In the largest municipal cemetery, only 20 percent of the area is still occupied by graves. This calls for new offers.
There is a rainbow grave field at the Sihlfeld cemetery in Zurich, which is primarily aimed at the LGBTQ community.
The Zurich cemeteries are running out of dead people. Forty years ago, there were grave after grave in Sihlfeld, Zurich’s largest grave complex. Only a few fields were free. Show this old aerial photos.
Today it is exactly the opposite: instead of graves à gogo, there are many green spaces in Sihlfeld. In summer, young parents push their strollers around the facility and spread picnic blankets on the lawn. Athletes jog past. The Sihlfeld is not just a cemetery. It is also the largest city park in Zurich.
The decline is striking. “Only 20 percent of the area in the Sihlfeld cemetery is still occupied by active graves,” says Bruno Bekowies from the funeral and cemetery office of the city of Zurich. By “active graves” the experts mean those that are subject to 20 to 30 years of grave rest, which are maintained and planted.
After this time, or sometimes a little later, entire grave fields are cleared. The gravestones and plants are removed and a meadow is sown. The remains will not be touched. In contrast to other cemeteries in Zurich, the remains and urns remain underground. Anyone who picnics on the Sihlfeld is always very close to the dead.
Almost everyone chooses cremation
It’s actually strange that the cemeteries are getting emptier. Because of course people still die. Every year, the circle of life of around 3,500 people in the city of Zurich closes; The trend is increasing because the city is growing. In the Zurich crematorium, one of the largest in Europe, over 7,000 cremations are carried out every year because numerous neighboring communities also use the facility.
But while the living hardly find any living space, there is more than enough space for the dead.
Bruno Bekowies names three main reasons why the rows of graves are thinning out. First, the tendency towards cremation. Almost 90 percent of the deceased are cremated, and urns take up much less space than coffins.
Secondly, 40 percent of the urns are buried in communal graves to save space. Thirdly, not every urn finds its way to the cemetery anymore. “About every twentieth urn is taken home,” says Bekowies. “She will be buried in her own garden or the ashes will be scattered.”
However, the price hardly plays a role. The basic offer is free. “In the city of Zurich, the funeral is free for residents,” says Bekowies. “The grave site, the coffin, the cremation, the urn and the burial are taken care of by the general public.” Only the maintenance of the grave and the planting need to be paid for. Costs also apply for special requests, such as special graves.
Bruno Bekowies at the Sihlfeld cemetery near the rainbow grave field.
Half of the rainbow places have been taken
Such special requests include themed rental graves. These are community urn graves with a special design. There are themed graves: with a herbaceous garden, a grove of pear trees, one with vines and one in which the deceased are buried together with their departed pets.
The latest offering is the Rainbow Grave Field. It was built in a part of the Sihlfeld where row graves still stood forty years ago. As part of the public cemetery, the Rainbow Grave is open to everyone, but the focus is clearly on the queer community. This had stimulated the rainbow field; the rainbow is the symbol of the LGBTQ movement.
The rainbow field is well received: 3 of the 23 spaces are currently occupied and 10 more are rented. If there is further need, the field can be expanded to 140 urn spaces.
The cemetery administration has developed an elaborate planting concept for the rainbow rental grave. The idea is that at least one rainbow color is always visible throughout the year. For example, the witch hazel, nomen est omen, opens its delicate, orange flowers in the middle of winter.
Tulips in pink, yellow girls’ eyes, purple asters and penstemon in the color version “Züri blue”, as it is called on the planting list, are also planted. A total of 45 varieties in 59 variants are on the plan.
Themed graves offer a location, says Bekowies, especially for those who have rented a space in advance. Around a third of the locations are selected during their lifetime. “You then know that this is my place, that’s where I come,” he says. More than 100 graves were allocated in the pear grove within a year and a half.
Even if this is perhaps not the main focus for a public cemetery, the themed rental graves are also financially interesting: a space costs 2,000 francs for 20 years, 2,450 francs for non-residents, payable in advance. There is a stele made of acacia wood for the grave inscription, a stone slab for private grave decorations and year-round grave maintenance. For comparison: 400 francs are due for maintenance in the communal grave.
In the themed grave, the name of the deceased is recorded on a simple stele made of acacia wood.
With the new forms of burial, cemeteries are once again an option for those who had previously found other solutions. A person whose ashes were buried in the Rainbow Field died in 2008 and the urn was probably kept at home. Now the survivors have found a suitable place.
“I want to return cemeteries to their original purpose,” says Bekowies, “and also make them tangible. This is achieved with the themed rental graves.”
The Zurich concept is generating interest across Switzerland. The majority of Swiss cemetery gardeners have already been to Sihlfeld to look at the rainbow grave field, says Bekowies. “And just two weeks ago we presented it to seventy communities in the Zurich agglomeration.”
A cemetery for football fans
Would other themed graves also be conceivable? Maybe one for GC or FCZ fans, planted with penguins in “Züriblau”? “We are not closing ourselves off from this,” says Bekowies, “but the themed graves must always remain accessible to others.”
Elsewhere, people have already made further progress in this regard. In Hamburg, for example, there is a separate cemetery for HSV fans right next to the football stadium of the traditional northern German club. Through the entrance gate, which is of course modeled on a football goal, you enter an area that resembles a sports arena. There are even coffins in the HSV design.
But the final rest for fans who want to be loyal to their club even in death comes at a price. The “single player” package for a single urn grave costs around 13,000 euros for 25 years. For the “double pass” variant It’s even a good 18,000 euros.
2023-12-27 04:11:42
#Zurich #cemeteries #emptying
