Special exhibition

About the exhibition

The skin surrounds us – taut, soft, shaping, protective. It connects us to the world, makes us visible and social beings. For a long time it was hardly taken into account in medicine, only understood as a stage for internal disease processes, visible in “efflorescences”: redness, pustules or spots.

It was only the Viennese doctor Ferdinand Hebra (1816–1880) who recognized the skin as an independent organ in the middle of the 19th century. He documented skin diseases with systematic precision and created the basis for scientific dermatology with his Atlas of Skin Diseases (1856–1876).

The exhibition takes place in Hebra's “Clinicum”. It shows detailed patient portraits and impressive plastic wax casts, so-called moulages. It links Hebra's pioneering work with the development of Viennese dermatology and its significance to this day: a look at the skin as a mirror of our lives.

Curated by: Thomas Schnalke, Berlin Medical History Museum of the Charité
Scientific advice: Beatrix Volc-Platzer, Society of Physicians in Vienna

With a “groundbreaking intervention” by Markus Schinwald.

Supported by: