Wilhelmine nature

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1Thomas Lekan and Thomas Zeller (eds), Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (New Brunswick, 2005), 3. 2The German League for Natural Lifestyle and Therapy Associations was originally founded as Deutscher Bund der Vereine für Gesundheitspflege und arzneilose Heilweise, changing its name in 1900 to Deutscher Bund der Vereine für naturgemäße Lebens- und Heilweise. I use Michael Hau's translation here. See Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930 (Chicago, 2003). In the rest of the article, I refer simply to the German League. 3Friedrich Eduard Bilz, Die Zukunfsstaat: Staatseinrichtungen im Jahre 2000 [State of the Future: State Organization in the Year 2000] (Leipzig, 1904). Socialists, too, were fond of imagining the future. See August Bebel, Zukunftsstaat und Sozialdemokratie [The State of the Future and Social Democracy] (Berlin, 1893). 4'Naturist' is the term used by John Williams to describe people and groups that 'attempted to reorient the German people towards nature'; John Williams, Turning to Nature in Germany: Hiking, Nudism, and Conservation, 1900-1930 (Stanford, 2007), 2. 5Klaus Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Großstadtfeindshaft [Agricultural Romanticism and Anti-Urbanism] (Meisenheim a. Glan, 1970); George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, 1981); Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, 1961). 6Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Harvard, 2000). 7Michael Cowan, Cult of the Will: Nervousness and German Modernity (University Park, 2008); Hau, op. cit. 8Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp (eds), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse [The Kaiserreich in Debate] (Göttingen, 2009), 14-16, 20. 9Some outstanding correctives are Carsten Timmermann, 'Rationalizing "folk medicine" in inter-war Germany: faith, business, and science at "Dr Madaus & Co."', Social History of Medicine, xiv (2001), 459-82; J. Williams, op. cit.; Jeffrey K. Wilson, 'Environmental protest in Wilhelmine Berlin: the campaign to save the Grünewald', German Historical Institute Bulletin, iii (2006), 9-25. See also the excellent review articles by Edward Ross Dickinson, 'Not so scary after all? Reform in Imperial and Weimar Germany', Central European History, xliii (2010), 149-72; Dennis Sweeney, 'Reconsidering the modernity paradigm: reform movements, the social and the state in Wilhelmine Germany', Social History, xxxi (2006), 405-34. The case is put most forcefully by Young-Sun Hong, 'Neither singular nor alternative: narratives of modernity and welfare in Germany, 1870-1945', Social History, xxx (2005), 133-53. 10Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, Mark Cioc and Thomas Zeller (eds), How Green were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Athens, 2005). While the collection determines that the Nazis ultimately impacted 'green' movements in a negative way, the provocative framing of the problem does point to the widespread perception of close ties between National Socialism and 'naturist' ideas and practices. 11Raymond Williams, 'Ideas of "Nature"' in John Bone, David Inglis and Rhoda Wilkie (eds), Nature: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences (New York, 2005), 47. 12Arif Dirlik, The Post-Colonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism (Boulder, 1998), 17; William Sewell Jnr, 'The temporalities of capitalism', Social-Economic Review, vi (2008), 517-37. 13J. Williams, op. cit., 2-3. 14 Bäder Album der Königlich Preußischen Domänen Verwaltung [Bathing Almanac of the Administration of the Royal Prussian Domains] (Aachen, 1900), 8. 15Warren Maurer, Understanding Gerhardt Hauptmann (Columbia, SC, 1992), 142; Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain: A Novel, trans. John E. Woods (New York, 1995). 16Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: die Leidenschaft des Denkens [Max Weber: The Passion of Thinking] (Munich, 2005); Peter Thomas, 'Being Max Weber', New Left Review, xli (2006); Edith Hanke, 'Max Weber, Leo Tolstoy and the mountain of truth' in Sam Whimster (ed.), Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy (New York, 1999). 17Hannes Siegrist, Hartmut Kaelble and Jürgen Kocka (eds), Europäische Konsumgeschichte: zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18. bis 20. Jahrhundert) [European Consumer History: Towards a Social and Cultural History of Consumption from the 18th to the 20th Century] (Frankfurt, 1997); Alon Confino and Rudy Koshar 'Regimes of consumer culture: new narratives in twentieth-Century German history', German History, xix (2001), 135-61. 18Eberhard Wolff, 'Kultivierte Natürlichkeit: zum Naturbegriff der Naturheilbewegung' ['Cultivated Naturalism: Towards the Nature Concept of the Natural Healing Movement'], Jahrbuch des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung, 6 (1986), 219-36. 19J. Williams, op. cit., in particular the introduction and chapter one. 20Adolf Just, Return to Nature, trans. H. A. Nisbett (London, 1912), 49. 21For a contemporary review of some of the medical literature, see 'Bücherbesprechung', Therapeutische Monatshefte, 22 (1908), 484-6. 22Dr Georg Liebe, 'Luft- und Sonnenbäder in Heilstätten für Lungenkranke' ['Air and Sunbaths in Healing Facilities for Respiratory Illnesses'], Zeitschrift für physikalisch-diätetische Therapie, 11 (1908), 197-204. 23 Humboldt Universitätsarchiv - Medizinische Fakultät 1386, Fiche 3-4. Medical Faculty to Konrad Haenisch in reference to the creation of a chair for Naturheilkunde, 1919. 24Sander Gilman, Franz Kafka (London, 2005), 68. 25For an early treatment of clothing reform and body culture, see Wolfgang Krabbe, Gesellschaftsveränderung durch Lebensreform: Strukturmerkmale einer sozialreformerischen Bewegung im Deutschland der Industrialiserungsperiode [Societal Transformation through Life-Reform: Structural Characteristics of a social reform Movement in the Germany of the Industrial Period] (Göttingen, 1974), 93-112. 26Albert Shaw, 'The therapeutic value of the air-bath', American Monthly Review of Reviews, xxxv (1907), 632; my emphasis. 27William Paul Gerhard, Modern Baths and Bath Houses (New York, 1908), 219. 28Wolff, op. cit., 221. 29Arnold Rikli, Die Grundlehre der Naturheilkunde; einschließlich die atmosphärische Cur [Foundations of Naturopathy, including the Atmospheric Cure] (Leipzig, 1895), 22-3: 'den civilisierten Menschen ... mit der Atmosphäre vertraut zu machen'. I have taken some liberty with this translation, using 'outdoors' in place of 'Atmosphäre'. Ultimately, I feel that this captures the sense of the passage more clearly. 30 Stadtarchiv Leipzig. Kap. 35, Nr. 383. Verein fur Naturheilkunde Leipzig- West. Association report to the city council, 3 May 1916. 31 Stadtarchiv Leipzig. Kap. 35, Nr. 779. Verein fur Gesundheitspflege L.-Ost zu Leipzig Reudnitz und Leipzig Neustadt. Association report to the city council, 29 March 1905. 32 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (subsequently GStaPK) I HA Rep 77. Title 719, Nr. 26, Beiheft 1 (II), 9935. 33 ibid. The emphasis was in the ministry copy. 34 ibid. And it was not only the women from the Association for the Advancement of Morals (DFVHS) who were scandalized. A local worker reported that, while repairing the roof of an adjacent property, he observed the Pastor himself taking the sun in the nude. He made no mention of the naked women. 35GStaPK I HA Rep 77. Title 719, Nr. 26, Beiheft 1 (II), 12064, Berlin, 7 October 1899. 36GStaPK I HA Rep 77. Title 719, Nr. 26, Beiheft 1 (IIA), 1716. 37GStaPK I HA Rep 77. Title 719, Nr. 26, Beiheft 1 Abschrift I.C 9201. 38GStaPK I HA Rep 77. Title 719, Nr. 26, Beiheft 1 9935. 39 ibid. 40John Fout makes a parallel argument about homosexuality. See his 'Sexual politics in Wilhelmine Germany: the male gender crisis, moral purity, and homophobia' in John Fout (ed.), Forbidden History: The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe (Chicago, 1992). 