Art that is dead but not buried

Two children are examining a lifelike model of a man with what appears to be a raincoat over his arm. The model is lifelike because it was once a live man; draped over his arm is not a raincoat but his skin.

Welcome to Body Worlds, an exhibition of preserved corpses that is attracting outrage, controversy and more than 6,000 visitors a day in Berlin. The bodies have been preserved using plastination, a technique that replaces the body's natural fluids with synthetic polymer resins. Once set, the resins preserve every vein, muscle and piece of tissue in its original detail.

According to the organisers, the exhibition shows how the body functions and conveys "the vulnerability and transience of our corporeality". But others believe the exhibition of bodies cut open for an inquisitive public is a tasteless and degrading roadshow.

A Catholic church in Berlin held a requiem for "the souls of the anonymous dead, degraded to mere exhibits". Andreas Nachama, the head of the city's Jewish community, was also outraged. _"You have to wonder at a society that derives entertainment from dead bodies."

Critics have dubbed the man behind the exhibition, Prof Gunther von Hagens of the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, the Modern Mengele, after the Nazi doctor notorious for his war-time experiments. Others see him as a modern-day Frankenstein, a label he rejects. "These plastinates show the beauty of our body interior," he says.

One of the most disturbing exhibits is of a young woman reclining on a sofa, cut open to reveal the unborn child in her womb. Another exhibit attracted attention when it emerged that it was part of a consignment of 56 corpses of prisoners and homeless men sent to von Hagens from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

For von Hagens, the success of the exhibition means he will never be short of donors for his work. Of the six million people who have seen the exhibition in Japan, Switzerland and Germany, more than 3,000 have signed up to be preserved using his plastination process.

Those whose bodies are already on display gave varied reasons for wanting to be preserved. "I would like to make people understand better what a work of art the human body is," wrote one donor. Another had a more practical reason: to save money. "Grave maintenance is obviously the last chance to be fleeced," he wrote.