Exhibition of Human Corpses Sparks Furor

March 29 -- He's been compared to Dr. Frankenstein and Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, but Prof. Gunther von Hagens sees himself in a more Renaissance role; a sort of latter-day Leonardo da Vinci in anatomy study.

But when his latest exhibition, "Koerpewelten" or "Body Worlds" opened in Berlin last month, a number of residents, including Germany's Roman Catholic Church, saw nothing renaissance in his work. They simply found it sick, sinful and macabre.

It's easy to see why visitors might find von Hagens' work offensive. His exhibits include a man contemplating a chessboard as he sits at a table with his brains exposed. Another piece depicts a standing man, muscles and tissues bared, cavalierly holding his skin aloft. Other works include a pregnant woman with her belly peeled to expose a curled fetus.

But even more disturbing is the fact that the exhibits on display are real human corpses, preserved, dismembered and put on display.

Replacing Body Fluids

An anatomist, von Hagens developed a process, which he calls "plastination," in 1977 at the University of Heidelberg whereby water and lipids found in biological tissue are replaced with synthetic polymers. The result is a dry, odorless and durable corpse.

A former East German who spent two years in jail for attempting to escape to the West, von Hagens was allowed to leave East Germany in 1970.

Through the years, von Hagens has further developed "plastination" to arrive at a complicated process that can take up to three years to complete. A highly labor-intensive process, "plastination" work is done in Germany and China.

His jump from science to art, von Hagens told ABCNEWS.com during a telephone interview from China, was in keeping with the spirit of the Renaissance scholars such as da Vinci, who studied cadavers to better understand the human body.

The purpose of the "Body World" exhibit, he said, was to "show the beauty of the body interior" and to allow visitors to "come to terms with [their] bodies."