Hunger artist

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Hunger artist Hella Latonia (1910)

Hunger artists were showmen who fasted for long periods of time as a public attraction in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ; the entrance fee of the visitors was the fee of the starving man. The most famous of these showmen went on regular tours across Europe and gained greater popularity due to the reports in the newspapers. At the end of the 1920s, however, interest in show starvation decreased significantly.

Some of these showmen stated that they had "supernatural powers" to overcome hunger and the need for food, which explains the strong public interest in them. Until well into the 20th century it was not known that every person who fasts voluntarily feels less hunger after a few days and that the body releases hormones that cause a slight state of intoxication (hunger euphoria), so that fasters, in contrast to those who starve involuntarily, mentally less suffer even if the physical strength continuously decreases.

history

According to the sources, the beginning of this phenomenon can be dated exactly to the year 1880, when the American doctor Henry Tanner made a bet that he would be able to go completely without food for 40 days and only drink water. He believed that fasting could cure various diseases. In addition, Tanner wanted to demonstrate the power of human will, which is able to overcome natural instincts. His experiment took place at Clarendon Hall in New York City , where he was monitored day and night. Over the course of 40 days, thousands of paying visitors came to see the so-called "Hunger Doctor". After this popular and also financial success, Tanner repeated the voluntary starvation diet several times.

The news of Tanner's starvation was also spread in Europe and, not least, the opportunity to earn money led to the fact that a few years later the first imitators were found, whose hunger initially aroused keen interest from doctors. Daily reports on the hunger artist's condition appeared in the local newspapers during the designated time of starvation . The best-known representatives of this “art” in the 19th century were Giovanni Succi and Wilhelm Bode alias Ricardo Sacco. Succi performed in Milan in the summer of 1886 , and onlookers from abroad even came to see him. In 1888 he went hungry in Florence for a month for scientific purposes under the supervision of a team of doctors. The knowledge gained was published in book form and also translated into German (Luigi Luciani: Das Hungern. Studies and experiments on humans ).

In 1905 the first hunger artist appeared in Vienna, the actress Auguste Victoria Schenk. She wanted to surpass Riccardo Sacco, who had recently fasted for 21 days in a coffee house in Vienna's Prater , and held out for 23 days. In a Viennese newspaper a woman's break-in into a man's domain was mockingly commented on: “The competition rages on in all areas of human life; women have become men’s dreaded rivals in many professions, and now the female desires for emancipation have even challenged the most unprofitable of all arts - the art of hunger, which was previously practiced by men alone. Ms. Auguste Victoria Schenk, a former tragedian, is the bold lady who has undertaken to prove that the weaker sex can also have a strong stomach. ”In fact, women fasting for a long time were nothing new, about such cases have been reported repeatedly since early modern times, but they did not appear as showmen, but were compared with religious miracles.

The First World War meant a temporary end to hunger art in Europe, which was revived in the 1920s. In 1926, the German hunger artist Jolly triggered a real boom with his appearance in Berlin , after setting a “hunger record” in the spring of 44 days, attracted around 350,000 visitors and collected around 130,000 Reichsmarks (equivalent to around € 500,000 in today's purchasing power) would have. In Berlin and Vienna in particular, several imitators tried almost simultaneously, some of which broke off their attempts prematurely. Max Michelly set a new record with 54 days of fasting this year. Then the public interest ebbed somewhat, the Second World War basically meant the end of this form of showmanship. However, a German named Heros went hungry for 53 days publicly in the Frankfurt Zoo in 1950 .

Cases of fraud

The prominent starvation artist Giovanni Succi stayed comfortably in a hotel room on his first tour, where he also received the paying visitors, and even took part in public events. He was examined daily by doctors and his room was supposedly under constant surveillance, but primarily by hotel staff. And so from the beginning there was also public speculation about whether everything was going well with the hunger art or whether fraud and deception were involved, so the artists weren't really starving, they were just pretending to be. In fact, several cases of fraud became known, including among the prominent representatives.

