Leseprobe

tients from German sanatoriums and mental hospitals were thereby used under the title “Morbid hereditary disposition – Train of horror” and juxtaposed with a photo series of seemingly healthy children and adolescents playing sports. The exhibition planners thus relied on the presentation of opposing body images that were meant to justify the implementation of racial hygiene and racial policy claims without more detailed explanations. 19 The character of the travelling exhibition thus changed as a result: propaganda was now being distributed for the racial hygiene and racial policy of the National Socialist regime – especially for the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, which came into effect on 1 January 1934 and aimed at excluding allegedly hereditarily diseased people from procreation. 20 The new demonstration object, the Transparent Pregnant Woman, was also probably conceived of during the revision phase of the ex- hibition in 1933/34, thus likely making it one of the earliest figures produced at the DHMD. 21 The museum promoted the model prior to the first presentation in Erfurt as a “companion piece to the famous ‘Transparent Man’”, 22 which suggests that it was intended as a spe- cial attraction and key object. However, the figure was modelled not only as a healthy woman, like the Transparent Man, but decidedly as a pregnant woman (Fig. 13). With this decision, the focus was shifted to the women’s task of reproduction, which was in line with prona- talist National Socialist propaganda. Following the revision of the content of the show, the figure could be understood as the ideal of the (hereditarily) healthy German mother. Newspaper articles that reported on the stations of the travelling exhibition at least partially confirm this impression. The Thüringer Allgemeine Zeitung thus com- Fig. 12 Presentation of the revised travelling exhibition “Healthy Woman – Healthy People ( Volk )” in February 1934 in Wuppertal – prior to the inclu- sion of the Transparent Preg- nant Woman, photograph, inv. no. 2006/476.3 43