Figure construction

One can often see it in people: how they work and live, how they shape their everyday life, what their political views are, their philosophy, and their relationship to themselves and the world. Many things are not just visible in clothing or hairstyle, but are deeply etched in wrinkles, scars, and muscles.

That is why life-size figures have always animated the meticulously detailed replicas of historical sites in the Deutsches Auswandererhaus, telling their own stories of being an emigrant. The museum is now growing, as is the space for these very corporeal narratives.

Especially in social debates, as showcased in the new part of the permanent exhibition, various actors and figures emerge, and even in the ‘older’ part of the museum, there are new stories to tell. The exhibition planners had a long list of character wishes. In the past few months, they realized three very different studios specializing in lifelike figures and replicas made from a variety of materials: the Berlin ‘Lifelike Studio for Figure Construction’ by Lisa Büscher, the studio of Reinhard Bachmann near Leipzig, and a studio in Flurlingen, Switzerland, owned by Marcel Nyffenegger.

The former is originally a trained carpenter but has been creating replicas for exhibition houses for over 20 years. On June 17, 2021, he delivered some of the eight figures that he has crafted – in constant collaboration with the researchers from the German Emigration Center and the design office ‘Andreas Heller Architects & Designers, Hamburg’ – and which historically and personally may never have encountered each other. Except in his transporter. A whole team supported him to create the large number of lifelike figures in a short time. Among Marcel Nyffenegger’s supporters are versatile individuals like Sibylle Duttwiler, who accompanies the transport but also takes on painstaking small tasks, such as attaching individual hairs to the figure’s head, as well as specialists like makeup artist Tina Ehrat and Valentin Rihs, who carves the authentic body forms of the figures.

One of the figures is a young woman from the early 20th century, a suffragette, who proudly displays her political demand for women’s rights with her fabric rosette in purple, green, and white on her jacket. Her body was sculpted from PU foam (a dense, stable plastic often used in home insulation) and covered in epoxy resin. To ensure stability, there is a steel frame inside her. Visitors won’t see any of this. All of it is hidden beneath historically accurate clothing, designed by a costume designer from nearby Sigmaringen, Germany, in collaboration with the studio, the design office, and the researchers, and tailored directly onto the synthetic body. The boots are even historical originals, a lucky find. Only the elaborately modeled hands and the almost lifelike head are visible, which have gained surprising delicacy, almost like skin, through silicone layers and a special silicone paint.

The inspiration for the appearance of the New Yorker in the wool costume came from historical photos and the faces of living people, which can be examined more easily from various angles. While other studios chose to cast the faces of real models, Nyffenegger cautiously opted for a less direct approach and modeled the human profile from a variety of photos. For the exhibition lighting, the suffragette will be retouched on-site. The artificial hair hairstyle already looks good upon her arrival.

Here too, there are very different philosophies among the studios regarding what is best suited to impressively and durably imitate a human appearance. Some exclusively use real hair, while others mix artificial and natural hair. This is something Nyffenegger occasionally resorts to.

Now the new figure of the Migration Museum is being placed by the creator and exhibition designers in the new exhibition space. So that it stands equal to the visitors, gazing at them with clear eyes from the past, and can quietly tell about its life in the New York working class. Was the expressive posture of the historical figure difficult to model? Marcel Nyffenegger smiles: “Then the creation process is particularly exciting.”