Wolle helped curate an installation about nudism at the D.D.R. Or as Stefan Wolle put it: “It’s the most unerotic thing in the world.” Mr. “Nudism is about the cult of the natural,” she explained. Bikinis, the argument went, sexualize the body. One key to Germany’s relaxed attitude toward nudity, said Professor Möhring, is that from the start nudism was sold as something utterly asexual.

In practice there was a neat divide between (Polish) swimwear and (German) skin. In theory the border was invisible after Poland joined the European Union.

It’s not just my husband and a lot of Americans who struggle with nudity.Ī few years ago, the German beach resort of Ahlbeck on the Baltic Sea agreed to move its nudist beach 200 meters westward, away from the border with Poland - “to stop irritating Polish beach goers,” explained Karina Schulz of the local tourism board. When I took him to a sauna a short drive south of Berlin the other day, he didn’t know where to look. To a relative newcomer, like my British husband, all this nudity can be disconcerting. People regularly take their clothes off on television, too. There are sporting events from nude yoga to nude sledding. Nearly 100 years later, entire stretches of German waterfronts are designated as nudist beaches. Adamski’s camp, founded in 1921, was the first licensed nudist club on a lakeside in the country. “Free body culture” - basically bathing the whole body in water and sunlight while preferably also doing some exercise - became the battle cry for a healthy, harmonious lifestyle and an antidote to a destructive modernity. They have been getting naked in public for over a hundred years, when early naturists rebelled against the grime of industrialization and then the mass slaughter of World War I.

Granny in paradise free