1800s
1900s
19th
20th
A01=Michael Hau
active
aesthetic
alternative
anxiety
appearance
Author_Michael Hau
beautiful
body
bodybuilder
Category=NHTB
contemporary
cultural
culture
economic
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eugenics
europe
european
fitness
gender
german
groups
gym
historical
history
hygiene
ideal
industrial
industrialized
medicinal
medicine
nazi
norms
nudist
personal
prewar
reform
social studies
society
sociology
success
vegetarian
wellness
Product details
- ISBN 9780226319766
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 15 Apr 2003
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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From the 1890s to the 1930s, a growing number of Germans began to scrutinize and discipline their bodies in a utopian search for perfect health and beauty. Some became vegetarians, nudists or bodybuilders, while others turned to alternative medicine or eugenics. In "The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany", Michael Hau demonstrates why so many men and women were drawn to these life reform movements and examines their tremendous impact on German society and medicine. Hau argues that the obsessions with personal health and fitness was often rooted in anxieties over professional and economic success, as well as fears that modern industrialized civilization was causing Germany and its people to degenerate. He also examines how different social groups gave different meanings to the same hygienic practices and aesthetic ideals. What results is a penetrating look at class formation in pre-Nazi Germany that should interest historians of Europe and medicine and scholars of culture and gender.
