Don’t be surprised if you spot nudies during your summer holiday in Germany.
Summer isn't over yet. In Germany, a common way to spend it is by the lakes or the Baltic Sea. For many non-Germans, though, it comes as a bit of a culture shock: there are naked people walking around, and nobody seems to care.
Germany is one of the most relaxed countries in the world when it comes to public nudity. Parks, beaches, and campsites often set aside dedicated spaces for naturists, and there's a high tolerance for mixing between the dressed and the undressed.
Germany's “free body culture” (Freikörperkultur or FKK) roots can be traced back to the late 19th century, when (mostly) white-collar men in Protestant, urban Germany sought a return to nature as a response to rising industrialisation.
“The idea was to expose the whole body to sun, air, water, and other natural elements to contribute to its well-being. It also included exercising,” explains Maren Möhring, a cultural historian and nudism expert at Leipzig University.
By the early 20th century, it became a mass movement, with hundreds of FKK clubs with their own grounds where members could be nude together, as well as dedicated public spaces where people are allowed to be naked. It became especially popular around the lakeside resorts near Berlin and along the Baltic and North Sea coasts.
The Nazi regime had an ambivalent relationship with the practice: hostile to nudity itself, but sympathetic to the ideal of bodily discipline it represented, and as a result, nudism was only partly suppressed.
FKK found new life in communist East Germany. The government tried to suppress it at first, but public resistance was strong enough to force it to back down, and by the 1970s it had become mainstream. In a restrictive society under constant state surveillance, undressing at a lake or on a Baltic beach offered citizens a rare, harmless taste of autonomy. “It was a way for people to express their freedom,” Möhring explained.
The FKK tradition is very much alive today across the entire country (here is a map of official sites), though many people who go nude no longer bother joining a club. FKK club membership stood at around 33,000 in 2025 across 128 clubs – down from 54,000 at the turn of the century.
Naturism is popular across Europe, especially along the coastlines of France, Spain, and Croatia, as well as in the Netherlands and Denmark. But Germany's version is different, Möhring explains. “In those countries, naturism is often concentrated in big resorts. In Germany, it's less segregated and more woven into everyday life. Most Germans find it totally normal to be around someone naked, whether in the sauna, in a park, or on the beach.”
That might come as a surprise, given Germany's reputation abroad for prudishness. Möhring points to one key reason: from the start, nudism was marketed as strictly asexual. “It was made clear that it had nothing to do with eroticism or sexuality, it was about the cult of the natural body,” she explains.
In recent years, however, the practice is fading among younger generations in Germany. Because of the widespread use of smartphone cameras, but also the rise of the cult of the perfect body on TikTok or Instagram, which increases the pressure not to undress.
Despite its fading popularity, the impulse behind FKK's original success – a reaction to modernity – might still feel relevant today as our lives get more virtual. Möhring points to the current analogue revival and anything that feels authentic, like film cameras, vinyl, or print magazines. “The nudist movement could tap into that, since it's about your body, something you can feel, something not in virtual reality but in contact with the natural world.”
It also fits well into today's wellness-obsessed era. “FKK was early in talking about self-care for your body, about the idea that you're responsible for your body, that you should take care of it, that it should be healthy and become more beautiful. So in a way, they were quite ahead of their time.”