Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. 1880s free love messiah, naturist, pacifist, vegetarian, sun worshipper and unique symbolist painter.

Regarded as the “forefather of alternative movements” Diefenbach (1851-1913) took to wearing a caftan and sandals. In the 1880s. As often, he wore nothing at all. He gave up meat, alcohol and tobacco and preached free love, pacifism and sun worship.  He was rejected from Munich’s venerable Pinakothek museum in 1884 because his messianic robes were considered an “irreconcilable contradiction” to the old institution’s standards. His public preaching, advocating radical lifestyle reforms, were banned by police.

So enamored was he of sunlight, he named his children after it; Helios (the sun god), Stella (the star) and Lucidus (the shining one) and allowed them to sun-bathe naked. Another of the many infringements that confused polite German society and brought him into conflict with its authorities.

Diefenbach flouted social conventions; he considered marriage a “compulsory institute”, “degrading and shameful”, a “legitimate form of fornication”. The church was the “Satan institute”, and he rejected the “clothing epidemic” as a “monkey masquerade” that sickens the body. He practiced what he preached too, a regular sight, walking barefoot through Munich in his robes.

In 1892 he and his followers left for Austria where, of course, they founded Humanitas, a utopian commune outside Vienna. Diefenbach’s messianic tendencies were given free rein but by the time the century closed he was bankrupt. He retired to Capri, an island in Italy’s Bay of Naples, where he died in 1913.