North Rhine-Westphalia debates draft bill to abolish mandatory cemetery burials

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ^ | December 2, 2002 | Kristina Merkner

[Frobenius]

German widows and widowers who want to take the ashes of their loved ones home with them have to cross the border to the Netherlands and organize cremation there. Since the 1930s, German law stipulates that urns must be buried at a cemetery.

Displaying ashes on the mantelpiece or scattering them over a cherished plot of earth, long possible in the United States and several European Union countries, was ruled unconstitutional in Germany in 1979.

The first initiative aimed at abolishing mandatory cemetery burials since the 1979 ruling is now being debated in North Rhine-Westphalia's state parliament.

The draft legislation, put forward by the Greens and the Social Democrats, would also abolish a law that mandates coffin burials, something that would accommodate especially the growing Muslim community, for whom burying a corpse wrapped in linen is a religious tradition.



Rest of Article

[Frobenius]

...whatever Islamicists want, Islamicists get...

[AntiGuv]

Sounds like a fairly stupid law, in any event.

[expatpat]

Displaying ashes on the mantelpiece or scattering them over a cherished plot of earth......was ruled unconstitutional in Germany in 1979.

Unconstitutional? That's a large hammer for such a small nut, isn't it?