41Orvar Löfgren, 'Natur, Tiere und Moral. Zur Entwicklung der bürgerlichen Naturauffassung' ['Nature, Animals and Morality. Towards the Development of the Bourgeois Perception of Nature'] in Wolff, op. cit., 219. 42Notably Andreas Daum, Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848-1914 [Science Popularization in the 19th Century: Bourgeois Culture, Natural Scientific Education and the German Public Sphere, 1848-1914] (Munich, 1998); Corrina Treitel, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern (Baltimore, 2004). For an excellent historiographical review, see Michael Saler, 'Modernity and enchantment: a historiographic review', American Historical Review, cxi (2006), 692-716. 43Rikli, op. cit., 22-3. 44Cornelia Regin, Selbsthilfe und Gesundheitspolitik. Die Naturheilbewegung im Kaiserreich, 1889-1914 [Self-Help and the Politics of Health: The Natural Healing Movement in the Kaiserreich, 1889-1914] (Stuttgart, 1995). 45 ibid., 49-51. 46Reinhold Gerling, 'Ruckblick und Ausblick' ['A Look Back and a Look Forward'], Naturarzt (subsequently NA), 29 (1901). 47Anon., 'Erklärung' ['Clarification'], Blätter für Volksaufklärung (Neue Heilkunst), 20 (1908), 18. In January 1909, for example, Gerling cancelled a lecture because there were 'only' 212 people in the audience. 'Unsere Agitation' ['Our Agitation'], Blätter für Volksaufklärung (Neue Heilkunst), 21 (1909), 19. 48Kai Buchholz, Rita Latocha, Hilke Peckmann and Klaus Wolbert (eds), Die Lebensreform: Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900 [Life-Reform: Designs for a New Formation of Life and Art Around 1900], two vols (Darmstadt, 2001). 49Cited in Krabbe, op. cit., 13. 50Christoph Conti, Abschied vom Bürgertum: Alternative Bewegungen in Deutschland von 1890 bis Heute [Farewell to the Bourgeoisie: Alternative Movements in Germany from 1890 until Today] (Reinbeik bei Hamburg, 1984); Martin Green, Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900-1920 (Hanover, NH, 1986); Ulrich Linse, Barfüssige Propheten: Erlöser der zwanziger Jahre [Barefoot Prophets: Redeemers of the 1920s] (Berlin, 1983); Elisabetta Borona, Matthias Riedl and Alexandra Tischel (eds), Pioniere, Poeten, Professoren. Eranos und der Monte Verità In der Zivilisationsgeschichte der 20. Jahrhunderts [Pioneers, Poets and Professors: Eranos and the Mountain of Truth in the Civilizational History of the 20th Century] (Wurzburg, 2004). 51Florentine Fritzen, Gesünder Leben: Die Lebensreformbewegung im 20te Jahrhundert [Living Healthier: The Life-Reform Movement in the 20th Century] (Stuttgart, 2006), 176. 52F. E. Bilz, Das Neue Naturheilverfahren: Lehr und Nachschlagebuch der naturgemäßen Heilweise und Gesundheitspflege [The New Natural Healing: A Teaching and Advice Book for Natural Healing and Healthcare] (Leipzig, 1888 / 1898). 53Fritzen, op. cit., 47-8. 54 ibid. 55Julian Marcuse, Bäder und Badewesen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Eine Kulturhistorische Studie [Baths and Bathing in the Past and Present: A Culture-Historical Study] (Stuttgart, 1903). Philipp Sarasin has shown how this preoccupation with daily practice was closely related to a new concern with hygiene and medical prevention; Philipp Sarasin, Reizbare Maschinen: eine Geschichte des Körpers, 1765-1914 [Excitable Machines: A History of the Body, 1765-1914] (Frankfurt am Main, 2001). 56Hong, op. cit. 57 Staatsarchiv Leipzig. PP-V 118. Association of Healthcare and Non-Medicinal Healing Leipzig Neustadt-Reudnitz to the district court, 27 November 1907. 58According to Gerling, who edited Nature's Doctor from 1896-1906, the German League's mission was 'Health through enlightenment!' Reinhold Gerling, 'Neujahr 1898!' ['New-Years, 1898!'], NA, 26 (1898), 1-3. 59 Stadtarchiv Leipzig. Kap. 35, Nr. 915. Association for Natural Healing Leipzig Gohlis to the Leipzig city coucil, 1 January 1909; emphasis in the original. 