When
the kindergarten beach trip pictures were finally posted, I became
hysterical...with laughter. All the
important body parts were, of course, covered and protected from the sun: every
child was sporting a hat and sunglasses. The bathing suits I had packed for my
children came back clean and neatly folded. A discussion with the teachers
would not have helped. "What for?" would have been the response. Birthday
suits are better than bathing suits! Still, I was left with the question of how
to instill in my children a sense of modesty and propriety in a culture that
clearly had very different values surrounding this topic.
The
FKK (Freikörperkultur, or free body culture, i.e. nudist movement) has
become a hallmark of East German culture. Nudism has always existed in Germany,
both in the East and the West, and was appropriated by radical representatives of
various movements to signalize a return back to nature. The far right made use
of it as an expression of Germanic nature worship and the far left saw it as a
socialist equalizer. For East Germans, it became a key way to express one of very few freedoms
in an oppressive system of government.
The
Nazi German regime had banned nudist expressions in 1933 in reaction to the
socialists' propagandist view of nudism which was to "toughen the
socialist body in preparation for the conflict with capitalists." Since East Germans have always viewed
themselves as avowed anti-fascists, recovering this ancient right/rite was part
of fashioning the new emergent GDR culture and identity. Ahrenshoop, a Baltic
Sea resort, housed an elite movement of East German authors, politicians and
artists that began celebrating nudism as
freedom from social and political constraint. In some places nudists apparently
became rather unpredictable, painting their naked bodies, dancing wildly around
bonfires on the beach at so-called Neptune celebrations which led the local
authorities to place a ban on the FKK movement on August 16th, 1954. One has to
wonder whether the reason behind the ban had more to do with atheistic authorities'
desire to snuff out the Pagan religion underscoring these festivals rather than
nudity itself.
Still, protest letters
flooded government mailboxes. One such letter came from actress, Traute
Richter, who wrote an ideologically impassioned plea to the president Otto
Grotewohl about the arrest of FKK people on Rügen. She claimed that the FKK
movement had "triumphed over bourgeois capitalistic and religious
prejudice" and that "only in capitalistic America did one have to aid
one's sick mind by stuffing the body into gaudy swimming attire, that, on the
one hand served as erotic stimulus and on the other hand made considerable
profits for the textile industry."
Because of the
amount of protest and popular support,
the FKK ban did not alter the practice. The ban almost seemed
hypocritical since so many high ranking political figures were involved at the
Ahrenshoop resort movement. The East German government simply turned a blind eye to the continuing naked
activities until it became so common place that no one dared question it
anymore. A lax view of nudity was purposefully cultivated in East German day
care centers and schools. Children were potty-trained together in neat rows.
Dressing and undressing together was a normal part of the pre- and post-nap
routine. When the weather got warm, children were encouraged to strip naked and
play in the water. This sort of desensitizing and normalizing of nudity led
many children to bypass the natural developmental stage of middle childhood
during which experiencing shame and desiring privacy typically occur. But even
in the GDR, nudism was not an easy pill for everyone to swallow. A
self-proclaimed FKK-dissident, Lutz Thormann,
writes. "I tried to resist taking everything off, but after I realized how
pointless it was, having been undressed more or less voluntarily, I took out
the bathing suit which I had secretly packed in my suitcase, but this too was
confiscated and put away. Now the naked facts were irrevocably established. Every
Baltic Sea vacation began with this small humiliation. I spent most of the next
two weeks cowering face-down on my towel behind the windscreen. If I ever dared
to go down to the water, I made sure all the girls my age were far away enough not to see me."
Thormann was not the only one who had an issue with the FKK.
In 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the issue came up again when West
German tourists were shocked at the state of the Baltic Sea beaches and filed
complaints with local authorities. The media called it the Höschenkrieg, or panty war. Eventually, it was decided that FKK
beaches would have to be clearly marked for the sake of prude tourists who
might not want to stumble accidentally upon a nudist colony. Germans socialized
in the GDR cannot understand the big hoopla surrounding the issue of nudism.
This shows the extent to which it had become a normal part of the East German
experience.
 |
| Potty-training in an East German daycare center |
The fact is, nudism did serve the ends of
socialism quite well. Nudity is an equalizing factor, more so than any uniform.
