A graveyard is not a party zone. But didn’t Wolfgang Ambros sing about Vienna’s “Central Cemetery” with black humor in the mid-1970s, where death is celebrated? Because: “When night falls over Simmering, life comes into the dead.” How could it be otherwise when Falco and Udo Jürgens are buried there with many other greats who are sure to enrich any party.
One thing should be made clear: It is not appropriate to have such a celebration. And such a thing is not allowed in the municipality of Haar, for example. There, a new cemetery statute regulates in 27 paragraphs and many more indents what is forbidden. For example, no smoking, making noise or playing is allowed in the community cemetery. Nocturnal parties are therefore automatically prohibited. The question is, of course, whether the dead stick to it. And whether the statute applies to them at all. There is nothing about that in the same.
In Germany and, of course, in Haar, practically everything is regulated, more so than in its Alpine neighbors, who tend towards anarchy in some respects, which their idiosyncratic language alone expresses. And so in future withered flowers are to be expressly removed in Haar, bottles and tin cans are no longer tolerated as vases and artificial flowers – who would be against that? – forbidden. When the municipal council recently discussed the shortcomings of the old statute, the listeners got the feeling that the Haarer Friedhof had been a pretty wild place up until now.
But he isn’t. This is shown by reactions after it became known that cycling should also be banned on the cemetery paths from now on. Some thought that was exaggerated, especially if they had never met a cyclist in the forest cemetery. Questions immediately arose: What about wheelchairs? Are those forbidden too? As a result, the municipality changed the statutes again: bicycles, prams and wheelchairs are expressly permitted.
Nevertheless, there is no threat of laissez-faire. For example, children under the age of ten are not allowed to enter the cemetery unaccompanied by adults, which SPD local councilor Peter Schiessl finds excessive. But who would want to be responsible for the consequences when children encounter skeletons dancing over the graves at night? You are now on the safe side in Haar. The wild growth is buried under paragraphs.