 Entrance area | |
 | |
| Established | 1912 |
|---|---|
| Location | Lingnerplatz 1 01069 Dresden, Germany |
| Type | Medicine, health promotion |
| Visitors | 280,000 |
| Website | German Hygiene Museum |
The German Hygiene Museum (German : Deutsches Hygiene-Museum) is a medical museum in Dresden, Germany. It conceives itself today as a "forum for science, culture and society". [1] It is a popular venue for events and exhibitions, and is among the most visited museums in Dresden, with around 280,000 visitors per year. [2]
The museum was founded in 1912 by Karl August Lingner, a Dresden businessman and manufacturer of hygiene products, as a permanent "public venue for healthcare education", following the first International Hygiene Exhibition in 1911. [3] [4]
The second International Hygiene Exhibition was held in 1930-31, in a building erected west of the Großer Garten park according to plans designed by Wilhelm Kreis, which became the museum's permanent home. One of the biggest attractions was, and remains, a transparent model of a human being, the Gläserner Mensch or Transparent Man, of which many copies have subsequently been made for other museums. [4] [5]
During the Third Reich the museum came under the influence of the Nazis, who used it to produce material propagandising their racial ideology and promoting eugenics. Various Nazi government offices relocated to the museum between 1933 and 1941, [6] and the German Labour Front's Reichsberufswettkampf (National Vocational Competition) was held there in 1944. Large parts of the building and collection were destroyed by the bombing of Dresden in 1945. [4] [5]
In the East German period the museum resumed its role as a communicator of public health information. It produced a wide range of educational material, including short films on subjects such as smoking, breastfeeding, sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy. [7] In 1988 the museum, working in co-operation with East German gay and lesbian activists, commissioned DEFA film studios to make the documentary film Die andere Liebe (English:The Other Love), the first East German film that dealt with the subject of homosexuality. [8] The museum also commissioned the only HIV/AIDS prevention documentary produced in the GDR, Liebe ohne Angst (Love without fear) in 1989. [9]
Following German reunification the museum was reconceived and modernised, starting in 1991. In 2001 it was included in the German government's Blue Book, a list of around 20 so-called "Cultural Lighthouses" – cultural institutions of national importance in the former East Germany – in an association called the KNK. Between 2001 and 2005 the museum was renovated and partly rebuilt under the architect Peter Kulka. [4] [5] [10]
The museum's permanent features are the exhibition "Human Adventure" (Abenteuer Mensch), covering the human race, the body, and health in its cultural and social contexts, and a children's museum of the senses. [11]
The museum owns an extensive collection of around 45,000 items documenting the public promotion of bodily awareness and healthy day-to-day behaviour, mostly from the early 20th century onwards. [4] [5]
There is a regular program of temporary exhibitions on social or scientific issues. Recent examples have included "Religious Energy", "What Is Beautiful?" and "War and Medicine". The museum also organises scientific and cultural events, including talks, meetings, debates, readings, and concerts. [4] [12]
Eva Strittmatter was a German writer of poetry, prose, and children's literature.
Friedrich Kurt Fiedler was a German graphic designer and a representative of the Social Democratic Party. During the Weimar Republic he was acknowledged for his poster design, his book illustrations and his drawings. After World War II, he belonged to the re-founders of the association of fine arts in Dresden, but lost his influence when all social-democratic forces were repelled.
Hans Unger was a German painter who was, during his lifetime, a highly respected Art Nouveau artist. His popularity did not survive the change in the cultural climate in Germany after World War I, however, and after his death he was soon forgotten. However, in the 1980s interest in his work revived, and a grand retrospective exhibition in 1997 in the City Museum in Freital, Germany, duly restored his reputation as one of the masters of the Dresden art scene around 1910.
Herbert Hoffmann was a German tattoo artist and photographer.
The International Hygiene Exhibition was a world's fair focusing on medicine and public health, held in Dresden, Germany, in 1911.
