Nobody seemed to miss him. The body of a 46-year-old man was found more than eight months after his lonesome death in his apartment in Gelsenkirchen, a city in the Ruhr area, Germany's biggest industrial region.

As Zuzanna Hanussek speaks about him, her lively and energetic voice turns more quiet. "I'm shocked that even the neighbors often fail to notice anything — or that they remain totally indifferent. More and more people simply disappear from our society, and nobody even cares. Not only their death went unnoticed, but also their life," Hanussek, a Protestant pastor, told DW.

A lonesome farewell

There are only two things Hanussek knows about this man from Gelsenkirchen: his name and his address. Neither relatives nor friends were found. Not even his neighbors were able or willing to provide any further information.

Hanussek gave him a compassionate and dignified final farewell by performing last rites alongside a Catholic priest at a cemetery in Gelsenkirchen. The urn containing his ashes was buried in a public health funeral. In the absence of relatives, the municipal office for public order commissions and pays the funeral parlor that organizes the burial.

Read more: German funeral rites and customs

"There are no national statistics on public health funerals in Germany," Stephan Neuser, general secretary of the Federal Association of German Undertakers, told DW. "But since more than 81 percent of all the undertakers in Germany are members of our organization, we have an overview of the developments regarding funerals — and there are more and more public health funerals in Germany, especially in areas of high population density."

This development is particularly striking in Hamburg, Germany's second-largest metropolis. According to data provided by the city's cemeteries, the number of public health funerals in Hamburg has more than doubled between 2007 and 2017 (last year, it passed 1,200).

In the same period, the municipal office for public order in Cologne, the largest city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, also registered an increase in these funerals — from 486 to 636.

In the German capital, these numbers went up from 1,979 in 2012 to more than 2,300 in 2016, the speaker of Berlin's Senate Administration for Health, Care and Equality told DW.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Life is finite R.I.P.: In 2018, about 954,900 people died in Germany, according to the federal statistics office. Even if burial in a cemetery is obligatory almost everywhere in Germany, burial practices are changing, often leaving large swathes of grassy areas between traditional burial plots, which are not permanent but leased for a period of 15 to 20 years at a time — leases often are not renewed.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Fewer traditional burials 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: Cremated remains can't simply be scattered in your back yard. In general, they must be sealed in an urn and buried in a cemetery or designated forest.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites End-of-life choice Sealed, yet decorative ceramic, metal, wood or biodegradable urns hold the remains of more than one out of two deceased 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.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Back to the roots 80 centimeters deep: 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 allowed — it's just nature, peace and quiet, and open year-round.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites DIY coffin The idea hasn't quite caught on in Germany, but some funeral homes and experts offer casket-building workshops, like Lydia Röder, head of an outpatient hospice service, and artist Anna Adam (above). 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). Building your own can be a therapeutic experience.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Public viewing Before funerals, private or public viewings at funeral homes with the casket open or closed are 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 vastly different meaning, standing for for watching sports events or live concerts on a large screen in a public area, usually in a big crowd.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Condolences and sympathy 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.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Grieve, socialize and eat 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).

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Learning the trade 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.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Practical aspects 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, set up in 1994 near the center of the town of Münnerstadt by the Bavarian Undertakers Association.

R.I.P.: German funeral rites Sepulchural culture 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. Author: Dagmar Breitenbach



Isolation and poverty

"The increase in public health funerals is connected to demographic factors: people in Germany live longer than in previous times, and they are often alone when they die," said Neuser. He also pointed out that financial concerns over funerals have become more pressing since 2004, the year in which public health insurance companies in Germany stopped supporting burials.

Nowadays, close relatives are liable to pay for a funeral; their specific order is regulated by each of the federal states. If they are unable to afford it, they can apply for financial help at the social services department. In contrast to these "social services funerals," public health funerals are carried out to bury or cremate those who have died alone without being claimed by any relatives within a fixed period of time, or if relatives are not willing to make arrangements for the funeral.

"Sometimes people just aren't able to deal with all this," said Hanussek, explaining that very poor relatives "might shy away from applying for financial support at the social services department, because the hurdles are high, it takes some time and every proof of income has to be examined."

Read more: German politicians urge measures to fight loneliness

Watch video 04:27 Share Bargain burials Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/37MYz Bargain burial?

Each municipality in Germany is free to decide on how to commemorate these lonely dead — some of them are buried anonymously, in other cases their names are remembered in various forms. Starting in 2014, Hamburg has been allocating these people gravestones with names and the dates of birth and death.

On the last Sunday of the ecclesiastical year, when the Protestant Church in Germany and Switzerland commemorates the dead — this year it falls on November 25 — these deceased are being honored in Hamburg's main church St. Petri, where their names are read aloud. Once a year, many of the undertakers who deal with the sad task of arranging public health funerals also organize a commemoration ceremony for the lonely dead. In Gelsenkirchen, their names are engraved on "resting stones," a donation-funded project of the Ruhesteine e.V. initiative.

'Look after other people'

Hanussek is one of the founders of this project. Dedicated people like her want to save the loneliest of Germany's dead from oblivion. In the sermons she delivers alongside her Catholic counterpart at public health funerals, she can hardly say anything about a person's story — usually, little is known about the deceased. "But this is what we can do: During public health funerals and other church services, we call on everyone to look after other people in their neighborhood," she said.

Hanussek gives a dignified final farewell to those who die alone

Everyone can contribute to tearing down the walls of isolation and preventing tragedies like the gruesome death of the man in Gelsenkirchen, she says. It all starts with very simple things, like saying hello to one's neighbors. In order to encourage people to reach out to each other, Hanussek has initiated a project called "Neighbors helping neighbors" in Gelsenkirchen.

"In the first phase, a social worker regularly visits people in their homes, in the next one, neighbors are being brought together. After meeting a couple of times, they start building relationships — but they don't initiate them on their own," she said. Another one of Hanussek's projects is a free cafe for people who can't afford to attend regular cafes or pubs: "This doesn't save the world, but it's an attempt to help people overcome their isolation."

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