Idylle – Idyll

Promises of the dawn –  The natural aesthetic of the Lebensreform

The painter Christian Landenberger (1862-1927), a native of Ebingen, found the depiction of bathing children to be the ideal motif for his open-air painting. Self-forgetful and introverted the boys bathing enjoy the proximity and freshness of the water. In the spirit of the life reform movement around 1900, they return to the bosom of unspoilt nature.  Landenberger, who was a professor at the Stuttgart Academy and ran a private art school, also made this motif in his painting class. The young Willi Baumeister visited his teacher at the Ammersee and in his bathing scene with bistro table and parasol nevertheless set other accents.

From right to left

Christian Landenberger, Boys by a stream, 1883
Albstadt Art Museum, Walther Groz Collection Foundation

Christian Landenberger, Two boys bathing, 1901-10
Stuttgart Art Museum

Christian Landenberger, Bathing Boy (dedicated to the painter Rudolf Nissl), 1901-10
Stuttgart Art Museum

Willi Baumeister, Bathers with Parasol, 1907-09
Albstadt Art Museum, Walther Groz Collection Foundation

‘O river, my river’

O river, my river in the morning ray!
Receive now, receive
The longing body once,
And kiss chest and cheek!
He already feels up my chest,
He cools with love’s lust
And exultant song.

(Poem by Eduard Mörike, 1837)

Badeverbot in Ulm – bathing ban in Ulm

In July 1803, the Bavarian authorities of the time issued a ban on bathing in the Blau and on the banks of the Danube in the city area. The fact that passers-by could see unclothed bathers was considered an offence against custom and decency. The Strasbourg-born painter Johannes Hans considered the previously common, revealing activities of women and men in an etching. Bathing in the city area remained a contentious issue for a long time. As late as 1920, women’s associations in Ulm complained about the ‘bathing conditions on the banks of the Danube’, the clothing was ‘often quite inadequate’. Only the increasingly deteriorating water quality in the course of the 20th century really put an end to river bathing.

„Ulm from Southwest“, around 1800
Johannes Hans, House of city history ulm