Monte Verita

If you want to really understand naturism you have to study the Monte Verita project. Because here the whole ideas of naturism came together: anti-alcoholism, vegetarinism, body building and naturopathy. For me it was an eureka moment as I was in Locarno thirty years ago and I first heard about Monte Verita. But let's start at the beginning: The actual story of the alternative settlement project began as early as 1899 in Bled (at that time belonging to Austria-Hungary, today in Slovenia). It was there that the music teacher Ida Hofmann, who had grown up in Transylvania, and the Belgian industrialist's son Henri Oedenkoven met during a stay at the Arnold Rikli natural healing sanatorium. Both were unknown to each other until then but developed a strong sympathy for each other in the few weeks of their common cure therapy. They were joined by Karl Graeser, an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army who was also taking a cure therapy from the heliopath ("Sun Doctor") Arnold Rikli and intended to resign as soon as possible from his army post. Karl's views were influenced by his brother Gustav Grser, who had been living a journeyman life for a year. The three Graeser brothers Karl, Ernst and Gustav went together on a hike from Bled to Florence. The aspiring painter Ernst Graeser (18841944) later also lived temporarily on "Monte Verita" and lured fellow students such as Willi Baumeister, Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten to the closely related colony in Amden on Walensee. An intensive exchange of letters developed between Oedenkoven and Hofmann, which led to a meeting in Munich in October 1900. In addition to the initiators Oedenkoven and Hofmann, the brothers Karl and Gustav "Gusto" Graeser attended this meeting, as well as Ida Hofmann's sister Jenny, the teacher Lotte Hattemer and her friend Ferdinand Brune from Graz, a theosophically influenced son of a landowner. After "Oedenkoven's plan" of the founding of a so-called "vegetable cooperative" had been presented, the decision was made that "each individual's movable property [...] should be contributed to the founding of a natural healing institute [...]". The main part of the expected profit would go back to the project, the rest of the profit would be distributed among the members. If a member - for whatever reason - intends to leave the project community at a later date, the paid-in capital should be returned to him as soon as "it is liquidated". It was also decided that the cooperative should be founded on the shore of one of the northern Italian lakes and that, in order to find the right place, they wanted to set off immediately on foot. see more at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verita