1. Labour camping
and politics
in Helsinki and Berlin
districts in 1910-1935
Adjunct Professor,
Dr. Soc. Sci.
Anu-Hanna Anttila
University of Turku

2. Leisure policy and outdoor living
• The explicitly argued purposes of leisure time were to
– give time to rest from work (and for work)
– bring variety to everyday life
– permit own time for labour
– support the general idea of ‘good life’
• One feature of these discourses was the demand for organised
leisure activities as a way to prevent social problems.
• The proletarian youngsters and labour families were seen as
the main targets of care.

3. A trickle-down effect
• With the ‘right’ lifestyle one could enforce his or hers general
vitality.
• The ‘right’ meant self-discipline and high activity with the
purpose of building one’s character.
• One’s character must also become cultivated by reading
and other exercises of science and arts.
• Outdoor living, hiking and other physical exercises were
seen as good for one’s health as well as cold and salty sea
baths and vital sun baths.
• The basis of this kind of holistic thinking of vitality was
mainly on belief, for example, like in ‘vitalism’ or ‘nudism’.

4. A ‘proper’ leisure
• The ‘other’ places in which one could spend leisure time
were neither at home nor in the workplace, and therefore
society needed to organise facilities for R & R.
• A proper leisure time was supposed to include stimulating
activities that would be edifying in various ways, and would
advance one’s scientific and aesthetic skills. (Burns 1932.)
• Suitable activities for these purposes were outdoor pursuits,
like camping and hiking, and visits to public parks, gardens,
libraries and museums.
• Resources, funding and time for these would make people
happy, healthy and active.

5. A ‘proper’ leisure
• The ‘proper’ use of leisure was subsumed into the project
of nation-building.
• Among the Nordic countries in particular, the vitality and
‘people hood’ of a nation was expressed through its self-
image as having a special relationship with its own ‘unique’
nature and also being a modern and technologically
oriented civilisation (Löfgren 2001).
• The themes of vitality, the unique landscape etc. were
commonly presented in representations like in short films
(Anttila 2009).

6. The combination of play and politics
• Public open parks, camping areas, swimming baths and
organised day-trips were offered particularly to those, who did
not have other possibilities to enjoy their holidays and free
weekends.
• Not only in meetings, but also in their ‘own’ organised leisure
activities, like gymnastic and sport clubs, theatres and
orchestras, camping sites etc.
• Another idea of all kinds of play and fun was to induce
potential new members.
• To that end, the working class had to understand their own
good and to aid progress towards enduring socialism by
political action and agitation.

7. Kivinokka in Helsinki (1916- )
• The first camping community in Helsinki was based in 1916 in
the headland of Kivinokka.
• Organised by the youngsters of a socialist Sörnäinen Labour
Association and later also by labour sports and gymnastic
clubs.
• Other camping communities: in Herttoniemi ‘Mölylä’ (1901),
and Lammassaari (1903).
• Kivinokka was near the city-centre and the tract of the labour
residential districts of Sörnäinen, Kallio and Vallila.
• Since the 1930s, hundreds of tiny cabins started to replace
the tents in Kivinokka peoples’ park .

8. Kivinokka in photos
• Youngsters and oldies in Kivinokka holiday and
weekend camping in summertime in the 1920s.
• A licence to “stay” in Kivinokka area in 1925 with the
stain of Ponnistus, a local gymnastic and sport club in
Helsinki.
• In the 1930s, labour families camping in their own
(collapsible) wooden or laminate cabins in the
common land.

9. Kuhle Wampe in Berlin (1913-1935)
• The first area for labour camping in Berlin, Kuhle Wampe, was
based in 1913 on Müggelsee region.
• Organised by the local swimming organisation Berliner
Freibäder-Vereine.
• The first years activity was quite minor: there were about ten
tents.
• Other weekend camping communities were based nearby in
the mid-1920: Kleen Kleckersdorf and Tsinmulpo .
• In the early 1930s, it was the largest area for labour outdoor
living: almost 100 tents and place for more than 300 berths.
• Closed down by Nazis in 1935.
• A place for permanent living because the expansion of
residents in Berlin district and the deep depression in the
1930s. People become unemployed and homeless.

10. Kuhle Wampe (1932)
„Kuhle Wampe: Proletarisches
Zwanziger-Jahre-Idyll am
Miggelsse und Mittelpunkt des
gleichnamigen Films von Bertold
Brecht, Ernst Ottwalt und Slátan
Dudow.“
(Frankfurter Allgemeine 8.12.2012)
“‘Kuhle Wampe’ was a camp for
the dispossessed: the film’s
heroine rejects the docility of
the camp – filmed in semi-
documentary style – in favour of
class solidarity and revolution.”
(BFI /Distribution 2012)

11. The combination of play and politics
The annual meeting
of TUL, the central
union of labour
sports, in Kivinokka
in 1934.
The so-called Lads of Rajamäki
started to play ”journeyman songs”
in Kivinokka stage in the mid-1920s.
They became professionals
and started to use the name Dallapé,
which became one of the most
famous bands in Finland.

12. The combination of play and politics
• The explicit purposes of the
labour camping organisers were:
– offer a proper way for rest &
recreation
– support health outdoor living
– encourage to swimming and
other sports
– give a place to stay on
weekends

13. The combination of play and politics
• Leisure policy of labour organisations was political.
• The organised working-class leisure, holidaying and
labour tourism was a part in construction of own ‘red’
counter-culture which offered alternative way to think
and act.
• Generally thinking, the camping communities were
designated to labour activists to
– get together to enjoy fun and play ‘properly’
– practice active citizenship and labour politics
– associate and get organised
– exercise the (possible) forthcoming mobilization

14. Literature (just some)
• Anttila, A-H. (2009). An Integrated and Recreated Nation: Socio-semiotic
Approaches to Finnish Vacation Propagandist Short Films in the late 1940s.
Visual Studies, 24:1, 36−53.
• Anttila, A-H. (ed.) (2011). Kesämaja appelsiinilaatikoista: Kivinokka Stadin
kupeessa. Helsinki: Kivinokkalaiset ry.
• Anttila, A-H. (forthcoming): No Motels without Highways: The Finnish
Democratic Model of Tourism from the 1940s to the 1970s. The Journal of
Tourism History 5:2. (Will be published in June 2013)
• Baranowski , S. & Furlough, e.(eds.) (2001). Being Elsewhere: Tourism,
Consumer Culture, and Identity in Modern Europe and North America. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Burns, C. D. (1932). Leisure in the Modern World. Washington: McGrath
Publishing Co.
• Sandell, K. & Sörlin, S. (eds.) (2000). Friluftshistoria: Från ’härdande
friluftslif’ till ekoturism och miljöpedagogik. Teman i det svenska
friluftslivets historia. Stockholm: Carlsson.
• Sprink, C-D. (2001). ”Wir waren alles einfache Leute”. Die Geschichte der
Arbeiterzeltstadt Kuhle Wampe. Müggelheimer Bote. 7. 06/2001. Internet:
http://www.mueggelheimer-bote.de/0106/seite6.htm