60Magnus Hirschfeld, 'Staatshilfe oder Selbsthilfe?' [State-Help or Self-Help?], NA, 25 (1897), 66. His arguments about 'self-help' line up nicely with his advocacy for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Hirschfeld believed that homosexuality was a biological fact not subject to choice, and that prosecution of homosexual acts amounted to an attack on nature. He called on authorities to focus their attention instead on sexual predators and 'Johns' who did, in his view, have the freedom to make choices. Hirschfeld did not go as far as some of his peers in the movement, recognizing that the state did have a role to play in ensuring individual and public health. Magnus Hirschfeld, 'Ein Programmentwurf für die deutsche Naturheilbewegung, Teil II' [A Programmatic Proposal for the German Natural Healing Movement, Part II], NA, 25 (1897), 167-9. 61Magnus Hirschfeld, 'Staatshilfe oder Selbsthilfe?', NA, 25 (1897), 67. 62For an excellent treatment of some of these issues, see Cornelia Regin, op. cit. 63A. Knoll, 'Eine Aufgabe der Naturheilbewegung' ['A Challenge for the Natural Healing Movement'], NA, 26 (1898), 33-6. 64Tilman Harlander, 'Zentralität und Dezentralisierung - Großstadtentwicklung und städtbauliche Leitbilder im 20. Jahrhundert' ['Centrality and Decentralization: Metropolitian Development and Urban Planning Models in the 20th Century'] in Clemens Zimmermann (ed.), Zentralität und Raumgefüge der Großstädte im 20. Jahrhundert [Centrality and Spatial Organization of Cities in the 20th Century] (Stuttgart, 2006), 23-5; Brian Ladd, Urban Planning and Civic Order in Germany, 1860-1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1990), 14; Marianne Rodenstein, Mehr Licht, mehr Luft: Gesundheitskozepte im Städtebau seit 1750 [More Light, More Air: Health Concepts in Urban Planning Since 1750] (Frankfurt a. Main, 1988), 115. 65Hermann Wolf, 'Die Gesundheitspflege des Arbeiters (II)' ['The Healthcare of the Worker'], Neue Heilkunst, 13 (1901), 12. See also S. Milton Rabson, 'Alfred Grotjahn, founder of social hygiene', Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, xii (1936), 43-58; Corinna Treitel, 'Max Rubner and the biopolitics of rational nutrition', Central European History, xli (2008), 1-25. 66Dr med. Georg Bonne, 'Über die Notwendigkeit einer systematischen Dezentralisation unserer Großstädte in hygienischer, sozialer und volkswirtschaftlicher Beziehung, II' [On the Necessity of a Systematic Decentralization of our Cities from a Hygienic, Social and Economic Perspective], Monatschrift für Soziale Medizin, 1 (1904), 373; Beate Witzler, Großstadt und Hygiene: Kommunale Gesundheitspolitik in der Epoche der Urbanisieung [The City and Hygiene: Collective Healthcare Politics in the Age of Industrialization] (Stuttgart, 1995), 92-130. 67Jeffrey K. Wilson develops this argument in reference to environmental protection in Berlin between roughly 1904 and 1914; Wilson, op. cit. 68Alexander Knoll, 'Eine Aufgabe der Naturheilbewegung' ['A Challenge for the Natural Healing Movement'], NA, 26 (1898), 33. 69Alexander Knoll, 'Naturheilbewegung und Koalitionsrecht' ['The Natural Healing Movement and the Right of Assembly'], NA, 26 (1898), 316-18. Alexander Knoll, 'Naturheilbewegung und Lebensmittelzölle' ['The Natural Healing Movement and Taxes on Food-Stuffs'], NA, 29 (1901), 208-10. 70My discussion here collapses important distinctions between social democratic and left-liberal reformist projects. For a subtle analysis of different kinds of reformist agenda in Wilhelmine Germany, see Sweeney, op. cit., in particular 411-19. 71Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. W. D. Halls (New York, 1997), 84-5, 172-4, 284-5; Talcott Parsons, 'Religion in a modern pluralistic society', Review of Religious Research, vii (1966), 125-46. 72My reading of Parsons is based substantially on the excellent essay by Oliver Tschannen, 'The secularization paradigm: a systematization', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, xxx (1991), 395-415; see, in particular, 408-11. 