Two students enrolled designed to teach them about life on their own after high school are learning about funeral homes and burial customs. They are also to compare our rites in the USA with those in another culture. They would like to know what Germans do after the death of a family member.

Ron R
Since my wife's father passed away while we were in Germany in the summer and we had to plan the funeral, I do have some first-hand information! Now, this happend in the Rheinland, close to Bonn. There may be other traditions in other places.

First of all, it is always of interest to North Americans that cemetaries only "rent" the graves for 20 years. If you do not renew the contract, the remains (which are really nothing because the coffins are NOT placed into a concrete vault, as in North America) are removed. Just before the time is up, a sticker is placed on the headstone that the contract time is running out. In double graves, people are placed on top of each other. When the second body is added, the 20 years start over again. Once, when we visited a cemetary we saw a little backhoe digging up a grave!!!! All graves have a stone border around them and are planted with flowers or plants. After cremation, people are not allowed to take the ashes home or even drive them to the cemetary. (This is a point of discussion now in Germany). Small plots are used to bury the urn.

Funeral homes do not have "visitation"; the body is not normally on display. Sometimes, I understand, the body will be displayed in a church. I know this from my brother-in-law, a photographer. He used to get assignments where he had to take pictures of the deceased!

Death notices are mailed, as well as being placed in the paper. Funerals can take place only Monday to Friday. In 1997 My mother-in-law died during Karneval and due to a backlog had to wait 13 days to be buried. My father-in-law died in August, and again there was a long wait. Why? "Ferienzeit" we were told. The pallbearers were workers from the funeral home. The church service (Lutheran) was short and to the point. The closed coffin was in the church, and the minister did the eulogy and picked the music. After the service in the church, we walked behind the coffin to the cemetary. The coffin is lowered right into the grave. The minister said some words, and then he threw down the first shovel of dirt. The oldest daughter then throws down a bouquet of flowers. That was my wife. Then it was my turn to throw down a small bunch of flowers, and then everybody present threw down one of those little bunches which were supplied by the funeral home.

Normally, the family provides "Beerdigungskuchen" which is a kind of Streuselkurchen and Coffee afterwards. However, since we were only a small group, we took everybody out to a restaurant.

Everybody wears black! Since we were on our vacation, I did not have black clothes with me and had to go out and buy some. My young brother-in-law (the photographer) wore jeans and stuck out like a sore thumb.

The hearse (Leichenwagen) is silver. We also learned that graves are not repossessed even if the grave does not get paid for! What a relief!

Carolyn T
There is a really funny (remember, I admit I'm weird) movie called Ein Mord liegt auf der Hand, which is really a German version of a story by Oscar Wilde. In it are scenes of several family meals after the death of various family members.

Also, in Heinrich Boell's Und sagte kein einziges Wort, the narrator talks about going to funerals of people he doesn't even know and about going to the dinners afterward.

Maybe it is a regional thing, but where I am from, you can renew plots as often as you want.

"Funerals" is actually a topic in my German classes because the customs here (San Diego) are so different from the ones in my little home town in Germany. Here, people RARELY visit the cemetery. The grave is marked by a flat, little stone. Back at home, there are these little "lots" someone described. My parents' elderly neighbors consider it a labor of love to take care of my parents' graves because my sister and I live too far away. Hiring a gardener is considered heartless. Flowers bloom almost year-round, and often people visit daily. Since German small-town cemeteries are in the center of town, everyone crosses them daily on the way to the bank and the store, so people don't think anything about it.

In my town it is still the custom that neighbors and friends dress the dead person (a custom I can do without, to tell you the truth) and there is a viewing at the dead person's home. Only then is the body brought to the morgue. The actual funeral is a major "Staatsact." The whole town shows up; traffic stops, shops close.There is a prosession through the town. The three churches ring their bells and stop at the exact second the casket is lowered into the grave. (I don't know how they do that.) It is "feierlich" and heartwarming.

