Lebensreform.

7 photos, sepia-toned, 19,7 x 24,6 cm, stuck on paper.

Photo album 4to oblong, black shagreen, clasp and catch pres.

Intriguing album without any annotations comprising three photos of a castle, one of a church, one of people on a boat and two particular photos of a group of people, men, women and children, in a natural environment in front of their dwelling huts made from organic material. The people represented are bare-foot and dressed in the same simple way, all the men have long hair in the same style. It is possible that these photographs are the testimony of the first attempt at Lebensform by Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851-1913) in Transylvania. Lebensreform ("life reform") was a social movement in late 19th-c. and early 20th-c.Germany and Switzerland. The movement propagated a back-to-nature way of life, putting an emphasis on, among other aspects, health, raw and organic food, nudism, sexual liberation, alternative medicine, religious reform and abstention from alcohol, tobacco, drugs and vaccines. On the last photo we might identify Gustav Nagel (1874-1952), the founder of "Naturmenschen", a radical form of Lebensreform.