Gunter von Hagens: Autograph of those excentric and controversial artist / entertainer in Collectibles:Vintage:Unusual - Weird at Collect.at (col7030)

October 18 2002

Russian police have charged a senior Siberian pathologist after investigating for a year how 56 corpses ended up in Germany as part of a project to preserve human bodies as works of art.

The police say eight corpses were supplied under false pretences to the German institute where Gunter Von Hagens developed his "plastination" technique of replacing bodily fluids with synthetic resins.

Prosecutors in the southern Siberian city of Novosibirsk say Vladimir Novosyolov, head of the regional bureau of medical expertise, told the relatives of eight dead people under his jurisdiction that their bodies had been cremated.

The relatives were given urns containing their supposed ashes, while the real bodies, it is alleged, were sent on to Professor von Hagens's Institute of Plastination in Heidelberg in 1999...................Gunter von Hagens: Autograph of those excentric and controversial artist / entertainer in Collectibles:Vintage:Unusual - Weird at Collect.at @ rubylane