Man as ‘Industrial Palace’ on 1926 Fritz Kahn poster

German author and artist Fritz Kahn made this poster in 1926 depicting the human body as an ‘industrial palace’ by turning it into a complicated chemical plant using metaphors of 1920’s industrial life.



I find Kahn’s almost morbid ‘dream’ anatomy very interesting. His mechanical visualization of the inner workings of the human body reminds me of a somewhat similar illustration I loved to look at when I was in the fourth grade.

I stumbled across a ‘mechanical inner man’ illustration in an old three-volume encyclopedia in the school library. It was less complicated than the Kahn poster (pictured) but as a fourth grader I was intrigued by it and often drew my own versions (wish I’d kept those drawings).

More on Kahn’s ‘body machines’ here.