So that the citizens of Burgkirch do not have to pay so many cemetery fees at once in the middle of the crisis, they can also extend the right to use their graves on an annual basis in the future. Will that pay off in the long run?
People like to say that death is in vain, but of course there can be no question of that. Not because death costs life, as the saying often goes. Because all this may perhaps apply to the rather short-term death. Death is expensive in the long run. That also depends on how long someone has been dead, and people have very different ideas about that. But because everything costs more anyway, at least the municipality of Burgkirchen in the district of Altötting is accommodating its citizens – if not the dead, then at least their survivors.
Until now, they could only extend the right to use a grave in the local cemetery by five, ten or 15 years and then had to pay the full fee for it. Calculated over the year, this will not be cheaper in Burgkirchen in the future, but at least such an extension should be made according to a decision by the municipal council and a report by the Burghauser Gazette now be possible for three or even just one year.
However, the question is whether being dead will become cheaper in the long run. Because if you secure the grave for another 15 years, you can enjoy price stability for that long. On the other hand, if you only extend for a short period of time, you have to expect that the cemetery fees will increase in the meantime – and experience has shown that they are more likely to do so than to decrease. But who wants a long-term commitment these days? In any case, more and more dead people are frugal during their lifetime and commit to an urn grave. That’s a good two-thirds now.
Such an urn grave is considered to be easy to care for, and the whole thing is also much cheaper than a burial. Especially if the urn grave only has to be kept for two years, as the Federal Administrative Court allowed in 2019 for the cemetery in Olching, Upper Bavaria. In the case of burials, this municipally regulated rest period is much longer, because down there there is still something to be done that would otherwise already be done in the crematorium. Incidentally, with a high use of energy, which has recently had an impact on cremation prices in many places. Almost nothing in life is free, not even death. One more breath at most, even if it’s the last.