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Lebensreform

January 10, 2023

Not to be confused with Lebensborn.

Lebensreform ("life-reform") is the German generic term for various social reform movements, that started since the mid-19th century and originated especially in the German Empire and later in Switzerland. Common features were the criticism of industrialisation, materialism and urbanization combined with striving for the state of nature. The painter and social reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach is considered to be an important pioneer of the Lebensreform ideas. The various movements did not have an overarching organization, but there were numerous associations. Whether the reform movements of the Lebensreform should be classified as modern or as anti-modern and reactionary is controversial. Both theses are represented.[1]

One of the many aspects of the Lebensreform was healthy reform clothing. This picture from 1911 shows probably a Dutch woman who wears a dress in so-called reform style without a tight-laced corset.
The Reformhaus health food stores in Germany have their historical roots in the alternative nutrition of the Lebensreform movement.

Other important Lebensreform proponents were Sebastian Kneipp, Louis Kuhne, Rudolf Steiner, Hugo Höppener (Fidus), Gustav Gräser, and Adolf Just. One noticeable legacy of the Lebensreform movement in Germany today is the Reformhaus ("reform house"); retail stores that sell organic food and naturopathic medicine.[2]

History

The Lebensreform movement in Germany was a politically diverse social reform movement. There were hundreds of groups across Germany dedicated to some or all of the concepts associated with the Lebensreform movement. Representatives of the Lebensreform propagated a natural way of life with ecology and organic farming, a vegetarian diet without alcoholic beverages and tobacco smoking, German dress reform and naturopathy. In doing so, they reacted to what they saw as the negative consequences of social changes in the 19th century. Spiritually, the Lebensreform turned to new religious and spiritual views, including theosophy, Mazdaznan and yoga. Many late neo-romanticism elements were also taken up, along with a glorification of the "simple life in the country". Dozens of magazines, journals, 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.[3]

The architectural form of the Lebensreform first came from settlement experiments such as Monte Verità, later in the garden city movement such as the Hellerau settlement and many others, the best-known representative of which was the reform architect Heinrich Tessenow (1876–1950), and the Bauhaus. The first establishment of a vegetarian settlement in Germany was the Vegetarian Fruit-Growing Colony Eden (Vegetarische Obstbau-Kolonie Eden) in Oranienburg near Berlin in 1893 formed by some 18 vegetarians from Berlin, later named the Eden Fruit-Growing Cooperative Settlement (Eden Gemeinnützige Obstbau-Siedlung [de]).

Lebensreform was a mainly bourgeois-dominated movement in which many women also participated. In the body culture (Körperkultur), it was about providing people with plenty of fresh air and sun to compensate for the effects of industrialization and urbanization.

Some areas of the Lebensreform movement, such as naturopathy or vegetarianism, were organized in associations and enjoyed great popularity, which is reflected in the number of members. To disseminate their content and principles, they published magazines such as Der Naturarzt (The Naturopath) or Die Vegetarische Warte (The Vegetarian Observer). Part of the Lebensreform movement also included the freikörperkultur (FKK, also naturism), the physical culture, gymnastics and expressionist dance.

The German researcher Joachim Raschke [de] compared the Lebensreform to other social movements and found some specifics:

  • The workers' movement was a mass movement interested in power politics and only secondarily in sociocultural issues.
  • After 1968, Germany (and other countries) saw the growth of the so-called New Social Movements such as the students' movement, the peace movement and the movement of the modern environmentalists. Those movements lacked a unified ideology, had no tight organization and were very diverse. Their members (not only the leaders) were highly educated, which was a result of the expansion of the German educational system in the 1960s. Typical for these movements was a certain enmity towards "leaders" and a preference for direct action, although these movements often changed the way they expressed themselves.
  • The Lebensreform movements were much smaller groups that consisted often of academics. They had experienced an estrangement in modern society and tried to realign mankind and nature. They usually organized themselves in a traditional way, with lectures, clubs and magazines.[4]

One outstanding prophet of the Lebensreform movement was the painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1861–1913), a pacifist and Tolstoyan anarchist who lived with his students in a hermitage in Höllriegelskreuth near Munich and later founded the community Himmelhof [de] near Vienna. Among his disciples were three painters: Hugo Höppener (Fidus), František Kupka and Gustav Gräser.[3] In 1900 Gräser became the cofounder and inspiring pioneer of the community Monte Verità near Ascona, Switzerland. Monte Verità attracted many artists from all of Europe, during World War I conscientious objectors from Germany and France. Gustav Gräser, a 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. Richard Ungewitter and Heinrich Pudor were also well-known advocates of a strain of Lebensreform that emphasized nude culture (Nacktkultur) and was explicitly Völkisch in tradition, which eventually became the Freikörperkultur movement.[3] The Freikörperkultur movement eventually broadened and came to include socialists with no strains of ethnic nationalism like the educationalist and gymnastics teacher Adolf Koch.[3]

