Gunther von Hagens is dead. The 81-year-old anatomist, whose name became synonymous with the Body Worlds exhibition and the controversial art of plastination, passed away on July 24. He died in a Heidelberg hospital following a cerebral hemorrhage that struck just a day prior.
His passing fulfills his own bizarre, long-held desire. He wanted his body processed. Sliced. Displayed.
While the Institute for Plastination confirmed the news with “deep sadness,” the specific fate of von Hagens’ remains remains slightly up in the air. His Plastinarium museum in Guben, Germany—founded in 2006—has pledged to preserve him. It was always his wish. But where his plastinated corpse will end up? That hasn’t been decided.
He had suggested various options in the past. Maybe a welcoming pose at an exhibition entrance. Maybe sliced into sections and scattered across various museum sites. Who knows. He died before sorting that part out.
The making of a plastination technique
To understand the man, you have to look at the science he invented in 1977. While working as a researcher at the University of Heidelberg, he looked at how specimens were preserved. At the time, plastic was poured around the body. It seemed backward to him.
Why not inject the plastic into the body?
That question sparked plastination. The process is brutal in its efficiency. Bodily fluids and soluble fats are drained from a cadaver. They are replaced with resins, silicones, or epoxies. The result is tissue that is rigid. Dry. Lifelike in its posing, but definitively dead.
It allowed bodies to stand. To play chess. To engage in sexual acts. To exercise. It turned anatomy into spectacle.
From East Berlin protests to global fame
Von Hagens didn’t start with a fedora and a leather vest. He was born Gunther Gerhard Liebchen in 1945 in what is now Poland, then under Nazi occupation. He grew up in East Germany.
He was a dissident early on. In 1968, he joined protests against the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring. The following year, he tried to flee to the West. He was caught. Imprisoned.
West Germany paid 40,00 deutschmarks for his freedom. Once released, he settled in the West, married Cornelia von Hagens, and adopted her surname. He liked the sound of it. The connotations of nobility, perhaps, in a man who would eventually deal in the currency of the dead.
His exhibition, Body Worlds, launched in 1995. It toured the globe. It drew over 50 million visitors. Critics called it titillating. Supporters, particularly his second wife and co-curator Angelina Whalley, called it a democratic act. They wanted to shatter taboos around death and the human body.
Ethical shadows and the “ownerless bodies”
The morality of Body Worlds has always been murky. Von Hagens insisted all bodies were donated for educational purposes. But the line between donation and coercion has often been blurry.
The accusations grew sharper over time. In 2004, Der Spiegel published documents suggesting that his facility in Dalian, China, was acquiring “ownerless bodies” from police. Some of these had been executed. They bore bullet holes.
The report claimed von Hagens subsequently instructed his staff to stop accepting executed bodies. Whether that stopped the flow of questionable cadavers entirely is hard to prove. The image of von Hagens himself didn’t help. Dressed as a cross between a mad scientist and a ghoulish pathologist, he fed the perception that he was more interested in shock value than science.
The final years and a disbelief in the afterlife
Parkinson’s disease complicated his later years. Diagnosed in 2008, it eroded his motor skills. It limited his speech. He handed the reins to his wife and his son, Rurik, stepping back from the day-to-day operations of his empire.
Despite the grand displays of the human form, he remained a staunch materialist. He saw no ghost in the machine.
“Every deceased body I have seen has shown me that the absence of the soul,” he wrote in 2008.
He admitted that sometimes, with age and illness, he wished he could embrace the idea of an afterlife. A continuum. He couldn’t. He saw only what was left behind. Or rather, what was preserved.
Now, he becomes part of that display. His body will be plastinated. Whether it stands welcoming visitors or sits in silent pieces in a corner of the Plastinarium is still to be determined. He always wanted to be seen. Finally, he will be. Permanently.
The exhibition ends here, but the display begins.
