Flying high! "Engineer von Tarden" and the mania for invention

At the center of the exhibition is a wondrous object: it resembles a zeppelin, but it also has two sails.

It was designed by a patient at the Charité psychiatric clinic in the years between 1908 and 1910, when the zeppelin euphoria reached its peak, the first airship appeared in the skies over Berlin and psychiatry found a new diagnosis in the form of the “delusion of invention”, which also described a collective social condition.

Under the name “Ingenieur von Tarden”, the patient hopes to help shape the future of the world with his airship and make the dream of flying come true. In the psychiatric ward, he is given the opportunity to build a model of his invention and to stage this model for photographs as if it could actually fly. However, a submission that he prepares for the patent office is never sent off.

The airship is reconstructed for the exhibition on the basis of photos and the description preserved in the medical file. The gaps resulting from the rudimentary sources are enriched with artistic and literary reflections.