A
ARRRRRRRRGH
Guest
According to this story the Nazis invented the sex doll.
I was going to post this into "The Human Condition", but it appears to be
a hoax:
Original story from psychwatch and originally http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/07/153052.php
And from boing boing, the debunking:
And from an earlier boing boing post:
Which is exactly my reaction to the story. 8)
Why to all the best stories have to be too good to be true.
Please tell me the boing boing got their facts wrong
Apologies if this is old news.
The MB search for nazi sex doll turned up nothing.
I was going to post this into "The Human Condition", but it appears to be
a hoax:
Original story from psychwatch and originally http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/07/153052.php
The Nazis invented the worst thing ever: the assembly-line death factory. But they also invented something else, perhaps the only legacy of theirs that endures to this very day. During World War II, Hitler's war machine created the world's first sex doll: Borghild.
Psychiatrist Dr. Rudolf Chargeheimer wrote the following note as the project went forward:
”The sure thing, purpose and goal of the dolls is to relieve our soldiers. They have to fight and not be on the browl or mingle with 'foreign womenfolk.' However: no real men will prefer a doll to a real woman, until our technicians meet the following quality standards:
The synthetic flesh has to feel the same as real flesh;
The doll’s body should be as agile and moveable as the real body;
The doll’s organ should feel absolutely realistic.”
Between June 1940 – 1941, IG Farben had already developed a number of ”skin-friendly polymers” for the SS. Their special characteristics: high-tensile strength and elasticity.
The cast of a suitable model proved to be more difficult. Borghild was meant to reflect the beauty-ideal of the Nazis: white skin, fair hair and blue eyes. Although the team considered a doll with brown hair, the SS Hygiene Institute insisted on manufacturing a ”Nordish doll.” Tschakert hoped to plaster-cast from a living model. A number of famous female athletes were invited to come to his studios.
But in a letter to Mrurgowsky, Tschakert came to this conclusion: ”Sometimes the legs are too short and look deformed, or the lady has a hollow back and arms, like a wrestler. The overall appearance is always dreadful and I fear there is no other way than to combine.” While Mrurgowsky still favoured a ”whole imprint” of prevailing diva Kristina Söderbaum, the Borghild-designer decided to build the doll’s mold in a ”modular way,” taking bits and pieces from different women. In Tschakert's view, the doll should be nothing less than a ”female best-form,” a ”perfect automaton of lust,” that would combine ”the best of all possible bodies.” The team agreed on a cheeky and naughty face, a look-a-like of actress Käthe von Nagy, but she politely declined to lend her face to Tschakert’s doll.
After Mrurgowsky’s exit, Dr. Hannussen took over, and rejected the idea to cast a face from a living person. He believed in an ”artificial face of lust,” which would be more attractive to soldiers. ”The doll has only one purpose and she should never become a substitute for the honourable mother at home ... When the soldier makes love to Borghild, it has nothing to do with love. Therefore the face of our anthropomorphic sex machine should be exactly like the common wanton’s face.”
Something strangely twisted, another fine legacy of modern psychiatry
And from boing boing, the debunking:
It appears that we must toss the previously-blogged tale of Nazi Sex Doll Borghild (Link) on the dungheap of internet hoaxdom. Boing Boing reader Rochus Wolff says of the fabled proto-robo-ho:
I came across the story about these dolls about a year ago after a Canadian researcher sent an email around asking whether anyone knew anything about this doll apart from what it said on the (now mostly defunct) site borghild.de.
After reading your post, i researched the matter a bit further. The origin of the information that led to your post (via Fleshbot and other blogs) seems to be an article by the widely read but often less-than-accurately-reporting German daily Bild. All the information given is what can be found on the rather odd website borghild.de - the "information" given there can still be found here in an English translation.
Independently of each other, Jens Baumeister and I have concluded from the information available to us, that the "Borghild" story is quite probably a fake. (The German posting on my research is here. Jens has posted his results here. Some of his findings are translated here: Link).
The main problems with "Borghild" are:
- There is no evidence that any of the documents the text talks about ever existed. The Deutsche Hygiene Museum says that of course most records were destroyed in an attack in 1945, but that still no one they talked seems to remember anything about this project. The photographs on borghild.de are clearly fabrications, and the site even acknowledges that.
- The author of borghild.de, "Norbert Lenz", claims to have worked for a number of German magazines - all of which claim not to know a journalist by that name. He is not listed in phone directories, and the only book currently available in Germany by a Norbert Lenz is a book about - ducks.
So in the end it seems like the Nazis were not, after all, planning to equip their soldiers with sex dolls. That hardly comes as a surprise.
Yours truly,
Rochus
And from an earlier boing boing post:
Reader comment: Adam Thornton says,
Have you read Gravity's Rainbow? Because this reads like something straight out of GR.
From the Nazi Sex Doll blog:
"A stickler for verisimilitude. Between June 1940 – 1941, IG Farben had already developed a number of ”skin-friendly polymers” for the SS. Their special characteristics: high-tensile strength and elasticity."
When I read this, all I could think was "Whoa. Imipolex G."
Which is exactly my reaction to the story. 8)
Why to all the best stories have to be too good to be true.
Please tell me the boing boing got their facts wrong
Apologies if this is old news.
The MB search for nazi sex doll turned up nothing.