Rosa Prochaska is desperate. Her husband has been dead for two years and his ashes rest in the wall of the Pöringer urn. Until recently, she visited his urn almost every day – until a termination for her own needs forced the seriously ill woman to move to Unterschleißheim. Together with her sister-in-law Agathe Schmidt, she asked the municipality of Unterschleißheim if she could move her husband’s urn to the cemetery, which she can now see from her new living room window. It would be fine, they said to her, as long as the Zorneding community agreed. “We thought it was just a formality,” says Agathe Schmidt. But then came the cancellation from the town hall: the rest period for the urn had to be observed.
In Germany, death is a strictly regulated matter. This is also the case in the municipality of Zorneding. What types of tombs are there? How may a tomb be designed and what size may it have? Everything is regulated in the “cemetery and burial statute for the municipal cemeteries in Zorneding and Pöring” – and this provides for a dead rest of twelve years in Zorneding. Respect for the dead allows no disorder.
Whether Rosa Prochaska will still be alive in ten years is uncertain
“Günter and I have spent our whole lives together,” says Rosa Prochaska. She has breast cancer and is seriously ill – she doesn’t know how much time she has left. She would like her husband to be close by during this time, to be able to visit him and, when the time comes, to be buried with him in Unterschleißheim. That’s why sister-in-law Agathe Schmidt went public on Facebook and expressed her displeasure with the decision in Zorneding town hall within the group “You’re from Zorneding, if…”. It’s sad that you can’t make an exception at such a moment, she writes there. But is it even possible to make an exception in this case? Rest periods for the deceased are regulated by law and are the responsibility of the cemetery authority – in this case the municipality of Zorneding. This is provided for in the cemetery and burial statute, that the rest period for the dead is twelve years – including their ashes. A reburial is therefore only possible with the permission of the community and if an important reason justifies the disturbance of the peace of the dead, it says.
“Please help me to fulfill this very understandable single wish.”
After the call and the associated first rejection from the municipality, Agathe Schmidt sat down at her computer and wrote an e-mail to Piet Mayr, the first mayor of the municipality of Zorneding: “My sister-in-law will almost certainly not make it ten more years. And she would like to definitely with her husband in Unterschleißheim in the urn wall. Please help me to fulfill this very understandable single wish, “she writes to him. But the answer is sobering. The request was examined in detail and the decision was made not to comply with it. The mayor’s justification, which is available to the SZ, states that the aspect of better care after a move is not a weighty reason according to general morality and piety and the relevant case law. It is reasonable to rely on third parties for the care of the grave and the way from Unterschleißheim to Zorneding is also reasonable. Especially since this is an urn niche, no comprehensive grave care is necessary. The desire to continue to visit the husband’s grave despite changed circumstances (illness) does not represent an important reason in individual cases. Changing circumstances are also not isolated cases and are foreseeable.
An assessment that German courts have already come to. In August 2016, the Bavarian administrative court in Ansbach ruled that the protection of the peace of the dead generally outweighed the right of relatives to care for the dead and rejected a daughter’s lawsuit for permission to move the urn of the deceased mother to another cemetery. But whether such cases are comparable seems questionable – after all, they have to be weighed up in each individual case.
Agathe Schmidt now appeals to humanity
In any case, Rosa Prochaska and Agathe Schmidt are dismayed by the decision, which they see as purely bureaucratic. For both of them, the reasoning is incomprehensible. “The rest period ends in ten years. We don’t know if Rosa will live that long,” she says. Agathe Schmidt takes care of her seriously ill sister-in-law, who now lives in her immediate vicinity. Due to her illness, the 77-year-old can no longer take care of herself. “She has no children who can take care of her or her husband’s grave and the remaining relatives live in Munich or Unterschleißheim,” she explains the situation. You can also see that Rosa’s condition is getting worse. We need 30 to 40 minutes by car to get to Zorneding – the cemetery in Unterschleißheim is a two-minute walk away, she says.
“Moving is not an important reason,” explains Daniel Kommnick, when asked by the editors. He is manager of the Zorneding municipality and says that moving to Unterschleißheim cannot be assumed to correspond to the last will of the deceased. Therefore, after “proper consideration and involving several people in the house”, the decision was made to put the rest of the dead above the lady’s wish. “If one could decide purely emotionally, then the case might have been decided differently.”
For Agathe Schmidt it is an emotional “affair of the heart” of her sister-in-law to fulfill her husband’s wish for a reburial. “You can be human for once,” the two women now appeal to the community of Zorneding. Ultimately, the two say the only way left for them is through a lawyer – but that would take a lot of strength and time. Strength and time that Rosa Prochaska may no longer have.