WITHOUT TITLE

(death masks Josephinum), 2018

My display of the death masks from the collection of the Josephinum was part of an exhibition on the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna between 1938 and 1945. The selection shows leading doctors and professors of the medical school famous until 1938: among them some who died long before the “Anschluss” in 1938 like the well-known anatomist Emil Zuckerkandl (1849–1910), some who were immediate victims of the National Socialist regime due to their Jewish origin, like Hans Horst Mayer (1853–1939) or Max Neuburger (1868–1955) and also Nazi sympathizers such as Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940).

The presentation of the masks without identification leads towards the attempt to distinguish the faces of the „non-Aryans“ from those of the perpetrators and advocates of National Socialism and evokes the obsolete typification of supposedly “Jewish” or “Aryan” physiognomies propagated by the nazi’s racial delusions following the racial theories of the 19th century.