It all began when a citizen referred to the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau (EKHN) because he saw Else Niemöller's badly weathered grave in Wiesbaden as an eyesore.

It even threatened to be cleared away.

The church gave a signal to the Martin Niemöller Foundation, which took on the matter: Today, the grave of the resistance fighter's wife, who died early, and the first EKHN church president, is being tended by cemetery gardeners - the foundation and the descendants are responsible for the costs .

Martin Benninghoff

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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With the prominent Niemöller family, the case was clear: the cemetery serves as a place of remembrance where the past and present meet, where the bereaved mourn for their relatives or friends - and the public, if not the memory, at least shares the memory .

The Sunday of the Dead on this weekend, which some Protestant churches call Eternal Sunday, is also an opportunity for collective remembrance.

In the church services, those who died in the past church year are commemorated; believers visit their graves.

Empathy and compassion are often quickly consumed

But do rituals and collective strategies for coping with grief endure in a society that is becoming increasingly individual? The Frankfurt grief researcher Heidi Müller speaks of a "privatization of grief" against this background, of a retreat into the private sphere and thus also of grief, which is "no longer an issue for the social environment". In the performance society, the grief after the loss of a loved one is set a narrow framework, empathy and compassion are often used up after a few months. Instead, everyone has to "work" again quickly.

This also affects the funeral and mourning culture, which has been changing for years - and adapting to the rapidly changing needs for individual solutions and privacy. In Frankfurt in 2019, only 25 percent of the dead were buried in a conventional coffin, 75 percent were cremated and buried in a space-saving urn. For comparison, in 2009 there were 34 percent coffin and 66 percent urn burials. There are many reasons for this: Many relatives no longer live near their relatives and cannot or do not want to look after the graves. Anyone who still has to look after a conventional grave sometimes makes do with bark mulch or even gravel and gravel, as in the controversial front gardens that have become stone. "We don't like to see that," says the head of the green space office responsible for the Frankfurt cemeteries,Heike Appel. The administration recommends a planting, even if it is only ground cover.

It's also about money: an earth burial in one of the 37 cemeteries in the city currently costs more than 1,400 euros, while an urn burial "only" costs just under 900 euros.

In both cases, only a few municipal burial services are covered, such as digging the grave or transporting the wreaths.

In addition, there are rental costs for the mourning hall and of course the fees for the use of the grave, which can be extended after the time has expired - as well as the costs for the private undertaker.

That adds up to a few thousand euros.

The fees have been rising for years: "The more you raise, the more likely people are to migrate," says Appel.