Figure construction for the Deutsches Auswandererhaus

You can often see it in people: how they work and live, how they shape their daily lives, their political stance, their philosophy, and their relationship with themselves and the world. Much is visible not just in clothing or hairstyle, but it is deeply inscribed in wrinkles, scars, and muscles. This is why life-sized figures have historically animated the detailed replicas of historical locations in the German Emigration Center and narrate stories of the emigrant experience. Now, the museum is expanding, along with the space for these very corporeal narratives. Especially in societal debates, as shown by the new part of the permanent exhibition, various actors and figures come into play, and even in the ‘old’ part of the museum, there are new stories to tell. The exhibition planners had a long wishlist of figures. In recent months, they realized three very different ateliers that specialize in lifelike figures and replicas made from a variety of materials: the Berlin ‘Lifelike Atelier for Figure Construction’ by Lisa Büscher, Reinhard Bachmann’s atelier near Leipzig, and an atelier in Flurlingen, Switzerland, run by Marcel Nyffenegger. The latter, originally a trained carpenter, has been creating replicas for exhibition houses for over 20 years. On June 17, 2021, he delivered some of the eight figures he had crafted in close collaboration with the researchers from the German Emigration Center and the design office ‘Andreas Heller Architects & Designers, Hamburg’, which in all likelihood would have never encountered each other historically or personally—except in his transporter. A whole team supported him to create a large number of lifelike figures in a short time. Those supporting Marcel Nyffenegger included versatile individuals like Sibylle Duttwiler, who accompanied the transport and took on painstaking small tasks, such as pinning the individual hairs onto the figure’s head, as well as specialists like makeup artist Tina Ehrat and Valentin Rihs, who carves the authentic body shapes of the figures. One of the figures is a young woman from the early 20th century, a suffragette, who proudly makes her political demand for women’s rights visible 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 building insulation) and covered with epoxy resins. To ensure it can be securely attached, there is a steel framework inside her. Visitors will see none of this; it is all hidden beneath historically accurate clothing, designed in collaboration with a costumer from nearby Sigmaringen, Germany, and sewn directly onto the synthetic body. The boots are even genuine historical originals, a lucky find. Only the elaborately modeled hands and the almost lifelike head are visible, which have retained surprising delicacy, almost like skin, through layers of silicone and a special silicone paint. The inspiration for the appearance of the New Yorker in wool attire came from historical photos and the faces of living people that can be easily examined from various angles. While other ateliers opted to cast the faces from real models, Nyffenegger chose a more cautious approach, modeling the human profile from a variety of photos. For the exhibition lighting, the suffragette will be re-applied with makeup on site. The synthetic hair is already styled nicely upon her arrival. Here too, there are very different philosophies among the ateliers regarding what is best suited for impressively and durably mimicking a human appearance. Some use only real hair, while others mix synthetic and natural hair, something Nyffenegger occasionally resorts to as well. Now, the new figure of the migration museum is being placed by the creator and exhibition designers in the new exhibition space so that she faces the visitors equally, gazing at them with clear eyes from the past, and—silently—can tell them about her 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.’