Eulogy
Mourning speakers hold in a non-religious funeral service provided by a funeral home is organized, the eulogy . As so-called free speakers , they organize the process. The job title varies depending on the region in which they work. Common are z. B. funeral, funeral or grave orators, speakers or speakers , also with the addition of free or secular.
As a rule, funeral orators are not allowed to appear in church. With the burial in the communal cemetery or in the funeral home, they take on the otherwise usual role of the clergy and increasingly take their place.
history
Funeral orators have their origins in the free religious and free spiritual movements of the 19th century. The Enlightenment created essential prerequisites for the emancipation of thought, which in Germany ultimately resulted in the separation of church and state with the Weimar Constitution of 1920 . Other factors were the atheistic cremation movement of 1789, in the French era the establishment of communal cemeteries without denominations , the first construction of a modern corpse cremation facility by the industrialist Friedrich Siemens , the commissioning of the first crematorium in Gotha in 1878 and the denominational dispute between the cremation associations and the Christian churches because of the Cremation . The Protestant Church forbade its clergy to participate in cremation celebrations until 1954 ; the Catholic Church did so until 1963.
Freelance speakers not only organize funeral services, but also other celebrations within the circle of life.
Due to the high proportion of people with no religious affiliation in the population, most of the funeral orators are in East Germany and in the metropolitan areas of the big cities. In 2013, the proportion of the 895,000 deceased in Germany who did not make use of a church burial for themselves was approx. 313,215, i.e. H. about 35%.
Employment Status
Funeral orators are usually freelance, but there are also undertakers who perform this task as owners or their employees. The funeral orators receive their mandate to take over a funeral service from the relatives. You do not speak on behalf of a religious community , a belief community or any other institution.
Professional organization
According to their own statements, the profession comprises around five hundred people in Germany, as well as eulogists in Austria and Switzerland and the Netherlands. Funeral orators are usually placed by funeral directors and work closely with the funeral industry. You organized yourself in 1996 as a federal memorial service group and in 1989 as a professional association for secular mourning and funeral culture.
Choosing a funeral speaker
Decisive for the choice of a secular funeral service are the wishes of the deceased during their lifetime and / or the bereaved family's own ideas about the upcoming funeral service. "Secular" means that no dogmatic or ecclesiastical meaning is given to the life and death of a person. Religious symbols or world views from the life of the deceased can definitely have their own place in the funeral service.
literature
- Marianne Kramer-Abebe: Departure to new rituals. An approach to the practice of freelance ritual guides. In: Yearbook for Liturgy and Hymnology , Volume 39, Göttingen 2000, pp. 35–64.
- Michael Nüchtern, Stefan Schütze: Funeral culture in motion. Edited by the Evangelical Central Office for Weltanschauungsfragen (EZW -tex No. 200), Berlin 2008.
- Birgit Aurelia Janetzky: Mourning speeches. Guide to funeral speeches. Specialized publisher of the German funeral industry, Düsseldorf 2013, ISBN 978-3-936057-39-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus Dirschauer: Buried with words: drafting and creating funeral speeches . Donat Verlag, Bremen 2012, p. 16
- ↑ Andreas Finke: Free theologians, free speakers, free rite designers. The new market for rites remote from the church. EZW material service. Journal for Religions- und Weltanschauung, 67th year, Berlin 2004, pp. 123-134. Ders .: Got a number from the pastor? Burials in eastern Germany . In: Zeitschrift für Gottesdienst , 6th year, issue 3/2008, p. 10ff.
- ↑ Jan Hermelink: The secular burial and its ecclesiastical competition. Reflections on casual practice in East Germany . In: Yearbook for Liturgy and Hymnology , Vol. 39, Göttingen 2000, pp. 65–86. Ders .: Christian, secular or a little bit of everything . In: Praktische Theologie , Volume 37, 2002, pp. 206-209.
- ↑ Barbara Happe: Death is mine. The diversity of today's burial culture and its origins. Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2012, pp. 76-95, ISBN 978-3-496-02856-7
- ↑ Everything was worth it in the end. Material for secular funerals. Published by the Central House for Cultural Work of the GDR , Leipzig 1972.