Schöner gehen? : Zur technischen Optimierung des kriegsinvaliden Körpers im frühen 20. Jahrhundert

Reconfigurating and enhancing the human body with a prosthesis was one of the earliest cyborg-technologies, which then was improved and standardized after experiencing the impacts of World War I: In Germany officially about 70.000 servicemen suffered from physical destructions of their bodies and had to undergo surgery and especially amputation of the upper and lower limbs. Analyzing the relationship and dependencies between human bodies and these technical artefacts, most of the historical or STS-research projects point out the material part of this configuration. On the contrary the following text argues from the perspective of actor-network-theory to open again this black box prosthesis. Thus it will ask for networks and processes of translation, by which the prosthesis as a reconstructing and new technical part of the body and also the stump attains to achieve the status of an actor itself.