Togetherness on the Trail

To most humans, walking is the pedestrian business of putting one foot in front of the other. Not so in Germany. There it is a cherished tradition, a cure for ills mental and physical, and the kinetic tie that binds family and society together.

Every Sunday after the midday meal, millions of West German parents take to sidewalks, the slopes of nearby hills, or the 75,000 miles of marked paths in the federal republic's tidily tended forests. Side by side, Mercedes and motor bike repose in the parking lot; for a few brief hours, worker and industrialist, Cabinet minister and cabinetmaker are equal and often indistinguishable--clad (as are their wives) in sensible shoes, sturdy capes and shapeless hats. Toddlers are carried. Teen-agers desert friends and transistor radios. The whole family trudges, pausing now and then for a spell of tiefatmen (deep breathing), to say hello to the Muellers (walking in the other direction), or to let Papa train his binoculars on an interesting bird, until in the late afternoon everyone collapses at a cafe for hot chocolate or coffee and pastry.

The Wandering Birds. The British roam the moors, the heaths and the braes; Swiss and French scale the Alps, while Arab and Hindu plod weary miles to reach Mecca or the Ganges. To the German, however, the act, and not the object of the journey, is what counts. German doctors and orthopedists recommend wandern as good for the heart, lungs, legs and circulation. German sociologists inquire anxiously on questionnaires, "Do you walk with your wife?" --presumably on the theory that togetherness begins along the trail. German scholars account for the national wanderlust with learned references to Goethe and the 19th century romantics, who originally glorified nature and the nomadic as a protest against the industrial revolution. By the turn of the century, the idea had captured the imagination of thousands of students, who, in groups known as Wandervogel (wandering birds), hiked, camped, sang folk songs and danced folk dances around bonfires.

The Nazis were shrewd enough to put Germany's passion to use in the Hitler Youth during the 1930s; yet walking remains a romantic refuge from politics and society in general. Many Germans ramble alone. Others prize the mystic shared experience of striding arm in arm, verbunden (joined together) with a dear friend, facing the little obstacles of the way, starting together at strange noises, wondering what Grimm monster lurks in the forest shadows. "Walking invigorates the soul," they explain. "Things seem to sort themselves out and fall into place during a good walk."

Today, despite fears of encroachments by the automobile and TV on a great national institution, a recent survey shows that walking is still West Germany's No. 1 Sunday recreation. Both the cities of Essen and Bonn last year staged highly successful community "walking days." A two-year-old Spazierengehen Stiftung (Strolling Foundation) has so far awarded 34,430 gold, silver and bronze shoe-shaped medals to enthusiastic strollers who have walked respectively 300, 200, and 100 hours in a single year. Presided over by, of all people, Georg von Opel of the car clan, the Strolling Foundation has even coined a slogan for motorists: "Get out and walk."

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