August 10, 1997

NOTHING TO HIDE

GERMANS BLOW THEIR TOPS -- AND BOTTOMS -- OVER OUR NUDITY LAWS

By MATTHEW FISHER
Sun Columnist at Large MARKGRAFENHEIDE, Germany -- As many as 16,000 people come everyday to a sublime stretch of white sand on the Baltic Sea to do what is not only illegal, but still considered scandalous in Canada.
"It's the law. This is a nude beach. Total nudity is allowed," Rudolf Lazar said as he surveyed several hundred naked men, women and children of every physical description cavorting in the sun.
Lazar has a unique job. He is the chief of police of the world's longest and busiest nude beach.
"The rules state people may only be nude on 12 km of our 15-km beach," the 45-year-old police chief said. "The reality is that some people take their clothes off everywhere while others prefer to keep them on. We're very liberal. We never interfere with any of this."
It is official policy that Lazar and his nine officers must wear their uniforms when patrolling among the nudists, which they do every day from May until September. The lifeguards are obliged to wear swimsuits and T-shirts, although the moment they are off duty, most of them strip down to their birthday suits.
The German word for nude sunbathing is Freikoerperkulture or free body culture. But everyone calls it FKK. Signs on the magnificent sand dunes, which border what Germans call the Ostsee, warn that dogs, horses, fires, camping and much else is forbidden. The only thing that seems to be allowed is FKK.
Sun worshippers here were confounded when told about a recent Canadian court ruling that stated that women in Canada finally may go topless. They couldn't understand why such a ruling was necessary, let alone how it could scandalize many Canadians and get them speaking darkly about a breakdown in sexual morality.
"I'm baffled and astounded by the Canadian position on this. This is normal behavior. Thank God we can do this here without interference," 41-year-old Juergen Rohde said. "Those who want to be nude in the West are often boxed in at little clubs or on small beaches. It's totally open here. There are no shocks or surprises. Everyone knows what they are getting."
If visitors don't want to take their clothes off, they are free to leave them on, Rohde said. If they are offended by the nudity of others, they can still go to what Germans call a "Textil" beach -- a beach where people wear bathing suits made from textiles.
Aileen -- a 16-year-old day-tripper from the nearby port of Rostock who had come by bus to sunbathe in the nude -- said her sister had been to Canada and the U.S. and found the people there "very conservative about nudity."
"Canadians must be prudish," was the opinion of Aileen's equally blond 16-year-old school chum, Dortai. "I think the upbringing has left people over there with a lot of complexes."
Thora Moeller, a striking, Baywatch-beautiful lifeguard on the beach, offered a blunter assessment.
"Canadians must be stupid to think there is something wrong or dirty about FKK," said Moeller, who is planning to visit an uncle in Toronto next week.
Asked if she intended to swim in the buff in Canada, the 23-year-old former competitive swimmer replied: "No, I won't. As ridiculous as your rules are, I don't want trouble. I'll be a guest there, so I'll wear Textil."
Nude sunbathing was popular in Germany long before it came into fashion on the French Riviera.
There has been an FKK club in Berlin since 1922.
By the time the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, there were 13 such clubs in Germany with thousands of members. Germans viewed nudism as a reaction to the extreme moral conservatism of 19th-century Prussia. For the Nazis, it fit with Adolf Hitler's propaganda that Germans were the most beautiful and most fit race in the world. After the war the FKK movement sputtered in capitalist West Germany. But it continued to flourish in the communist east.
The majority of the people lazing on the beach at Markgrafenheide -- two hours north of Berlin -- were on holidays from the former East Germany. Most said FKK was one of the few freedoms they were allowed, so they took to it passionately.
Since reunification, the nudist movement has exploded across all of Germany. Munich's Englischer Garten -- on the banks of the Iser River -- is crammed every lunch hour with buck naked office workers. So is Tiergarten Park, near the Reichstag in Berlin. A similar comparison would be if large numbers of Bay Street types took all their clothes off every summer's day at Queen's Park.
Like most former East Germans, Uwe Odrich, 45, a heating systems repairman, is proud of nudity.
"I thought you (in Canada) came from a democracy where people could do as they wished? But it isn't true, is it?" Odrich asked with an impish smile as his 18-year-old daughter, Dana, was naked beside him.
Medical student Kristina Groth, 35, attacked sunbathing with swimming trunks as unhealthy.
"It's better to go without clothes," the aspiring physician said. "Wet clothes can be dirty and carry infections. I think it is wonderful to see brown skin everywhere. It's esthetically pleasing."
Groth also was convinced that nudity was good for the sexual psyche and that repressing it -- as she thinks countries such as Canada have done -- can lead to problems.
"You get bad ideas about sex when you forbid people from looking at other people who are naked," the wife and mother of one said. "I can't understand, for example, why so many (Western) parents will not let their children see them naked. This is totally incomprehensible to me."
Shop clerk Kristina Schaumberger, 40, said that she felt only pity for Canadians because they aren't allowed to swim in the nude.
"The water brings out inner feelings of eroticism," Schaumberger said. "It makes you feel like a swan to feel the water everywhere. It was the water that was erotic. Not the boys who were with you."