The price of German funerals are escalating. Cremation is a cost-saver. Don’t plan on placing Uncle Otto’s urn on the mantle. Deutsch cremation laws are restrictive.
German Funerals – Cremation and the High Cost of Burial
Around the world the cost of interning loved ones is rising. The cost of German funerals is expanding beyond the means of survivors. The range is €5,000 to €15,000 with an average of €8,000. Government engagement is most responsible for the premiums. Up until recently, only state hospitals embalmed the deceased. Churches and the state manage cemeteries. Some funerals homes are offering embalming services, but they are not reducing prices. More Deutsch are purchasing funeral insurance to cover their trip to the hereafter. Cremation may be the best means of reducing the costs of German funerals.
German Funerals – Cremation Restrictions
Cremation eliminates the expensive embalming step. German law requires burial for cremated ashes. Laws forbid spreading ashes in the Black Forrest, over the Zugspitze, or into the Rhine. The beautiful urn of a loved one is destined for a burial plot, not in the garden. Cemeteries offer smaller burial plots for urns. Multiple urns share one plot. The embalming savings and the smaller plot size reduce the overall costs of German funerals.
Some cemataries allow ashes spread in a designated area. Another exception is spreading ashes outside German territorial waters in the Baltic and North Seas. Survivors seek more.
German Funerals – Conflicting Cremation Perspectives
Germany faces conflicts in expanding its cremation laws. In a country with fears of window drafts, health official dread the increased flying ash of the deceased. The funeral industry resembles a cartel that lobbies for laws that protects profitable pricing. Germany’s dense population restricts cemetery growth. Families lease, not buy, burial plots for twenty-to-thirty years. Survivors face the removal of loved ones from their not-so-final resting place to make room for ash urns. Deutschland, a country that worships nature, and strives for a sustainable environment, needs to reduce the cost of German funerals by liberating its cremation laws.
The deceased hope a better legacy awaits loved ones. Family members do not need excessive debt added to their grief. Reducing the cost of German funerals is a big step toward resting in peace.
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Written by Mark F. Weber
I am an international business professor in Pittsford, NY who managed a business unit for a German company. My passion is family and friends, plus roaming the countryside on my road bicycle.