Eduard Baltzer e il movimento di "riforma della vita"

This introduction examines Eduard Baltzer’s role in the emergence of the German vegetarian movement and its broader connection to the nineteenth-century Lebensreform (“life reform”) movement. It shows that vegetarianism, in Baltzer’s thought, was not merely a dietary practice but part of a comprehensive moral, social, and spiritual project aimed at regenerating both individual and collective life in accordance with nature. Baltzer linked ethical concern for animals, hygienic reform, and socio-economic transformation into a unified vision of social renewal. The text further situates his philosophy within the wider intellectual context of modernity critique, ecological thought, and Romantic Naturphilosophie, especially in relation to Franz von Baader.