The Nature Friends of America: A Historical Sketch by Klaus-Dieter Gross (Regensburg, Germany) The International Organization The Nature Friends were founded in 1895 as a labor organization in Vienna (Austria). Their intentions were a) to improve the health conditions among the working classes and to foster cooperative activities; and b) to empower workers also beyond their immediate work places for the class struggle between capitalists and proletariat. These aims have also defined the Nature Friends of America ever since, with shifting emphases, as either focused on leisure time activities (in what was to become the California section of the club), or with a focus on political action realized through cultural and sports activities (in the Eastern and Midwestern locals which did not survive McCarthyism). The Viennese idea was compulsive. In 1905 it had already reached Zurich (Switzerland) and Munich (Germany). Five years later German and Austrian emigrants took it across the Atlantic. They shared the promises of the American Dream but brought European concepts of culture and nature with them. Der Naturfreund, the international members´ magazine, reported on September 18, 1910, that a New York group had come into being. Its members saw themselves as pioneers whose eminent task it was to open their co-workers´ eyes for the beauty of their new land and to lead them into a socially and culturally improved future, in a country with a culture of plenty, but also of wastefulness; which was fresh, but also raw; where promises of social advancement were subverted by desperate living conditions; and in which nature was unimaginably bountiful, but in whose hectic money-making nobody really cared. The president of the new club was Adolf Tanzer, and mail was to be set to Alexander Wiederseder, 124 Ferst Place, Brooklyn, N.-Y. In 1912, a San Francisco branch came into being. In a text written for the international 75th anniversary, in 1970 Fred Zahn proudly reminded his readers that Adolf Veil was the last living person to have attended the Vienna founding; later an immigrant to California, he was still active among them. While the First World War was raging, national Nature Friends organizations were spreading all over Europe (including Britain), and even to far-away places such as Australia and South America. California The Eastern and the Western sections were to develop somewhat differently. In spite of a few attempts at spreading out, the number of Californian clubs remained three: After San Francisco in 1912, Los Angeles came in 1920, and Oakland in 1921. Typically, to the present day they are praised for their “European atmosphere,” that “[o]ur beer is cold and the smiles warm,“ and that the Muir Woods club house, e.g., is “A pub in the woods,“ also tagged “Pfiff! : Beer + Hiking = Naturfreunde.“ Popular festivals like Octoberfests and traditions such as Schuhplatteln (a Bavarian- or Austrian-type dance form) and the Maibaum (a May pole) still characterize their internet presence. When celebrating 50 Years The Nature Friends Branch Oakland, Erich Fink summed up the history shared by all Californian branches: “All members in the 1920´s spoke German. All meetings were conducted in German. Until the early 1930´s, membership in a union was also required before becoming a Nature Friend. This aspect of our organization has nearly disappeared.” Early on, the Nature Friends were “usually of a political persuasion a bit to the left.“ On the McCarthyite prosecution in the East he took a more conservative stand: “Unfortunately, due perhaps to the irresponsibility of a few political fanatics, those branches have disappeared as Nature Friends since the end of World War II.” In 1971 (as well as today, one may add) the organization “represents a wider cross section of the population“ and is “mainly engaged in social family type recreational activities.“ Only in Southern California, Fink reports, the German element is less prominent: Our Los Angeles club is not as large in membership as the two clubs in Northern California. Our membership has been hovering around 100 in the past few years while Oakland has over 200 and San Francisco nearly 500. There are also only a handful of old-timers left who built up the club and the origin of our membership is much more diverse in ethnic background and nationality. The Nature Friends, in a way, are similar to the Sierra Club: In the Alpine countries today the club is active in all aspects of the ecological and naturalist-political movement similar to the activities of the Sierra Club in the U.S. The difference between the Sierra Club and the Nature Friends in Europe is that the Nature Friends own and maintain nearly a thousand clubhouses and mountain homes where members are involved in a variety of social and cultural activities. To today´s Californian Nature Friends politics is of minor relevance: The club is of a non-political nature, although the members´ declaration of love of nature involves some commitment to the environmental cause. Our club´s parent club in Europe, just like the Sierra Club here, is actively involved in the political ecological movement on all levels. Here in California our members have more of an inclination to be participants and friendly users of the pleasures of nature: hiking, skiing, mountaineering and outdoor recreational activities. In retrospect trans-continental differences may look sharper than contemporaries saw them. Internal migration was important, as in the case of Conrad und Anna Rettenbacher, who, coming from Philadelphia, had joined the San Francisco group on January 15, 1932. When three years later they died in the California mountains, their grave was marked “Die Naturfreunde, Inc. San Francisco.