The German Hygiene Museum is a museum in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It conceives itself today as a "forum for science, culture and society". It is a popular venue for events and exhibitions, and is among the most visited museums in Dresden, with around 300,000 visitors per year.

History

The museum was founded in 1912 by Karl August Lingner, a Dresden businessman and manufacturer of hygiene products, as a "public venue for healthcare education", following the first International Hygiene Exhibition

International Hygiene Exhibition

The International Hygiene Exhibition was a world's fair focusing on medicine and public health, held in Dresden, Germany, in 1911.The leading figure organizing the exhibition was German philanthropist and businessman Karl August Lingner, who had grown wealthy from his Odol mouthwash brand, and was...

 in 1911.

The second International Hygiene Exhibition was held in 1930, in a building by Wilhelm Kreis

Wilhelm Kreis

Wilhelm Kreis was a prominent German architect and professor of architecture, active through four political systems in German history: the Wilhelmine era, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the foundation of the Federal Republic.Kreis was born in Eltville am Rhein in Hesse-Nassau...

 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.

During the Third Reich the museum came under the influence of the Nazis, who used it to produce material propagandising their racial ideology

Racial policy of Nazi Germany

The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the "Aryan race", and based on a specific racist doctrine which claimed scientific legitimacy...

 and promoting eugenics

Eugenics

Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...

. Various Nazi government offices relocated to the museum between 1933 and 1941, and the German Labour Front

German Labour Front

The German Labour Front was the National Socialist trade union organisation which replaced the various trade unions of the Weimar Republic after Adolf Hitler's rise to power....

's Reichsberufswettkampf

Reichsberufswettkampf

The Reichsberufswettkampf was an annual vocational competition held in Nazi Germany as part of the Gleichschaltung of German society.The competition was organised by the German Labour Front with the aid of the Hitler Youth and the National Socialist German Students' League...

(National Vocational Competition) was held there in 1944. Large parts of the building and collection were destroyed by the bombing of Dresden

Bombing of Dresden in World War II

The Bombing of Dresden was a military bombing by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force and as part of the Allied forces between 13 February and 15 February 1945 in the Second World War...

 in 1945.

In the GDR-era the museum resumed its role as a communicator of public health information. Following 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

Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen

The Konferenz Nationaler Kultureinrichtungen or Conference of National Cultural Institutions is a union of more than twenty cultural organizations in the former East Germany...

. Between 2001 and 2005 the museum was renovated and partly rebuilt under the architect Peter Kulka.

Exhibitions, collection and other activities

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 sense

Sense

Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception...

s.

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.

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.

Further Reading

• Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945. Cambridge Monographs in the History of Medicine, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

External links

• Home page in English
• Time magazine report on the 2nd hygiene exhibition Time
  Time (magazine)
  Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
  
  , 2 June 1930.