The Kronhausens met in 1954 at the University of Minnesota, where Phyllis, then 25, was an undergraduate studying business, and Eberhard, at the relatively late age of 39, was getting a Masters in psychology.
In 1960 Phyllis Kronhausen testified in a California obscenity case, involving a series of soft core erotic writings.
According to the Kronhausens, "her testimony resulted in an acquittal of the defense, saving the author and publisher of these truly harmless books many years in jail.
[...] We had occasion, in fact, to watch the transformation of pornography into art before our own eyes when Hans Bellmer one day worked in our presence, making a complicated and highly erotic engraving from a series of common pornographic photographs.
They organized the “First International Exhibition of Erotic Art" at a public museum in Lund, Sweden in 1968 – overcoming a lot of institutional resistance.
The latter was not really a manual but rather a book of nearly 2,000 black and white photographs without text, featuring a real French husband & wife couple having sex in a variety of positions, in every room of their home including the hallway and stairs.
[2] In 1978 the Kronhausens were featured in Hustler magazine, with a piece on the Bible's Book of Genesis, illustrated with a series of erotic paintings.
The Kronhausens then argue that the Bible has been misunderstood, and that the story of Adam and Eve is not about the discovery of sin, but about the loss of innocent enjoyment of sex - "and with it the appearance of false shame where none is called for, and needless guilt where no evil has been committed."
The paintings that illustrate the article were said by the Kronhausens to be by an anonymous artist and dated to 1850-1900, but could well be 1970s imitations of 19th century art, and are not necessarily about the Garden of Eden.
Kronhausen were apparently drawn most often to a major style of the 1960s - the look of high-contrast black-and-white photography joined to hot, buzzing billboard colors.
They were living at that time in California, and came into contact with the teachings of the Indian-born theosophist and spiritual director Jiddu Krishnamurti, at his American headquarters in the New Age hotspot of Ojai, near Los Angeles.