Berlin - A German bookshop owner who announced an all-nude launch party in his shop for a forthcoming book about nudism admitted Tuesday the invitation had been an April Fool's Day hoax. Some 30 television, radio and newspaper reporters applied to attend the event, Helmut Maass said. He put most of them off by saying he had run out of space, but kept claiming as March advanced that all guests at the event would have to strip off.
But when April 1 did come, Maass told the media, "I fooled you all."
Although no public reading - clothed or naked - took place Tuesday, he really was selling a book in his shop in the north- eastern town of Pasewalk about the nudist minority in formerly communist East Germany.
It draws on recollections - and photographs - of holidaymakers in East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
The region's nudist movement is experiencing a revival. A travel agent in the eastern city of Erfurt has laid on nudist domestic charter flights this summer to Usedom, a Baltic island resort and home to a large nudist colony in the communist era.