73Cited in Ingrid Matthäi, 'Kleingartenbewegung und Arbeitergesundheit' ['The Small Garden Movement and Workers' Health'], Medizin, Gesellschaft und Geschichte, 13 (1994), 193. Members of the Association for Healthcare and Non-Medicinal Healing in Leipzig Reudnitz-Neustadt claimed that parks, gardens, bathing and sport facilities were all tools to insulate the working poor from the 'corrupting effects of street-life'; Stadtarchiv Leipzig. Kap. 35, Nr. 779. Verein fur Gesundheitspflege L.-Ost zu Leipzig Reudnitz und Leipzig Neustadt to the city council, 6 February 1905. 74For an excellent recent contribution, see Dennis Sweeney, 'Cultural practice and utopian desire in German social democracy: reading Adolf Levenstein's Arbeiterfrage', Social History, xxviii (2003), 174-201. 75Adolf Levenstein, Die Arbeiterfrage. Mit besonderer Beruksichtigung der sozialpsychologischen Seite des modernen Grossbetriebes und der psycho-physischen Einwirkungen auf die Arbeiter [The Workers' Question with Particular Attention to the Social-Psychological Side of Modern Big Business and its Psycho-Physical Effects on the Worker] (Manchester, NH, 1975), 188; first published in 1912. 76 ibid., 359. 77Adolf Damaschke, who helped to found the German Land reform and Garden City movements, helped to forge these linkages. After editing Nature's Doctor between 1894 and 1896, he left to pursue the issue of land reform full time. Franz Schönenberger and Oskar Mummert also held long-time advisory positions. 78Anna Pappritz, 'Die Wohnungsfrage' ['The Housing Question'], NA, 37 (1909), 179-83. 79Bund Deutscher Bodenreformer, Adolf Damaschke zu seinem 50te Geburtstage [Adolf Damaschke, for his 50th Birthday] (Franfurt Oder, 1915), 12. 80Rodenstein, op. cit., 107. 81W. Heinrich, 'Was jeder von der Bodenreform wissen sollte' ['What Everyone Should Know about Land-Reform'], NA, 35 (1907), 281-2. 82 ibid. 83For a good overview of these issues, see Justizrat Dr Liertz, Adolf Damaschke und die Deutsche Bodenrefom [Adolf Damaschke and German Land-Reform] (Düsseldorf, 1948); Adolf Damaschke, Die Bodenreform: grundsätzliches und geschichtliches zur Erkenntnis und Überwindung der sozialen Not [Land-Reform: History and Foundations for the Recognition and Overcoming of Poverty] (Jena, 1918; 15th edn). 84Wilhelm Siegert, 'Nationalökonomie' ['National-Economy'], NA, 38 (1910), 25. 85Bund Deutscher Bodenreformer, op. cit., 9. 86Paul und and Health'], NA, 35 (1907), und and Health'], NA, 35 (1907), my emphasis. and Jürgen (eds), Die Land und der um 1900 [The City as the Land as the of and Effects of Cities Around 1999). A more line to the by who that the preoccupation with is a of the of to In this has close ties to I am not that land reform does in the that analysis Land after with of from a public Damaschke made a argument in his oder or (Berlin, Damaschke that land reform was an important of the of While I am not by the a line of of See and and contemporary of Public Culture, (2006), I to David for this und NA, 35 (1907), op. cit., Regin, op. cit., and von Die und [The Housing Question is a The Movement and Housing (Berlin, NA, - für und die so die Die - und the have the The as Alternative Social and (Berlin, Regin, op. cit., 'Eine in Die bei ['A in Germany: The Deutsche (1898), 'Die und ['The in in the 25 of its Deutsche 14 Die in in 25 a far more discussion of the Wilhelmine reform see and the of German and the for (Cambridge, 2000). op. cit., Soziale und zur des im Kaiserreich in of and Towards a Social History of the Healthcare in the German (Göttingen, for example, to a on in Berlin Nr. 1 op. cit., Wilson the campaign to the from roughly 1904 to to in and Berlin were up the of the for example, zu the of Deutsche (1901), Adolf Damaschke, um Deutsche (1901), The of the and of the The of Germany (Manchester, 25. Siegert, NA, for a on as a to land The was in place from Ladd, op. cit., For of the more contemporary see des und der of Housing and the Housing (Jena, is he of the in of that the of the by of

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