My dad passed away in southern Austria when we all were on vacation two years ago. I suggested cremation; the older people in my town almost fainted. I was told that you cannot cremate a relative unless that person put that in writing at some point in his or her life. And none of this ashes scattering business. My sister and I had my dad's body driven from southern Austria to northern Germany. Once he arrived back home, I was lovingly told that I had picked the wrong casket in Austria. I had picked one with a "Corpus" on it, and my dad was Lutheran, and one simply doesn't pick a casket with a "corpus" for a Lutheran. (Find me a lutheran casket in southern Austria.) I had also requested that the funeral home in Austria dress him in his favorite Hawaiian shirt from Maui and that caused an uprising in my German town. (Yes, they asked "was hat der Papa denn an?" ) I love the people in that little town dearly, but at that point, I was ready to get on the next plane, and my sister promised to come with me. :) The younger people use funeral homes, by they way, much to the older generation's chagrin.

There is also the custom that you send flowers on birthdays and major holidays to be delivered to the grave. I don't participate in that. On my parents' birthdays and on some holidays, I sent flowers to the people who take care of my parents' graves. They think I am a little weird, but they appreciate the gesture, and everyone is happy. These are really nice people. This whole Grabpflege doesn't mean much to me, but it means a lot to them, and I appreciate what they do.

My mom, a frequent visitor to the US, loved Nordstrom (what's not to like) and had joked that she wanted to wear Nordstrom clothes at her funeral. Little did we know, but she died shortly thereafter. My dad and my sister and I tried to get the neighbors to dress her in Nordstrom clothes; they wouldn't do it. (It wasn't black.)

****Morbid Alert****
Particularly the older people have a "different" approach to funerals. They'll casually mention funeral details ("Wisst ihr noch wie heiss es war, und der Sarg roch schon...") at the dinner table that will leave me and my poor American husband speechless. I guess when you are old enough to have participated in so many funerals, you'll get used to anything.

Greg S
On the topic of flowers, a somewhat morbid-humorous story. We were at our friend's in Giessen for my wife's birthday. It being late in the night, we were still celebrating, when the neighbor (from a block away) shows up, as per usual, around 12:00 a.m. He knew it was my wife's birthday and not wanting to show up empty handed, decided to stopover in the graveyard to pick a flower to present to her. We were delighted at his thoughtfulness, though we all agreed, we hoped the original owner of the flower didn't come looking for it!

For our German Day video several years ago my students emailed a flower shop and had a short albeit useful emailing activity to find out about flowers that they suggested and arranged for funerals. Real dialogue with a native was a great motivator for them. They also learned the Unser Vater in German and Old English to say at the mock funeral they put on.20 It got them into one of our local cemetaries which has a multitude of German language headstones.

Susan B
Where my family is from, family is "kindly urged" to give up a plot at a time that the church deems appropriate. My mother, for example, had a child stillborn in 1949 buried in the town cemetary as well as a brother who died as a child in 1943. The church approached her in the late 80s, and felt it really was time to free the plot. I've always understood this as an issue necessitated by limited space in Germany. What I've always wondered though is what's done with the remains. I've been to ossuaries in Europe, but those contain intact bones, certainly not ones removed from graves. Does anyone have a clue as to where they go?

Ron R
Yes, graves are re-used because the space is limited. Years ago, I wrote to some German funeral home to find out what is done with the remains. It was explained to me that there is usually nothing left. The burial time is different according to soil conditions. So they know how long it takes for a body to de-compose. If there is something left, it gets buried in a different section of the cemetary.

Also, I remember a friend who wanted to buy a grave that was protected, under "Denkmalschutz." She could have buried her parents there, but she could not have a headstone or anything with the new name on it. They would have to be buried in the grave of "Margarete D" with no sign that somebody else occupied the grave.

Another interesting thing is that the mailed death announcements have a black border around them. These are only used by the household where somebody died. If you get an envelope with this kid of border, you know it is bad news. When we did the mailing in the summer, we inadvertendly put too little postage on some. When we realized our mistake we were horrified to think that somebody would have to pay postage due and the penalty. A couple of phone calls later, we realized that they went through. I guess, the German mailmen have some compassion. They did not say: "If you want to know who died you have to pay 1 DM."

Oh yes, another thing. One of my nieces was working that summer. She did a kind of internship at a company, (which I should not name, because it is a US firm), not a high paying job, more for experience. When she asked for the day off to go to the funeral, she was told: "You can only get time off if your parents die, there is no time off for grandparents." As I said, I learned a lot this summer!