DOP

I want to tell you about the Lebensreform movement in the early 20th century. The problems back then were the same like today: globalisation, brutal capitalism, financial crises, wars abroad, rise of global communication, a society in which very few get super-rich while the rest stays poor. So some young people turned their back on the degenerated system and proclaimed a sustainable way of life, back to nature. Their idea of liberation touched every aspect: nudism instead of the corset, a vegetarian diet instead of tobacco and alcohol, dancing in the fresh air instead of being bound to status, choosing the poet instead of the dictator.

All of this got to a point of culmination at Monte Verità, a commune build on a hill near Ascona in Switzerland. The sanatorium there attracts freethinkers from around the world: Hermann Hesse, C. G. Jung, Mary Wigman, Hans Arp, Krishnamurti, Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, Leo Trotzki, Paul Klee… just to mention a few.

It was the photography of Gerhard Riebicke that paved the way for the awakening of the Lebensreform movement. Here’s a post about his work:
Ways to Strength and Beauty