German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, inventor of the plastination technique and creator of the controversial Body Worlds exhibitions, died on July 24 at the age of 81 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, which he had suffered from for twenty years, worsened by a cerebral hemorrhage. In accordance with his last wishes, his own body will be plastinated in turn.
A technique invented in 1977 to preserve human tissues
Nicknamed Doctor Death, Gunther von Hagens developed plastination in 1977, a process that removes water and fat from organic tissues to replace them with silicone or epoxy resin, making bodies rigid and permanently displayable. Launched in 1995, the traveling Body Worlds exhibition, which presented plastinated bodies in everyday poses, some dissected to reveal internal organs, attracted about 60 million visitors worldwide.
In a statement, the Plastination Institute and the anatomist’s family hailed a pioneer, researcher, and inventor, as well as an iconoclastic and sometimes controversial thinker, whose work made anatomy accessible to the general public while encouraging reflection on health, illness, and mortality.
Exhibitions that often sparked outrage
The staged displays of human and animal cadavers conceived by Gunther von Hagens regularly provoked controversy worldwide, with some exhibitions facing calls for bans. His permanent exhibition installed in 2015 at Alexanderplatz, at the foot of Berlin’s TV tower, was legally challenged by district authorities who considered it contrary to regional burial laws, but they ultimately did not prevail in court.
His wife, Angelina Whalley, herself a physician, actively participated in developing these exhibitions alongside him since the 1990s, helping make Body Worlds one of the most visited private museum franchises in recent history.
