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Inventing-Mania! The Sailing Airship of the “Engineer von Tarden”

Exhibition design: raumlabor Berlin

Model construction airship: Bernd-Michael Weisheit

Room installation: Mahony Collective

Essay for the exhibition: Teresa Präauer

Graphic: Gruetzner Triebe

The exhibition begins with a medical file from the Charité archive. It unfolds the story of a patient who was admitted to the psychiatric clinic in 1909. There, he  worked tirelessly on his invention of a sailing airship, which  was not only intended to help him overcome the wall of psychiatry. He wanted to be remembered as the “Engineer von Tarden”.

His story takes us back to a time when zeppelin euphoria was at its peak, the first airship was flying in the skies over Berlin and psychiatry was using the term “inventing-mania” as a diagnosis that also described a collective social condition. As a still young academic discipline, it struggled with the definition of clinical pictures to define its subject: the human psyche.

The exhibition reveals the interweaving of psychiatry, the individual and society, exposing its constructions and projections. It opens up a variety of resonating spaces with a spatial installation by the Mahony Collective, a literary story by Teresa Präauer and a reconstruction of the sailing airship by Bernd-Michael Weisheit.

Fotografie vom Ingeniuer von Tarden Segelluftschiffmodell aus Krankenakte
Skizze des Modells eines Segelluftschiffs vom Ingeniuer von Tarden aus Krankenakte
Skizze eines Denkmals des Patienten Ingeniuer von Tarden aus Krankenakte
4 Fotos vom Ingeniuer von Tarden mit dem Modell eines Segelluftschiffs aus Krankenakte