Nudism is not just a matter of being naked: naturism has been seen as a political statement for around one hundred and fifty years now. The philosophy, as a concept of healthy living centred upon fresh air and sunlight, originated in the late eighteenth century and the idea of nudism as a purely physical activity combined with sport and other exercise spread very widely during the twentieth century. The early Romantic ideas of self-sufficiency and attachment to the land, with associated pagan, mystical, anti-capitalist and libertarian elements, became increasingly politicised and distorted as the early decades of the twentieth century progressed.
As the cover of the journal Ver Sacrum indicates, Fidus worked within established stylistic and symbolic parameters. Ver Sacrum (‘Holy Spring’) was the journal of the Vienna Secession, the breakaway group of younger artists led by Gustav Klimt. Images of youth, the Germanic past and exploration and discovery, combined with Art Nouveau graphics, were radical and new at the time.
Lebensreform
Nudism developed as a practice that was not limited solely to a concern with individual physical health; it incorporated much wider concerns. For example, German naturism was established as part of the Lebensreform and Wandervogel youth movements of the 1890s. The latter group was opposed to industrialisation and promoted hiking, communal living and an interest in folk culture. Lebensreform (‘life reform’), meanwhile, was a social movement that propagated a ‘back-to-nature’ lifestyle, emphasising the benefits of raw and organic foods, nudism, sexual liberation, alternative medicine, and religious reform. At the same time abstention from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and vaccines were encouraged. Important Lebensreform proponents included Rudolf Steiner and the artists Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach and Hugo Höppener (for both of whom see later).
In naturism, the significance of nudity is considerable. It conveys innocence, health and purity, as well as a heightened sensuous connection to the natural world: the pollution and encumbrances of the industrialised world are renounced. In turn, this sense of physical freedom can lead towards personal liberation. If the naturist casts off the material aspects of modern society- why not the old morality too? The expression of one’s innate nature seems to follow readily therefore; if the body is freed of garments, why not of outdated assumptions and restrictions? The argument was that the healthy mind in the healthy body ought not to be repressed and for many it seemed an entirely reasonable consequence to assert a right to love whoever you wished to love. In several of these naturist movements, notably Lebensreform, new approaches to sex and sexuality were promoted. In line with the sexual reformers of the period, socialist nudists argued that nudism was a means by which sexuality could be made more ‘rational’- disassociating sexual activity from ideas of shame and sin. I have touched on some of this previously in my discussion of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry.
In Germany, Lebensreform was a politically diverse movement. There were hundreds of groups and dozens of magazines, books, and pamphlets on the subject were published. Some of these groups were socialist and pacificist (the Nacktkultur movement), some were apolitical, and some were right-wing and nationalist in outlook. One strand of Lebensreform, the Freikörperkultur movement (FKK), emphasised nudism and was explicitly anti-Semitic. It encouraged activities such as nudist hikes for factory workers, something which highlighted their idea that industrialised urban life is harmful and that exposure to the natural environment is healing. Another strand of Lebensreform, the völkisch movement, gradually became part of Nazi ideology by the 1930s.
Fidus– the mystical naturist
A couple of German artists were clearly associated with the contemporary Lebensreform, Nacktkultur and Freikörperkultur movements. The most notable of these is the artist usually known as ‘Fidus.’ This name was the pseudonym used by the German illustrator, painter and publisher Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener (1868-1948). He was a symbolist artist and his work came directly to influence the psychedelic style of graphic design of the late 1960s.
Born in Lübeck, son of a pastry chef, Höppener demonstrated artistic talent at an early age. In 1887 he entered the Munich Academy and in the same year met Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913), who lived alone in a valley near Munich. Known as the ‘apostle of nature’ Diefenbach was an extreme ‘life reformer’ as well as being a symbolist artist, Tolstoyan anarchist and pioneer of the naturist and the peace movements. His philosophy included living life in harmony with nature, a rejection of monogamy, turning away from any religion (although he was a theosophist), and vegetarianism. On Diefenbach’s behalf, Hoppener served a brief prison sentence for public nudity, which earned him his nickname of ‘Fidus’ (“faithful” in Latin). Diefenbach’s thought and artistic style both seem to have been highly influential upon his young disciple, as it was on other contemporary artists such as Frantisek Kupka and Gusto Gräser.
