Max Dreyssig's skeleton rests in Adelaide after 113 years

Johann David Max Dreyssig was buried on Saturday in Adelaide, 113 years after his death.

The German immigrant's skeleton had stood in the South Australian Museum for almost 80 years. Photographs showed it posed with one leg on a small chair and a bird skeleton perched on his outstretched hand. A sign read "Human: Homo sapiens". Earlier images showed Dreyssig sitting backwards on the chair, arms draped over its back.

Prof Archibald Watson, his doctor, had the body reduced to a skeleton and sold it to the museum for £10 in 1920. That sale began a museum career lasting, with interruptions, until 2019.

How did Max Dreyssig's body become a museum object?

Watson was a University of Adelaide anatomy professor. He had been arrested for murder and blackbirding in the South Pacific, slipped bail and gone to Germany to study medicine.

Anna Russo, the museum's repatriation manager, said at the funeral: "We don't know the conversations that Max had with Dr Watson on his deathbed in the North Adelaide hospital in 1913, but we do know what the laws were at that time, and we know that it wasn't possible for people to donate their bodies to their doctors."

Watson, the North Adelaide hospital and the museum all knew the legal position in 1913, Russo said, even though the conversations at Max's deathbed remain unknown. "Knowing Max's story and that history, the museum had to think very deeply about what dignity and respect meant for Max."

His illness began with severe indigestion and lower back pain. Watson diagnosed stomach cancer. John Healey, writing in the Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia in 1998, speculated that Watson may have carried out "radical and untried" surgery. Dreyssig died three weeks later.

Museum taxidermist Joe Rau then "flensed" the body and prepared the skeleton, Healey wrote. He quoted Rau's son, Alan Rau: "Dreyssig sold – he donated [for] ten pounds – his body to professor [Archibald] Watson". "And when he did that, Watty brought it over to Dad and Dad made the skeleton."

A £10 purchase in 1920 turned a cancer patient into a teaching specimen for nearly eight decades.

Who was Max before the museum?

Dreyssig earned the Iron Cross for bravery after serving in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. He moved to Australia in 1885 and worked as an iron and steel merchant. His obituary recorded: "The deceased is one of the few surviving veterans who earned the Iron Cross … many will recall that he never failed to wear this decoration with great pride at patriotic celebrations in Adelaide."

Healey described him as a good-looking, slightly built man with dark, wavy hair. He took children on donkey rides on Brighton beach, owned a grey mare named Marie, and once donated a dead penguin to the museum. Another time, he donated a locust.

Dr Ian Harmstorf, a historian and former president of the SA German Association (Saga), told the gathering that Dreyssig had had an "exciting life" and had been quite successful in his work.

Watson's methods were less conventional. Healey wrote: "One of his particular passions was the collection of body parts from the operating theatre and post-mortem room, something he did not always do by the book." He once replaced a torso with an umbrella to fool relatives at a viewing.

Before the museum, Max was a decorated immigrant, a merchant and a familiar figure on Adelaide's beaches.

How did Max remain on display for almost 80 years?

Harmstorf said the skeleton likely stayed in one of Watson's cupboards as the First World War raged, then "sat unheeded" behind a museum curtain with other bones, mostly from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

"Next he appeared to have a rebirth," he said. "He was exhibited as a skeleton in a glass case. Later, he was moved and put in with the other skeletons and with other animals."

Healey placed the first public display in 1942, during the Second World War, when the museum taught human anatomy to students. The chair, bird skeleton and "Human: Homo sapiens" sign became fixtures for generations of visitors.

In 2009, a German visitor complained to the German government about the indignity of Dreyssig's remains. Harmstorf said: "Max almost caused a diplomatic insult." The museum removed the remains from display in 2019.

The museum showed Max for about 77 years, from 1942 to 2019, as anatomy teaching and public spectacle.

Who gave Max a burial?

For months, the museum and Saga searched for any relatives Dreyssig might have left. They found none. The family line had ended in 1960.

Russo and her colleagues worked with Adelaide's German community to arrange the burial at West Terrace cemetery. A small casket draped with the German flag held his remains. A Lutheran pastor read the last rites. About 20 people attended a wake at the German Club.

Dr Rob Saint, chair of the museum's board, said the museum's practices had fallen short "of the standards of respect and ethical responsibility to which we now adhere".

He added: "Sadly, and as a disturbing example of the different scientific attitudes and museum practices at the time [which were] not even legal, his remains were treated as a specimen, an object of scientific interest, as an addition to the museum collection."

Saint widened the case: "The story of Max Dreyssig reminds us that museums have a responsibility to consider not only our past actions, but more broadly … whose stories have been told and from what perspective, and how the people who feature in our stories have been treated."

He closed: "Max will now be remembered with a dignity he deserves. May Max now rest in peace."

One grave, one pastor and about 20 mourners ended Max's 106 years as a museum specimen.

Saint's question now reaches beyond one grave to the museum's wider holdings, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander bones Harmstorf said sat unheeded behind a curtain.