Simulacra

"Das ewige Antlitz" (Undying Faces) is a book published by Ernst Benkard in 1926
in Berlin. It presents photographs of the death masks from the collection of the
Schiller National Museum of Marbach (123 masks, many of well-known
figures like Newton or Cromwell, Beethoven, Pascal, Hebbel, or the famous
‘‘Inconnue de la Seine’’15). This book was an immediate success and was
reprinted several times in subsequent years. It caught the attention of
Gide and Canetti, Aragon and Céline. In "The Ground of the Image"
Jean-Luc Nancy writes: "There is no great risk in the hypothesis that