Fidus was the pseudonym used by German illustrator, painter and publisher Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener (1868 – 1948). His drawings of nude figures in graphic designs helped characterize the work of the era. He was a symbolist artist, whose work expressed a resistance to the conditions of urban life in all its forms. Hoppener left art school in 1887 to join Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach’s commune near Munich. When the police raided the commune, Höppener was charged with nude sunbathing. On Diefenbach’s behalf, he served a brief prison sentence for public nudity, earning him the name Fidus – Latin for “the faithful one.”
There are some articles accounting for Fidus’ activity in the Lebensreform (life reform) movement. Fidus and his peers were critical of the negative aspects of progress and modernization or petty-bourgeois conceptions. But no articles I have found recognize that the naturist movements in Germany at heart were very likely a reaction to Prussian Model educational system.
Prussia’s military failings in the Napoleonic Wars lead to the German kingdom into developing an “education” system designed to social engineer children, year, from age 6 to 16, into full compliance with the state and its military leaders. The point was bluntly stated by the philosopher Fichte, “Education should provide the means to destroy free will.” The development of the modern educational system is presumed to be the touchstone of libertarian ideals but nothing could be further from the truth. Statements from the founders of the education system make it clear that the intent was to mold and pacify the young to serve the needs of industry. The principle method was by suppressing the child’s feelings which were thought to be a hindrance to pursuing objective knowledge. This conditioning lead to the reduction of a person’s value to zero. Fidus and other artists of the period sensed that they had been turned in to zeros. So I believe many of the nude figures of the period expressed the need to reject the modern systems of conditioning.
Unfortunately, there has not been much written to interpret Fidus’ art. There’s just a general understanding that he expressed the feelings for a direct and immediate contact with nature. But some of his pieces have an iconography that is difficult to interpret. Is the nude man holding a hammer and a nail in Der Traum des Fidealisten Christ? Why do the men who surround the nude figures have the bodies of wooden manikins? The art of Fidus deserves more attention.