Presenter, journalist and author Christine Westermann presents her book recommendation here every two weeks. This time: “digging today” by Mario Schlembach.
Christine Westermann
Such a funeral is heavy physical work for an undertaker. Depending on the weight of the corpse, a coffin can weigh 150 kilos. If you are overweight, there is a risk of trouble. If the wooden floor bulges dangerously downwards, you have to act quickly to get the coffin into the pit before anything worse happens. If a bearer loses his balance at the grave due to a wrong move and the coffin tips over into the grave, the undertakers would like to sink into the ground out of shame. And when they open a tomb, the coffins may float inside “like pickles in a jar.”