For example, after Succi's 30-day fast in April 1896 in Vienna, a minor scandal broke out when, following the public statement by the medical "monitoring committee" that the attempt was successful, it became known that Succi was in his Hotel room had been surprised while eating a beef steak . In order to protect its reputation, the committee corrected the official Lenten indication to 25 days. Whether Succi had actually fasted continuously during this time remained open.

The suspicion, repeatedly expressed in the newspapers, that it was being cheated, led to a standardization of public starvation. After the showman had eaten a meal in public for the last time before the fast, he was locked in a completely transparent glass box that had previously been publicly viewed, which was known as the "walling". There was some furniture in the box, including a sofa, bed, and armchair. But even this tightening of conditions still left opportunities to deceive the public, especially at night.

Even the alleged hunger record holder Jolly was subsequently unmasked as a charlatan who had been secretly slipped chocolate by the guards. Other showmen were given chicken broth or malt sugar at night . The discovery of these scams contributed to the decline in popularity of starvation.

Others

In 2003, action artist David Blaine performed as a hunger artist, spending 44 days without solid food in a glass box hung over the Thames in London . The public interest was comparable to that of the earlier hunger artists, but the reactions were far more critical. Blaine lost 40 pounds during that time and was hospitalized afterwards.

The writer Franz Kafka wrote his sarcastic short story Ein Hungerkünstler in 1922 , in which his protagonist is forgotten and dies in his cage in the circus. Kafka himself suffered from eating disorders at least at times and was also interested in many phenomena of variety and showmanship. In literary studies it has therefore been suggested that Giovanni Succi could have been a model for Kafka's hunger artist. The fasting teacher Arnold Ehret (1856–1922) , who was locked up on June 26, 1909 in Cologne for a 51-day fasting attempt, is much more likely . On display in a glass cell for public viewing, it spent 49 days without food, setting a new world record. He came from Monte Verità , where in 1912 he opened a "school for physical and mental dietetics". Kafka was very interested in life reforming practices, visited a number of relevant health resorts between 1903 and 1915 and would have liked to have founded his own naturopathic association. Reports of Ehret's sensational display in a glass house will not have escaped him.

Quote

"In Germany, people are far more relentless against hunger artists who don't want to persevere than they are against princes who consumed something completely different from organic malt during the World War and cheated on the audience in a completely different way." ( Karl Kraus , writer)

Individual evidence

  1. Gerald Huether: Neurobiological Effects and Psychological Effects of Fasting
  2. Enrico Danieli: Fasting as a Freakshow ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. a b c d e f g Wiener Zeitung : Peter Payer: The breadlessest of all arts ( Memento from December 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  4. 16150g Krondorfer. In: Berliner Zeitung . May 13, 2002, accessed June 15, 2015 .
  5. ^ Astrid Lange-Kirchheim: Messages from the Italian hunger artist Giovanni Succi. New materials for Kafka's Hunger Artists . In: Freiburg literary psychological discussions. Yearbook for literature and psychoanalysis. Volume 18: Size Fantasies. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999. pp. 315-340.

literature

  • Peter Payer: Hunger Artist in Vienna. A Disappeared Attraction , Verlag Sonderzahl, Vienna 2002
  • Walter Vandereycken, Ron van Deth: hunger artists, fasting miracles, anorexia. A Cultural History of Eating Disorders. Edited and translated by Rolf Meermann, Zülpich 1990 and Munich 1992.
  • Walter Bauer-Wabgnegg: Monsters and machines, artists and technology in Franz Kafka's work. In: Wolf Kittler, Gerhard Neumann (ed.): Franz Kafka. Correspondence. Freiburg 1990. pp. 316-382. (A detailed description of the art of hunger in the fair and variety scene on pp. 372–380.)
  • Gottfried Fischborn : Hunger Strikers and Hunger Artists as Actors of Modern Theatricality . In: GF: Political Culture and Theatricality . Articles, essays, journalism. Peter Lang Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2012. ISBN 978-3-631-63251-2
  • Thorsten Carstensen and Marcel Schmid (ed.): The literature of life reform. Cultural criticism and optimism around 1900. Bielefeld 2016.

Web links