Leseprobe

JULIA BIENHOLZ-RADTKE TRANSPARENT WOMEN. AN EXHIBITION HISTORY The Transparent Man of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden (DHMD) could often be viewed as a key object in the popular health exhibitions of the 1930s. The transparent figure was seen in this con- text not only as a “technical masterpiece”, 1 but also symbolised the ideal of the beautiful, high-performance and healthy body. 2 In con- trast with its universal designation of “Mensch” (human being), this usually involved a transparent man that the DHMD presented in its permanent exhibition and in its travelling exhibitions and copied for international sale. In 1935/36, the workshops of the DHMD did in fact manufacture a Transparent Woman that was modelled after the Transparent Man. However, this was produced as a commission for an American factory owner and could only be viewed in the USA after 1936. › Transparent Woman from 1935/36, p. 144 However, accord- ing to more recent research on the object history of individual Trans- parent Figures, this Transparent Woman was already the second female figure produced by the DHMD. 3 In fact, a Transparent Preg- nant Woman was already being used in travelling exhibitions of the museum as of the mid-1930s. The significance of the Transparent Women increased considerably after 1945 in the exhibitions of the DHMD, as well as with regard to sales of the Transparent Figures. More than 65 Transparent Women were manufactured and sold worldwide up until 2000. Even today, the Transparent Woman is viewed as a symbolic figure of the DHMD and can be seen as a cen- tral exhibit in the “Human Adventure” permanent exhibition. Despite this considerable visibility, the (success) story of the Trans- parent Women since the 1930s has not yet been examined. Today, there are in fact many studies on the history of public hygiene edu- cation and on the institutional history of the DHMD, in which the different exhibitions of the museum are discussed. 4 However, the increased significance of the Transparent Woman after 1945 remained for the most part ignored. 5 In the following, therefore, the exhibition history of the Transparent Women will be examined in highlights from the first presentation of such a figure in 1934 into the 1960s. In the process, the to date hardly examined “Woman” exhibitions of the DHMD, which were established at the end of the 1920s and were reintroduced in the 1950s, will be briefly outlined. 6 INTRODUCTION ‹ Fig. 11 Promotional sign of the travelling exhibition “The Woman”, 1950s, inv. no. 2021/531 41