Margarete Schön was a German stage and film actress whose career spanned nearly fifty years. She is internationally recognized for her role as Kriemhild in director Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen series of two silent fantasy films, Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge.
Karl Albiker was a German sculptor, lithographer and teacher of fine arts. Albiker studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris. From 1919 to 1945 he was a professor at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. His monumental statues, like those of Georg Kolbe, reflected National Socialist heroic realism. Albiker created the relay racers for Berlin's Reich Sports Field and various war monuments, including those in Karlsruhe, Freiburg im Breisgau, and Greiz.
Annemarie von Nathusius, originally Anna Maria Luise von Nathusius, was a German novelist who wrote boldly about issues of women’s sexuality and lived a distinctly unconventional life. In her books, she criticized the sexual ignorance and exploitative marriages imposed on young women of her class. Her most successful novel was Das törichte Herz der Julie von Voß. The novel Malmaison 1922 was film adapted by Paul Ludwig Stein for the movie Es leuchtet meine Liebe.
Alfred Lichtwark was a German art historian, museum curator, and art educator in Hamburg. He is one of the founders of museum education and the art education movement.
Fritz Kahn was a German-Jewish physician who published popular science books and is known for his illustrations, which pioneered infographics.
Die andere Liebe is a 1988 East German public education documentary film directed by Axel Otten and Helmut Kißling. It is 34 minutes long and in German with English subtitles. It was the first film produced by East Germany's state-run DEFA film studios that dealt with the subject of homosexuality. It was commissioned by the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. It was made in co-operation with gay and lesbian activists in East Germany and includes interviews with lesbians and gay men talking about their lives. The film was aiming to convey official state acceptance of homosexuality.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung des Kurpfuschertums was a skeptical association founded in 1903 for consumer protection against quackery. It opposed the Kurierfreiheit, that existed in Germany from 1869/1872 until the adoption of the Heilpraktikergesetz in 1939. The association originated after the example of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten, and is counted as one of the predecessors of the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP).
Liebe ohne Angst is a 1989 East German public-education documentary film, directed by Frank Rinnelt. It is 25 minutes long. It was the only HIV/AIDS prevention film made in East Germany. It was produced by DEFA film studios on commission for the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden.
The German Democratic Republic, a state in Central Europe that existed from 1949 to 1989 and was merged with the Federal Republic of Germany, was dominated by heterosexual norms. However, homosexual East Germans experienced decriminalisation during the 1960s, followed by increasing social acceptance and visibility.
Manfred Richter is a German writer, scriptwriter and dramaturg.
Max Lingner was a German painter, graphic artist, communist, and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.
Michael Tschesno-Hell was a screenwriter and cultural official of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
Baroness Ada von Maltzahn was a popular nineteenth century German novelist who primarily published as Ada von Gersdorff.
Max Creutz was a German art historian and curator of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum in Krefeld where he worked from 1922 until his death. In Cologne, in 1914 he was instrumental in the first exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund, Deutsche Werkbundausstellung. In Krefeld, he succeeded in acquiring modern art exhibits, including works by Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, and Alexej von Jawlensky. He included a substantial collection of art, crafts and design from the Bauhaus.
Franz R. Friedl, was an Austrian violist, composer and film composer. The son of a cooper he attended grammar school and then received artistic training from Rosé and Carl Flesch. Friedl then worked as concertmaster in Dortmund and Dresden. From 1923 to 1926 Franz Friedl was principal violist at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, since 1927 the Upper Austrian, worked as a composer and composed chamber music, overtures. From 1933 he was music composer for theatre and films. He is listed on some recordings as the conductor of the "Berlin Symphony Orchestra", a pseudonym of an unidentified ensemble, but it is doubtful whether he actually was the conductor. From 1940-1945 he was musical director of Die Deutsche Wochenschau. The grandchild of his only daughter is Björn Stenvers.
