The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

LORENZ D., described by Dunkelblau as “a quiet, unassuming child,” never spoke a distinguishable word after being part of the Meistergarten system, although he sang wordlessly and laughed and even screamed without visible cause for the rest of his life. He was institutionalized in 1916 and began to paint, primarily “huge, barren landscapes peopled by burning mice and human-headed octopuses,” as a nurse described them. He also climbed walls with great skill, and was often to be found by his caretakers curled up in the institution’s overhead light fixtures, asleep. Lorenz D.’s family never questioned their own judgement in letting him be part of Dunkelblau’s experiment, and described those who criticized their choice as “pitiful” and “jealous,” despite their own lack of interest in visiting Lorenz after he was institutionalized.

HELGA W., whose “brilliant future” in the arts never materialized, nevertheless did become a performer of sorts. Witnesses in the 1930s identified her as the “Hard-Boiled Egg Woman” in Berlin’s infamous Der Eigenartige Wandschrank club, who was said to be able to fling an egg fifteen meters with her reproductive parts while leading the crowd in singing “Wir Wollen Alle Kinder Sein!”

WOUTER K., the most materially successful of the doctor’s subjects, founded a number of private hospitals for the care of “difficult children” (which, some alleged, were merely “holding cells” for the unwanted offspring of the wealthy) and then funneled the profits into the manufacture of chemical agents such as mustard gas, which was banned after the Great War by all sides but still bought and stockpiled by many nations for years after, so that Wouter K. became known in international military circles as “Meister Senf,” or “Mister Mustard.” Soon his factories were making many other kinds of poisons as well, and his scientists are linked to the discovery of the infamous G-series poison gases, including sarin, tabun, and cyclosarin. Wouter K. made millions but used the money primarily to shield himself from the public eye, and was not heard from again until he issued the following “proclamation” to the world’s leading newspapers in early 1939:

The work of Doktor Adelbert Dunkelblau has been much maligned in the international press, especially by those whose minds are too small to understand his vision. What his work proved was not that the Meistergarten was unworkable, or a “crackpot” scheme, as some have termed it, but simply that the experimental sample was too small. I was one of five subjects, and I have become one of the world’s most successful and richest men. Surely a success rate of twenty percent is not to be mocked, especially with a discovery that will literally change the world. A generation of supermen is a goal that no one can fault, and I will provide the first seeds for that wondrous human accomplishment. Twenty percent. It is something to think about—something to thrill the human soul!

I have purchased a quantity of land—no one will know where!—and on that site I shall build Dunkelblau’s Meistergarten anew. But instead of five, I shall commit five hundred or even five thousand subjects to the test (there are orphanages the world over that will happily contribute their superfluity), and from these humble materials will our first generation of “Meistermenschen” be born. But unlike the clownish National Socialists of the current German government, our gifted ones will not reveal themselves, let alone brag of their superiority, but instead they will turn around and create newer, larger generations of others like them, until one day we shall emerge from the wild places where we have hidden ourselves and take our true place as leaders of a fallen, but not entirely hopeless, world. Be warned! On that day, everything will change.

It was rumored in some circles that throughout the 1920s and 1930s “Wouter K.” secretly bought extensive tracts of land in the largely unexplored Chaco Boreal region on the border between Paraguay and Bolivia. Others claim his major holdings were uninhabited volcanic islands in the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean. In either case, to this day, nothing definitive has ever been heard of the last Dunkelblau test subject, and although a few businesses with the name “Meistergarten” have shown up in international registries from places as distantly separated as Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, no sign of the promised “first generation of Meistermenschen” has yet been seen. However, it is clear that even at this late date, the book on Dunkelblau’s experiment cannot quite be closed for good.

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