Deutsches Hygiene-Museum

The creation of the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (1912) harks back to the efforts of the Dresden industrialist Karl August Lingner (1861-1916), the manufacturer of the mouthwash Odol. In 1911 Lingner had been among the protagonists of the First International Hygiene Exhibition, for which more than five million visitors had come to Dresden. This exhibition combined state-of-the-art technologies and unprecedented lifelike displays and models to impart knowledge about human anatomy and address issues of proactive health care and diet. Always at the cutting edge of science, the museum and its presentations for a general audience did much to democratize the field of health during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933).