Leseprobe

cessful health exhibitions that took place in the context of public hygiene education of the first half of the 20th century, wax models, moulages and prepared specimens were presented in a tent standing on wooden crates. Hoppe had acquired some of the dis- play material from the DHMD, which also produced teaching materials. The variety of wax models had mostly been manufactured by freelance modellers in the early 20th cen- tury. The Transparent Man functioned within the fair show as a new attraction that was presented in its own booth with a home- made pedestal and special illumination. The showman family thus imitated the successful stagings with which the DHMD had been drawing a public since the 1920s – illuminat- ed wooden boxes with seemingly transpar- ent Spalteholz preserved specimens, remi- niscent of the DHMD exhibition group “The Transparent Man”, were also produced. › Key objects of health education, p. 198 Despite these efforts, the number of visitors to the so-called Anatomical Museum de- creased rapidly – parallel with the generally lessening interest in health exhibitions. 9 At the beginning of the 1970s, the exhibition objects, including the Transparent Man, were finally placed in storage. In 1987 it was sold to the Barber showman family in Cologne, which once again presented the exhibition under the title “The Human Being”, if only for a brief time. In 1989, the objects were sold to the Finnish showmen Wainö Hamari and Esa Karttunen, who had begun to gather an ex- tensive collection of anatomical wax models from various sources, which they exhibited under the historicising title “Panopticon. The Famous Anatomical Wax Cabinet of the 19th Century”. 10 The DHMD purchased most of this collec- tion in 2009, thereby also acquiring the Trans- parent Man from 1935. Following the conser- vation research on the figure in 2012/13, the Fig. 55 The Transparent Man in the special exhibition “Roll up, Roll up! An Anatomical Waxwork Cabinet Meets Art”, 2014/15 141