Leseprobe

This exhibition was then placed in storage in 1944/45 in Schleswig-Holstein. › Key objects of health education, p. 209 The figure was thus moving around between 1936 and 1945 in a total of four different travelling exhibitions of the museum, which were used to promote National Socialist health policy, and in the framework of which the Transparent Man could be understood as symbolic of the healthy and vital “New Man”. › Key objects of health education, p. 204 Despite the linking of the figure with Na- tional Socialist health propaganda in terms of content, the Transparent Man was quickly able to once again function as a highlight in newly developed health exhibitions in the post-war years. The DHMD exhibition man- ager Johannes Erler, who had been travelling with the “Healthy or Sick” travelling exhibition in Schleswig-Holstein until 1944, resumed exhibition activity as of 1946. He used the stored yet partially severely damaged exhibi- tion material to compile a travelling show under the title “Battle against Sexually Trans- mitted Diseases” and to present it in the Brit- ish occupation zone. 5 In subsequent years, however, disputes arose between the DHMD and Erler, who was no longer able to maintain the travelling exhibition and ultimately resold the Transparent Man without the consent of the museum. 6 That the Transparent Man could still be sold after more than a decade in regular ex- hibition operations and the first necessary repairs, probably reflects not only the high profile and recognition effect that the figure had acquired in the 1930s but also the great popularity of public hygiene education. The showman Mathias Hoppe thus apparently purchased the Transparent Man in the course of the 1950s for presentation in his “Anatom- ical Museum” 7 , which he showed at “fairs, markets, public festivals and carnivals” 8 in Germany and Europe. In the style of the suc- Fig. 54 The Transparent Man in Sofia, photograph, 1938, inv. no. 2006/392.18 140