Nazi Anatomy Atlas: Ethics of Beauty From Atrocity

Bodily Imagery as Narrative Thread

In his essay The Most Dangerous Beauty, Michael Paterniti uses recurring images of bodies, body parts, and bodily functions to tie together the different historical periods of his essay and give the story itself a sense of life. While the essay is mainly about David Williams, a professor interested in an anatomy book produced by Nazis during World War II using the bodies of murdered Jews as source cadavers, Paterniti also traces the history of the book itself, with a particular focus on its author and one of its artists, Eduard Pernkopf and Franz Batke. Paterniti introduces Williams with a discussion of his heart problems and his daily regimen, and he uses the images of clogging arteries and a weakening heart to convey a sense of determination — and possibly hopelessness — to Williams' story (Paterniti 4).

While Williams is determined to continue examining the book, traveling all the way to Vienna to investigate its origins, he is aging, and his love affair with the book is tarnished by its murderous origin, in the same way that his heart muscles and arteries, which he exercises every morning, nevertheless slow down and clog. Paterniti also uses the image of a dividing cell to convey the tumult and divisions of history, repeating the notion of a cell — and history — splitting in two (Paterniti 9). The cell splitting is a process of life forming, but it also represents an irreversible division. In a way, the book itself can be considered the product of that process, because it is a beautiful, vital work born out of the destructive and horrific divisions of the Holocaust.

Finally, Paterniti uses the images of detached body parts — both figuratively and in direct reference to the illustrations in the anatomy book — to vividly demonstrate the destructive and dehumanizing effects of World War II. The Jews who died and were recorded in the pages of the book appear only as body parts, so that they are simultaneously given a kind of perverse life as vivid paintings while their real lives were extinguished with little concern for the sanctity of their bodies.

A Moment of Fascination: Pernkopf's Morning

Michael Paterniti's essay The Most Dangerous Beauty is full of interesting moments, as the narrative travels across the world and through time to tell the story of an anatomy book, the men who made it, and one American professor who was practically obsessed with it. However, a single moment stands out because it manages to capture the sense of awe that seems to surround the book without diminishing the terrifying historical context from which it sprang. The moment comes when Paterniti first introduces Eduard Pernkopf on the day he gives a speech irrevocably aligning himself with the Nazi party and decrying Jews (Paterniti 12).

Paterniti introduces Pernkopf on the morning of the speech, but then goes back to discuss the history of the book itself and the effort of assembling its various artists. In doing so, he demonstrates how the creation of the book and the rise of the Nazi party were driven by many of the same social and historical forces, so that the book itself seems to contain the essence of the historical period that created it. This history of the book is contained within Pernkopf's morning ritual before he gives his speech, and it helps define the character of the man — not by describing his interactions or personality in detail (although Paterniti does this later), but by tying his personal work on the book to his more public role as a supporter of the Nazis.

This moment is especially resonant because the essay as a whole also details the morning ritual of David Williams, an American professor whose deep interest in the book frames the entire narrative (Paterniti 9). The parallels between the descriptions of Pernkopf's and Williams' respective mornings make the moment eerily familiar, and it becomes somewhat more difficult to dismiss Pernkopf as a clear-cut villain when he is so closely tied to the ostensible protagonist. Instead, the reader is forced to consider the personal and historical forces that drive individuals to their respective interests, and what connections might exist between oneself and seemingly distant, unrelated people.

Critical Assessment: The Essay's Ethical Evasion

Central question: How does the origin of a work affect its reception, and can genuine beauty come from the ugliest parts of human nature?

In the essay The Most Dangerous Beauty, Paterniti approaches an interesting and important topic from a fresh perspective, attempting to uncover what it means that Nazi atrocities produced works of seemingly undeniable beauty — and furthermore, whether or not the atrocious origins of a work should affect its subsequent reception and interpretation. However, while the essay raises these questions in vivid ways, it seems reluctant to offer a real answer, instead using the ambivalence of David Williams' own experience as a kind of cover that allows the essay itself to escape the need for a conclusion. This in turn forces the reader to ask a different question: if a work's origin should affect its reception and interpretation, how removed must that origin be in order for it to lose its hold over the subsequent work?

This question is crucial because it goes straight to the heart of the dilemma facing anyone interested in the texts produced by the Nazis, which include not only Pernkopf's anatomy book but also the research conducted by scientists such as Josef Mengele. Mengele's experiments were cruel and horrifying, but they also contributed genuine knowledge about the human body — mostly in the areas of physical endurance, such as the body's response to prolonged heat or cold. Most contemporary observers would agree that Mengele's experiments were immoral, but it is considerably harder to determine whether it would also be immoral to apply the knowledge he acquired through them. On the one hand, knowledge is knowledge, so what is done with it may be more important than how it was gained; on the other hand, benefiting from his experiments forces one to acknowledge that they produced some benefit, even if one qualifies that acknowledgment by stating that the benefits do not outweigh the harms.

This is the same conflict that David Williams seems to be struggling with in the essay, but tellingly, neither he nor the essay ever comes down clearly on one side or the other. However, this does not mean that there is no hint of their respective positions. In the case of Williams, it seems as if he has accepted that beauty can come from atrocity, but he can only appreciate that beauty so long as he tempers it with a healthy dose of sadness and guilt. The essay itself, on the other hand, takes a more evasive approach. Rather than make an explicit statement regarding the morality of benefiting from atrocity — or appreciating the beauty that may come from it — the essay pretends to be about Williams' own ambivalence, and thereby acts as if it has no stake in the debate, but is merely telling the story of someone who does.

In reality, however, the essay quite clearly has a stake in the debate, because it would not be possible without Pernkopf's anatomy book or Williams' ambivalence. In a sense, the essay has directly benefited from the thousands of victims of the Nazis, yet it pretends that this is not the case. This is not to suggest that the essay holds any sympathy for the Nazis, but when the entirety of the work is about the difficulty of determining the morality of benefiting from and enjoying the products of atrocity, it seems almost disingenuous to remove the author from the equation and act as if the story is being reported from a comfortable distance, safely removed from the very real ethical questions at hand.

This reluctance to take a clear position is made all the more significant because the essay itself is not dispassionate or removed. On the contrary, it is filled with vivid imagery and florid language, which makes it entertaining and engaging. If there is a problem with finding beauty in the work of Nazis, is there a problem with finding the story behind that work entertaining? If yes, then the essay itself has failed to live up to its own moral standard. If no, then it is impossible to say that there is actually a problem with finding beauty in that work, and the entire conflict of the essay collapses — becoming less a story about a man dealing with a difficult moral issue and more a story of a man who cannot make up his mind. One could attempt to distinguish between finding the anatomy book beautiful and finding the essay entertaining, but this simply returns to the original question, because in order to make that distinction one must propose a standard by which a work is sufficiently removed from the atrocity that caused it to make its enjoyment morally acceptable.

Based on what is present in the essay, it seems as if the author does not really have a problem finding beauty in the work of the Nazis or benefiting from their atrocities, but rather maintained a false sense of ambivalence throughout in order to make the essay more compelling. It also seems likely that the author would attempt to maintain a distinction between finding the essay entertaining and finding beauty in Pernkopf's book, if only because the essay's ambiguity points toward an unwillingness to follow its own positions to their logical — if sometimes uncomfortable — ends. The question the essay poses is a crucial one, and it is regrettable that it was not answered more sufficiently.