Karl August Lingner

Karl August Lingner (1861-1916) and the First International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1911

In the years leading up to the First World War, medical research experienced a worldwide boom in both pioneering diagnostic and therapeutic methods. All modern sciences were flourishing, with findings and progress fever everywhere.

Whether natural healing methods or classical medicine, the common goal was the comprehensive improvement of public health and Lingner's commitment to the I. Considering the enormous effort that was required for its successful realisation, this trade fair certainly had the status of a world exhibition.

The old site on the edge of the Great Garden had to be completely redesigned and extended to such an extent that bridges were needed to connect all the areas. The main idea was primarily to illustrate and highlight the global state of knowledge in the broad field of "hygiene". However, the large number of visitors was attracted not least because of the additional entertainment on offer, such as a wide range of gastronomic experiences, theatre, toboggan run, bowling alley, dance saloon, etc. The need for amusing diversion was sufficiently present among all sections of the population.

Lingner's lifelong work and endeavour was to convey that the clinical term "Hygiene" is associated with a very broad, holistic concept in which the individual with a healthy lifestyle as a complex is at the centre.

Karl August Lingner was born 155 years ago in Magdeburg, trained as a businessman and came to Dresden via detours from Paris, where he first worked as an unhappy employee and then as a small businessman in search of happiness. He was to find it with "Odol" - the first blockbuster and still the best-known product today. The Radebeul-based Chemische Fabrik von Heyden provided him with the key production raw material. The enormous sales of this antiseptic mouthwash enabled Lingner's meteoric financial rise, as he combined his products with highly successful advertising campaigns. Such large-scale sales strategies were rare and unusual at the turn of the century. Despite the almost daily headlines about the latest scientific advances, the general living situation was characterised by hardship and misery, disease, high infant mortality, alcoholism, small windowless workers' dwellings and toxic industrial fumes in the air. Pulling the suffocating blanket off this world and bringing "light, air and soap" to the people was the aim not only of Lingner, but also of a whole movement of reformers, including the naturopath Friedrich Eduard Bilz (1842-1922) from Radebeul.

However, Lingner did not act exclusively as a self-sacrificing messianic champion of the philanthropic cause, although his work was not least due to his luxurious lifestyle. He was a rational businessman and found his purpose in scientifically based enlightenment and the broadly effective educational mission. His mammoth hygiene exhibition project, which he often compared to a health textbook brought to life, should also be seen in this context. The huge success of the exhibition proved him right. The bottom line: more than 5 million visitors in 6 months generated a net profit of over 1 million marks for the foundation's coffers, which was the founding moment of the German Hygiene Museum. Whether Lingner maintained an active friendship with the naturopath Bilz from Radebeul cannot be determined here, but at least they were friends in spirit. Bilz's sanatorium in Lößnitzgrund had already existed since the 1890s and was constantly being expanded. Naturally, Bilz visited the hygiene exhibition and was particularly impressed by the Undosa wave machine, which he promptly purchased for his "light-air bath" and which has been in operation since 1912 to this day as the oldest machine of its type.

Despite the great success of his zealous activities - he also subsidised Dresden's cultural institutions, founded various health facilities, donated a reading hall, designed many exhibitions on the subject of public health and contributed to the expansion of hospitals - and despite numerous honours, Karl August Lingner himself was denied the title of nobility and a long life. The King of Odol died of tongue cancer in 1916 and has been buried in a mausoleum at the foot of the vineyard below his Lingner Castle since 1922, in accordance with his will.

Maren Gündel, City Archive

Published in: Radebeul Official Gazette, March 2016