Germany's Nudists
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 August 2017
⏱️ 10 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 has been speaking to one East Berliner who recalls the heyday of naked sunbathing beside the Baltic Sea, and who still likes to bare all when he goes on holiday.
Photo: Bathers enjoying the beach at Baerwalder See, Eastern Germany (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds just before this |
| 0:30.3 | BBC podcast gets underway here's something you may not know. |
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| 0:38.3 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely |
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| 1:05.1 | Sounds. |
| 1:06.1 | Hello and welcome to the Witness Podcast, History Told by the People Who Were There. |
| 1:10.9 | I'm Mike Lanchin. And today we're going back to the 1950s when a growing |
| 1:15.8 | number of East Germans were going naked on the beaches, despite the initial disapproval |
| 1:21.6 | of the country's communist authorities. |
| 1:24.0 | They weren't part of a protest movement. |
| 1:26.5 | They were naturists from a group called the FKK or free body culture. For more than six decades, Wolfgang Heider has been stripping off at the beach and he's unashamedly proud of it. |
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