Effect in the United States

Some of the less well-known protagonists of the movement in Germany, such as Bill Pester, Benedict Lust and Arnold Ehret, emigrated to California at the end of the 19th and until the mid-20th century, where they strongly influenced the later hippie movement.[5][6] One group, called themselves the "Nature Boys", settled as a commune in the California desert. One member of this group, eden ahbez, wrote the song Nature Boy, (recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole), popularizing the "back-to-nature" movement in mainstream America. Eventually, a few of these Nature Boys, including Gypsy Boots, made their way to Northern California in 1967, just in time for the Summer of Love in San Francisco.[5]

Today

Many contemporary environmental and other movements (the organic food movement, many fad diets and "back to nature" movements, as well as "folk movements"), have their roots in the Lebensreform movement's emphasis on the goodness of nature, the harms to society, people, and to nature caused by industrialization, the importance of the whole person, body and mind, and the goodness of "the old ways".[3]: 40 [7][8]: 32–33 [9]

Right-wing radicalism

A specific stream based on völkisch Romanticism gradually became part of Nazi ideology by the 1930s, known as blood and soil. As early as 1907, Richard Ungewitter published a pamphlet called Wieder nacktgewordene Menschen (Again people become naked) 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".[10]

The extremists promoting right-wing ideology eventually became popular among Nazi Party officials and their supporters, including Heinrich Himmler and Rudolph Höss, who belonged to the right-wing farming organization the Artaman League. When other groups were being banned or disbanded due to political conflict during the 1930s, the extreme nationalist ideology became connected with National Socialism. The German Life Reform League broke apart into political factions during this time. The Nationalist physician Artur Fedor Fuchs began the League for Free Body Culture (FKK), giving public lectures on the healing powers of the sun in the "Nordic sky", which "alone strengthened and healed the warrior nation".[11] Ancient forest living, and habits presumed to have been followed by the ancient tribes of Germany were beneficial to regenerating the Aryan people, according to Fuchs' philosophy. Hans Sùren, a prominent former military officer, published Man and the Sun (1924), which sold 240,000 copies; by 1941 it was reissued in 68 editions. Sùren promoted the Aryan master race concept of physically strong, militarized men who would be the "salvation" of the German people.[12]

Contemporary books that influenced Lebensreform

  • Just, Adolf (1903) [1896]. Return to Nature: Paradise Regained. Translated by Lust, Benedict. New York: Benedict Lust. ISBN 9780787304850. Also available as a PDF from the
  • Richard Ungewitter: Nakedness (1904), ISBN 0-9652085-1-6
  • Arnold Ehret: Mucusless Diet Healing System (1922), ISBN 0-87904-004-1 — PDF
  • Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha (1922)

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Eichberg, Henning. Nacktkultur, Lebensreform, Körperkultur - Neue Forschungsliteratur und Methodenfragen - PDF [Nude culture, life reform, body culture - new research literature and methodological questions] (in German). Gerlev, Denmark.
  2. ^ Fritzen, F. (2009). "Changing the World with Müsli". German Research. 31 (3): 10–14. doi:10.1002/germ.201090000. — PDF
  3. ^ a b c d e Williams, John Alexander (2007). Turning to nature in Germany : hiking, nudism, and conservation, 1900-1940. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. pp. 23–30. ISBN 9780804700153.
  4. ^ Joachim Raschke: Soziale Bewegungen: ein historisch-systematischer Grundriss. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York, 1987 (1985), pp. 44-46, 408-411, 415, 435.
  5. ^ a b "Hippie Roots & The Perennial Subculture" 2010-09-24 at the Wayback Machine — also contains excerpts from Kennedy (1998)
  6. ^ Frieze magazine, issue 122 (April 2009): Tune in, Drop out 2010-01-03 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ Hakl, Hans Thomas; McIntosh, Christopher (2014). Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Routledge. p. 272. ISBN 9781317548133. How can we explain the convergence of conservative-volkisch currents with the Lebensreform faction, the ecology movement,(103) early women's liberation and the opening to alternative forms of religion—a convergence that seems so surprising from today's perspective? A deep emotional chord is struck by the themes of one's own Volk, of peace-giving religion, of the local soil that demands such careful nurturing, of one's own mother, indeed of the "feminine" in general. This chord vibrates again and again in the same register, which can best be characterized by the German word Geborgenheit, implying a reassuring sense of security against that which is new and strange. Footnote 103: The ecology movement, which today tends to be seen as belonging to the left, had its origins in the Lebensreforrn groups of around the turn of the twentieth century, which were often marked by "Volkisch" (ethnic) thinking and were influenced by the Wandervogel (wandering birds) movement. What they had in common was their opposition to the industrialization and urbanization of modern life.
  8. ^ Fitzgerald M (2014). Diet Cults: The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of US. Pegasus Books. ISBN 978-1-60598-560-2.
  9. ^ Meyer-Renschhausen, E; Wirz, A (July 1999). "Dietetics, health reform and social order: vegetarianism as a moral physiology. The example of Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867-1939)". Medical History. 43 (3): 323–41. doi:10.1017/s0025727300065388. PMC 1044148. PMID 10885127.
  10. ^ Gordon 2006, pp. 138–9
  11. ^ Gordon 2006, p. 144
  12. ^ Gordon 2006, p. 146

