Deutschlandfunk reported this morning that the "Plastinarium" has opened in Guben, Brandenburg. The Plastinarium is the brainchild of Gunther von Hagens. He takes human bodies and makes educational artwork out of them. His exhibition "Body Worlds" has been shown in several cities and caused some controversy. People bequeeth their bodies to von Hagens. He injects the corpses with a mixture of formaldihyde and plastic and poses them in various "life-like" positions, often with the skin off, showing various internal organs.

Now, in Guben, he is setting up a the "Plastinarium" factory to produce and display more "plastinate" figures.

The town of Guben appears to be generally happy about the opening. It promises to bring money and jobs. (This is the best account I have found onilne.) There were some protesters at the opening, however, and, at least on Deutschlandfunk, they got all the air time. The radio piece briefly described the opening and the displays on exhibition there. But the commentary was almost all negative. The narrator expressed serious concern that children were allowed in and that whole nursery school classes were visiting the exhibition, seeing the bodies. Childen under 6 are admitted for free, older children for half price. She did not explain why it might be a problem that children see dead people formed into art; it was just assumed that it is a problem and that child protection laws (Jugendschutz might need to be enforced.

The German Lutheran church is preparing legal action against von Hagens. No doubt they will be able to use that marvelously ambiguous phrase about human dignity in the German constitution ("Wuerde des Menschen") and general western discomfort with and taboos about death to at least cost him a legal battle. Some protesters outside the new factory were interviewed. Their arguments were all religious: We are dabbling with God's creation, we are supposed to go earth-to-earth, dust-to-dust, etc. A few of the protesters were from the local town and vowed to move away from Guben, the "corpse city" ("Leichenstadt") as the press is now calling it.

If the bodies were from executed prisoners or other victims - like the bodies in Graeberfeld X here in Tuebingen, there would be a problem. If the bodies of the people were identifiable to visitors, that might be a problem, depending on the consent given by the deceased. But that is not the case.

The media - and to a lesser degree perhaps von Hagens himself - seem to have no small degree of interest in hyping this thing, making it off to be some kind of freak show. The enthusiasm of the town and the streams of visitors to the "Body Worlds" exhibition shows that the German public seems more enlightened than the media who serves them.