Exhibition of human corpses sparks artistic, medical and moral furores

A German pathologist who displays preserved, human corpses as art exhibits is facing legal action as a result of an exhibition in Berlin that has created an artistic, medical and moral furore.

Dr Gunther von Hagens, who runs a private medical institute in Heidelberg, has developed a special technique for preserving bodies so that they do not smell or become discoloured.

Almost 800,000 Germans went to see Dr von Hagens' corpses at an exhibition in Mannheim last year but it was not until he put four bodies on show in an art exhibition called "The Power of Age" at Berlin's Kronprinzenpalais that the law caught up with him.

Mariele Bergmann, a 52-year-old psychologist, was so outraged by the exhibits when she saw them last week that she has taken a criminal action against Dr von Hagens. She accuses him of using human corpses to produce art objects, misleading donors and abusing his position as a pathologist.

Ms Bergmann claims that, if Dr von Hagens were not a medical doctor, he would be regarded as a suitable subject for psychiatric help and she is demanding that, if the preserved corpses are not removed from the immediately, the exhibition should be closed down.

Forty thousand Berliners have already visited "The Power of Age", which includes works by such artists as Joseph Beuys, James Lee Byars and the rising German star, Rosemarie Trockel. The exhibition is sponsored by the insurance company Deutsche Herold and boasts Germany's President, Roman Herzog, as its patron.

Its curator, Bazon Brock, brushes off public outrage at von Hagens' corpses and maintains that the ghoulish doctor is pushing back the boundaries of art and science.

An easterner who spent two years in jail following an unsuccessful attempt to escape to the west, Dr von Hagens was allowed to leave East Germany in 1970. He invented the preserving technique known as plastination in 1978 and now runs a private institute in Heidelberg specialising in the process. It involves replacing water and lipids found in biological tissues with polymers such as silicon or polyester which, when they harden, leave a dry, odourless and durable corpse.

The most striking exhibit in Berlin is a male figure, stripped of skin and appearing to run, his muscles separated from the bone and stretched backwards, as if they are fluttering in the wind. Although the body has no skin, its eyeballs and eyebrows are present, giving it an uncannily life-like appearance. It is based on a 1913 sculpture called Original Forms of Movement in Space by the Italian futurist, Umberto Boccioni.

Another corpse has segments sliced out and extended like drawers in a cupboard, a reference to a painting by Salvador Dali. A third corpse is holding its own, entire skin in one hand, a quotation of a detail from Michelangelo's The Last Judgment.

A notice at the entrance to the exhibition warns visitors that the plastinated corpses might offend religious beliefs but most appeared to enjoy the show, ignoring the fact that they were scrutinising dead human beings.

"Although as a pathologist, I'm accustomed to quite a few things, I was a bit outraged at the first sight of it," said Dr Markus Rothschild, a lecturer in pathology at Berlin's Free University.

"The dead, human body is not terrible or disgusting, it just has an unpleasant smell sometimes. But I believe that death and all that comes afterwards must be treated with respect. That is not the case when dead bodies are made ridiculous, as they are here."

What outrages critics such as Dr Rothschild and Ms Bergmann is the fact that most of those who donated their bodies to Dr von Hagens expected them to be used for medical research or teaching rather than as dubious art works.

Dr von Hagens was unrepentant last week and even hoped to persuade visitors to the exhibition to satisfy their yearning for immortality by having themselves plastinated after death.