Secular funeral service

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The term secular or secular funeral denotes the memorial ceremony for a deceased , at the funeral on the design features of a funeral service and a church funeral is omitted. In terms of content and procedure, the funeral service is often based on the ideas of its relatives; some people decide before they die how they want their funeral service.

The funeral speech outlines and pays tribute to the deceased's biography. It resembles a necrology . The mourning address, on the other hand, is primarily geared towards the grief situation of the bereaved relatives affected by death and, in this psycho-social framework of a ritual of passage , once again honors the life story.

Historical background

The secular or secular funeral service goes back to the cremation movement of the French Revolution of 1789. She demanded that the deceased should no longer be buried in the traditional way, but rather cremated, cremated. With the establishment of communal cemeteries and the construction of the first crematorium in Gotha in 1878, an alternative form of burial and secular funeral service were realized. The resistance of the churches related to the Christian dogma of the physical resurrection of the dead . The Protestant Church refused to participate in cremations until 1954. In the Catholic Church, the ban on taking over cremation celebrations was lifted in 1963. The secular funeral service was originally connected with the church leaving movement in the 19th century; today it no longer sees itself as competition for a church funeral service. She sees herself carried by the need of large parts of society that people need a passage ritual in life transitions .

layout

The funeral is agreed between the undertaker and the relatives. The secular funeral service consists of three parts: to commemorate the deceased, to honor his life story and to perform his entombment. Apart from the burial at sea , the burial of the deceased in the coffin or the burial of his ashes in the urn is carried out ceremonially with earth and with words . The funeral is - as Erdbegräbnis , urn burial or natural burial occurred (burial at sea, forest funeral, Aschenverstreuung) - a rite of passage : The deceased is passed to the world of the dead. The central element of the secular funeral is the Trauerrede or mourning speech . The funeral oration addresses the life of the deceased, characterizes his personality and characteristics, the professional activity and the family situation. His suffering and death are also discussed. The deceased must be recognizable for the mourners. The funeral speech emphasizes the uniqueness and the special features of the special life of the deceased.

symbolism

In consultation with the eulogist , symbols can also be used that are taken from religious tradition (e.g. candles, flowers, green plants, cloths, fragrances, etc.). The deceased is symbolically buried by the orator, relatives and other mourners with three hands or three spades of earth . These actions are reminiscent of the original funeral, which neighbors and friends used to take for granted for the mourners. The earth throw is accompanied by a word that found its way into the Prussian burial ritual from the liturgy of the Anglican Church in 1844 : earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The mourners also let small bouquets of flowers slide into the grave as their last greetings from the last journey: the dead person is, if you will, the passenger on a journey of no return. Added to this are the musical parts of the funeral service and word parts from world literature. Gestures, also special words, masquerades, costumes, even balloons or creative events as a personally justified selection of the contributors occur. The secular celebration is intended to help relatives to cope with their grief and to say goodbye to the deceased.

function

The secular memorial service addresses the social changes - namely the status changes of the bereaved - that accompany the death of a person. It does not necessarily refer to a religious community or its dimension. A person has died and leaves his partner, widowed spouse , - a child as an orphan - parents as " childless ": She gives everyone involved a new status in front of his worldly public. Overall, it focuses on the transition of all survivors from the old way of life with a person to the new way of life after the death of that person without him.

Secular funeral ceremonies are generally understood to be public, even in the case of a so-called burial in the smallest of circles , which nevertheless represents the public that the bereaved trust to help them cope with the farewell. In the sphere that the bereaved here call private , the secular memorial service sees the final authority of the public. According to the Federal Statistical Office , there were 852,000 deaths in Germany in 2012, 35% of which were not buried in church. If you add those for whom the relatives did not make use of the right to a church funeral, that equates to 300,000 funeral speeches for the professional funeral orators. This also includes funeral speeches from family or friends that were held at the coffin or grave of a person.

literature

• Jürgen Bonk: Everything was worth it in the end. Material for secular funerals. Central House for Cultural Work of the GDR , Leipzig 1972, OCLC 833347686 .
• J. Eva Sondershaus: On the importance of rituals in modern times - the example of mourning rituals. Master's thesis . Grin-Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-640-73150-3 .
• Jane Redlin: Secular death rituals, honoring the dead, state funeral and private burial in the GDR . Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-8309-2194-3 .
• Klaus Dirschauer: Buried in words: designing and creating funeral speeches . Donat Verlag, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3-943425-08-6 .
• Klaus Dirschauer: The characteristics and rituals of the secular funeral service . In: Friedhofskultur . Journal for the entire cemetery sector. 102nd volume, 9/2012, pp. 15-17.
• Christine Schlott: Undertaker in Leipzig. Ritual provider in secular times. Thelem Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942411-45-5 .

Web links

• Secular funeral ritual at Trauer.de
• Ines Lange: From the cradle to the grave: On the history of socialist celebrations at birth, marriage and death in the GDR. (Meeting)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andreas Fincke: In focus: Free theologians, free speakers, free rite designers. on the website of the Protestant Central Office for Weltanschauung questions
2. ↑ Carrying part of the ashes in the Madaillon on a chain around your neck or as an artificial diamond on your finger can be described as a form of memory, but not a form of burial. The vast majority of the ashes are buried in a cemetery.
3. ↑ The term was coined by the French ethnologist Arnold van Gennep in his work in 1909: Les rites de passage The German translation appeared in 1986 and has the pioneering title: Rites of passage . 3rd, exp. Edition. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-593-37836-1 .
4. ^ The Burial of the Dead. In: Book of Common Prayer . London 1549 n.p.
5. ↑ Klaus Dirschauer: Buried with words: drafting and creating funeral speeches . Donat Verlag, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3-943425-08-6 , pp. 22-29.
6. ↑ deaths, life expectancy. on: destatis.de