Gunther von Hagens (1945-2026) has died. The inventor of plastination passed away on Friday, July 24, at the age of 81. His family confirmed the death to "B.Z.", among others. The news only became public on Monday, July 27.
One day before his death, von Hagens was admitted to a Heidelberg clinic due to a brain hemorrhage, according to the Berlin newspaper. Whether this was officially determined as the cause of death is not yet known. Von Hagens had suffered from Parkinson's disease since 2008, making the diagnosis public two years later. Mobility and speech were severely limited in recent years, public appearances rare. According to those close to him, he nevertheless continued working on improving his plastination process.
The Anatomist's Final Wish
Von Hagens wanted to become a plastinate himself after his death. He had publicly announced this for years, and his wife Angelina Whalley agreed after initial hesitation. "We will respect and carry out this wish", the tabloid quotes the family as saying. Whether a full-body plastinate will be created or individual specimens, whether the body will be displayed at all and at which location is also not yet known.
He was born in 1945 as Gunther Gerhard Liebchen in Alt-Skalden near Posen, in present-day Poland. He later adopted the name von Hagens from his first wife. In 1965, he began studying medicine in Jena, but after protests against the suppression of the Prague Spring and an escape attempt from East Germany, he was imprisoned in Cottbus and Jena. In 1970, West Germany bought his freedom for 40,000 Deutsche Marks.
He earned his doctorate in Heidelberg, where he also achieved his breakthrough in 1977: plastination, a process for the permanent preservation of biological specimens, as the company writes in its official statement. In the 1990s, he founded the private Institute for Plastination, and workshop pieces became exhibition pieces. More than 58 million people have now seen his 'Body Worlds' exhibitions, according to the company.
Dispute Over Human Dignity and a Museum at Alexanderplatz
He has always fascinated and outraged simultaneously. Critics saw human dignity violated in the displayed corpses. In Berlin, a museum with plastinates opened at Alexanderplatz in 2015, which the Mitte district opposed from the start: Even preserved bodies are corpses and must be buried, the argument went. Only after court rulings did the institution adapt its exhibition.
The specimens come from body donors who stipulated during their lifetime that their bodies would be available to science. In 2017, according to the Institute for Plastination, around 16,680 people were registered in the program. In Guben today, son Rurik von Hagens runs the business of Gubener Plastinate GmbH, where animal plastinates are also created, and visitors can watch the production process through a glass workshop.
