What connects bourgeois women of the 19th century with the maimed of World War I? What does the "New Woman" of the Weimar Republic have in common with patients of social medicine? They were all part of a debate centered around cosmetically altered bodies and societal issues. Annelie Ramsbrock writes a history of artificially shaped beauty from the end of the Enlightenment to the beginning of National Socialism. She emphasizes that the formation of beauty ideals has always been subject to fundamental patterns of social order. On one hand, fields such as transplantation medicine or cosmetics production reflect the development of scientific knowledge. On the other hand, altered bodies provided a projection surface for ideas of social order. Thus, the history of beauty is understood as both a history of knowledge and of societal norms.