We Can Blame the Germans for the Hippies

[roo_ster]

http://takimag.com/article/the_original_nature_boys_steve_sailer/print

I figure, "Why not?"  Once you shoulder the blame for WWII and the murder of millions, longhairs reeking of patchouli is a breeze.

The [Nat King Cole] record set off a brief journalistic frenzy in 1948 over its hitherto unknown lyricist eden ahbez, who had long hair and a beard, dressed in a robe and sandals, ate only fruits and nuts, had given himself a Book of Genesis first name and cosmic A-to-Z last name, and lived in a tent under the first “L” in the “Hollywood” sign.

In other words, years before the word was coined in the 1960s, this guy was a hippie. He and the dozen or so other robe-wearing proto-hippies who hung around a German couple’s health-food store in Laurel Canyon called themselves “Nature Boys.” Hence the song’s odd title.

Trying to figure out the story behind this weird anomaly led me to a 2003 article entitled “Hippie Roots & The Perennial Subculture” by Gordon Kennedy and Kody Ryan. They make the case for the origins of the hippie phenomenon in late-19th-century Germany: nudism, hiking (Wandervogel), health food, and the whole back to nature “life reform” business. It’s all more or less German.

So, next time you are playing the latest video game set in WWII W Europe, you can think of every kraut you shoot down as a proto-hippie, too. 

In addition to that theme, the article points out the slowing velocity of social change.

[lee n. field]

They make the case for the origins of the hippie phenomenon in late-19th-century Germany: nudism, hiking (Wandervogel), health food, and the whole back to nature “life reform” business. It’s all more or less German.

19th century German ecological mysticism.  One of the philosophical roots, so I have read somewhere, of what became Nazi-ism.

[MicroBalrog]

Practically anything can be said to have evolved from something else. You could go even further to the various religious-mystical movements of the early Reformation, or to the Middle Ages... but of course this does not mean 'nothing is new under the sun' as the author seems to think.

[gunsmith]

I remember reading Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" he hit on some of the same stuff.
 A total life style? totalitarianism ... very holistic

[Lee]

Wouldn't Jesus qualify as a hippie?

[gunsmith]

Wouldn't Jesus qualify as a hippie?

No, he wanted people to sell some clothes if they didn't have a sword, so they could Purchase  a sword.

Hippies are terrified of swords

[Gewehr98]

That's Ãœber Hippies to you, Ausländer! 

[Perd Hapley]

Practically anything can be said to have evolved from something else.

Ok. The Edict of Nantes, and the adoption of flaked breakfast cereals into the 20th-century American diet.

[Lee]

I dunno....I saw some hippies with swords at a medieval festival once. But they do like their dungeons and drag -ons though.

[Scout26]

The 11 and 12th Century Carmena Burarna^(*) consists of poems and songs that appear to be the work of Goliards, clergy (mostly students) who set up and satirized the Catholic Church.  Generally they were the "Free Spirits" of the day who went from Church to Church, Public House to Public House, drinking and [not quite] following the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.

   

(*)1. 55 songs of morals and mockery (CB 1–55),
    2. 131 love songs (CB 56–186),
    3. 40 drinking and gaming songs (CB 187–226), and
    4. two longer spiritual theater pieces (CB 227 and 228).


The Germans have made hippies for several centuries....

[French G.]

I thought this was going to be about VW micro-buses.

[Scout26]

I thought this was going to be about VW micro-buses.

That too!

[MicroBalrog]

Ok. The Edict of Nantes, and the adoption of flaked breakfast cereals into the 20th-century American diet.

All too easy, fistful.

Edict of Nantes > Spread of protestantism in its various forms > W. K. Kellog was a Seventh-Day Adventist and a religious vegetarian (easy to see why he invented and promoted corn flakes), while J. H. Kellogg was an abstinence promoter and believed a vegetarian diet helped control sexual urges see here.

I'm missing a few steps, but that's approximately how it works.

[roo_ster]

All too easy, fistful.

Edict of Nantes > Spread of protestantism in its various forms > W. K. Kellog was a Seventh-Day Adventist and a religious vegetarian (easy to see why he invented and promoted corn flakes), while J. H. Kellogg was an abstinence promoter and believed a vegetarian diet helped control sexual urges see here.

I'm missing a few steps, but that's approximately how it works.

James Burke would be proud of you for making those connections. 

[Perd Hapley]

Oh, sure. Blaming the French is always easy. But what's the connection between the Battle of Sekigahara and Picasso's Blue Period?

[seeker_two]

Personally, I blame the British......bloody Druids....

[Harold Tuttle]

Are we not the supermen, Aryan pure supermen
Ja we are the supermen, (super duper supermen)

[French G.]

Come with me
Into the trees
We'll lay on the grass
And let the hours pass

Take my hand
Come back to the land
Let's get away
Just for one day

Let me see you
Stripped (2x)

Metropolis
Has nothing on this
You're breathing in fumes
I taste when we kiss

Take my hand
Come back to the land
Where everything's ours
For a few hours

Let me see you
Stripped (2x)

Let me hear you
Make decisions
Without your television
Let me hear you speaking
Just for me

Let me see you
Stripped (2x)

Let me hear you
Make decisions
Without your television
Let me hear you speaking
Just for me

[Perd Hapley]

Are we not the supermen, Aryan pure supermen
Ja we are the supermen, (super duper supermen)

Right in der Fuehrer's face!