Leseprobe

Julia Bienholz- Radtke Manuel Vojtech Research (BMBF), with the title “Transparent Figures in the GDR. Digitalisation of Photographs and Audio Tapes”, made it possible to visually comprehend the manufacturing processes for Transparent Figures after 1945. In addition to this, the exhibition contexts and (media) presentation strategies of the Transparent Figures in the se- cond half of the 20th century were subjected to a coherent analysis for the first time thanks to a variety of image material and the audio lectures available in digital form. 2 The extensive image material comprises negatives, prints and slides that share an institutional background. 3 The DHMD had its own photo lab until the beginning of the 1990s. Employed photographers documented the production of the in-house workshops, the various exhibitions of the museum and special occasions that took place on the premises over decades. At the same time, they created photos for catalogues, advertising material, in-house and travelling exhibi- tions or reproduced other content, for example, technical plans. Pho- tos were also acquired from external providers. A photo archive was created to administer these holdings, which was reorganised into its present form in the 1980s. The photo archive was finally incorporated into the collection of the DHMD in the 1990s. The image material can be roughly classified into the following areas: ❚ Object photographs of historical Transparent Figures ❚ Manufacturing processes in the “Transparent Figures” workshop, as well as in other involved workshop areas, like the plaster sculpting department or the mechanical workshop ❚ Technical documents on the Transparent Figures ❚ Documentation of in-house exhibitions of the DHMD from the 1940s to the 1980s – especially including the National Hygiene Exhibition of 1961 ❚ Delegations from home and abroad in the DHMD ❚ Trade fairs and exhibitions in the GDR with images of Transparent Figures ❚ Trade fairs and exhibitions abroad with images of Transparent Figures The collection of the DHMD also includes more than 220 sound storage media with audio lectures on Transparent Figures in 29 languages. The first preserved record with an audio lecture origi- nates from 1934/35, one of the last new recordings from the mid- 1990s. Most of the audio tapes, 117 in total, refer to the Transparent Woman. This corresponds with the role that it played in the exhibi- tions of the DHMD. There are 48 sound storage media about the Transparent Man, 26 about the Transparent Cow, 24 about the Transparent Cell and five about the Transparent Pregnant Woman. Several more tapes contain technical explanations or music. Around 120 of these objects are audio tapes on cores or reels, the rest are compact cassettes. An especially valuable part of the holdings are so-called master tapes containing finished, edited versions of the lectures, which served as the basis for further copies. In contrast with this, subsidiary tapes contain a version of the lecture with switching pulses in reduced quality for exhibition operations. Nearly 134