Berlin  - A German travel company that made headlines earlier this year with plans for nudist charter flights to the Baltic coast has dropped the idea, a news report said Friday.

The company, which styles itself OssiUrlaub. de and was catering primarily to those who recalled the nudist culture popular under the former communist regime of East Germany, had changed its mind, international broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.

There had been "moral objections" from several sources, a spokesman said. The first flight was to have taken off on July 5,

"In the former East Germany, naturist holidays were a much-loved way of spending the best weeks of the year," company founder Enrico Hess said when he first launched the idea at the beginning of the year.

"We want to make that freedom possible above the clouds, too."

Nudism has had a bad couple of months in Germany. A German bookshop owner, whose plans for an all-nude launch party for a book about nudism drew international attention, came out on April 1 to day it had all been a hoax.

Some 30 television, radio and newspaper reporters had 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.

Maass nevertheless gained considerable publicity for the book, which draws on recollections - and photographs - of holidaymakers in East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. (dpa)