The 1930’s might have been the apogee of naturism. Modern nudism began in Germany in the 1920’s and spread quickly, crossing the pond within a few years. “Nudist colony”, “nudist camps” and even “nudist cult” were common expressions used by the thirties’ press to describe the nascent movement, which had as many as a million followers in Germany, and around 300,000 in the United States. Some of the stories newspapers printed about naturism were wildly outrageous even by today’s standards. Here we’ve picked a few for your reading enjoyment…
- The January 10, 1931 edition of the Milwaukee Journal reported that nudists on the French Riviera bought and refurbished a dirigible in order to be nude away from police persecution (this was long before Cap d’Adge!).
- An August 17, 1931 article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette explains how a French nudist cult having a colony on an island near Paris had its population cut from 75 to 50 thousand due to a cold epidemic.
- A 1932 article tells how the German government of the time tried to stop the spread of the naturist movement, ordering police to seize Berlin’s biggest nudist school. The school’s director cleverly foiled the raid by offering to follow the officers to the police station, along with 4,000 other nude “scholars”!
- The California Pacific International Exposition in San Diego in 1935 and 1936 had a nudist exhibit, where 2 million visitors paid 25 cents to peer over a fence into a “nudist corral”. Nudists at large denounced the event and it’s said that it was the main impetus for the naturist movement to go “underground”. We couldn’t find a free article about the exhibit, but it’s mentioned in this Time Magazine page.
- Even crazier than this is the related story which appeared in the San Diego Evening Independent, claiming that an organization of blind people sought to stop a repeat of the nudist exhibit at the 1936 fair, as it would corrupt young minds!
- The St Petersburg (Florida) Evening Independent of February 4, 1936, tells us of what was probably the first nude cruise, or at least the first attempt. The article refers to the old boat as a “nudist ship”, with over twenty nudists heading out of Tampa to the US Virgin islands, where they hoped to found a nudist colony. Said “nudist ship” had to return to port when its engine ran into trouble.
- A September, 1937 piece tells of a feud between nudist leaders, each seeking to attract more people to their respective conventions. Perhaps jealous that his rival had managed to assemble 390 people, the other claimed it wasn’t a nudist convention at all, as he charged some attendees wore pants.
We can’t make this stuff up!
