Being a German hippy
What do Nazis and hippies have in common? Quite a lot.
One of the recent political phenomenon I've been fascinated by is this so-called 'horseshoe theory' where basically hard-left and hard-right swing so far around from the centre, they basically meet up at the same place.
Think about the (safe to say, somewhat radicalised) people opposed to covid-19 vaccinations, or climate change. George Monbiot just wrote about it, and Jules Evans has been doing a lot on this around with regards to his concept of 'conspirituality'.
However, the reason I am interested in this is due to my own family history.
I'm drawing on a few threads here, but in essence: I've been drawn to holistic medicine practices and theories for many years. Its partly because I grew up around it, through my mum, who has been living with various complex health problems for decades. She is also a post-war German refugee.
It was her that put me onto the concept of transgenerational trauma, which for her is a lived experience. She grew up around two parents that were deeply traumatised through their experience of being both combatants and civilians in Germany. This is a huge part of my story, and I know I'll be unpacking this further in time.
Yet, a caveat that makes talking about this difficult, that whatever they went through, it cannot be as difficult as what faced Jews in the same period. However, it is somewhat related that the stories of Germans immediately post-war is almost a taboo. It cannot be given its place in the light, due to the immense (and often justified guilt) about the Nazi-period.
What I'm struck by when looking through our family albums of that period is two things: there are a lot of terrifying uniforms and subtle signs of a fascist regime, but there are also vibrant signs of healthy living.
Since that period of time, I think we've condensed the organisations like the Hitler Youth into a homogeneous blob of militaristic conditioning for young people. Preparing bodies for war.
However, just a glance at that history, shows that the Hitler Youth and these health-focused regimes sprung from an older culture that was prevalent in Germany from the 19th century through to the early 20th.
There is a direct beeline you can trace from the sorts of organisations that were inspired by 19th century German Romanticism, through to the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner et al, to the immigrant germans who headed to California and became the first generation of hippies; even through to the quiet rise of a young man denied his chance to study agriculture due to 1920s hyperinflation and depression who found company and refuge and ultimately notoriety in the SS (that man was Heinrich Himmler).
Back then, as now, our individual and collective health is a universal need, that can be shaped by both the left and right wing politics for various purposes.
Personally, I am interested in trying to re-assess the history of German health practices through a lens that recognises the awful role of Nazism, but recontexutalises it within a much, much broader - and inclusive - culture that sought to find ways to live in better relationship with nature that did not integrate fully with an industrialised age.
There are some fascinating characters from this period - and as the grandson of an East Prussian - I was kind of bowled over to learn of a man, Friedrich Müller, who singlehandedly transformed our attitudes to the human body and sought to re-shape beauty to Grecian ideals.
His books, under the anglicised Eugen Sandow, such as 'Life is Movement' I think serve to remind us that the current obsession with wellness - think Apple Watch-supported yoga; personalised vitamin regimes; microbiome diets - are not new. They are very old, and they are mostly German in flavour.