Man as a chemical plant on 1926 Fritz Kahn poster - revisited

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

More on Fritz Kahn’s “body machines” here.