Tribute to Hubert von Luschka

Anatomist, cartographer of the body – and a threshold to another way of relating to life.

An embodied memory

My great-great-grandfather, Hubert von Luschka (1820–1875), was a professor at the University of Tübingen. Ennobled for his anatomical work, he was one of those who helped shape modern medicine by making the human body structured, standardized, and intelligible. His writings described organs, nerves, ducts and cavities with astonishing precision.

He filled the body with organs – literally. He drew the contours of the visible, laid the foundations of surgical medicine, and contributed to making anatomy a science of clarity and control.

A reversed transmission

Today I honour him. But this recognition comes with a reversal. If his work made the body legible, it is now my turn to open a space where the body is no longer reduced to a set of organs.

Not to erase, but to go beyond this architecture.
Not to reject, but to honour differently what still pulses within us.

A body without memory

What I sense is a relationship to life that does not pass through memory.
A post-historic human, not defined by organs or disease, but present through direct perception.

A human like a newborn, who doesn’t need to know in order to feel.
A human without past or concept – yet entirely present in the now.

A bridge

Hubert von Luschka helped raise the edifice of modern medicine.
I bow to the precision of his gesture.
And I extend a bridge – toward a space where life precedes form,
where testimony comes before concept,
where the immediacy of being alive reclaims its rightful place.