Fidus remained a student and disciple of Diefenbach and lived on his commune until 1889, when he broke with his mentor and returned to his studies at the Munich Academy. In 1892, the young artist moved to Berlin, set up another commune, and worked as an illustrator on the magazines Sphinx, Jugend, and Simplicissimus (for which Heinrich Zille and Jules Pascin also worked). In addition he designed posters and other graphic materials. He also contributed to the early homosexual magazine Der Eigene.
Fidus held mystical Theosophical beliefs, and became interested in German mythology. His early illustrations contained dream-like abstractions, while his later work was characterised by motifs such as peasants, warriors, and other naked human figures in natural settings. He often combined mysticism, eroticism, and symbolism, in both Art Nouveau and Secessionist styles. By 1900 he was one of the best-known painters in Germany, and was influenced by the anti-materialist garden city and Wandervogel movements. In 1912 he designed a famous poster for a congress on ‘biological hygiene’ in Hamburg, showing a man in the process of breaking his bonds and rising up to the stars (see earlier). Eugenic thinking was another product of the Lebensreform movement that led to tragic consequences.
After 1918, interest in Fidus’ work as an illustrator ebbed, even though his personal philosophy developed in line with the times in Germany (he even produced a rather pious, adulatory portrait of Hitler). However, his enthusiasm for the Nazi Party was not reciprocal and in 1937 his work was seized and the sale of his images forbidden. This may seem surprising, given the predominance of healthy, Aryan-looking youth in his pictures and his designs for grandiose ‘pagan’ buildings. My guess is that the slightly ambiguous, slightly bizarre and frequently mystical tone of these- and the lack of solid evocations of a bucolic peasant life- is what made the party officials suspicious. Fidus’ grandiose architectural schemes foreshadow those of Albert Speer, but their utopian aspect, found also in images such as Atlantis, place Fidus in an ideal reality rather different to that envisaged by the NSDAP.
By the time Fidus died in 1948 his art had been almost forgotten. It was rediscovered in the 1960s, and directly influenced the psychedelic concert posters which began to be produced at that time, initially in and around San Francisco. Colour images such as that shown at the head of this post were especially popular designs.
The art website Artnet has succinctly summarised Fidus’ work, describing how it depicts “nude figures in idyllic landscapes, evocatively combining mysticism, eroticism, and Romanticism into a strange, sometimes hallucinogenic aesthetic that remains wholly his own, even today.” Nudity and youth are constant themes in his imagery, mostly delicately drawn in pen and ink. Good examples are Sag kleines Tier- Mädchen auf einem Felsen sitzend, wendet sich an Eidechse of 1893 (see below) or Magie- Junges Mädchen auf Felsen mit Adler auf dem Arm, dated 1891. Unity with the natural world, as in Du sollst nicht töten and Sag kleines Tier, are also prominent. These vegetarian and pacificist elements foreshadow modern ecological concerns.
For Fidus, the naked human body frequently symbolised the nobility and strength of the liberated individual (an idea that fed through into later concepts of so-called ‘Aryan’ racial purity). Nevertheless, his juvenile nudes more often suggest a naïve fragility and charm, as well as a sensuous vigour and joy in life, as illustrated by the plate Sturzwellen (crashing waves) from an early issue of the German arts magazine Jugend. There is an Edenic naturalness and innocence about Fidus’ images too, implying that the ideal state of Nordic youth was a back-to-basics naturism, in touch with the ancient spirits of the land and sea. Fidus’ images of harmony with nature and a kind of mystical worship of the grandeur of sea and mountains are by no means unique to him: they can be seen too in the work of contemporary German painter Magnus Weidemann (1880-1967) and the American graphic artist Mabel Rollins Harris during the 1920s and ’30s.
The exact status of some of Fidus’ figures is perhaps a little uncertain: they may be real, but their close encounters with wild beasts (who are either not scared of them, or which don’t scare them) suggest that they may actually not be humans but nymphs, dryads, nereids and other water and woodland sprites (German nixes, for example). This mystical and religious tendency is, at the same time, leavened by indications of an irreverent sense of humour- as in the picture of Little Marion and My Puppy earlier. All of this, coupled with Fidus’ fundamentally anti-war, anti-violence, other-worldly sentiments, probably explain why the Nazi party viewed him askance (as we saw previously with Richard Muller).
Fidus was a prolific artist and the images illustrated are just a handful of his output. Plenty of other examples will be found online, for example on the Symbolismus website.
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