Walk through Munich’s biggest park on a summer afternoon and you’ll pass people sunbathing naked a few minutes from the city centre. Nobody looks twice. That’s FKK: not a niche hobby, but a normal part of German life for well over a century.
- 1898
- Germany’s first FKK club is founded, in Essen
- 1949
- The German FKK federation, the DFK, is set up in Kassel
- 1982
- Munich makes part of the Englischer Garten a nude area
- 18 km
- The Harz nude hiking trail, opened in 2010
1. What FKK means
FKK stands for Freikörperkultur, literally “free body culture”. It’s the German word for naturism, but it carries a slightly different feel. For many Germans, FKK isn’t an identity or a club you join. It’s simply what you do when the sun comes out: you go to the lake, find the FKK side, and take your clothes off. You’ll see the letters on signs at beaches and lakes across Germany, and across Europe too, since German holidaymakers took the word with them.
2. Where it came from
FKK grew out of the Lebensreform, or “life reform”, movement of the late 1800s. As Germany’s cities filled with factories and smoke, reformers pushed back with fresh air, sunlight, exercise, vegetarian food and a return to nature. Taking off restrictive clothing was part of the same idea. The Wandervogel youth movement, founded in Berlin in 1896, took young people hiking and camping in the countryside, and Germany’s first FKK club was founded in Essen in 1898.
By the 1920s the movement was bigger in Germany than anywhere else in the world. In 1926 Adolf Koch opened a school of physical culture in Berlin where men and women exercised together naked, and in 1929 it hosted the first international congress on nudity. The Nazis restricted the movement from 1933, then brought the clubs under state control, and FKK only found its feet again after the war.
3. East and West
After 1945 FKK took two different paths. In West Germany it was organised through clubs. The German Association for Free Body Culture, the DFK, was founded in Kassel in 1949 and is still the national body today, a member of the German Olympic Sports Confederation.
In East Germany it became a mass movement. The government tried to ban nude bathing in 1954, but artists and writers who holidayed at Ahrenshoop on the Baltic protested, and by 1956 nude swimming was allowed on beaches set aside for FKK. From the 1970s it was hugely popular. For millions of East Germans, a family holiday on the Baltic coast meant the FKK beach, and going naked became a small everyday freedom in a country with few others.
4. FKK today
Club membership has fallen since its peak, from around 150,000 in the early 1970s to about 60,000 by the end of the 1990s, and the DFK reported about 45,000 members in 2008. But that understates how ordinary FKK still is. Most Germans who go bare have never joined a club. You’ll find FKK in places the UK would never allow:
- City parks. Munich’s Englischer Garten has official nude areas, including the Schönfeldwiese, made an FKK area in 1982 after naturists had been sunbathing there for years.
- Lakes. Many lakes around Berlin have FKK sections, among them the Teufelssee in the Grunewald forest, a nude swimming spot for decades.
- The Baltic and North Sea coasts. Long stretches of beach have signed FKK sections.
- Hiking trails. Nacktwandern, or nude hiking, has its own trails. The best known is the 18 km Harzer Naturistenstieg near Dankerode in the Harz mountains, opened in 2010.
5. The German sauna
For many British visitors, the sauna is where FKK comes as the biggest surprise. In most German saunas, nudity isn’t optional; it’s the rule, and many are mixed. Swimwear is seen as unhygienic, and you’ll be asked to take it off. Bring a large towel: you sit or lie on it so that no bare skin touches the wood.
6. Tips for British visitors
- Look for “FKK” signs. “Textil” means swimwear on.
- Nobody will stare, and nobody expects you to explain yourself. Relax and act as if it’s normal, because there it is.
- The same etiquette applies as at home: no photos of other people, give people space, and dress when you leave the FKK area.
- Stay inside marked areas. Being naked outside them can still get you a fine.
Germany tops our list of the best countries for naturism. If FKK has you curious, start closer to home: our first-timer’s guide and UK beach map will get you to your first naturist beach, and British Naturism runs swims and events across the country.