R.I.P.: German funeral rites

In 2021, 1,023,723 people died in Germany, according to the Statista statistics platform, compared to 985,572 the year before. Burial in a cemetery is obligatory almost everywhere in Germany, but burial practices are changing, often leaving large grassy areas between traditional plots, which are not permanent but leased for a period of 15 to 20 years at a time — leases often are not renewed.

Hamburg's Ohlsdorf Cemetery, the world's largest park cemetery, offers a partially covered space for mourners: The "station for grief." People can leave flowers, sit and contemplate, or grab colored chalk and write or draw on the walls. Surrounded by hearts, one of the messages reads "Du fehlst" — missing you.

With steep burial costs and declining interest in investing in and tending to family plots, Germans particularly in urban areas are increasingly opting for a less expensive option: cremation. Even here, a coffin or other container is a requirement, since Ccemated remains can't simply be scattered in your backyard. They must be sealed in an urn and buried in a cemetery or designated forest.

Sealed, yet decorative ceramic, metal, wood or biodegradable urns hold the remains of more than one out of two deceased people in Germany, with a much higher percentage in cities. In 2015, Germany's smallest state, Bremen, became the only one to liberalize the rule that stipulates burial in a cemetery. It began allowing a loved one's ashes to be scattered or buried in one's own back yard.

Germans have also taken to the woodland burial, where a wooden or biodegradable urn is buried among the roots of a tree in a designated area of specifically approved forests. No individual care is required, no flowers or candles are allowed — it's just nature and peace and quiet.

Building your own casket can be therapeutic. Lydia Röder (r), head of an outpatient hospice service, and artist Anna Adam offer workshops. Röder argues that "a coffin is not just an ordinary box, but an important piece of furniture in our lives." A handmade casket takes four square meters of lumber — and at a few hundred euros, it's cheaper than buying a casket at upwards of €1,000 ($1,150).

Before funerals, private or public viewings at funeral homes with the casket open or closed were common in many countries, but not so much in Germany. Neither is the practice of embalming. Moreover, in Germany the term "public viewing" has a very different meaning, standing for watching sports events or live concerts on a large screen in a public area, usually in a big crowd.

Deutsche Post issues special stamps for traditional condolence letters and death notices. Instead of or along with a newspaper obituary, the bereaved often send personal notices in the mail, notifying the reader of the time and place of a funeral or memorial service. People are also told whether flower arrangements are welcome, or whether the bereaved prefer donations, for instance to a hospice.

After a funeral or memorial service, mourners — family and close friends, usually by invitation only — gather in a restaurant nearby to socialize, share memories and have a bite to eat. A traditional "Leichenschmaus" (literally, corpse feast) snack includes coffee, a fortifying cup of broth, sandwiches and almost always some variety of sheet cake, for instance, streusel cake (above).

In 2005, Germany opened a federal training center for future funeral directors in the Bavarian town of Münnerstadt. In practice and theory, trainees spend three years learning the ins and outs of the trade, including how to counsel families, make funeral arrangements and prepare bodies for burial. Undertakers from as far away as China and Russia have taken advanced classes at the German academy.

Future undertakers learn how to operate special excavators to dig graves — you don't want walls to collapse or tombstones to topple — and how to bury an urn at Germany's only practice cemetery was set up in 1994 near the center of the town of Münnerstadt by the Bavarian Undertakers Association.

Germany has a museum devoted entirely to death in all its facets: the Museum of Sepulchral Culture in Kassel. It displays caskets and hearses, art, and traditional and contemporary product design spanning the centuries. The curators say visiting the unique museum that opened in 1992 is "all about life." The above exhibit shows an 1880 funeral carriage and a 1978 hearse in the museum courtyard.