“ Even after dissolution in the East, contacts remained intact, like when J.L. Behmer, from Schwenksville, Pennsylvania (and for twenty years president of the New York local) represented California at the meeting of the Nature Friends International in 1975. At present the Californian clubs boast five “Homes” at spectacular natural retreats: The Heidelmann Lodge, the Tourist Club San Francisco Home, the Oakland Nature Friends Lodge, the Sierra Madre Clubhouse and the San Jacinto Cabin. They have vowed to meet maximum ecological standards and pride themselves in preserving the German traditions of their forebears. The East and Midwest It is remarkable how prominent American texts and references were in the early Naturfreund, reflecting how proud the editors in Vienna were of their daughter clubs across the ocean. Yet unlike for California, data on Eastern groups vary according to sources, and the slowness of trans-Atlantic communication may be responsible for some inconsistencies. One compilation of founding reports in Der Naturfreund reads like this: 1910 New York 1913 Philadelphia San Francisco Los Angeles Seattle 1917 St. Paul, Missouri 1919 Newark 1921 Oakland 1925 Chicago 1926 Milwaukee 1927 Detroit, Mich. Paterson, N.J. Locals such as St. Paul or Detroit do not seem to have survived long. For Los Angeles we find a discrepancy between first meetings and a formal incorporation in the 1920s. Soon distances made it practical to split groups into a Western (“Gau West”) and an Eastern/Midwestern section (“Gau Ost”). For the East, the American members´ magazine Der Tourist: Zeitschrift für den Gau der Nordost- und den Gau der West-Staaten Amerika´s names ten clubs registered with the New York headquarters in 1931: - New York City - Syracuse, N.Y. - Paterson, N.J. - Rochester, N.Y. - Jersey City, N.J. - Newark. N.J. - Philadelphia, PA - Allentown, PA - Detroit, Mich. - Milwaukee, Wisc. - Chicago, Ill. A seemingly unlimitted supply of free land provided the clubs with the chance to acquire camps and houses at a speed unimaginable in densely populated Europe. In the 1910s and 1920s Der Naturfreund lists them as 1913 San Francisco (Muir Woods) 1916 New York (a bathhouse) 1917 New York (a farmhouse) San Francisco (Swiss style chalet) 1918 New York (camp ground near Peekskill) 1921 New York (Midvale) Oakland (Sierra Madre) 1928 Chicago (near Lake Michigan) Philadelphia (Boyerstown) For 1929 an international survey of Nature Friends Homes mentions six active vacation and recreation centers: - Camp Midvale, N.J. (run by the New York chapter) - Muir Woods (San Francisco) - High Peak, Catskill Mountains (New York) - Redwood Peack [!] (Oakland) - Landistore, PA (Philadelphia) - Stade Indiana (Chicago). Chicago, a relative late-comer in the Midwest, is a most interesting case. One source states that in the 1920s it already had a city home, yet there are not details. Unique visual documentation is the building of their Home in “Starved Rock“ state park: 32 photos taken between 1925 und 1927 by Walter Wieland, an immigrant who later returned to Germany. The 1926 calendar of the German national club showed Chicago members hiking in the very area. That way it acquainted more than 100.000 German club members with the American efforts, and certainly publications like these did their best to give emigrants with a Nature Friends background the impression that they would be welcome in the USA. Before, during, and after World War I Der Naturfreund published addresses, promoted contacts and invited newcomers to join their overseas comrades. American membership in the second half of the 1920s exceeded 1000, and was 1200 in 1936. The organization was big enough to create a lively community across the nation, but too small to have any kind of mass effect. Several reasons may account for that: First, most of their publications were in German. Then, no party or group supported the clubs, whose political intention was to bridge rather than increase political differences. Thirdly, the organization was active mainly in big cities, where commercial distractions were strong. And finally, in particular the Depression polarized the organization. Some locals now preferred a generally humanistic approach, with politics as just one field of activities; others (like Philadelphia and Chicago) called for more active opposition to capitalism.