Pushing the limits

This volume on Gunther von Hagens will shed light on previously unknown facets of this famous anatomist and creator of the BODY WORLDS exhibition. It will do so through accounts of people who have accompanied von Hagens for some part or other of his life, beginning with his childhood and adolescence ( reported on by his former classmate, Dietrich Wagner) to his imprisonment in the Cottbus penal institution (as remembered by his fellow prisoner, Bernd Wolfram) and on to his first anatomical workplace, the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg. Wolfgang Koser and Klaus Tiedemann describe the beginnings and first successes of plastination that they contributed to, medically and technically, not only as experts and coworkers, but also as friends. Wilhelm Kriz, back then von Hagens’ supervisor at the Anatomical Institute, writes about the balancing act between medical education and lay information that eventually failed, not without speculating on von Hagens’ motivation. Von Hagens’ further development is reflected on by Karine Oostrom and Bernd Hillebrands from the viewpoints of a former plastination student and family friend, as well as a coworker and executive officer of the BIODUR company, respectively. Rurik von Hagens, his son, and Angelina Whalley, his second wife, contribute very personal impressions of the father and husband von Hagens. Wolfgang Heindl, his financial advisor and friend, and the journalists Nyschanbek Kotschkorov, Harald Biskup and Stefan Rathgeb accompany the exhibition producer through high and low points in the history of his enterprise BODY WORLDS, that, by now, has expanded to Kyrgyzstan, China, and the U.S.A. Eventually, Bazon Brock and Franz Josef Wetz, one an artist, the other a philosopher, both of them friends of Gunther von Hagens, take a step back and paint a portrait of von Hagens as a spiritual ascetic and describe his path of life up to now as the forceful movement of a highly controversial and much admired breaker of boundaries and envelope-pusher.