Der falsche Korper: Beitrage zu einer Geschichte der Monstrositaten (review)

This book contains nine articles on the function and interpretation of monsters and monstrosities in theology, medicine, sexology, aesthetics, criminology, and psychiatry in the period between the eighteenth century and the early twentieth century. The title (“The Wrong Body”) already communicates the connotations associated with people who are marked by a physical deformity or who, as hermaphrodites, live “in the wrong sex” (as Andreas Hartmann’s chapter is entitled). The term monstrosities refers to deformities such as used to be found in anatomical collections. The monster as an aberration of nature can be contrasted with the societally defined monster, who does not necessarily have a physical deformity.

The editor of the volume, Michael Hagner, approaches the subject from the perspective of a specialist in the history of science. Monstrosities have a history, he maintains. With his choice of topics he shows that despite the advent of teratology the final word on this subject has not yet been spoken. He also succeeds in challenging the widely held view that the history of monstrosities is a continuum (p. 10). Common to all the contributions is the question of the context in which the monstrous is defined and discussed (p. 10). Monstrosities have always been the object of interpretation, the particular interpretation depending on the particular need. That which is clearly different is a challenge for every theory. Theologians have had to address the question of whether misshapen individuals can be an expression of the heavenly order. The Augustinian worldview established a “logical connection between miscreation/deformity and the moral category of evil” (Josef N. Neumann, p. 39) that had a long-lasting impact. Natural science of the eighteenth century asked whether deformities should be understood as a deviation from natural laws. Autopsies on “monsters” led the English anatomist John Hunter to conclude that the organism can organize itself in spite of deformities. The knowledge that even deformities of the body followed natural laws led to the “naturalization of monstrosity” (Javier Moscoso, p. 56). The question of the origins of monsters was closely related to explanations of the origins of life. Michael Hagner points out that “toward the end of the eighteenth century monstrosities played a key role in establishing the sciences of life” (p. 76). The theory of preformation was replaced by embryology.

Roy Porter sees the connection of monsters and the insane as a tool in the political discussion about the French Revolution. Robespierre became a monster to many at the height of the reign of terror. The postrevolutionary psychiatrist Philippe Pinel believed that “the children of the revolution had degenerated into crazy monsters” (p. 109). Porter gives numerous examples showing that the popular conception of monsters and the insane as two ways of looking at the same thing was strengthened by the French Revolution, but had already been present in the “collective unconscious” (p. 108). The Enlightenment saw in natural laws the realization of “die Ordnung der Vernunft” (laws of reason). If the insane and the deformed did not fit in with the laws of reason, then the two were placed on the same level. But this association of the insane and people with deformities goes further back, as Ambroise Paré’s treatise Des monstres et prodiges shows (originally published in 1573; English translation: On Monsters and Marvels [1982]). According to the theory of imagination, a monster could be born through the strength of maternal imagination [Porter, p. 118, n 37].

Johann Caspar Lavater (1746–1801) was convinced that “the character . . . of a human can be recognized in his external features.” ¹ He believed that the harmony of moral and physical beauty derived from man’s having been created in the image of God; hence, an ugly person could not be a good person. The aesthetic norm led to a moral judgment. Just as Lavater believed he could measure “the depths of the...