Murder in Paradise: The Tale of the Baroness and the Bohemians
In 1929 a German doctor named Friedrich Ritter and his former patient Dore Strauch landed on Floreana, a then-uninhabited island in the Galapagos archipelago off the coast of Ecuador. Having both left their spouses they’d set out to create paradise, far from their despised bourgeois milieu back in Germany. Friedrich arrived on the island toothless: he had removed his teeth before the trip because he wanted to see if his gums would toughen in the wilderness. At dinner time he would wear a pair of steel false teeth, made before the trip, that he would soon have to share with Dore, whose teeth quickly rotted and, for lack of dentistry tools, had to be pulled out with gardening implements. Yes, there was definitely an unconventional side to the couple. But then they also loved to quote Nietzsche and Lao-Tse, then as now a very bourgeois thing to do.
Friedrich’s gums never toughened, of course, but he and Dore did. They worked hard to make their homestead—clearing the land, building a house from scratch, raising chickens and cattle, planting a garden. To deal with the heat, the heavy rains, and the thorny vegetation upon the sharp volcanic rocks, they quickly learned it was best to wear nothing but knee-high boots. The few visitors that passed by their homestead, often wealthy travelers who had read about them in the international press, would be greeted by a sign prompting them to ring the bell and wait, so Friedrich and Dore could get dressed. Their nudism added to their allure: the rugged doctor and his mistress, naked, creating their own Garden of Eden on a far-off island.
Todd Brizendine