Testimonials: For and Against
Someone you know as a Plastinate
1. Look carefully at the positions of those quoted below .
2. Which arguments can be used respectively for and against the BODY WORLDS 2 exhibition?
3. Are the arguments conclusive? (Test them if necessary by drawing on further reading.)
4. Consider what motivates a donor to allow his body to be plastinated for an exhibition.
5. Consider how the friends and relatives of the donor feel.
Positions of visitors and non-visitors1
“What tastelessness and irreverence will people come up with next to “get rich quick”? Can they
not imagine how the friends and relatives of the deceased feel? But I think that Gunther von
Hagens understands nothing of “sympathy”, and “stopping at nothing”. As can be judged by the
780,000 visitors at Mannheim, there are enough sheep everywhere to go along with him. I would
advise these people and the exhibitors, if they are so curious to see dead bodies, to go into war
zones.”
Gertrud Holzki, Cologne
“I think that the exhibition is simply fantastic because it teaches us about the inner anatomy of
the human body. You can read a hundred books on anatomy and look at hundreds of pictures,
but how the organs really look, and where and how they are positioned, can only be seen in this
genuinely fascinating exhibition. I also think that it‘ s great that bodies can be conserved for a
very, very long time in this way. This is useful for training doctors or even enlightening us, the lay
people. We can see ourselves in the plastinates.”
Rita Gilberg, Koblenz
“I do not think that it is educational because the bodies are not displayed in natural positions.
The way Hagens does it, it‘ s not physiologically correct. The people are not just taken apart, but
the layers are pulled apart. Afterwards we don‘t know what the body really looks like from inside.
Reality is distorted, and the people are only put on show. This exhibition is about voyeurism, and it
has nothing to do with striving after medical knowledge.”
Daniela Klinger, Cologne
“I don’t agree with the statement that BODY WORLDS is a corpse show. It is a great credit to
people when they put themselves at the disposal of science after their deaths. Perhaps this
exhibition will cause an increased respect towards service to humans, as offered by doctors,
nursing staff or the fire brigade.”
Silke Ebert, Cologne
“I am looking forward to this exhibition a lot. Even as a child I looked up in the encyclopedia what
people look like from inside. I also watch operations on the television for hours at a time. I find
it totally fascinating. And the horror effect of a show like this is surely the same as looking at a
cathedral crypt in which a dead bishop is buried.”
Sascha Arnz (German TV Producer, “Wetten, dass ... ?”)
“If respect for the dead is maintained in the display, I find it very interesting. I will definitely be
viewing the exhibition. I hope that it will cause people to change their attitude towards the body
and perhaps treat it a little better, when they see how often it is abused. A little shock like that can
sometimes be helpful. ”
Joey Kelly (“Kelly Family”)
“No, I am not going to the exhibition. Because death is not for use as a kind of trendy
exhibitionism. I see this unsuccessful attempt at obscenely making eternal what is transient as
nothing more than grave-robbing and show-business with horror under the pretext of breaking down
taboos.”
Günter Wallraff, author
“I find an exhibition like this unnecessary. There are enough cut-up bodies, even cross-sections of
bodies, for the medically-inclined to see in the anatomical institutes of university clinics. A corpse
show like this does nothing for art. It just adds to the horror factor. I don’t need to see it.”
Heinz Zolper, Cologne-based painter who designed the title page
of the millennium edition of EXPRESS newspaper