Bibliography

  • Thorsten Carstensen & Marcel Schmid: Die Literatur der Lebensreform. Kulturkritik und Aufbruchstimmung um 1900. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2016, 352 pp., ISBN 978-3-8376-3334-4
  • Gordon Kennedy: Children of the Sun: A Pictorial Anthology From Germany To California 1883–1949. Nivaria Press (1998), 192 pp., ISBN 0-9668898-0-0
  • Gordon, Mel (2006). Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin. Feral House. ISBN 1-932595-11-2.
  • John Williams: Turning to Nature in Germany: Hiking, Nudism, and Conservation, 1900–1940. Stanford University Press (2007), 368 pp., ISBN 0-8047-0015-X
  • Martin Green: Mountain of Truth. The Counterculture begins, Ascona, 1900-1920. University Press of New England, Hanover and London, 1986, 287 pp., ISBN 0-87451-365-0
  • Friedhelm Kirchfeld & Wade Boyle: Nature Doctors. Pioneers in Naturopathic Medicine. Portland, Oregon,1994, 351 pp., ISBN 0-9623518-5-7
 
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January 10, 2023
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Not to be confused with Lebensborn This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in German January 2022 Click show for important translation instructions View a machine translated version of the German article Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate rather than simply copy pasting machine translated text into the English Wikipedia Consider adding a topic to this template there are already 9 732 articles in the main category and specifying topic will aid in categorization Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low quality If possible verify the text with references provided in the foreign language article You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at de Lebensreform see its history for attribution You should also add the template Translated de Lebensreform to the talk page For more guidance see Wikipedia Translation Lebensreform life reform is the German generic term for various social reform movements that started since the mid 19th century and originated especially in the German Empire and later in Switzerland Common features were the criticism of industrialisation materialism and urbanization combined with striving for the state of nature The painter and social reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach is considered to be an important pioneer of the Lebensreform ideas The various movements did not have an overarching organization but there were numerous associations Whether the reform movements of the Lebensreform should be classified as modern or as anti modern and reactionary is controversial Both theses are represented 1 One of the many aspects of the Lebensreform was healthy reform clothing This picture from 1911 shows probably a Dutch woman who wears a dress in so called reform style without a tight laced corset The Reformhaus health food stores in Germany have their historical roots in the alternative nutrition of the Lebensreform movement Other important Lebensreform proponents were Sebastian Kneipp Louis Kuhne Rudolf Steiner Hugo Hoppener Fidus Gustav Graser and Adolf Just One noticeable legacy of the Lebensreform movement in Germany today is the Reformhaus reform house retail stores that sell organic food and naturopathic medicine 2 Contents 1 History 1 1 Effect in the United States 2 Today 3 Right wing radicalism 4 Contemporary books that influenced Lebensreform 5 See also 5 1 Footnotes 5 2 BibliographyHistory EditThe Lebensreform movement in Germany was a politically diverse social reform movement There were hundreds of groups across Germany dedicated to some or all of the concepts associated with the Lebensreform movement Representatives of the Lebensreform propagated a natural way of life with ecology and organic farming a vegetarian diet without alcoholic beverages and tobacco smoking German dress reform and naturopathy In doing so they reacted to what they saw as the negative consequences of social changes in the 19th century Spiritually the Lebensreform turned to new religious and spiritual views including theosophy Mazdaznan and yoga Many late neo romanticism elements were also taken up along with a glorification of the simple life in the country Dozens of magazines journals 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 3 The architectural form of the Lebensreform first came from settlement experiments such as Monte Verita later in the garden city movement such as the Hellerau settlement and many others the best known representative of which was the reform architect Heinrich Tessenow 1876 1950 and the Bauhaus The first establishment of a vegetarian settlement in Germany was the Vegetarian Fruit Growing Colony Eden Vegetarische Obstbau Kolonie Eden in Oranienburg near Berlin in 1893 formed by some 18 vegetarians from Berlin later named the Eden Fruit Growing Cooperative Settlement Eden Gemeinnutzige Obstbau Siedlung de Lebensreform was a mainly bourgeois dominated movement in which