing up in East Berlin, agrees. “There was a certain sense of escape,” he says. “[East Germans] have always been exposed to all these demands from the Communist Party and what they had to do, like going to party rallies or being asked to perform community duties on weekends without pay.
There was a feeling of escape
While rogue East Germans continued to bathe in the buff in the early years of the GDR – while keeping an eye out for police on patrol – it was only after the coming to power of Erich Honecker in 1971 that the FKK would be officially licensed again. According to Bauerkämper, under Honecker, the GDR began a process of opening up foreign and national policies, a tactic intended to make itself more favorable to the outside world.
“For the GDR it was very helpful to say that ‘OK, we allow and even encourage nudism, we are a kind of free society,’” Bauerkämper said.
Since East Germany merged with the West in 1990 and restrictions were lifted in the former communist state, the FKK culture has declined. In the 70s and 80s, hundreds of thousands of nudists filled campgrounds, beaches and parks. In 2019, the German Association for Free Body Culture had only 30,000 registered members, many of whom were in their 50s and 60s.
Yet today, FKK continues to leave an impression on German culture, especially in the old East. It even manages to make occasional viral headlines, such as when a naked man in an FKK-designated area in a Berlin lake this summer was forced to chase after a wild boar that had fled with a bag containing his computer. portable.
In fact, the long nudist tradition of CFK and Germany has left widespread tolerance across the country for clothesless spaces and public nudity as a form of wellness. As I discovered, CFK spaces can always be found without searching too much, and they are often linked to health activities.
If you’re used to seeing people naked, you don’t think much about appearances
The Nacktbaden.de ad site has a well-organized list of beaches and parks all over Germany where you can sunbathe naked; undress in saunas and spas; or go hiking in the chamois in places like the Harz mountains, the Bavarian Alps or the forests of Saxony-Anhalt. Or, if you want to be a little more formal about it, FSV Adolf Koch Sports Club offers nude yoga, volleyball, badminton, and table tennis in Berlin.
In many ways, the legacy of the FKK gives travelers a glimpse of the values that still unite many East Germans. For Sylva Sternkopf, who grew up on the beaches of FKK in East Germany, the country’s free body culture has both reflected and passed on certain values that it passes on to her children, especially the openness of spirit of the country towards their own body.
“I think this is still very deeply rooted in my generation in East Germany,” she said. “I also try to give that to my children, to raise them in this way of being open to your own body and not being ashamed of being yourself and being naked, of showing yourself naked.
For Sternkopf, seeing naked bodies in a non-sexualized way also helps people learn to see others beyond their outward appearances. By exposing all of this, it is easier to see not only a body, but the individual.
“If you’re used to seeing people naked, you don’t think much about appearances,” she says. “I think it’s something that’s more prevalent in East Germany in general: we try to judge people not for their outward appearance, but we always try to look below.
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