BERLIN (AP) — Gunther von Hagens, the German anatomist whose preserved human body exhibitions drew both wonder and outrage from audiences around the world, has passed away at the age of 81.
His family and the Institute for Plastination, an organization he founded, confirmed that he died on Friday. A statement released on Monday offered no additional details about the circumstances of his death. Von Hagens had publicly revealed in 2010 that he had been living with Parkinson’s disease.
Throughout his career, von Hagens walked a delicate line between scientific education, entertainment, and commerce — both through his traveling exhibitions and through attention-grabbing stunts, including a public autopsy he performed before a live audience.
Central to von Hagens’ legacy was a technique known as plastination — a process in which the fluids inside a human body are replaced with liquid plastic that subsequently hardens. He began developing this method in the 1970s. The process stopped decomposition, kept tissues intact, and made it possible for him to display preserved human remains and internal organs for public viewing.
The exhibition that resulted from this work, titled “Body Worlds,” made its public debut in Japan in 1995.
Two years later, the collection of partially skinless human bodies went on display in von Hagens’ home country of Germany, despite efforts by local church leaders to prevent the opening, who argued it was disrespectful to the deceased. Von Hagens maintained that his work helped audiences gain a better understanding of how the human body functions.
The anatomist “is forced in his daily work to reject the taboos and convictions that people have about death and the dead,” von Hagens said in describing his own work.
“I touch here a taboo, which is our body, and nothing is so near as our body is to us,” he added.
The exhibits featured the bodies of individuals who had consented to donate themselves for plastination. Critics accused von Hagens of crossing into sensationalism, pointing to displays such as a corpse mounted atop a plastinated horse and a preserved pregnant woman with an eight-month-old fetus visible inside her body.
When the show opened in the German capital in 2001, the Rev. Ernst Pulsfort, spiritual rector of Berlin’s Catholic Academy, said von Hagens “plays with the corpses like a child plays with dolls” and argued it fed a “public lust for sensation.”
During a “Body Worlds” showing in London in 2002, von Hagens — sporting his signature black fedora hat, as he always did — carried out Britain’s first public autopsy in 170 years in front of a sold-out crowd of hundreds. He went ahead with the procedure despite government warnings that it could be considered illegal.
Von Hagens called it a “huge success.” However, Dr. Michael Wilkes, the head of ethics at the British Medical Association, described it as “degrading and disrespectful.”
The “Body Worlds” exhibitions eventually made their way to the United States, debuting in Los Angeles in 2004 before traveling to several other American cities.
In 2006, von Hagens opened his “Plastinarium” — the facility where bodies are prepared for display — in the eastern German town of Guben.
Von Hagens was born Gunther Liebchen on January 10, 1945, in what is now western Poland.
He attended medical school in Jena in East Germany, but grew increasingly disillusioned with the communist government and made an unsuccessful attempt to flee to the West. He was captured, and West Germany later purchased his freedom in 1970, a practice that was common at the time.
He resumed his medical education at the University of Luebeck and, during the 1970s, began working at the pathology and anatomy institute at Heidelberg University. He married a former classmate, Cornelia von Hagens, and adopted her surname. His second wife, Angelina Whalley, now leads his Heidelberg-based Institute for Plastination and oversees his exhibitions. He had three children from his first marriage.
The statement released Monday noted that it was von Hagens’ personal wish for his own body to undergo plastination after his death, and that “his family will respect and carry out this wish.”