many women also participated In the body culture Korperkultur it was about providing people with plenty of fresh air and sun to compensate for the effects of industrialization and urbanization Some areas of the Lebensreform movement such as naturopathy or vegetarianism were organized in associations and enjoyed great popularity which is reflected in the number of members To disseminate their content and principles they published magazines such as Der Naturarzt The Naturopath or Die Vegetarische Warte The Vegetarian Observer Part of the Lebensreform movement also included the freikorperkultur FKK also naturism the physical culture gymnastics and expressionist dance The German researcher Joachim Raschke de compared the Lebensreform to other social movements and found some specifics The workers movement was a mass movement interested in power politics and only secondarily in sociocultural issues After 1968 Germany and other countries saw the growth of the so called New Social Movements such as the students movement the peace movement and the movement of the modern environmentalists Those movements lacked a unified ideology had no tight organization and were very diverse Their members not only the leaders were highly educated which was a result of the expansion of the German educational system in the 1960s Typical for these movements was a certain enmity towards leaders and a preference for direct action although these movements often changed the way they expressed themselves The Lebensreform movements were much smaller groups that consisted often of academics They had experienced an estrangement in modern society and tried to realign mankind and nature They usually organized themselves in a traditional way with lectures clubs and magazines 4 One outstanding prophet of the Lebensreform movement was the painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach 1861 1913 a pacifist and Tolstoyan anarchist who lived with his students in a hermitage in Hollriegelskreuth near Munich and later founded the community Himmelhof de near Vienna Among his disciples were three painters Hugo Hoppener Fidus Frantisek Kupka and Gustav Graser 3 In 1900 Graser became the cofounder and inspiring pioneer of the community Monte Verita near Ascona Switzerland Monte Verita attracted many artists from all of Europe during World War I conscientious objectors from Germany and France Gustav Graser a 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 Richard Ungewitter and Heinrich Pudor were also well known advocates of a strain of Lebensreform that emphasized nude culture Nacktkultur and was explicitly Volkisch in tradition which eventually became the Freikorperkultur movement 3 The Freikorperkultur movement eventually broadened and came to include socialists with no strains of ethnic nationalism like the educationalist and gymnastics teacher Adolf Koch 3 Effect in the United States Edit Some of the less well known protagonists of the movement in Germany such as Bill Pester Benedict Lust and Arnold Ehret emigrated to California at the end of the 19th and until the mid 20th century where they strongly influenced the later hippie movement 5 6 One group called themselves the Nature Boys settled as a commune in the California desert One member of this group eden ahbez wrote the song Nature Boy recorded in 1947 by Nat King Cole popularizing the back to nature movement in mainstream America Eventually a few of these Nature Boys including Gypsy Boots made their way to Northern California in 1967 just in time for the Summer of Love in San Francisco 5 Today EditMany contemporary environmental and other movements the organic food movement many fad diets and back to nature movements as well as folk movements have their roots in the Lebensreform movement s emphasis on the goodness of nature the harms to society people and to nature caused by industrialization the importance of the whole person body and mind and the goodness of the old ways 3 40 7 8 32 33 9 Right wing radicalism EditA specific stream based on volkisch Romanticism gradually became part of Nazi ideology by the 1930s known as blood and soil As early as 1907 Richard Ungewitter published a pamphlet called Wieder nacktgewordene Menschen Again people become naked 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 10 The extremists promoting right wing ideology eventually became popular among Nazi Party officials and their supporters including Heinrich Himmler and Rudolph Hoss who belonged to the right wing farming organization the Artaman League When other groups were being banned or disbanded due to political conflict during the 1930s the extreme nationalist ideology became connected with National Socialism The German Life Reform League broke apart into political factions during this time The Nationalist physician Artur Fedor Fuchs began the League for Free Body Culture FKK giving public lectures on the healing powers of the sun in the Nordic sky which alone strengthened and healed the warrior nation 11 