Showcasing vintage male photography, mostly nude. You must be 18 years of age or older to visit this blog! If you hold a copyright on any material shown on this blog, notify me, and it will be removed immediately.
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Friday, July 7, 2023
Men and Their Balls
Today we look at men playing with balls in a variety of settings.
All the info that came with this one was "Nazi era."
The Nazis moved incrementally in the early stages of the regime and the FKK - if this photograph is indeed to be classified as such - would eventually have been abolished or absorbed into an equivalent umbrella organization under the aegis of the NSDAP, by which time the Nuremberg Laws had been introduced, disqualifying Jews from membership.
It is, however, quite wrong to assume that circumcision was unknown or not practised in Europe before WWII.
Forget the "masturbation hysteria" that so-say informed Victorian medicine and is often quoted as being the cause for mass circumcision. It is the case that England introduced prophylactic circumcision of newborns the earliest, in the 1860s, but the major drive, which affected in the main Britain, France, Germany and Northern Italy and the Low Countries (Belgium and The Netherlands) started in the 1890s as a means to control an outbreak of syphilis which was reaching epidemic proportions at a time when circumcision was thought to provide - as with AIDS today - some sort of protection. Such was the problem that in the 1890s both the French Assemblée nationale (Third Republic) and the German Reichstag (German Second Reich) debated making prophylactic circumcision mandatory but neither body could decide at what age and so these legislative initiatives were abandoned.
For various reasons outside the scope of this reply, circumcision has an historical association with warrior tribes, peoples and societies. There was - and in Britain remains - a distinct regimental tradition of circumcision, and so large numbers of mostly the officer class of the Imperial German Deutsches Heer (Army) and its subsequent legacies of the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht (Wehr meaning "Defence") would have been circumcised, along with the scions of the middle- and upper-middle-classes. This was the same in Britain and also France.
Despite the fact that Hitler was very vocal on the subject - when was he not on any subject? - and prophylactic neonatal circumcision was effectively banned, soldiers going to fight under Rommel in the Afrika Korps were offered a circumcision as were the men shipped to North Africa from Britain to fight opposite them under Field Marshal Montgomery.
By the time socialized medicine was introduced into Britain in 1948, about 50 per cent of males were anecdotally circumcised. It is difficult to find statistics for Germany, but it was far from the case that only Jews would have been circumcised and so there is absolutely nothing odd or exceptional about the above image. What we can tell from the photograph is that the subject is tall, healthy and fit and thereby highly likely to be middle- to upper-middle-class, and thereby from the circumcising classes, at a time when, in Europe, the social classes could be distinguished through height alone.
Today, Britain has one of the lowest circumcision rates per capita of population outside the Jewish and Muslim communities, although this is rapidly growing. Germany and France remain much higher as does Northern Italy.
I'm pretty sure circumcision remains on the "alternative medicine" pile. Has been for over a century. But it's the consummate do-nothing intervention, since most African cultures already practice it, so much more popular than condoms or antiretroviral drugs or other proven interventions.
Help, in the States, they claimed it cured paraplegia because, wait for it, the foreskin supposedly disrupted the flow of "vital force" to the lower body.
I don't know if many of us can remember these old leather footballs - played in soccer - but they weighed a ton, particularly when wet - which was most of the time in England in the playing season. Given that the subject of this photo is on the beach, the ball is wet, if only from absorbing the humidity in the atmosphere. Look at him. He's fit.
I have this pic saved and labeled as below. No date, and not sure what it all refers to, but the first seems to be the title of the publication it appeared in, and the second seems to be the title of an article or book about the Third Reich. Convergence of Health, Strength, and Beauty - Occult History of the Third Reich - (DIE OKKULTE REICH UND RASSE) - Deutschland Ostmark - Peter Crawford
If so, how could he be circumcised? I doubt that Jews were welcome at the FKK.
ReplyDeleteHe could just have a really short foreskin. Zoom in and that's what it looks like.
DeleteOr Muslims. A lot of Arabs were ironically considered Ehrenarier (honorary Aryans). Don't ask me why.
The Nazis moved incrementally in the early stages of the regime and the FKK - if this photograph is indeed to be classified as such - would eventually have been abolished or absorbed into an equivalent umbrella organization under the aegis of the NSDAP, by which time the Nuremberg Laws had been introduced, disqualifying Jews from membership.
DeleteIt is, however, quite wrong to assume that circumcision was unknown or not practised in Europe before WWII.
Forget the "masturbation hysteria" that so-say informed Victorian medicine and is often quoted as being the cause for mass circumcision. It is the case that England introduced prophylactic circumcision of newborns the earliest, in the 1860s, but the major drive, which affected in the main Britain, France, Germany and Northern Italy and the Low Countries (Belgium and The Netherlands) started in the 1890s as a means to control an outbreak of syphilis which was reaching epidemic proportions at a time when circumcision was thought to provide - as with AIDS today - some sort of protection. Such was the problem that in the 1890s both the French Assemblée nationale (Third Republic) and the German Reichstag (German Second Reich) debated making prophylactic circumcision mandatory but neither body could decide at what age and so these legislative initiatives were abandoned.
For various reasons outside the scope of this reply, circumcision has an historical association with warrior tribes, peoples and societies. There was - and in Britain remains - a distinct regimental tradition of circumcision, and so large numbers of mostly the officer class of the Imperial German Deutsches Heer (Army) and its subsequent legacies of the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht (Wehr meaning "Defence") would have been circumcised, along with the scions of the middle- and upper-middle-classes. This was the same in Britain and also France.
Despite the fact that Hitler was very vocal on the subject - when was he not on any subject? - and prophylactic neonatal circumcision was effectively banned, soldiers going to fight under Rommel in the Afrika Korps were offered a circumcision as were the men shipped to North Africa from Britain to fight opposite them under Field Marshal Montgomery.
By the time socialized medicine was introduced into Britain in 1948, about 50 per cent of males were anecdotally circumcised. It is difficult to find statistics for Germany, but it was far from the case that only Jews would have been circumcised and so there is absolutely nothing odd or exceptional about the above image. What we can tell from the photograph is that the subject is tall, healthy and fit and thereby highly likely to be middle- to upper-middle-class, and thereby from the circumcising classes, at a time when, in Europe, the social classes could be distinguished through height alone.
Today, Britain has one of the lowest circumcision rates per capita of population outside the Jewish and Muslim communities, although this is rapidly growing. Germany and France remain much higher as does Northern Italy.
I'm pretty sure circumcision remains on the "alternative medicine" pile. Has been for over a century. But it's the consummate do-nothing intervention, since most African cultures already practice it, so much more popular than condoms or antiretroviral drugs or other proven interventions.
DeleteHelp, in the States, they claimed it cured paraplegia because, wait for it, the foreskin supposedly disrupted the flow of "vital force" to the lower body.
As I said, woowoo.
I don't know if many of us can remember these old leather footballs - played in soccer - but they weighed a ton, particularly when wet - which was most of the time in England in the playing season. Given that the subject of this photo is on the beach, the ball is wet, if only from absorbing the humidity in the atmosphere. Look at him. He's fit.
ReplyDeleteI have this pic saved and labeled as below. No date, and not sure what it all refers to, but the first seems to be the title of the publication it appeared in, and the second seems to be the title of an article or book about the Third Reich. Convergence of Health, Strength, and Beauty - Occult History of the Third Reich - (DIE OKKULTE REICH UND RASSE) - Deutschland Ostmark - Peter Crawford
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bryan. That's a lot more detailed than "Nazi era."
Delete