Catholics celebrate All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day at the beginning of November and remember the dead in the cemetery. What is currently changing there says a lot about society.
An angel figure on a gravestone in the Hörnli cemetery in Basel.
Stefan Mesmer-Edelmann made many gravestones in his life. Unusual, reserved, elaborate, simple. He has been a sculptor in Muttenz for forty years. For a long time, gravestones were a given in Switzerland.
The names and dates of life of the deceased were engraved on gravestones, stone after stone commemorating the deceased. The cemetery was also a gallery of the village’s history.
There is an anecdote from Mesmer-Edelmann’s long professional life that illustrates the changes in his industry. A woman once ordered a gravestone from him. She said she would die tomorrow and wanted to relieve her relatives. She paid, he did the work. The woman did not die until seventeen years later.
Mesmer-Edelmann read the obituary and contacted the bereaved, assuming they would be happy about the surprise. But the relatives rejected the gravestone. They didn’t want to have to worry about caring for the grave after the funeral and buried the woman in an urn in the common grave.
The anecdote illustrates a social trend. The deceased are increasingly being cremated and buried in communal graves. The tombstone, once an important status symbol, disappears.
Urn burial is the norm
Stefan Mesmer-Edelmann says the cemetery is a reflection of society and the spirit of the times. “In the past, a representative gravestone was as important as a stylish car or an expensive watch is today. If someone didn’t have a gravestone and had to go into the urn wall, they were considered a poor wretch.”
Today, urn burial is the norm. According to the Swiss Association of Undertakers, 90 percent of all deceased people were cremated last year. In 2000 it was around 70 percent, in 1950 it was just under 20 percent. Burials in the ground are now rare; in some places there are not a single one for years.
A grave means work, obligation, commitment. Many relatives today are no longer willing to maintain a grave themselves. Either you have it done by a specialist, and that costs money. Or you can take care of the flowers and grave decorations yourself, which takes time.
And more and more people are turning away from religion. This year, non-religious people overtook Catholics for the first time and became the largest religious-sociological group in the country. The church, the cemetery, the gravestone: apparent relics from an earlier time.
A piece of memory culture is fading
With the gravestone, a cultural asset and a monument to the culture of remembrance disappears. The city of Basel is setting a counterpoint this Friday, on All Saints Day. A jury, which also includes Mesmer-Edelmann, honors tombs that are outstanding in terms of artistry and craftsmanship. The honor has taken place every year since 1996, and other cities also have similar events.
Christian Galsterer is a team leader at the cemeteries of the city of Basel and is responsible for this award. He says: “A special grave gives form to feelings and stories and shows a confrontation with the deceased.” The price is a silent sign against arbitrariness. With the gravestone award, the city wants to encourage those left behind to take the time to create a personal memory of the deceased.
This process is often associated with pain. That’s why Galsterer sees the award as an impetus to remove taboos about dying. “If we deal with finiteness before our own death, we can counteract hidden suffering.”
An avenue in the Hörnli cemetery in Basel.
It’s better to mourn with a gravestone
A gravestone has a strong effect in the mourning process, says Stefan Mesmer-Edelmann. Particularly in the case of sudden losses, such as when a young person has an accident or a close relative dies unexpectedly. This effect is often underestimated. “As soon as the gravestone is in place, many people can better accept that a loved one is dead and life goes on around them.” The stone rests, and so does the deceased.
There is also the social component. “It used to be a rewarding task for many widows or widowers to prepare the grave,” says Stefan Mesmer-Edelmann. “They met other bereaved people in the cemetery, they were looked after, the gravestone was like a social meeting place.” This can still be observed in some small Italian villages today. In Switzerland, society is more anonymous today, and that is evident in the cemetery.
The souvenir today: individual, but different
The way we deal with the dead is changing. The ashes of the deceased are more often scattered in nature, on a mountain, by a lake, in the forest. One reads that relatives want to set up a wild bee hotel instead of a gravestone or have the ashes pressed into a diamond. Cemeteries offer tree graves, private providers offer so-called ecological alternatives. The need for an individual souvenir is still evident today, but in a different form.
But the cemetery is changing. This has financial consequences for the communities, but also design ones. As fewer and fewer people have gravestones, the appearance of cemeteries changes. More and more space is becoming available, especially in larger cities. Some are testing temporary uses, others are increasingly focusing on events.
The boundaries between cemetery and park are disappearing, which can be clearly observed in large cities such as Basel, Bern, Lucerne and Zurich. Or as Christian Galsterer says: “A cemetery today is a place of life, and not a place of death.”
