Burials without a coffin have been permitted in Bavaria since last year. But how do you put a shrouded corpse in the grave with dignity? Some cities already have experience with this, Nuremberg is still testing.
Nuremberg (dpa / lby) – More than a year after the easing of the coffin requirement in Bavaria, the dead are only occasionally buried in the shroud. In the end, it is up to the municipalities to decide where burials without a coffin are possible, since that also depends on the soil conditions in the cemeteries, said Matthias Liebler from the Bavarian Undertaker Association. This is already the case in Munich, Augsburg and Würzburg, for example. Nuremberg is currently testing the procedure for coffinless burials.
Last spring, Bavaria was one of the last federal states to abolish or relax the coffin requirement. According to the consumer initiative Aeternitas, this is only still the case in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Liebler does not have a precise overview of which municipalities allow funerals without a coffin. It will likely only happen in the big cities with larger Muslim communities, Liebler said. In rural areas, there has been little demand so far.
According to the city, Augsburg changed the municipal cemetery statute last August to allow burials in a shroud for religious and ideological reasons in the New East Cemetery. Since then there have been 15 coffinless burials. “Even within the Islamic culture, burials often take place differently, especially with regard to the rituals at the grave,” explained Anette Vedder, head of the office for green space, nature conservation and cemeteries.
The state capital Munich first rehearsed the burials without a coffin at different grave sites in order to be able to gain experience with different space conditions and the process. “A dummy was used that corresponds to an average person in terms of shape, dimensions and weight,” said a spokesman for the health department. Since October 2021, the dead can be buried in a shroud in the West Cemetery, Forest Cemetery and New South Cemetery.
In Nuremberg, too, the cemetery administration ran through various scenarios in this way. “There are various things to consider,” said the head of the municipal cemetery administration, Armin Hoffmann. Above all, a way had to be found to lower the dead to the grave in a reverent manner, wrapped in a cloth, and to ensure that they were correctly oriented towards Mecca. In November, Hoffmann and his team want to use a dummy to demonstrate their solution to Muslim associations and the Commission for Integration. The cemetery administration will later determine which cemeteries will allow burials in shrouds.
In Würzburg, people have been able to have their relatives buried without a coffin in the forest cemetery since August – in order to meet the desire of many Muslims to be buried according to their religious rites and guidelines, according to the city. However, these must be requested from the cemetery administration, which decides on a case-by-case basis. “Since then there has been no coffinless burial,” said a city spokeswoman.
