Gunther von Hagens, the creator of the controversial “Body Worlds” exhibitions where dissected human and animal bodies were displayed, has died at the age of 81, according to his family.

Sometimes known as “Doctor Death”, he became famous for developing a technique called plastination, by which fluids and fatty tissue in corpses are replaced by rubber and polymers.

His family said in a statement that he had asked for his body to be made available for plastination and that they intended to carry out his wish.

More than 58 million people worldwide have viewed his exhibitions, the statement said. However, religious groups and others have frequently objected to his display of human remains.

His family’s statement said von Hagens died on Friday, a day after being admitted to a clinic in Heidelberg, Germany, with a brain haemorrhage. He had suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for nearly two decades.

“It was Gunther von Hagens’ own wish to make his body available for plastination after his death,” the statement reads. “His family will respect and carry out this wish.”

Born in Nazi-occupied Poland in the last months of World War Two, von Hagens grew up in communist East Germany before fleeing to the West in 1970.

In the next few years he developed the plastination process. Specimens came to be used as teaching aids at universities or by research institutes.

But it was not until the late 1990s that he began taking his Body Worlds exhibitions around the world.

Colleagues paid tribute to a “pioneer, a researcher, an inventor” who made “anatomy accessible to the general public”, but critics have accused him of voyeurism and profiting commercially from death.

In 2002 he caused further controversy by performing the first public autopsy in London for 170 years on camera. Authorities had warned the event could be illegal but no charges were brought.