Ancient forest living and habits presumed to have been followed by the ancient tribes of Germany were beneficial to regenerating the Aryan people according to Fuchs philosophy Hans Suren a prominent former military officer published Man and the Sun 1924 which sold 240 000 copies by 1941 it was reissued in 68 editions Suren promoted the Aryan master race concept of physically strong militarized men who would be the salvation of the German people 12 Contemporary books that influenced Lebensreform EditJust Adolf 1903 1896 Return to Nature Paradise Regained Translated by Lust Benedict New York Benedict Lust ISBN 9780787304850 Also available as a PDF from the Soil and Health Library Richard Ungewitter Nakedness 1904 ISBN 0 9652085 1 6 Arnold Ehret Mucusless Diet Healing System 1922 ISBN 0 87904 004 1 PDF Hermann Hesse Siddhartha 1922 See also EditAgrarianism Anarcho naturism Anarcho primitivism Back to the land movement Bioregionalism Commune intentional community Communitarianism Deindustrialization Down to the Countryside Movement Ecovillage Green anarchism History of the hippie movement Localism Neo Tribalism Physiocracy Permaculture Plain people Renewable energy Rural flight Self sufficiency Simple living Subsistence agriculture Survivalism Sustainability Sustainable development Sustainable living Tolstoyan movement Wandervogel movement Footnotes Edit Eichberg Henning Nacktkultur Lebensreform Korperkultur Neue Forschungsliteratur und Methodenfragen PDF Nude culture life reform body culture new research literature and methodological questions in German Gerlev Denmark Fritzen F 2009 Changing the World with Musli German Research 31 3 10 14 doi 10 1002 germ 201090000 PDF a b c d e Williams John Alexander 2007 Turning to nature in Germany hiking nudism and conservation 1900 1940 Stanford Calif Stanford University Press pp 23 30 ISBN 9780804700153 Joachim Raschke Soziale Bewegungen ein historisch systematischer Grundriss Campus Verlag Frankfurt am Main New York 1987 1985 pp 44 46 408 411 415 435 a b Hippie Roots amp The Perennial Subculture Archived 2010 09 24 at the Wayback Machine also contains excerpts from Kennedy 1998 Frieze magazine issue 122 April 2009 Tune in Drop out Archived 2010 01 03 at the Wayback Machine Hakl Hans Thomas McIntosh Christopher 2014 Eranos An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century Routledge p 272 ISBN 9781317548133 How can we explain the convergence of conservative volkisch currents with the Lebensreform faction the ecology movement 103 early women s liberation and the opening to alternative forms of religion a convergence that seems so surprising from today s perspective A deep emotional chord is struck by the themes of one s own Volk of peace giving religion of the local soil that demands such careful nurturing of one s own mother indeed of the feminine in general This chord vibrates again and again in the same register which can best be characterized by the German word Geborgenheit implying a reassuring sense of security against that which is new and strange Footnote 103 The ecology movement which today tends to be seen as belonging to the left had its origins in the Lebensreforrn groups of around the turn of the twentieth century which were often marked by Volkisch ethnic thinking and were influenced by the Wandervogel wandering birds movement What they had in common was their opposition to the industrialization and urbanization of modern life Fitzgerald M 2014 Diet Cults The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of US Pegasus Books ISBN 978 1 60598 560 2 Meyer Renschhausen E Wirz A July 1999 Dietetics health reform and social order vegetarianism as a moral physiology The example of Maximilian Bircher Benner 1867 1939 Medical History 43 3 323 41 doi 10 1017 s0025727300065388 PMC 1044148 PMID 10885127 Gordon 2006 pp 138 9 Gordon 2006 p 144 Gordon 2006 p 146 Bibliography Edit Thorsten Carstensen amp Marcel Schmid Die Literatur der Lebensreform Kulturkritik und Aufbruchstimmung um 1900 Bielefeld transcript Verlag 2016 352 pp ISBN 978 3 8376 3334 4 Gordon Kennedy Children of the Sun A Pictorial Anthology From Germany To California 1883 1949 Nivaria Press 1998 192 pp ISBN 0 9668898 0 0 Gordon Mel 2006 Voluptuous Panic The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin Feral House ISBN 1 932595 11 2 John Williams Turning to Nature in Germany Hiking Nudism and Conservation 1900 1940 Stanford University Press 2007 368 pp ISBN 0 8047 0015 X Martin Green Mountain of Truth The Counterculture begins Ascona 1900 1920 University Press of New England Hanover and London 1986 287 pp ISBN 0 87451 365 0 Friedhelm Kirchfeld amp Wade Boyle Nature Doctors Pioneers in Naturopathic Medicine Portland Oregon 1994 351 pp ISBN 0 9623518 5 7 Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lebensreform Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Lebensreform amp oldid 1122235227, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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