They became known around town as the ‘Nature Boys’. They too cultivated long hair and beards, practiced vegetarianism and Eastern mysticism, and spent long periods of time in nature where they slept outside, roamed nearly naked, and foraged for food. When not wandering the desert, eden abhez occasionally worked as a piano player at the Eutropheon, where he befriended a group of young men with similar views. Richter’s Cook-Less Book with Scientific Food Chart (1925), which condemned the violent act of eating cooked animal flesh and offered chapters on sun-baked bread and ‘soups for the toothless’. John Richter regularly gave public lectures about the benefits of raw foods and natural living at the Eutropheon, while his wife Vera wrote cookbooks such as Mrs. This interest in alternative lifestyles was akin to a religious calling. Such figures promoted ideals that, over nearly a century, travelled from Germany to the deserts and tiny health food stores of Southern California, and, eventually, defined a spirit of 1960s counterculture.Ī group of ‘Nature Boys’ including eden ahbez (front row, second from left) and Gypsy Boots (back row, far left), 1948 (courtesy: The Estate of Gypsy Boots) the ‘father of the detox bath’ and Adolf Just, founder of the Jungborn vegetarian nudist colony and author of titles such as Return to Nature! The True Natural Method of Healing and Living and the True Salvation of the Soul (1896). They shared books on naturopathy and healing by Germans like Arnold Ehret, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1914 after running the sanitarium at the Monte Verità commune in Switzerland, Louis Kuhne a.k.a. The communities that coalesced around such businesses shared not only dietary habits, but also an interest in learning about alternative health and lifestyle practices. Sexauer’s Natural Foods in Santa Barbara, owned by German immigrant Hermann Sexauer, and the Eutropheon, a vegetarian raw food cafeteria in Los Angeles opened by John and Vera Richter in 1917, were centres for disseminating radical ideas imported from Europe. By the time he settled in California he had embraced the freedom of an atypical lifestyle, claiming to have crossed the country eight times by foot.īesides Lebensreform, other Germanic ideas were finding fertile ground in early 20th century Southern California. Ahbez – who wrote his chosen name in lowercase because he believed that only the words ‘God’ and ‘Infinity’ should be capitalized – was born to a large, impoverished family in Brooklyn and sent by orphan train to live with foster parents in the Midwest. Recognizing a kindred spirit, Pester became a mentor to the younger man. Sometime in the 1930s, Pester met a fellow wanderer named eden ahbez in Tahquitz Canyon. These cards featured health tips gleaned from the philosophy of Lebensreform (life reform), the late-19th century German cultural movement that endorsed a return to nature through practices like vegetarianism, natural healing, and nudism. He settled in Palm Canyon, a couple of hours drive east of Los Angeles, where he took long solitary hikes in the bronze San Jacinto Mountains and sold homemade postcards at a roadside stand. Pester, known as the ‘hermit of Palm Springs’, left Germany in 1906 to avoid military service. He’s been living in the desert for years, making his own sandals and subsisting on a diet of mostly raw fruit and vegetables. Behind him is a simple hut he built himself, covered with palm fronds. He’s barefoot and wears a loose wrap around his waist. Willard)Ī photograph taken near Palm Springs, California, depicts a long-haired, bearded man sitting on a tree stump playing slide guitar. William Pester in front of his cabin in Palm Canyon, Palm Springs California, 1917 (courtesy: Palm Springs Art Museum, Photograph: Stephen H.
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