In Germany,
Plasticized Corpse Exhibit Proves Shocking but
Educational
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
April 03, 2001,
Shul.org
MANNHEIM, Germany --
Until recently, this mid-sized industrial city wasn't
known for much more than its ice-hockey team. But that
was before the Runner, the Muscleman and the Expanded
Body.
The three are among the
displays at "Human Body World," an exhibition
on human anatomy at Mannheim's Museum of Technology and
Work. The life-sized figures are posed in familiar human
activities like running, standing or sitting, but unlike
the specimens at a conventional science museum, the
Runner and his numerous colleagues are real human
corpses. Preserved through a process called "plastination,"
the bodies, donated by volunteers, have been transformed
into what the inventor of the process calls
"anatomical artwork."
And
they have stirred up a debate across Germany over the
boundaries of morality, art and science.
The Runner is frozen in
the loping gait of a marathoner, stripped of almost
everything except bones and muscles. Its outer muscles
fly backward off its bones, as if the muscles were being
blown by the wind rushing past.
The Muscleman is a bare
skeleton that holds up its entire system of muscles,
which looks like an astronaut's bulky spacesuit dangling
on a hanger. The Figure with Skin retains all its
muscles and organs, but its skin is draped like a coat
over one arm. The Expanded Body resembles a human
telescope, its skeleton pulled apart so people can see
what lies beneath the skull and the rib cage.
Catholic and Protestant
church leaders have denounced the exhibit as a breach of
human dignity. The Premier of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg
would like to shut down the exhibit. The local district
prosecutor is trying to decide if he can bring criminal
charges against museum officials.
Yet the show has also
attracted heartfelt praise. Defenders say that, far from
being macabre, the exhibition celebrates the wonder and
the fragility of the human body in all its dimensions.
"I do not see this
as a room full of corpses or as a hall of death,"
said Gunther von Hagens, a medical doctor who is a
lecturer in anatomy at the University of Heidelberg
School of Medicine who invented the plastination
technique and assembled the exhibit here. "What
this does is build bridges back to your own body. When
you look at the models, you can recognize yourself as a
member of the human species. Your humanity becomes
clear."
More
than 200,000 people have passed through the exhibit
since it opened two months ago, and visitors now wait as
long as three hours to get in. Upon leaving, the vast
majority of visitors say the exhibit gave them a new
appreciation of the human body. Many have even signed up
as potential donors of their own bodies.
"It showed the
human body as a wonder machine," said Gisela Linde,
an architect from Berlin who came to the exhibit at the
insistence of one of her children, a medical student.
"You can see the complexity and the mystery. It
showed the humanity. I really would like to have stayed
longer."
Both the technology and
the exhibit's often shocking impact come from von Hagens,
a 53-year-old refugee from the former East Germany who
is unfazed by accusations of being a real-life Dr.
Frankenstein. Indeed, as he threaded his way through the
packed crowd at the exhibit, he was more surprised to
find himself besieged by people wanting his autograph.
"Just look at all
the people coming here -- and many of them came here
full of skepticism," he said. "But they find
themselves fascinated and enthusiastic. That shows you
that this exhibit is affecting them in an important
way."
Von Hagens pioneered
his preservation techniques for use in medical schools
shortly after arriving in Heidelberg more than 20 years
ago. Body parts are immersed in acetone chilled to 13
degrees Fahrenheit, and the water is removed from every
cell. The water is then replaced with molten plastic
material that later hardens. The parts retain their
color and shape, though many organs end up looking like
plastic.
Von
Hagens went on to become a virtuouso at displaying
individual aspects of the body -- the skin, the muscles,
the digestive tract or even just the circulatory system.
He also learned how to preserve human bodies in vertical
and horizontal slices a quarter-inch thick.
But therein lies the
controversy. While nobody questions the value of
fashioning sophisticated cadavers for use by medical
students, religious and ethical critics say von Hagens
has crossed an important line by treating the human body
as something tantamount to a sculptor's clay.
"The Mannheim
exhibition fits somewhere between art and commerce, one
in which the likely damage to taboos has been factored
in as a cost," said Johannes Reiter, a Catholic
theologian and ethicist at the University of Mainz who
serves on a commission that advises Chancellor Helmut
Kohl on questions of ethics and technology. "He who
styles human corpses as a so-called work of art no
longer respects the importance of death."
Catholic and Protestant
church leaders from Mannheim have also vigorously
protested the exhibition, and implored local government
leaders to prevent it from even taking place. But while
local government officials have been sympathetic, they
have thus far been unable to come up with a valid legal
objection to the show.
Von
Hagens argues that his exhibit gives people a new
respect for the body. They can inspect the damage to a
lung caused by smoking or to a liver shriveled by
alcohol poisoning.
Yet he himself has
invited criticism by referring self-consciously to his
displays as "anatomical artwork."
"I use the word
art very cautiously, because it has come to mean
business and entertainment," he said as he strolled
through the museum. "What I mean here is an exhibit
of the human anatomy that is both instructive and
esthetic, an exhibit so exact that it represents a work
of art."
To that end, medical
students from the University of Heidelberg have been
paid to explain the anatomical ideas behind exhibits
that often seem bizarre at first glance.
The Runner, for
example, shocks many visitors, because the muscles look
as if they have been stylized into some form of modern
sculpture. But tour guides on hand say the real purpose
is to let people see the many different layers of
muscle.
"If you just
looked at the surface, you would only see the outer
muscles," said Jens Kubitz, one of the students.
"Here, you can see the lower muscles as well, the
ones that help us keep our balance and work for us all
the time without our even realizing it."
By any measure, some of
the exhibits are shocking. On one female corpse, the
stomach and womb have been slashed open to reveal a
five-month old fetus. In a glass case at the center of
the room, visitors encounter a row of plasticized infant
corpses, including a pair of conjoined twins.
All the adult bodies
that appear in the exhibit were donated by volunteers
who knew what they would be used for, and the donors'
identities have been protected. He does not accept the
bodies of infants. Von Hagens said the infants he
plastinated for the exhibit were acquired from hospitals
and medical schools. They were all preserved before
1935, he said.
Although he has been
approached by anti-abortion groups to prepare
plastinated fetuses for their use, he said he has
refused to do so for fear of becoming embroiled in
political battles.
Dieter Blumer, a
schoolteacher who traveled more than 300 miles from the
town of Bocholt on the Dutch border to see the exhibit,
said, "Some of the exhibits were right on the
edge." He added, "But in the end, I would have
to agree that the human body can be used for another
useful purpose after a person dies."
Von Hagens said that he
has not even begun to run out of ideas for new body
displays. "I have already designed quite a few
other specimens, but I wouldn't show them here because
they would be misunderstood," he said.
Related Links:
"Plastination"
KÖRPERWELTEN.
Die Faszination des Echten
