Lebensreform ("life reform") was a social movement in late 19th-century and early 20th-century Germany, Austria and Switzerland that propagated a back-to-nature lifestyle, emphasizing among others health food/raw food/organic food, nudism, sexual liberation, alternative medicine, and religious reform and at the same time abstention from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and vaccines.

 Lebensreform proponents were Sebastian Kneipp, Louis Kuhne, Rudolf Steiner, Karl Wilhelm 

Diefenbach, Fidus (Hugo Höppener), Gusto Graeser, and Adolf Just.

Hugo Höppener (1868-1948), who used the pseudonym Fidus was one of the most significant artists of the movement.

Depicting nude figures among the natural landscape, not sexualized, but in harmony with nature, and working in cooperation with each other, Fidus gained wide recognition. Several of his works show a male-female couple embracing, not out of lust, but in a kind of Tantric reaching for Deity.

His most famous work (of which he made several versions), 'Gebet zum Licht' (Prayer to the Light), shows a man standing on a rock mound, with his arms outstretched to the sky.

In 1932, Fidus joined the NSDAP.. Fidus was probably impressed by the National Socialist’s environmentalism and romantic portrayals of the German people.

Ideology in Germany

The Lebensreform movement in Germany originally was a politically diverse movement.

There were hundreds of groups across Germany dedicated to some of all of the concepts associated with Lebensreform: ecology and organic farming, vegetarianism, naturalism (Nacktkultur), and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco.

Dozens of magazines, books, and pamphlets were published on these topics.

Some groups were made of socialists, some were apolitical, and some were right-wing and nationalist in outlook.

One outstanding prophet of Lebensreform was the painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1861-1913), pacifist and tolstoyan anarchist who founded the community Himmelhof near Vienna.

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (February 21, 1851, Hadamar, Duchy of Nassau – December 15, 1913, Capri) was a German painter and social reformer.

Diefenbach was a pioneer of nudism and the peace movement. His country commune in Vienna (1897–1899) was one of the models for the reform settlement Monte Verità in Ascona. His ideas included life in harmony with nature and rejection of monogamy, turning away from any religion (although he was a follower of theosophy, and a vegetarian diet. One of his students was the artist Konstantinos Parthenis.

As a painter he was an independent representative of Art Nouveau and Symbolism.

Among his disciples were three painters: Fidus, Frantischek Kupka and Gusto Graeser.

In 1900 Graeser became the co-founder and inspiring pioneer of the community Monte Verità near Ascona, Switzerland. Monte Verità attracted lots of artists from all of Europe, during World War I conscientious objectors from Germany and France.

Gusto Graeser, thinker and poet, greatly influenced the German Youth Movement, and such writers as Hermann Hesse and Gerhart Hauptmann.

He was the model for the master figures in the books of Hermann Hesse.

An important influence on Völkisch ideology was Ludwig Fahrenkrog (20 October 1867 – 27 October 1952) who was a German writer, playwright and artist.

He was born in Rendsburg, Prussia, in 1867.

He started his career as an artist in his youth, and attended the Berlin Royal Art Academy before being appointed a professor in 1913.

He taught at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bremen from 1898 to 1931.

He was also involved in the founding of a series of Völkisch groups in the early 20th century.

The first group started by Fahrenkrog was the 'Deutscher Bund für Persönlichkeitskultur' (German League for the Culture of the Personality), which also supported a publication called Mehr Licht! ("More Light!", the famous last words of Goethe).

He was also involved with the 'Deutsche Religionsgemeinschaft' (German Religious Community [DRG]), which would later change its name several times, first in 1912 to Germanische-Deutsche Religionsgemeinschaft (Germanic-German Religious Community [GDRG]), then in 1915, following a split in the membership, to the Deutschgläubige Gemeinschaft (Association of the German Faithful [DGG]).

Other groups which emerged from völkisch Romanticism gradually became part of National Socialist ideology by the 1930s, known as 'Blut und Boden' (blood and soil).

As early as 1907, Richard Ungewitter published a pamphlet called 'Nacktheit und Kultur' (Nudity and Culture) (which sold 100,000 copies), arguing that the practices he recommended would be:

"the means by which the German race would regenerate itself and ultimately prevail over its neighbours and the diabolical Jews, who were intent on injecting putrefying agents into the nation's blood and soil".

The most significant of these Lebensreform movements was the Wandervogel.

WANDERVOGEL

  

Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward.

The name can be translated as rambling, hiking or wandering bird (differing in meaning from "Zugvogel" or migratory bird) and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom.

Soon the groups split and there originated ever more organisations, which still all called themselves Wandervogel, but were organisationally independent, nonetheless the feeling was still of being a common movement, but split into several branches.

The Wandervogel movement was officially established on 4 November 1901 by Herman Hoffmann Fölkersamb, who in 1895 had formed a study circle at the boys' Berlin-Steglitz grammar school where he was teaching.

The Wandervogel soon became the pre-eminent German youth movement.

It was a back-to-nature youth organization emphasizing freedom, self-responsibility, and the spirit of adventure, and took a Völkish approach, stressing Germany's mystical Teutonic roots.

After World War I, many of the leaders returned disillusioned from the war.

The same was true for leaders of German Scouting, so both movements started to influence each other heavily in Germany.

From the Wandervogel came a stronger culture of hiking, nacktkultur, (see below) - German naturism was part of the Lebensreform movement and the Wandervogel youth movement, which promoted ideas of fitness and vigour.

At the same time doctors of the Natural Healing Movement were using heliotherapy to treat diseases such as TB, rheumatism and scrofula with exposure to sunlight

During the National Socialist Gleichschaltung period, after Adolf Hitler came to power, nudism benefited from official recognition and sponsorship for its health benefits.

Nevertheless, all naturism clubs had to register with Kraft durch Freude.

The Wandervogel movement also encouraged adventure, Völkish mysticism, romanticism and a younger leadership structure.

Scouting brought uniforms, flags, more organization, more camps and a clearer ideology.

There was also an educationalist influence from Gustav Wyneken.

Together this led to the emergence of the Bündische Jugend.

The Wandervogel, German Scouting and the Bündische Jugend together are referred to as the German Youth Movement.

They had been around for more than a quarter of a century before National Socialists began to see an opportunity to adopt some methods and symbols of the German Youth Movement to use it in the Hitler-Jugend - (Hitler Youth).

This movement was very influential at that time.

Its members were romantic and prepared to sacrifice a lot for their ideals.

The philosopher Ludwig Klages profoundly influenced the youth movement, and particularly shaped their ecological consciousness.

He authored a tremendously important essay titled 'Mensch und die Erde' (Man and Earth) for the legendary Meissner gathering of the Wandervögel in 1913.

An extraordinarily poignant text and the best known of all Klages’ work, it is one of the very greatest manifestos of the radical ecology movement in Germany.

'Mensch und die Erde' anticipated just about all of the themes of the contemporary ecology movement.

It decried the accelerating extinction of species, disturbance of global ecosystemic balance, deforestation, destruction of wild habitats, urban sprawl, and the increasing alienation of people from nature.

In emphatic terms it disparaged Christianity, capitalism, economic utilitarianism, hyper-consumption and the ideology of ‘progress.’