Thanks to rudolfm for the advice!
Here it comes, an article from 2006 about two student models from a German university
I'm not a porn-queen here.
Students Anna (32) and Angelika (25) model at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. Completely naked. The job is decently paid but quite exhausting. Even in seemingly simple poses "a minute can turn into hell", says Anna.
The awkwardness is still there, but not for long. Angelika knows that emotional roller coaster. "It fades the moment I'm up there," she says. Standing alone on the platform, the student steps into the light, strikes a pose — and settles in. In that instant, Angelika slips into the role of the muse, and being completely nude stops mattering to her.
Angelika Schmidt (25) studies russian and music in Bochum. Like many students, she side hustles. However, what is it, she tells only a few fellow students. She works as a nude model for drawing classes at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art.
Just like today. It's Friday morning, short before 10, the sun dabs at the walls of the nude drawing workshop at the first floor. Pencils and brushes roll on the floor, paper Rolls pile up next to the paint in tubes. Six Free Art freshmen stand by the easels or sit on the chairs with built-in stand. They've arranged themselves in a half-circle around the model at the center, sketching her pose: Angelika leans against the Edge of a couch.
Onstage, the embarrassment melts away
The student-model has both arms propped parallelly behind her, her torso bends up, she holds the right leg stretched out to the front so that the tip of her toe touches the floor. Her left thigh is parallel to her right, but she angles her left calf outwards to the side and lies the instep of her left foot spread on the couch.
Angelika has been holding this punishing pose for nine minutes — absolutely still. “It’s more fun when the poses aren’t so boring,” she says. Only the undressing beforehand, hurriedly in a corner of the room, felt awkward. “Outside the stage, being nude isn’t exactly normal.” Once she’s in position, though, the nudity fades; she becomes part of the staging.
The tutoring does Arnim Tölke (43). The lecturer at the art academy oversees the drawing courses. He makes sure that a pose never lasts longer than a maximum of 15 minutes, "there should be as little muscle tension as possible," says Tölke, who is sitting on a chair next to the podium, a smoldering cigar in the corner of his mouth, a mobile phone with a stopwatch in his hand.
Cracking joints
He prefers to use aspiring dancers as models, like ballet students from neighboring Essen. "Dancers know their limits best; they're already stressed out all over, they know what they can handle and what they can't."
After four years on the job, Angelika knows her limits too. She first stepped in for a friend, filling in for her. At the academy, she earns €10 for 45 minutes with three pose changes — plus another €10 for commuting from a nearby city.
"For a student gig, it's well paid", thinks Anna, German language student from Düsseldorf. The 32-year-old is still clothed, but shortly she takes over from Angelika, as in Düsseldorf there are always two models posing on the course. Her environment reacts at times indignantly. Anna's parents weren't less than outraged as she told them about her side gig which she had come across through a notice at the university. "I was born in Poland and have been raised strictly catholic", says Anna. Scenes flashed through her parents’ minds — innocent girls exposing themselves to shady photographers.
Although in the Academy it's not about voyeurism or eroticism. "I'm not a porn-queen here", schmoozes Angelika from the stage, "but a visual aid of the art" - which really starts to ponder things while it remains still. "Up there I think about a thousand small matters. What I'm gonna buy after [the class], that I have to call my mother. Sometimes I just listen to noises in the room".
"Two more minutes," calls the instructor, drawing on his cigar. The time limits are meant to push students to work fast. “Everyone should develop a free line, their own abstract principle — open to what a pose gives them,” Tölke explains. “You don’t fuss; you just go for it. Two-minute poses are the best,” says Peter (25), one of the students.
Angelika releases her pose and makes place for Anna, who's put away her clothes in the meantime. She stands sideways, on hand on the hip. A seemingly simple pose, "but these are often deceptive, and a minute can turn into hell", knows Anna. Once, a young student stood in the same pose, "he almost fell down from the stage of exertion", tells Arnim Tölke.
“It actually helped with my last assignment on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language,” she says. “But with heartbreak, it’s torture.”