Nazism and the Warhol of cadaver art

There's quite a tumult in Poland these days. I should say: there's quite a tumult about Poland, and what might be built there, and by whom, and for what dastardly, bone-chilling reasons.

You've probably heard of this man, Gunther von Hagens. He's an anatomist and pathologist, formerly of Heidelberg University, who now makes his living freaking the hell out of people with his [patented] plasticized cadavers, former humans infused with various polymers, then carved up in interesting and artsy ways.

Once a mild-mannered research scientist with no artistic pretensions, He displayed his work at a University open house in the late 70's and has been doing cadaver art ever since. While he says he originally felt uneasy that his work was being considered art, that is, it was resonating emotionally with people, he gradually came to understand it.

plastination opens the hearts of the people to themselves. They recognize themselves, get a new kind of body pride.

The current controversy: he wants to build a factory in Western Poland to churn these suckers out. The facility would employ up to 300 people and would be located in the small town of Sieniawa Zarska, very close to both Prague and Berlin.

This seems to worry people. Certainly the commercialization of death is nothing new, but for some [the devout] it remains a sticky subject. So let's enumerate the concerns:

1. Artistic Medium is dead folks
2. Factory will mass-produce dead folk art
3. Western religions tend to sanctify the dead and their bodies
   
4. Factory will be in Poland, which is virtually 100% Catholic, 60% of whom consider themselves deeply religious
5. Poland is scene of another kind of industrial event involving human bodies, the Holocaust.
   

Those last three are, I believe, the kickers. Von Hagens already has a factory like this in China, where there are no strong cultural feelings about human remains and no connection to the Holocaust. I'd never heard the Orient factory mentioned anywhere before. Now, all of a sudden, the new site is Poland and the press are having a field day.

“How can a German come up with the idea of processing dead bodies for commercial use on Polish soil 60 years after the liberation of Auschwitz?” one Polish daily asked.

Firstly, All Germans were not Nazis, and von Hagens is not a grave-robber, each cadaver he uses has consented while still alive. It's more of an ethical quandary for the person being plasticized than for von Hagens, because they are the ones obligated to address the feelings and fears of their loved ones, some of whom are probably religious. He's got factories doing this stuff, that makes him prodigious, not a monster.

Frankly, the biggest problem I have with von Hagens is that he's a bad artist. His compositions are trite and perfunctory. A man playing chess with his brain exposed. A body playing basketball. One hanging its skin on a coat rack. He's terrible, but there's nothing evil about his incompetence. He's certainly not Dr. Mengele. Where that doctor made infamous lampshades of human skin, von Hagens offers handy backpacks of, presumably, nylon. Again, tacky merchandising makes him a capitalist, not a monster.

I'm annoyed at the way the media--especially the American media--has tried to paint him as some kind of mad scientist, playing on people's fear of death and the cultural aversion to playing with remains without explaining his motives. Motives? He's just craaaaazy. Two years ago the BBC ran an article after von Hagens conducted the UK's first public autopsy in 170+ years. Then, they called him "a professor of anatomy" and went on to explain that his fascination with the human body comes from childhood: "it was seeing his first autopsy when he was 17, which he says absolutely fascinated him, that encouraged him to take up medicine."

Then yesterday, ABC, using a Reuters feed, ran this article, calling him a "Controversial German artist . . . known for his displays of preserved human corpses stripped of skin." The report then noted his desire to, "build a factory in Poland to mass-produce his art." A similar story run yesterday in the Telegraph is more measured and, well, journalistic, calling him an "anatomist". It then allows von Hagens to explain what the press chooses to call a factory is intended to be a "cathedral of science". Still weird--maybe more so--but that destroys the implicit argument that this shop and warehouse are simply for the wholesale distribution of desecrated remains to the consumer market.

The biggest part of the tumult, though, involves that 5th point up there. Turns out von Hagens' dad--who handled von Hagens' business affairs in Poland--was a stormtrooper.

Already suspect, von Hagens is now portrayed as a Nazi by association. Von Hagens denies it of course, saying he didn't know about his father's past, but we know the truth. He's gone so far as to fire the father, but that's smoke and mirrors. He's also going to replace him with a native Pole, whom we'll all decry as an Uncle Tom. The subtext of these articles is startling that way.

My friend [L] has an interesting story about her time in Germany. She was befriended by a couple Austrian students in a cafe and eventually [she says inevitably] the talk turned to the holocaust and how the German people try to hide or deny personal, familial involvement, since they can't escape the legacy as a nation. The girl [adjusted to represent L's bad Austrian caricature] said something like:

Eferyvon in Germany says zey housed a family of Jews. Eferyvon ver hiding little Anne Franks in zeyr Attik. Zis is just not pohssible. It is impohssible, no vahn vould have died if all der Germans had Jews in zeyr attiks.

Point being: There were very few innocents in Germany, and you can't throw a rock, be it Baden-Baden or Dresden, without hitting the descendent of a Nazi, them's the facts. There must come a time when we stop looking sidelong at people, condemning them for the sins of their forbears.

We can, however, condemn von Hagens for making crappy art, then shamelessly merchandising it. And condemn the world for buying it and making him rich. And then him again for wearing that fedora like the Indiana Jones of embalming.