Images of disability
About our project
The Hans Würtz Collection
At the turn of the Twentieth Century, the German pedagogue Hans Würtz (1875-1958) passionately collected artworks connected with impairment and disability. Würtz, himself not disabled, was the educational director of the Oskar-Helene-Heim (Oskar-Helene-Home) in Berlin, one of the largest orthopaedic institutions for disabled children and teenagers of its time. His collection features hundreds of 2D prints, lithographs and photographs along with small 3D statuettes made of pottery, metal, wax, textile and carved wood and ivory. Exhibited in Berlin in 1932, the accompanying publication entitled Zerbrecht die Krücken (Smash the Crutches) suggests most of the works to be from the 14th to the 20th Century. Würtz’s activity was set against the political background of the rise of National Socialism.
Most of the collection has been held in Prague (CZ) since (approximately) 1938 and has been presented only once in 2013 at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art (Prague), as part of their Disabled by Normality exhibition.
Please note all images are copyright of their respective owners – The National Medical Library, Prague, Czech Republic and the Jedlička Institute and Schools, Prague, Czech Republic.
Berlin 1910-1932
In Berlin, in 1932 Hans Würtz built one of the largest-ever exhibitions connected to disability and impairment (Deutsches Museum für Krüppelfürsorge). Würtz also created new and divergent categories for various forms of ‘deviations from the norm’. He connected these ‘types’ with specific psychological dispositions like envy and mistrust as part of his attempt to create a definition of the “Soul of the Cripple” which led him to develop what are now outdated (but typical of the time) physiognomic concepts of disability in 'special education'. Representatives of the emancipatory disability movement in Germany (the so-called "Perl-Bund") fought against Würtz's ideas of a "crippled soul" and the supposedly necessary separate home education for physically disabled children and youths as early as the 1920s. Despite this Würtz innovatively moved away from the prevailing medical perspective on impairments to a more cultural perspective that materialised in his outstanding collection, both regarding its size and content. His assemblage, the collection, uniquely connects art and disability in a cultural manner beyond the status of a simple cabinet of curiosities.
Berlin 1932
During 1932 Würtz exhibited his collection at the Oskar- Helene-Heim. Included in the collection was a contentious image of the Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Würtz was later arrested, and accused of embezzlement and misappropriation, escaping to Prague in 1934 with his collection following approximately in 1938.
Prague 1936 and 2013
The Würtz Collection was sold to the Jedlicka Institute (Prague) and a part of it was later transferred to the National Medical Library in Prague. Elements of the collection have been on public display at the National Medical Library and were displayed at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in in Prague 2013.
Würtz the teacher and collector
Hans Würtz with his wife Rosalie outside the Jedlička Institute in Prague 1934
The collection in numbers -approximately!
Examples from the Collection
This lithograph by British artist Ernest Whatley from the early 1920s shows a man on a cigarette break in front of a workshop entrance (picture detail). The man, who is missing his left leg, supports himself on a crutch. His left eye is covered by an eyepatch. Only a few artworks by Whatley are known, and these were primarily used for commercial and advertising purposes as is the case here in the uncropped image. It is part of a print advertisement for a variety of goods produced by World War One Commonwealth veterans. Artistic representations of working, disabled men constitute a recurrent theme in the Würtz Collection.
This statuette (8.5 cm tall) portrays a woman with a spinal deformity who is missing both her right arm and left leg. She is shown hawking small floral bouquets on the street. The round holes in the centre of the flowers suggest missing inlays. The statuette is of unknown origin and could be made of ivory, which remains to be verified. It bears striking similarities to more than a dozen other statuettes in the collection depicting people of different ages and genders with severe physical impairments as if it belonged to a set.
The original engraving of Der krumme Tischler zu Innsbruck (The Crooked Carpenter of Innsbruck) was produced in 1620 by Andreas Sprängler (picture detail). It is a well-known historical image associated with the Tirolean capital. It shows Wolfgang Gschaidter, a gaunt, bedridden man chastely covered by a cloth. His atrophied arms are flat on the bed. His feet are deformed. His profession as a carpenter and position in this view from above evoke a comparison to images of the crucified Christ. Various Baroque references are present in this image: the Memento mori in its sacred context and the secular Wunderkammer with its invitation to a lurid gaze.
The image was cut from an unknown edition of Eugen Holländer’s Wunder, Wundergeburt und Wundergestalt in Einblattdrucken des Fünfzehnten bis Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Marvels, Marvellous Births and Marvellous Figures in Broadsheets of the 15th to 18th Centuries). Original prints can be seen in the holdings of the British Museum and the Wellcome Collection in London. The image also features prominently in the participatory action research project Bildnis eines behinderten Mannes (Painting of a Disabled Man).