Burial also possible without a coffin: Nuremberg practices a cloth burial for the first time
Created: 11/23/2022, 8:07 p.m
By: Christian Einfeldt
Nuremberg wants to enable Muslim communities to say a dignified farewell to a deceased person.
How the ceremony works and what needs to be considered.
Nuremberg – Immediately after the end of the obligation to have a coffin was announced, Munich tested the first burials based on Islamic rituals.
That was in the spring of 2021 - one and a half years later Nuremberg is now carrying out the first burial with a linen cloth.
The fact that November 2022 was by no means an official ceremony could have been revealed first by the numerous cell phone cameras pointed at the grave, and then by the human-sized doll that was lowered into the grave at the southern cemetery.
Nuremberg practices burials with a linen cloth - and in this way wants to enable Muslim communities to say goodbye to the deceased with dignity.
Bavaria relaxes coffin requirements: Nuremberg carries out burials without a coffin for the first time
"Because everyone has the right to be buried according to their ideological or religious attitude - even without a coffin".
With these words, Joachim Hanisch, parliamentary group leader of the Free Voters, explained in March 2021 the urgency to relax the Bavarian coffin obligation.
He was concerned with "religious freedom", "human dignity" and an "open approach to a dignified burial according to individual needs".
Bavaria was one of the last federal states to relax the coffin requirement.
Another change that has recently also found its way into smaller Bavarian communities: Cemetery undertakers can now be chosen freely.
A corresponding ceremony, which makes a burial without a coffin possible, has now been rehearsed in Nuremberg on a trial basis.
November 2022: Nuremberg is testing a burial without a coffin for the first time.
© Daniel Löb/dpa
As reported by the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
(
SZ)
, among others, the event was to be explained as a prime example - how the body could be buried with dignity and how it could be correctly aligned in the direction of Mecca.
Cloth burial: why there were only a few funerals without a coffin in Bavaria
At the current time there would only be a few Muslims who would make use of the rule change in Bavaria.
As the
SZ
reports, citing information from the Federal Association of German Undertakers eV, this could have several reasons.
On the one hand, the municipalities can decide for themselves whether they agree to a coffinless burial or not.
It could also be due to the ground conditions in cemeteries that burial in linen cloths is prohibited.
In addition, there are different views within the Muslim faith on how a burial might take place - from different rituals at the grave to the desire to be buried in the country of birth.
In Germany's metropolitan cities, a cloth burial is no longer unusual.
In Cologne, for example, around 1100 burials have already been carried out in this way.
According to the Aeternitas eV association, the consumer initiative for funeral culture, it would still be a rarity at the moment.
It is a form of burial that is also gaining increasing attention in the media - and soon the first real cloth burial could take place in Nuremberg.
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