German Hygiene Museum

Von Oktober 2014 bis Juni 2015 wurde im Deutschen Hygiene-Museum die Ausstellung „Blicke! Korper! Sensationen! Ein anatomisches Wachskabinett und die Kunst“ gezeigt. Im Zentrum der Ausstellung stand ein fast 200 Stucke umfassendes anatomisches Wachskabinett, das in grosen Teilen Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts in Dresden entstanden war. Im Jahr 2009 konnte das Deutsche Hygiene-Museum diese Sammlung erwerben — ein Glucksfall, denn solche umfangreichen und zusammenhangenden Sammlungskonvolute stehen nur selten zum Verkauf.

In the past 20 years, trauma has become firmly established as a new paradigm in the social and cultural history of medicine. However, more recently, many uses of the term, both for individual psychological conditions and for collective mentalities, have been criticised as ‘inflationary’. But it is precisely this dual understanding of the effects of traumatic experiences that brings with it important pathways for research on psychological traumas and their political and social implications. Interdisciplinary reflection on the sociocultural genesis, manifestations and effects of experiences of extreme violence show how such events not only embed themselves deeply and completely in personal memory, but also, through a sociocultural process of transformation, shape social and ethnic groups' identities and visions of the future. And because trauma designates both an individual and a collective condition, we must ask how the construction of collective traumas takes place, and what tools are provided by government and society to allow the society as a whole to begin processing the individual and collective trauma.

Und der Tod wird nicht mehr sein (Apk 21, 4) — dieser Satz aus der Offenbarung des Johannes ist dem Glauben nach an die Existenz Jesu Christi gebunden, an sein Leiden, seinen Tod am Kreuz und seine Auferstehung, und wird, wie es die Bibel sagt, in einer ganz neu geordneten, gerechten Welt (Mt 5, 3–10) am Ende der Tage erfullt werden. So viele Berichte. So viele Fragen — mit dieser Feststellung schliest das Gedicht Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters 1 des Marxisten Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956).

Ist International Hygenic Exhibition took place in Dresden in 1911 and it was dedicated to communicable diseases. In period of three months when it was opened it was seen by 5 million people. Next, the second - in 1930, was including also the problems connected with neoplastic and psychic diseases, and also with diseases of circulatory system. Sections dedicated to different problems, have had a similar didactic plan. They have been presenting a disease prevalence in the world; how to recognize it and what the course of it is; how it comes to infection and how it is transmitted; what present medicine can do about its treatment; what everybody should do to prevent becoming ill. Exhibitions were one of the elements of communicable diseases prevention, and of health education propagation; they played a significant part in this field.

Jeder Versuch, die Verbreitung hygienischer Kenntnisse planmasig zu organisieren, hat zweierlei zugleich im Auge zu behalten