Carl Herrmann Unthan

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Carl Herrmann Unthan (born April 5, 1848 in Sommerfeld near Elbing , † November 21, 1929 in Berlin ) was a German violinist and artist born without arms (art marksman and art swimmer ).

Carl Herrmann Unthan plays a violin with his feet (1885)

Live and act

Youth and first appearances

Carl Herrmann Unthan, who was born without arms, developed an astonishing skill with his feet : cared for in his family, he was able to eat himself at the age of two, not least thanks to the efforts of his father, who was a teacher, and at the age of ten he taught himself to play the violin on a violin lying on a chair . At the age of 16 he attended a conservatory, which he graduated the following year. The constant training of the dexterity of his feet (as well as his leg and hip joints) already in his youth meant that Carl Herrmann Unthan was able to lead an almost completely independent life: He could not only undress and dress himself, shave himself or herself Tie ties, with the help of his feet he also wrote letters and texts either in clear script or on the typewriter.

At the age of 20 he was already performing as a soloist with orchestras, he began his triumphal march in the Leipzig Krystallpalast , which is why he was later often described as “the armless miracle of Leipzig” despite his East Prussian origins. Nonetheless, Unthan quickly realized that the audience was less interested in his artistic achievements than in the fact that he could play the violin (and later also the piston ) virtuoso without arms .

According to his own admission, in one of these performances a violin string broke, which he replaced with the help of his toes . This first gave him the idea of ​​repeating this feat in every performance and finally to fill up his program with this and other feats, which, however, also had to mean that he had to leave concert performances.

Unthan as an artist, actor and writer

In this way he began to earn his living in circuses, initially in Germany and a short time later as a sought-after artist worldwide, where he was not only enthusiastic as a violin virtuoso, but also in the same program. B. also shone as an art shooter (he shot the symbols from normal playing cards with a Tesching, among other things, or shared a pencil at a medium distance). Since he was able to pull pins up from the bottom of a water basin with his toes (which in the normal case - with fingers - requires considerable dexterity), this too became part of his program. With this he toured - with the help of various impresario - through Europe, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, South America and the USA.

Two films were made with Carl Herrmann Unthan as an actor: In 1913 the silent film Atlantis , based on a script by Gerhart Hauptmann , was shot in Denmark under the direction of August Blom , in which he plays the armless Arthur Stoss. The idea for this role arose during an Atlantic crossing, during which Hauptmann and Unthan met. In 1914 he played in Der Mann ohne Arm - an artist drama .

After the First World War, his ability to lead a largely self-determined life without arms led him countless times to army hospitals and - at that time so-called - cripple homes, to speak to disabled people or invalids, to demonstrate his art and thus give them courage to live.

Carl Herrmann Unthan was married to Antonie Neschta (nickname: Minx ), who was also his assistant for many years, and wrote his autobiography himself at the age of 76. As he used the typewriter with his toes, he called the resulting work, das It was first published in Stuttgart in 1925 and had several editions up to his death, pediscript (svw. "Written with the feet" ), emphasizing the contrast to the usual manuscript . The book also contains numerous photos showing him doing everyday activities, as well as a page with his “handwriting” or footprint.

The interest of scientific research in Unthan

The secret of his physical performance was u. a., as explained in the catalog of the scientific collections of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), in the fact that Carl Herrmann Unthan "spread your toes, bend toes 1, 4 and 5 and straighten toes 2 and 3 in one act" and was able to grab larger objects. In this way Unthan - combined with training his leg and hip muscles - was able to carry out all activities that did not require legs and hands at the same time in everyday life (such as lifting objects from higher points), which he was able to do in the sequence also in his circus performances, always only to be performed one after the other .

The numerous photo plates, casts and preparations by Carl Herrmann Unthan available in the HU attest to the great scientific interest that the artist Unthan and his achievements were shown during his lifetime. The investigators found it remarkable in “(...) considering the very different and sometimes very fine functional inserts of his feet [...] their rather clumsy shape and the shortness of the toes." : Basically, however, this analysis supports Unthans after the first World War I developed and also publicly represented the conviction that his art is basically an art for everyone or everyday art : It can be done in substantial parts by every human individual at any time without the use of prosthetic aids, only by their own will and extensive training. His conviction was one of the reasons and the main motivation for Unthan's commitment to the welfare of the disabled after the First World War.

Works

  • Through life without arms , Karlsruhe: Braun 1916 (digitized version of the Württemberg State Library Stuttgart [1] )
  • The pediscript. Notes from the life of an armless person. 1st edition, Verlag Robert Lutz, Stuttgart, 1925 ( digitized 2nd edition, 1925 ).

literature

  • Carl Herrmann Unthan and Lore Neddermeyer. The pediscript . Verlag Marhold, 1970. This is an excerpt from the 4th edition of the pediscript by Carl Herrmann Unthan with comments and explanations by Lore Neddermeyer.
  • Colleen M. Schmitz: A life without arms. Carl Hermann (sic) Unthan and his work on motivating war invalids in Germany. In: Melissa Larner, James Peto, Colleen M. Schmitz (ed. For the German Hygiene Museum and the Wellcome Collection): War and Medicine . Wallstein Verlag GmbH, Göttingen, ISBN 978-3-8353-0486-4 , 2009.
  • Joachim Piechowski: The man without arms. Kant-Verlag, Hamburg, 1967.

Web links

Wikisource: Carl Herrmann Unthan  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berliner Volkszeitung, vol. 77, no. 550, November 21, 1929, evening edition
  2. ↑ This occurrence was described by JC Lobe : “He not only performs slow vocal passages, but also rather fast passages from the lowest to the highest tone regions, gliding over all four strings, clean and pure; he also produces trills with two toes as quickly and nicely as the best virtuoso does with two fingers; he plays whole series of double stops in thirds and decimals. But what almost wants to say more, he delivers with refined taste and a lot of feeling, in that he has all nuances of expression in his power, from pianissimo to medium degrees of strength ... ”Quoted from Ernst Günther: The dream of an armless violinist . In: 33 circus stories. Henschelverlag, Berlin, 1977, p. 96.
  3. ↑ For this z. B. Theater and art news. (...) Alcazar. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Morgenblatt, No. 1494/1868, October 27, 1868, p. 11 ( unpaginated ) middle. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.
  4. ↑ a b A description of the Unthan program from the perspective of a viewer in the 1920s, as well as a very personal view of his life, is e.g. B. to be found in Ernst Günther: The dream of the armless violinist . In: 33 circus stories . Henschelverlag, Berlin, 1977, pp. 91-100.
  5. ↑ Carol Poore: Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture (English), University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (MI, USA), ISBN 978-0-472-03381-2 , 2007, p. 15 ( PDF )
  6. ↑ Pet name quoted from Ernst Günther: The dream of an armless violinist . In: 33 circus stories. Henschelverlag, Berlin, 1977, p. 92.
  7. ↑ Published as: Carl Herrmann Unthan: Das Pediskript. Notes from the life of an armless person. 1st edition, Verlag Robert Lutz, Stuttgart, 1925.
  8. ↑ a b Catalog of the scientific collections of the Humboldt University Berlin , Document ID 8505
  9. ^ Catalog of the scientific collections of the Humboldt University Berlin , Document ID 8482
personal data
SURNAME Unthan, Carl Herrmann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION armless artist and violinist
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Sommerfeld near Elbing
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1929
Place of death Berlin