NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

A very German idea of freedom: Nude ping-pong, nude sledding, nude just about anything

By Katrin Bennhold
New York Times·
7 Sep, 2019 03:14 AM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Nudists at a lake in Germany. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

Nudists at a lake in Germany. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

Warning: This article contains images featuring nudity

The first time Michael Adamski saw his mother-in-law naked it was awkward.

But it wasn't as awkward as seeing his boss naked.

Adamski, a police officer in Berlin who investigates organised crime, first started going to a nudist camp at a lake outside Berlin after he met his wife, whose family owned a cabin there.

One weekend, when he had just about gotten used to stripping in front of his in-laws, he bumped into the highest-ranking colonel in his precinct — who promptly challenged him to a game of table tennis.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

They have been on first-name terms ever since.

"Once you've played Ping-Pong with someone naked, you can't call them 'colonel' anymore," Adamski said as he prepared to join a triathlon where the swimming and running portions of the race were naked. "Nudity is a great leveller."

A couple outside their cabin at a nudist camp site in Zossen, Germany. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times
A couple outside their cabin at a nudist camp site in Zossen, Germany. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

Germans love to get naked. They have been getting naked in public for over 100 years, when early naturists rebelled against the grime of industrialisation and then the mass slaughter of World War I.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"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.

Adamski's camp, founded in 1921, was the first licensed nudist club on a lakeside in the country. Nearly 100 years later, entire stretches of German waterfronts are designated as nudist beaches. There is a nudist hiking trail. There are sporting events from nude yoga to nude sledding. German saunas are mixed and naked. People regularly take their clothes off on television, too.

Discover more

Travel

Germany: Following a gut feeling

14 Oct 09:00 PM
Lifestyle

The joy of cooking naked

05 Feb 06:00 AM

To a relative newcomer, like my British husband, all this nudity can be disconcerting. When I took him to a sauna a short drive south of Berlin the other day, he didn't know where to look.

Clothing is optional when playing badminton at the Zossen nudist camp. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times
Clothing is optional when playing badminton at the Zossen nudist camp. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

Naked bodies floated on top of the water in the saline pool and lounged on submerged seats around the pool bar. They lined up for ice cream in the garden area, wearing only flip-flops and sun hats and in one case a T-shirt (but no pants).

Just when we thought we had seen it all, it was time for Zumba in the main pool. Naked.

I knew I had to write something about naked Germans when I happened upon a whole field of them sunbathing on my way to work. This was in the Tiergarten, Berlin's equivalent of Central Park, which runs adjacent to the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a long-standing sauna fan.

One story Germans love telling about Merkel is that the night the Berlin Wall fell, she stuck to her weekly sauna appointment before heading across to the West for a taste of freedom.

Maybe that's because in Germany getting naked has itself quite a lot to do with fighting repression.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Michael Adamski, in yellow shirt, a police officer who competes in naked triathlons, says, "Nudity is a great leveller." Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times
Michael Adamski, in yellow shirt, a police officer who competes in naked triathlons, says, "Nudity is a great leveller." Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

"It's all about freedom," said John C. Kornblum, a former US ambassador to Germany, who has lived here on and off since the 1960s, and was once shouted at by a naked German for not taking off his swimming shorts in a whirlpool.

"Germans are both afraid of freedom and deeply desire it," Kornblum said. "But hierarchy and rules are so embedded that direct political or social dissonance is simply not thinkable."

"When people walk down the beach naked, it allows them to feel a little rebellious," he said.

The Nazis tried to root out nudism, and so did the Communists, briefly. To no avail.

A lot of Germans don't get naked in public, but nudists are ubiquitous enough that the practice has entered the national psyche.

Tiergarten, one of Berlin's most popular parks, where many sunbathe naked. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times
Tiergarten, one of Berlin's most popular parks, where many sunbathe naked. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

"Most Germans finds it totally normal to be naked in the sauna, see bare breasts on the beach and naked children in the paddling pool," said professor Maren Möhring, a cultural historian and nudism expert at Leipzig University.

Although there are nudists around the world, no other country has developed a mass nudist movement, Möhring said. "It is a German exception," she said.

And when someone, somewhere, tries to change the taboo against nudity, that person is likely German, Möhring added.

The first nudist congress in New York was organised by a German immigrant, she said. German nudists also tried to colonise pockets of South America.

"Free body culture" became a battle cry for a healthy, harmonious lifestyle. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times
"Free body culture" became a battle cry for a healthy, harmonious lifestyle. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

It's not just my husband and a lot of Americans who struggle with nudity.

