It's clear to see: the Transparent Woman reveals her internal organs at the Hygiene Museum. Credit: DEUTSCHES HYGIENE-MUSEUM

Medical models

Last year an undetonated Second World War bomb was discovered near the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. It was a reminder, if any were needed, of the dramatic history of the museum, which this week reopens its valuable permanent collection, 14 years after German reunification.

Most of the bombs did their job in 1945, however – the museum was 80% destroyed. Gone, too, was the Nazi ideology that had perverted its original, progressive, aim: enlightened health education.

By the start of the twentieth century, the infectious basis of common diseases was understood and, in the absence of antibiotics, the emphasis was on avoiding infection. Interest was high – some 30 nations took part in the First International Hygiene Exhibition held in Dresden in 1911.

The exhibition, which attracted more than five million visitors, was so successful that a permanent German Hygiene Museum was founded in Dresden the following year, moving into its permanent home – an imposing building in the Bauhaus tradition – in 1930.

Workshops sprang up to manufacture anatomical models and teaching aids of ever greater ingenuity and no small artistic value. These included moulages, or wax models of healthy or diseased body parts, transparent human organs produced by a new method developed by the Leipzig doctor Werner Spalteholz, and didactic wall charts. Most famously, Franz Tschakert prepared plastic-coated anatomical statues known as Gläserne Menschen (transparent people), complete with real or artificial skeleton, wax organs and thousands of metres of painted wire representing blood vessels and nerves.

The first Transparent Man was unveiled at the opening of the museum's new building in 1930. He stood on a plinth in an apse-like recess, a setting that no doubt added to the spiritual atmosphere he exuded with his exultantly outstretched arms.

But three years later the atmosphere changed. Extending the general enthusiasm for hygiene to racial hygiene and eugenics, Nazi Germany subverted the museum for propaganda. In 1933 the Nazis also sacked the museum's Jewish employees and destroyed the frescoes in its restaurant painted by expressionist Otto Dix, as they considered him a degenerate artist.

The museum somehow maintained its professional reputation to the extent that its rebuilding became a priority for the Russian occupying army shortly after the bombing, and was completed within a year. The museum became a flagship of the new Communist state of East Germany, where it continued its official mandate to educate the public about health issues. It spoke to the wider world – albeit with forked tongue – of East Germany's strengths in technology and education. Despite shortages of materials, the manufacture, sale and export of its anatomical models grew. It produced the first black anatomical models for export to Africa, and developed special wax for moulages exported to hot climates. It sold more than a hundred transparent men and women, extending its repertoire to transparent cows and horses.

But reunification put an end to the museum's official purpose – West Germany already had a government office for health education.

The permanent exhibition is part of the museum's development of a fresh identity. The first of the four new exhibition rooms is dedicated to the Transparent Man, which remains a metaphor for enlightenment and transparency about the past, as well as allowing us to see tissues and organs. Instrumentation on show includes a first-generation X-ray machine. And there is a range of historical anatomical models, including the first Transparent Woman and a more recent model whose organs light up when buttons are pressed. The other rooms feature life and death, eating and drinking, and sexuality. Three additional rooms, dedicated to movement and the cardiovascular system, neuroscience, and skin, will open next year.

The museum's curators have eschewed recent trends towards amusement-park styles of presentation. This is a place to learn, and the museum's important collection is central. Unobtrusive computer terminals provide further information, which can be e-mailed to visitors' home computers. The displays' strong, simple and light design – the ultimate in German chic – creates an effect that is modern and learned, calm and uncluttered, despite the wealth of objects. Its elegance is a tribute to its early, avant-garde history.