Sweat Stains Worth Millions

The drawing from which we borrowed the title of our exhibition was created by the merchant Carl Lange (1852-1916) in the Hubertusburg asylum around 1900. The heading reads “Worth more than many millions. The photographically verifiable, interleaving miraculous images in the shoe insoles of the victim, revealing a fifteen-year old crime”. The rows of images in oval frames represent these shoe insoles, and the figures are those which had appeared to him in the sweat stains. Apparently, they transformed themselves; the rows of images look something like a series of film stills.

Sweat as a pictorial medium is unusual, but not unique. Lange must have been thinking of Christian icons and sacred images, such as the Veil of Veronica, or the Shroud of Turin. Thus, Lange’s sweat was of a special nature, able to sanctify the perspirer. Not least for this reason, he sees revelations in these precious visions. They seem so real to him, as if he could actually photograph them, if only he had a camera. Without one, he reproduced them with pencil.

After completing his business studies, Carl Lange first worked in Danzig, and later in Hamburg. Unhappy with his position, he left in 1875 for Bordeaux, and in 1876, he went to New York. Later, he tried his luck in Mexico, where he soon became harshly critical of the political maladministration. In 1882, God appeared to him and told him he was Jesus Christ. Lange saw his divine vocation as reformer of the Mexican people. In order to publish and distribute “revolutionary pamphlets and articles”, he moved to San Antonio, Texas. When he intended to send letters to heads of state containing a photograph of a piece of meat resembling a grotesque silhouette inscribed “Immortalidad”, and began planning the assassination of the Mexican president, his brother had him committed to the Bloomingdale asylum in New York. In 1884, he was transferred to the Allenberg asylum, and then to Görlitz. In 1888, he arrived at the Schwetz asylum, where he died in 1916 of pneumonia.

Lange never accepted his diagnosis of mental illness and never consented to his hospitalization. He wrote a great number of long letters and essays explaining his point of view and demanding his release. The drawings in the margins of these contain complex faces, similar to his stand-alone drawings.

Image: Carl Lange, “Worth more than many millions. The photographically verifiable, interleaving miraculous images in the shoe insoles of the victim, revealing a fifteen-year old crime”, Inv. No. 99 © Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg University Hospital