The Netflix series Monster, the Ed Gein Story focusses on Ed’s penchant to re-use the skin of bodies he exhumed from graveyards as well as that from the victims he killed, to make furniture covers as well as a human body suit, including several faces. While searching his house, detectives found a wastebasket made of human skin, human skin covering several chairs, a corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist, leggings made from human leg skin, masks made from the skin of women’s heads including Mary Hogan’s face mask in a paper bag, a pair of lips on a window shade drawstring, a lampshade made from the skin of a human face and items made from intimate body parts. Ed’s father was a tanner, who skinned the hides of hunting trophies and probably taught his sons this skill.
Ed, who operated during World War II, is said to have been inspired by the Nazi atrocities depicted in pulp magazines, especially those committed by Ilse Koch, dubbed the “Commandant of Buchenwald”.
Ilse was married to Karl-Otto Koch, commandant at Buchenwald, a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. Although Ilse had no official role as a Nazi, she ruled the camp to such an extent that she herself was nicknamed the commander. Tales of Ilse’s sadistic atrocities began leaking and by the 1940’s became the trope of pulp magazines. Thriving on sensationalism, readers could not get enough of the stories that Ilse would select prisoners with tattoos to be executed so she could make furniture covers from their skin. Ilse had a reputation of a pervert behaving lasciviously towards the prisoners.
The total number of deaths at Buchenwald is estimated at 56,545, dying of torture, medical experiments, starvation, hard labour and execution. The notorious camp was liberated on 11 April 1945.
The Buchenwald war crime trial conducted by the United States Army as a court-martial in Dachau lasted from April 11 to August 14, 1947. Thirty-one people were indicted for war crimes related to the Buchenwald concentration camp and its satellite camps, all of whom were convicted. Twenty-two were sentenced to death. However, only nine death sentences were carried out, and by the mid-1950s, all perpetrators had been freed except for Ilse Koch, who was tried again by the West German Judiciary at Augsburg in 1950–1951. Although no evidence could be found that Ilse had indeed made furnishings from human skin, she was given a life sentence. She killed herself at Aichach women’s prison on 1 September 1967 at age 60. Whether she had an affinity for flayed skin could not be proved, but Ilse Koch was not the first, nor the last to have been accused of flaying humans.
In Greek mythology, Marsyas, a satyr, challenged Apollo to a music competition. Marsyas lost and Apollo flayed him alive as punishment for his hubris. History is abound with example of religious martyrs and political rivals to be flayed of which St Bartholomew and, the Roman emperor Valerian come to mind.
Ed Gein was not the first to make a body suit of human skin. In 1323, the Mexica (an Aztec tribe) asked for Yaocihuatl, daughter of Achicometl, ruler of Culhuacan in marriage. Unknown to him, she was sacrificed, with the priest appearing during the festival dinner wearing her flayed skin as part of the ritual. Upon seeing this, the king and the people of Culhuacan were horrified and expelled the Mexica.
Ilse Koch was imitated in 2011by 20-year-old South African Chane van Heerden who with her accomplice and lover, 25-year-old Maartens van der Merwe lured Michael van Eck to death and flayed him.
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