The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930From the 1890s to the 1930s, a growing number of Germans began to scrutinize and discipline their bodies in a utopian search for perfect health and beauty. Some became vegetarians, nudists, or bodybuilders, while others turned to alternative medicine or eugenics. In The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, Michael Hau demonstrates why so many men and women were drawn to these life reform movements and examines their tremendous impact on German society and medicine. Hau argues that the obsession with personal health and fitness was often rooted in anxieties over professional and economic success, as well as fears that modern industrialized civilization was causing Germany and its people to degenerate. He also examines how different social groups gave different meanings to the same hygienic practices and aesthetic ideals. What results is a penetrating look at class formation in pre-Nazi Germany that will interest historians of Europe and medicine and scholars of culture and gender. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 Life Reform as Burgerliche Kultur | 9 |
2 Popular Hygienic Culture Class and Aesthetic Norms | 32 |
3 Gender and Aesthetic Norms in Popular Hygienic Culture | 55 |
4 Racial Aesthetics | 82 |
5 Models of Holistic Constitutionalism in Regular Medicine and Natural Therapy | 101 |
Life Reform the Crisis of Medicine and Weimar Hygiene Exhibitions | 125 |
Other editions - View all
The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890-1930 Michael Hau Limited preview - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
According argued BA Berlin-Lichterfelde bacteriology beauty Berlin Bildung body bürgerliche Bürgertum chapter claimed concepts contemporary cultivation degeneracy Deutsche deutschen Deutschland discourse Dresden Ebert Ernst eugenic expression female feminist Fetscher Fischer-Dückelmann Freikörperkultur Fritz Lenz gender Gerling German Geschichte Gesolei Günther gymnastics holistic Hueppe human hygiene exhibitions Ibid ideal individuals intersexual Jews journal Kaiserreich Körper Koßmann and Weiß Kraft und Schönheit Kretschmer Leben Leipzig Lichtland Liek lifestyle male Mensch mental middle classes modern Munich natural therapy natural therapy movement Naturarzt Nazi Neue Nordic Nordic race nude culture nudists one’s organized Otto Ammon Paul Schultze-Naumburg people’s percent physical culture physicians predispositions propagated race Racial Hygiene racial theories Rassenschönheit reformers regular medicine regular physicians Richard Ungewitter Sander Gilman Schönenberger Schultze-Naumburg scientific medicine sexual Siegert social Stratz Strongfort Stuttgart Surén tion tried University Press vegetarian Vegetarische Warte Weimar Republic Wilhelm women
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