Lebensreform

''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.

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.

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.

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 (').

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 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.

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 near Vienna. Among his disciples were three painters: Hugo Höppener ( Fidus), František Kupka and Gustav Gräser. 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. The Freikörperkultur movement eventually broadened and came to include socialists with no strains of ethnic nationalism like the educationalist and gymnastics teacher Adolf Koch.

Effect in the United States

Some of the less well-known protagonists of the movement in Germany, such as Bill Pester

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