KAHN, Fritz.

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The Human Factory. The English version of the iconic Der Mensch als Industriepalast poster (first issued in 1926), the most famous illustration from Kahn's Das Leben des Menschen (1922-31). It is a pioneering example of early information design. Kahn, a German gynaecologist, was "arguably one of the most successful popular science writers internationally between 1920 and 1960" (Borck, p. 495). His heavily illustrated books combined science with the zeitgeist of Weimar Germany: new technologies, rapid industrialization, and the Bauhaus and Dada movements. Das Leben des Menschen was Kahn's greatest achievement, a copiously illustrated five-volume set on human anatomy and physiology which took nearly a decade to complete.Der Mensch als Industriepalast visually summarizes the book and functions as an iconographic microcosm of its content, "thus encapsulating Kahn's explanatory strategy. The poster shows the human body as an assembly line in an industrialised workspace, packed with technology and populated, according to the division of labour, by anonymous workers and white-collar members of the modern society. The image did not simply compare the body to an industrial plant metaphorically - it directly represented every organ and bodily system with a technical analogue topographically proportionate in size and location" (ibid., pp. 462-3).Rössler notes that there were an unknown number of translations from the original German poster, including into English and Arabic (p. 32). Wor

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