East Germany's nudists
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 August 2021
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For years Germans have been bathing nude at the beach. Many are members of a naturist movement called the FKK, which was banned under the Nazis and faced official disapproval during the early years of communist rule in East Germany. Mike Lanchin spoke to one East Berliner who recalled the heyday of naked sunbathing beside the Baltic Sea.
This programme is a rebroadcast.
Photo: Bathers enjoying the beach at Baerwalder See, Eastern Germany (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and |
| 0:35.0 | the BBC World Service with me Mike Lanchin |
| 0:41.0 | and today a story from our archives. We're going back to the 1950s when a growing number of East Germans were going naked on the beaches despite the initial disapproval of the country's communist authorities. |
| 0:53.4 | They were part of a protest movement. |
| 0:55.4 | They were naturists from a group called the FKK or the free body culture. Six decades Wolfgang Heider has been stripping off at the beach and he's unashamedly proud of it. |
| 1:16.2 | It was never an erotic thing. |
| 1:18.8 | It was a natural thing. |
| 1:20.8 | Yes, yes. |
| 1:21.9 | As part of the sort of the German culture of sort of walking and hiking and swimming and... |
| 1:27.0 | Right, yes, right. |
| 1:29.0 | Using nature completely in a full way. |
| 1:39.0 | Wolfgangs now 87 years old. He first went naked on the beaches of Germany's Baltic Sea Resorts back in the early days of |
| 1:44.4 | communism. There were young girls, there were young boys, we were playing |
| 1:49.3 | together, there was always a kind of sport, |
| 1:53.0 | vulnerable, swimming, of course. |
... |
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