Ueli Sauter

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Ueli Sauter (born May 18, 1941 in Kreuzlingen ) is a Swiss undertaker. He developed the idea and concept of the burial forest .

Career

As the son of a stonemason who was involved in the manufacture and sale of gravestones, Ueli Sauter had a connection to cemeteries from childhood . As a five-year-old he suffered severe injuries from a falling tombstone, so that the doctors advised a leg amputation, which the father refused. Sauter later studied electrical engineering and became self-employed as an electrical engineer. After selling his company, he worked for 20 years as an organizer of esoteric seminars with a preferred focus on astrology .

Tree burials - idea and implementation

According to Sauter, he owes the impetus to think about a form of burial that was as natural as possible to a London friend who had decided to bury his ashes in the Swiss mountains. Sauter had come up with the plan to plant a tree at the burial site that would take up the ashes of the deceased with the roots. He actually planted a mountain ash on the Stoos in the Swiss mountains; however, the ashes of the dead were not transferred.

Sauter justified his approach to burial of the deceased ashes at the tree roots with the fact that new life could arise from the nutrients in the ashes. “Now it was obvious to me to bring this type of burial closer to other [sic] people who have to say goodbye to their loved ones. The alternative to conventional cemeteries was born. "

In the 1990s, Sauter initially tried in vain to obtain approval for a funeral forest in Steckborn, which is adjacent to his place of residence in Mammern . After he had already started to burial trees on his own property in what he called FriedWald , he received official approval in 1999. In the following 20 years, a total of 70 locations in Switzerland were designated as Friedwälder, which are operated by Sauter and his company employees.

Sauter sold the patent rights for burial forests to Germany as early as 2000, where the companies FriedWald GmbH and RuheForst GmbH in particular have had numerous tree burial locations approved for their part.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Ida Sandl: His trees grow into the sky. Ueli Sauter from Mammern studied electrical engineering and organized esoteric seminars for 20 years. Then he had the idea of ​​the Friedwald. The business of resting under shady trees is booming. The 75-year-old is not interested in status symbols. In: St. Galler Tagblatt , January 7, 2016; Retrieved on August 18, 2019. In retrospect, Sauter does not think much of the subject of work at the time. He was already the skeptic in the midst of "sensitive" people. (Ibid.)
  2. ↑ Quoted from: Rüter 2011, p. 48; Rüter refers to the entry page of the Swiss FriedWald website as of March 17, 2010.
  3. ↑ Frevert 2010, p. 76 f.
  4. ↑ Reiner Sörries: Rest gently. Cultural history of the cemetery. Kevelaer 2009, p. 212; Rüter 2011, p. 48.
personal data
SURNAME Sauter, Ueli
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss undertaker
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Kreuzlingen