It reminds us we humans are all made of the same stuff. There can be no display
of wealth, no accessories, no gadgets that make us feel we're worth more than
our neighbor. It also shows us how we need each other in our frailty. The FKK
message was that even an individual's body was not really his or her private
property. It was imperative to submit the body to the rules of collective
nudity that partly defined Gemeinschaft
. Therefore there was pressure to conform in order to uphold the values of
solidarity to the socialistic community. In that sense, nudity was not as much
about sexualization as it was politicization. The utopian desire for equality is
understandable after the horrors of Nazi selection and many idealist East
Germans set out with the goal of establishing a tolerant and fair society when
they embraced socialism. We all long to be accepted as we are, no strings
attached. No yellow stars or pink triangles setting us apart for persecution. In
essence, we want paradise lost to be restored. Unfortunately, this created a new
form of Zwang (coercion) for
individuals who had different political views than the majority. Many East
German Christians embraced the FKK ideals as well. Not doing so might have been
one more strike against them. Nudism provided the illusion of equality and outward
conformism to the system. The GDR's social experiment with community failed
because transparency and trust never developed. This was, of course, in large
part due to the fact that the STASI (Staatssicherheit or secret police) had its
informants everywhere, even spying on their own relatives. So the idealism of
FKK nudism was utopian and it ignored some very important aspects:
First,
the FKK ignores that there is a positive
expression of shame. Lutz Thormann, and surely many others too, had a proper
sense of shame that the FKK collective wanted him to just get over. Shame,
expressed positively doesn't mean that we want to hide because nudity is
somehow dirty, rather that there are some things that are meant to be private,
not public. The FKK movement purposefully blurred the lines between the private
and public display of the human body to make a political statement.
Second,
FKK nudity overlooks the reality of the brokenness of this world. It wants to
restore freedom and transparency without dealing with the problem of sin, guilt
and shame. This second form of shame is a perception of self, viewed from the
vantage point of moral failure. FKK nudity clearly sought to eradicate a
Judeo-Christian worldview in which God's laws are the standard for moral behavior
and in which public exposure was understood to be a shameful humiliation and a
reminder of man's utter helplessness apart from God. In GDR socialism, there was no sacrifice to be
paid for sin. The only sacrifice required was that of the individual's privacy
and freedom on the altar of collectivity.
The irony of the matter is that the East
German FKK movement that attempted to use nudity to promote atheism actually
pointed to an almost transcendental desire for the pre-Fall values found in the
Bible. There, in the garden of Eden, God created man and woman naked and
unashamed. There was nothing to hide nor to hide from. Interpersonal relationships
were pristine, transparent and shameless. Man 's relationship to God was
immediate. Shame entered the world only when objective guilt became a felt
reality. As a solution, God gifted Adam and Eve with animal skins. This layer
of clothing pictured the real and felt barrier between humans and God.
Immediate intimacy was no longer possible. The skins also symbolized protection
and promise. Protection from the elements, but also protection from themselves.
The promise the skins pointed to is to a better sacrifice that would not only
cover our physical shame, but most importantly cover our spiritual shame. Christ
on the cross, naked, despised and alone spans the reality gap between shame and
utopia. After his tortured humiliation, he was exalted and clothed in glory. He
now mediates an intimate relationship with God. The guilt the world incurred
toward its Maker was dealt with once and for all in his substitutionary atonement. Atheistic socialism sought human harmony without
God in the picture. But without God in the picture, there is no solution to the
problem of sin, guilt and shame and no hope for a paradise restored.
Raising
children in an post-modest
environment has its challenges. The naked facts are always before our eyes. We
are forced to talk about issues more. There are also some positive aspects I have
come to appreciate. Sometimes, we Americans can become overly concerned with
what we view as a premature sexualization of our children. However, these
attempts to hinder it sometimes lead to absurd situations. In the end, the attempts
to hide nudity in some contexts backfire because they draw even more attention
to it or make it appear "dirty." Getting uptight about mothers nursing
in public (even if done discretely) or putting bikini tops on baby girls are such
examples. I want my children to have a positive, natural but also guarded view
of their bodies because, ultimately, their bodies have been given to them by
their Creator to use for good purposes and nudity is reserved for the most intimate
of human relationships in which love and commitment are prerequisites.
I
have also become more relaxed over the years. Once, I picked up my son from his kindergarten
class and he was sitting, nonchalantly eating his lunch in his underwear. He
had spilled tea all over his clothes and the teacher had naturally hung them up
on the heater to dry. As a child I had terrifying nightmares in which I
suddenly realized I had gone to school in my underwear. I was relieved for my
son that he would never have that nightmare!