Berlin - Hundreds of people round the world have suggested ways to identify a mysterious female body, possibly that of German communist heroine Rosa Luxemburg, which has languished for 90 years in a Berlin hospital anatomy department.

Luxemburg was murdered by militiamen in 1919. What was thought to be her body was interred at her funeral. Another body, lacking a head, hands and feet, was later pulled from a Berlin canal. Pathologist Michael Tsokos believes the second corpse is Luxemburg's.

He told the German Press Agency dpa on Saturday that since his announcement on May 29, he had been contacted by Luxemburg cousins asking if they could offer their own DNA.

But Tsokos, who heads the forensic science section of Charite Hospital in Berlin, explained that this would not help much.

A child or grandchild of Luxemburg would have had DNA with some matching features, but the relatives who have come forward would not share enough unique DNA with the leftist author, feminist and revolutionary to establish a clear biological relationship.

Tsokos said he had not given up hope of unravelling the mystery and he had received a couple of leads that might help.

These included a revelation that there was a collection of pressed dried plants in Warsaw which had partly been collected by Luxemburg, meaning scraps of her skin could be on the leaves.

Tsokos said the waterlogged body kept in preservative fluid at Berlin's Charite hospital more closely matches Luxemburg, who walked with a limp, than the other body supposed in 1919 to be hers.

European leftists, who venerate her writings and her resoluteness, still make pilgrimages to the Berlin grave of Luxemburg, who was murdered as Germany teetered on the edge of revolution in 1919.

Witnesses say Luxemburg was bludgeoned and shot to death on January 19, 1919 and her body thrown in the canal. Tsokos said the hands and feet may have become detached from the weighted-down body when it decomposed. (dpa)