Freikörperkultur

[1][2][3] Freikörperkultur, which translates as 'free body culture', includes both the health aspects of being nude in light, air, and sun, and an intention to reform life and society.

[1] By the 20th century, the culture of communal open-air nudity in the "great outdoors" and its benefits to public health blossomed in Germany as an alternative to the stresses and anxieties of Industrial Age urban life.

Under the terms "naturism" and "nudism", it is now internationally widespread, with associations and designated public recreational environments in numerous countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

It restores one's physical and mental balance through being able to relax in natural surroundings, by exercise and respect for the basic principles of hygiene and diet.

[8] Nudity on the beach and in water, compared to wearing swimsuits, provides a different body surface sensation, which is generally perceived as pleasant.

In numerous designated holiday resorts, campsites, country parks, and sports club facilities, the practice of Freikörperkultur is also applied.

In public bathhouses, even in the Middle Ages, people bathed in the nude, although moral or medical concerns regarding disease transmission were occasionally expressed.

At the same time, the Scottish judge Lord Monboddo (1714–1779) practiced and preached unclothed "air-baths" for health and as a revival of Ancient Greek attitudes toward nudity.

In 1906, there were also 105 so-called "air-bath" sanatoriums (Luftbäder) in Germany, where unclothed exposure to outdoor air was used as a treatment for being cooped up in unventilated, warm rooms, which allegedly led to "softening", heat build-up in the body, headaches, nausea, and circulatory disorders.

With the battle cry "Back to Nature," advocates of the nude culture (Nacktkultur) declared war on the compulsory morality of a society that, in their eyes, had become neurotic and sick.

"We don't want to deny it: for the people of our time, a naked person is tasteless and looks like a slap in the face - that's how unnatural we have become," wrote Heinrich Pudor in 1893, one of the early pioneers of the free body culture naturist movement in the German Empire.

[3] The painter and social reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913), who practiced Freikörperkultur with his students in the Höllriegelskreuth hermitage near Munich and later on the Himmelhof near Vienna, is considered the true pioneer of naturism, particularly outside of clinical-medical treatments.

[3] The first official Freikörperkultur association in Germany was founded in 1898 in the Ruhr area, although the centre of nude bathing has always been on the coast and around the liberal, adventurous Berlin.

Following the establishment of the first official nude beach on Sylt Island in 1920,[2] most of the FKK associations joined together in 1923 to form the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Bünde deutscher Lichtkämpfer" (Working Group of the Leagues for German Light Campaigners).

[2] In 1930, representatives from England, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Italy, and Germany met in Frankfurt am Main and later founded a European League for Naturism.

[17] One popular form of Freikörperkultur recreation is Nacktwanderung, translated as "nude hiking", where a walking group collectively tours through the open countryside.

[21] Local regulatory authorities imposed fines of 200 Swiss francs for "being naked in public", which some nude ramblers refused to pay.

"FKK" designated area signage.
Freilicht (Open-Air) by German painter and photographer Max Friedrich Koch , ca. 1894: Early German nudists outdoors engaging in the athletic sport tug of war . One of many themed Freilicht photos by Max Koch depicting nudists outdoors. [ 10 ]
Illustration by Heinrich Zille (1858–1929), titled "As the outdoor public swimming pool appeared", postcard print 1919
FKK skiing in the Swiss Alps. From the Swiss FKK-magazine " die neue zeit [ de ] " (the new times), 1930