'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

This essay, based on primary sources from the privately-runInternationale FKK-Bibliothek and a growing body of secondaryliterature, examines some of the myths and misconceptions regardingthe fate of naturism in the Third Reich. It shows that despiteGoering's decree of 3 March 1933, which described the ‘nakedculture movement’ as ‘one of the greatest dangersfor German culture and morality’, naturism did not cometo an abrupt halt after the Machtergreifung. While officialhistories of German naturism talk proudly of the movement's‘persecution’ and ‘non-violent resistance’,there was little concerted effort to close down naturist associationsor to arrest individual activists. In fact, without a definitiveorder from the Führer, Germany's naturists existed in asemi-legal limbo for much of the 1930s. Many National Socialistsregarded the clothes-free lifestyle with contempt, but therewere elements within the Nazi state—and particularly theSS—which could see significant benefits from celebrating‘the instinct for bodily nobility and its beauty in ourVolk’. A mutual desire to de-eroticize nudity helped cementthe bond between Heydrich, Himmler and naturist leaders. Asa result, German Freikörperkultur passed some of its mostimportant landmarks in the years of Nazi rule, including itsvery first book with photographs in full colour, a full-lengthfeature film, and a new, more permissive Bathing Law. Thus whileGeorge Mosse's Nationalism and Sexuality claims the Nazis ‘forbadenudism after their accession to power’, a closer examinationof the fate of naturism after 1933 reveals a more complex picture,which serves to highlight not only the limits of the régime'stotalitarian aspirations, but also the naturist movement's owndisparate and problematic heritage.     

Becoming to Belong: On the Relation between Infinite Consciousness and the Absolute

My essay focuses on the relation between consciousness and reality. I argue, following Georg Cantor, that consciousness is a potential infinite driven by care to invest itself in the world historically. As human beings develop an authentic sense of self they are driven by good faith to postulate an Absolute infinite, which, following Spinoza, we may call God. Thus God, as the Absolute infinite, constitutes our reality, which I characterize as implicate information explicating itself through time. To live authentically is to recognize the nature of God and commit to Him through faith. Faith means to understand one’s self as a potentially infinite consciousness attempting to authentically participate in, and understand, the Absolute of God.     

Human–animal relations and the celebration of place‐identity: A case study of the Scone Racing Carnival,New South Wales

Festivals and carnivals are social‐cultural assemblages of human and non‐human entities. This paper investigates interactions between humans and animals by focusing on the Scone Racing Carnival, a key event in the Scone and Upper Hunter Horse Festival. This paper contributes to existing studies of non‐metropolitan festivals and animal–human relations by questioning how and why non‐humans are enrolled in these cultural events, and the impact this has on place identity. The central argument is that the relationship between humans and thoroughbred horses, in particular, has played a significant role in the creation of a distinctive landscape, a regional identity for the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales, and a local identity for Scone. In turn, the carnival has assisted in maintaining an ‘eque‐cultural’ identity through the marketing and annual public celebration of human–horse relationships.     

Innovations in the afterlife of the Cold War: German-language human geography

This commentary will coalesce around two main points. First, the articles by Markus Hesse on urban geography, by Annika Mattissek and Georg Glasze on recent developments in discourse-analytic approaches, and by Ulrich Best on the genealogy of radical–Marxist or critical German-language geography all support the contention that key features of Germanophone human geography still mark it out as a ‘Cold War’ human geography. As will become clear, this contention goes well beyond noting the marginality (until recently) of radical–Marxist positions (Belina, B., Best, U., & Naumann, M. (2009). Critical geography in Germany: From exclusion to inclusion via internationalization. Social Geography, 4, 47–58). Second, I will argue that although this configuration has had real costs, including both analytic and ‘civic’ deficits, it has also allowed the development of distinctive strengths and innovative emphases in human geographic research that can and should be engaged by other sub-communities in the international discourse.     

Ryan White CARE Act Title I Funding Priorities and Unmet Service Needs in Baltimore, Maryland

The analysis presented in this paper explores the similarities and differences between the services selected as priorities for funding by the Baltimore Ryan White CARE Act Title I Planning Council during the first 2 years of the program in this metropolitan area, and services perceived by HIV/AIDS service providers and people living with HIV/AIDS to be unmet needs. The data used for these analyses were collected as part of a study to assess the implementation and impact of the CARE Act legislation in the Baltimore eligible metropolitan area( EMS ). This project includes three interrelated components: (a) a case study of the legislatively mandated Planning Council, (b) a survey of providers representing HIV/AIDS service organizations, and (c) a qualitative field study of the perceptions of people living with HIV/AIDS about the service delivery system. Taken together, the data from these three sources describe the similarities and differences among these three groups involved in HIV/AIDS care in Baltimore, in terms of their perceptions of services needed by people living with HIV / AIDS. The conclusions drawn from this study can be used to strengthen needs assessments in Title I-EMAs throughout the United States.