The beauty

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Beauty - magazine for art and life adorned with pictures was a German monthly magazine published by Karl Vanselow between 1902 and 1914 in Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna. The magazine continued to appear in Dresden from 1915 until 1932. For this purpose, a publishing house of the same name was founded.

The magazine was elaborately designed, made on art paper and was the first to offer “nude cultural” photographic nudes. The cover sheet for each issue was designed in Art Nouveau style. The publisher was the poet and publicist Karl Vanselow. Due to financial difficulties it went to the Dresden publishing house book dealer Richard A. Giesecke in 1914 , who moved it to the right spectrum of life reform . Articles and short essays, novellas and stories through to poems by authors such as Wilhelm Bode , Henry van de Velde , Paul Schultze-Naumburg , Isadora Duncan and Hermann Bahr have appeared . Noticeably many withheld their true identity. It was characteristic of the nude culture movement to fall back on a pseudonym for fear of professional disadvantages.

Treatises on past and contemporary beauty cultures were published under topics such as personal hygiene, physical exercise and nudity. Under the heading “Prophets of Beauty”, artists, writers and philosophers - from Goethe and Anselm Feuerbach to Auguste Rodin - were presented as advocates of the beautiful. In addition, attention was drawn to reform clothing , beautiful living and dance culture , a little less the description of works of art. Series and foreign issues with travel reports and nude photographs of locals opened up foreign cultures. Political or economic questions, however, were not taken into account.

In addition to advertisements for life-reforming products, a “book market” and regional information, the supplement also contained contact advertisements that provided information about the readership of beauty. It consisted almost exclusively of the middle-class, middle-class milieu. The magazine saw itself intended for “free and distinguished women and men” who should “ennoble and refine healthy and sensual thinking”. It is also noticeable that men and women over forty years of age were rarely seen in the advertisements.

The topics of youth, art and literature also showed the first racial hygienic views on nudity and beauty, which resulted in perfect bodies. One of the last issues appeared in 1932 with the lead story: "Healthy woman - healthy people!"

literature

  • Rolf Koerber: Naturism . In: Diethart Kerbs / Jürgen Reulecke: Handbook of German Reform Movements 1880–1933 , Wuppertal 1998, pp. 103–114

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