Leseprobe

TRANSPARENT MAN FROM 1935 Exhibition piece, fair attraction, research ob- ject: the Transparent Man from 1935 is the oldest figure in the collection holdings of the DHMD and has an eventful history behind it. After it found its way into the collection of the DHMD in 2009 after an odyssey of decades, it was examined in 2012/13 in the context of a student project at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts with a view to its state of preserva- tion and its history as an object. 1 The study findings made it possible to align the body model with the history of the manufacture and exhibition of the Transparent Humans at the DHMD in the 1930s and provided a de- scription of the relevant stations of its “cur- riculum vitae”, so that we today know a com- paratively great deal about the history of this figure. 2 The Transparent Man from 1935 was the fifth male figure produced by the DHMD and had apparently been manufactured for pres- entation in the museum’s own travelling exhi- bitions. The figure was available for presenta- tion purposes as of January 1936 and was immediately integrated into the full exhibition calendar of the DHMD. It was shown until 1944 without longer interruptions. Because the Transparent Man, to the extent known, is the only surviving figure of the DHMD from the period prior to 1945 that was presented in Germany and Europe, its exhibition history provides unique insight into the use of such an object under National Socialism. The Transparent Man could be seen for the first time in January 1936 in the travelling exhibition “Mor och Barn” (“Mother and Child“) in Stockholm, which actually revolved around the protection of the health of women and children in the context of the National Social- ist population policy. › Transparent Women. An exhibition history, p. 41 Subsequent to this, it was shown until mid-1937 in the “Life and Health” travelling exhibition of the DHMD, which had originated from the “Heal- ing Powers of Nature” exposition that opened in 1933. To the extent that this could be recon- structed, it seems that special presentations occasionally took place despite the tight schedule of the travelling exhibitions: In Au- gust 1936, for example, the Transparent Man could be seen at the fair in Reichenberg (to- day Liberec, Czech Republic) and probably at the Paris International Exhibition from May to November 1937. There it had its own pavilion on the grounds of the so-called Parc d’Attrac- tion Scientifiques et d’Art with the title “Le Palais de ‘L’Homme de Verre’”, which the DHMD had been “invited” 3 to equip with dis- play objects from its own production. 4 The exhibition group shown in Paris sub- sequently toured in a travelling exhibition under the title of the successful Berlin Re- ich’s Exhibition of 1935 “Miracle of Life” through Southeastern Europe and could be seen in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece until the beginning of the Second World War. › Key objects of health educa- tion, p. 206 A historical photograph showing the Transparent Man being presented in So- fia provides insight into the manner of pres- entation of the figure (Fig. 54). After 1940, the figure could finally be seen in the German Reich in the “Healthy or Sick” travelling exhibition developed by the new scientific director of the DHMD, the physician and SS man Theodor Pakheiser (1898–1969), ‹ Fig. 53 The Transparent Man from 1935, inv. no. 2011/38 139