On the Sunday of the Dead, many people go to the cemeteries to commemorate their deceased on decorated graves. In some places these are tree graves – urn areas under trees or grouped around trees.
Jena (dpa/th) – Instead of an elaborate earth grave or an anonymous urn, a tree as a burial site: In Thuringia, several municipalities have responded to people’s desire for natural burials. They offer so-called tree graves in their cemeteries – grave fields that are arranged around a tree in the center or lie directly under individual trees. “It is well received,” said Bertram Flößner from the cemetery administration in Jena, where tree burials have been possible in the North Cemetery since 2014. Urns can also be buried in tree graves in cemeteries in Erfurt, Suhl, Heiligenstadt, Bad Salzungen and Weimar.
There are two areas for this in Jena. In one, the urns are buried in a circle around young trees, in another, naturally, under old trees. Families can also acquire the right to use a tree of their choice here – with space for four urns each, but without grave decorations. Small nameplates and flowerbeds are possible for the burial sites grouped around young trees. According to Flößner, 418 urns have been buried so far, most of them under trees. According to the city administration, almost 200 tree grave burials were counted in the Erfurt main cemetery last year alone.
In the Catholic town of Heiligenstadt (Eichsfeldkreis), where coffin burials were the norm until a few years ago, the option of urn burials is also used. “The circle of urns around the tree is getting bigger and bigger,” said the city’s first councillor, Ute Althaus.
In Thuringia too, the demand for near-natural burials was initially reflected in the desire for burial forests outside of cemeteries. The latter are available in the Free State in Bad Berka and Rudolstadt, among other places. Here, the municipalities cooperate with the state forest agency, among others. According to a Thuringia forest spokesman, 900 urns have so far been buried in the Bad Berka funeral forest, which opened in 2018. In the Rudolstadt funeral forest, which opened in 2020, there are 213 urns so far.