BODY WORLDS
a bit of HISTORY

Gunther von Hagens

The man behind Body Worlds is a German: Gunther von Hagens (1945). After studying medicine, he worked in the Department of Anaesthesia and Emergency Medicine at the University Hospital in Heidelberg. Here he completed his doctorate and began to work on the subject of impregnation. In 1977, he invented plastination, which he also patented. He founded Biodur Products in 1978 and the Institute for Plastination in 1993. This made him not only a doctor and inventor, but also a very successful entrepreneur. He has been showing real cadavers in public exhibitions since 1995. Despite the criticism, his exhibitions have attracted over 50 million visitors worldwide.

The exhibitions

Since Germany, as we know, is very insistent on dignity and laws (which is a good thing), Germany was not the first port of call for such an exhibition. So the first “Körperwelten” took place in Japan in 1995. However, the first exhibition in Europe was in Germany, in Mannheim, and it lasted one and a half years.

Further exhibitions followed until Hagen’s process was scrutinised by “Der Spiegel”. There were accusations that the specimens were executed people from China. Von Hagens then obtained a temporary injunction and the allegations were dropped. It appears that things may not have been entirely kosher at the beginning, as it is not possible to trace everything exactly, and Hagens also worked in China for a long time.

However, he and BODYWORLDS were now really well-known thanks to the Spiegel publications. Since 2009, he has not only been able to show one temporary exhibition, but eight different ones with different themes. Since 2005, animal exhibits have also been added after he received two naturally deceased elephants from Neukirchen Zoo for reprocessing.

Today, there are five permanent exhibition venues in addition to the travelling exhibitions: since 2015 in the base of the TV tower in Berlin (perhaps the most difficult opening of all). Since 2017 in Heidelberg in the “Altes Hallenbad”, this exhibition also deals with the topic of happiness. There is also the Plastinarium in Guben, which is run by one of Hagen’s sons. The Amsterdam and San José locations are the only permanent exhibitions outside of Germany.

The body donations

In Germany, the accusation of a “violation of human rights” was often levelled. The whole project acquired a negative flavour, not least because of Der Spiegel. The project was also regularly rejected on religious and ethical grounds.

The official “Körperwelten” website paints an entirely different picture. Van Hagens insists that all the bodies were bequeathed to him voluntarily and with full mental capacity. The website has a separate section on the subject. It says: “They come from people who, during their lifetime, have stipulated that their bodies should be available for the education of doctors and the education of lay people after their death.” The interesting thing is that of the total of 19,222 donations, 17,148 came from Germany alone. A huge number, considering that the topic is so difficult in Germany.

On the website, you can also be redirected to the official donor registration office. The bodies are completely anonymous so that no resemblance can be established: not only is the name missing, of course, but most of the bodies are also made up of parts of different people so that no such association is possible.

Plastination – how does it all work?

We can’t go too deeply into the subject here… The important thing to know is that Gunther von Hagens developed a method of replacing water from cells with a plastic. The whole process takes place under vacuum: surfaces and structures are preserved intact. Only the colour disappears and then has to be artificially reprocessed. The process makes the body (parts) odourless and preserves them for a long time.

The process consists of only 4 steps:

1. Fixation in formaldehyde: the tissue is prevented from shrinking in the process.
2. Freeze exchange and degreasing: a -25 °C acetone bath removes the water from the fabric
3. Forced impregnation: the most important step. Unfortunately, I have to quote this directly from Wikipedia: “Here, the preparation is placed in a plastic solution under vacuum. Due to the high vapour pressure, the acetone begins to boil and “bubbles” out of the preparation. This creates a volume deficit so that the same volume of plastic is sucked into the tissue. The preparation is then completely saturated with plastic and may be brought into the anatomically correct position.” (Plastination/Wikipedia)
4. Hardening: the plastic must harden. This is where the question arises as to whether the body parts should be full plastinates or disc plastinates.