A fairy tale goes like this: A rich man has died.

On the way to the hereafter, he comes to Peter, who asks him about his wishes.

The rich want a nice house, a comfortable armchair, their favorite food every day and lots of money.

That's exactly what he gets.

At first he is very happy, but then he starts to get bored.

When Peter came to him a hundred years later, he insulted him: “And that should be heaven?” “Why heaven?” Peter asks back.

"You are in Hell!"

Tilman Spreckelsen

Editor in the features section.

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    What happens to us when we die has preoccupied people for many thousands of years.

    In ancient Egypt, the hereafter, i.e. the place where the dead are, was imagined as a kind of extension of life.

    In other cultures, too, objects were placed in the graves that the dead believed might need on their further journey - often these were objects that the living also used, such as weapons, jewelry and food.

    The feast of Ascension Day has just been celebrated.

    This means a special transition into another world: Christ, as it is in the Bible, ascends into heaven before the eyes of his disciples, covered by a cloud.

    This happens exactly forty days after Easter, the day Christ rose from the dead.

    Another text also tells of Christ's journey to hell, from which he frees the souls of certain people and leads them to heaven.

    In the past two thousand years, a great many people have written down their ideas of the hereafter.

    Most of the stories about hell, the place where the dead are punished for what they have done in life, are more exciting than those about heaven.

    A famous journey into the afterlife, Dante's “Divine Comedy”, begins with a descent into hell - it is said that many readers love to read the beginning, but then no longer get to the ascent to heaven because that part of the poetry is no longer told as grippingly as the beginning.

    Some people believe that death is all over.

    Others believe that even after death, as long as someone remembers us, we don't completely disappear.

    Some believe that we will be born again, as humans or as animals.

    Others believe that in the afterlife we ​​will meet again those who died before us and whom we missed.

    There are many more ideas about what happens after death.

    But one thing applies to all of them: in life we ​​will not find out whether they are correct.

    Maybe that's a good thing.