California has long been a place of reinvention, where people escape convention to build new lives. The Golden State’s counterculture movements, from the Beats to the hippies, have defined eras and shaped art, music, and lifestyle trends. But the origins of these movements stretch back further than most realize.
Author Charlie Haas, in his novel The Current Fantasy, explores an often-overlooked influence on California’s free-spirited identity: the Naturmenschen. They were a German back-to-nature movement that thrived in the early 20th century. Their philosophy combined expressionist art, anarchism, spiritualism, and sun worship. The group attracted figures such as Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, Isadora Duncan, and D.H. Lawrence into their orbit.
Haas, who moved to California in 1968 as a teenager, saw firsthand how a distinct cultural attitude shaped the state. “It was curious, sometimes credulous, nostalgic for eras of magic but equally dazzled by science,” he recalls. That sense of wonder led Haas to uncover a deeper history, one that connected past utopian ideals with modern countercultural movements.
A Discovery in the Stacks
While browsing in a bookstore several years later, he stumbled upon Gordon Kennedy’s Children of the Sun: A Pictorial Anthology from Germany to California 1883 to 1949. The book contained striking photographs: men and women dressed in flowing garments, dancing in circles, working the land, or simply basking in the sun. Taken decades before the hippie movement, these images felt like a glimpse into an earlier version of California’s bohemian culture.
Intrigued, Haas dove deeper into the subject. He read Mountain of Truth by Martin Burgess Green and researched at the UC Berkeley library. He traced the Naturmenschen’s journey from Germany to California in the 1910s, where they influenced a new wave of spiritual seekers and artists.
Los Angeles saw its first raw-food restaurants and Ojai became a haven for rival spiritualist communities. Most notably, the canyons around Palm Springs filled with people content to live off the land, exercise with heavy stones, and dress in nothing but loincloths.
From History to Fiction
As Haas pieced together this forgotten chapter of history, he saw the potential for a novel. Characters began to form in his head—a Berlin family in 1914, drawn into the Naturmenschen’s ideals and willing to establish a utopian community called Sunland in San Bernardino County.
Though fictional, Sunland borrows heavily from real history. Haas discovered a common downfall of utopian movements: the bicycle. Many communities thrived in isolation until their as-of-then-unaware children got hold of bikes, rode to the nearest city, and returned home disillusioned. “The kids in my story get a bicycle,” Haas confirms, acknowledging the pattern of youthful curiosity disrupting idealism.
To bring his novel to life, Haas fully immersed himself in the physical world of his characters. He walked from San Bernardino to Redlands on an 80-degree day, experiencing the grueling heat and exhaustion the early settlers endured. Through this first-hand experience, Haas deepened his understanding of their struggles—both physical and philosophical.
Echoes of the Past in Modern Counterculture
The Current Fantasy bridges multiple eras, foreshadowing the Beat movement, the 1960s counterculture, and even present-day festivals like Burning Man. Haas sees a clear connection between early 20th-century expressionist art and the modern fusion of music, poetry, and visual storytelling. “So many elements of those times were already there in the 1910s,” he notes.
Despite two world wars and waves of societal upheaval, the desire to escape modern constraints and forge a simpler, more connected life persists. The Naturmenschen’s ideals continue to reappear. They slip into different generations, consistently adapting to new contexts.
“The dream of influencing the world by dropping out of it must have seemed painfully naïve after two world wars,” Haas reflects. “But that vision keeps coming back, in slightly different clothes, adapting and refining itself, slipping in where it can.”
For those who look closely, traces of the Naturmenschen remain embedded in California’s cultural fabric. Their footprints may be faint, but they’re unmistakable.