A few years ago, the German beach resort of Ahlbeck on the Baltic Sea agreed to move its nudist beach 200 metres westward, away from the border with Poland — "to stop irritating Polish beach goers," explained Karina Schulz of the local tourism board. In theory the border was invisible after Poland joined the European Union. In practice there was a neat divide between (Polish) swimwear and (German) skin.

One key to Germany's relaxed attitude toward nudity, said Möhring, is that from the start nudism was sold as something utterly asexual. Bikinis, the argument went, sexualise the body. "Nudism is about the cult of the natural," she explained.

Or as Stefan Wolle put it: "It's the most unerotic thing in the world." Wolle helped curate an installation about nudism at the DDR Museum in Berlin, which features exhibitions about life under Communism in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, as East Germany was known.

Being bombarded daily with often-photoshopped images of models' bodies in social media posts and ads, it was an eye-opener for me to hang out with a cross-section of naked people in the real world. As my husband remarked in the sauna: "The perfect body does not exist."

At the finish line of a naked triathlon competition. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times
At the finish line of a naked triathlon competition. Photo / Lena Mucha, The New York Times

At the same time, all those naked Germans I encountered while writing this article appeared happy and unselfconscious.

On the Baltic coast one recent morning, I asked Tina Müller, a 39-year-old mother of two, why she felt the urge to get naked. She promptly returned the question: "Why do you feel the urge to wear a wet and clingy bathing suit?"

When you swim naked, she patiently explained: "It tingles on the skin. You feel every movement of the waves, every gust of wind directly on your skin. You feel your whole body. You feel alive, you feel free."

Suddenly, I was the one who felt self-conscious.

Further down the beach, Gert Ramthun, an 80-year-old veteran nudist with snow-white hair and not a tan line in sight, said he started coming to Prerow, Germany's most storied nudist beach, in the 1950s. The parties in those days — dress code: shell necklace only, please — were legendary, he said.

Prerow, Germany's most storied nudist beach, where clothing has been optional since the 1950s when the site was in the Communist East. Photo / Lena Mucha for The New York Times
Prerow, Germany's most storied nudist beach, where clothing has been optional since the 1950s when the site was in the Communist East. Photo / Lena Mucha for The New York Times

And those beach parties were one reason the Communist regime formally outlawed nudism for two years — before giving up and eventually even encouraging the practice as proof of how much more liberated life under Communism was compared to the prudish, capitalist West.

"It was a kind of ersatz freedom but it was still precious," Ramthun said.

There is evidence group nudity has beneficial effects on body image and well-being. "Nudism makes us happier," concluded Dr. Keon West, a psychology professor at the University of London, who conducted a 2017 survey of 850 British people on the subject.

Outside of designated clothing-optional areas, public nudity is treated as a petty offense in Germany, punishable with fines up to 1,000 euros. But legal precedent has de facto legalised nudity near a beach; and nudity in nature is tolerated as long as no one complains, which rarely happens.

Some worry that Germany's nudist tradition is slowly going out of fashion, not least because of the widespread use of smartphone cameras and the popularity of photo-sharing sites like Instagram.

"Many younger people don't want to get naked because they don't want to be on the internet the next day," Möhring said.

Formal membership numbers in nudist clubs have halved since the end of Communism to about 32,000, but Utecht of the free body culture association said the numbers are rising again — especially as young families rediscover nudism and the egalitarianism it offers.

"When you get to know people naked, all that status stuff ceases to matter," said Adamski, the police officer. "You stop paying attention to how expensive their suit is or what brand their sneakers are."

So much so that when Adamski ran into a fellow nudist in the city center the other day he did not recognize him, because, "He was wearing clothes."


Written by: Katrin Bennhold

Photographs by: Lena Mucha

© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Lifestyle

Sweden’s secret to well-being? Tiny urban gardens

13 Jul 06:00 AM
Royals

'Don't be nervous': Princess of Wales shares tender moment with young fan

13 Jul 12:57 AM
Lifestyle

The quick school lunch solution every parent needs

12 Jul 11:00 PM

Get your kids involved in your reno

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

Premium
Sweden’s secret to well-being? Tiny urban gardens

Sweden’s secret to well-being? Tiny urban gardens

13 Jul 06:00 AM

New York Times: Koloniträdgårdar provide city dwellers access to nature and fresh produce.

'Don't be nervous': Princess of Wales shares tender moment with young fan

'Don't be nervous': Princess of Wales shares tender moment with young fan

13 Jul 12:57 AM
The quick school lunch solution every parent needs

The quick school lunch solution every parent needs

12 Jul 11:00 PM
'Move it or lose it': Adine Wilson and Irene van Dyk on their TV return to the court

'Move it or lose it': Adine Wilson and Irene van Dyk on their TV return to the court

12 Jul 09:00 PM
Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP