ABSTRACT

Otto Neurath was a social scientist, an economic historian by training who radically reconceptualized collecting practices and museum and exhibition design during and after the first World War. In 1917, he founded the Museum of War Economy in Leipzig, which attempted to popularize knowledge about the war economy and its impact on public and domestic life. In January 1925, the Museum of Settlement and Town Planning was renamed the Museum of Society and Economy, which had the expanded mandate of educating the working class masses about 'production, emigration, mortality, interior furnishing, unemployment, the fight against tuberculosis and alcoholism, diet, the meaning of sport, physical and mental development, schooling.. [and] the state of industry.' Between 1930 and 1933, the Museum of Society and Economy also made a series of short films and slide shows. Shot by Walter Pfitzner, the slide shows offered information about various working-class occupations and the processes and skills involved.