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Germany is a world leader in recycling garbage, and Germans are proud of it. But it’s also the only country in Europe that recycles its graves, too. Germans have mixed feelings about that custom. Daniel Estrin reports from Berlin. (Photo: Daniel Estrin) Download MP3

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World. Germany is a world leader in recycling garbage, and Germans are pretty proud of that. It’s also the only country in Europe that recycles its graves, too. Some Germans have mixed feelings about that custom. Daniel Estrin reports from Berlin.

DANIEL ESTRIN:  Last spring, Jessica Jacoby went to visit her grandmother’s grave.

JESSICA JACOBY:  And there was a sticker. This yellow sticker. “Family members, please contact.” When you see the sticker, you know they are about to demolish the grave.

ESTRIN: This has been the practice in Germany for centuries. You don’t own your own plot, you rent it. In Berlin, the rental period is 20 years. When the twenty years runs out, the cemetery asks the family members to pay the rent for the next 20. Rent can cost between $900 and $5000.

JACOBY: And if you don’t cough up, or rather, your children or grandchildren or whoever, the stone is removed and other people are put in your grave.

ESTRIN: Walking around the cemetery, we saw a few other yellow notices announcing nearly-expired graves.

JACOBY: The other sticker is even more rude. It says, [GERMAN SPEAKING] Mean, quite literally, means time to rest in peace has run out. Which is, by so many people, just taken for granted and they just shrug their shoulders, say well, that’s just the way of the world. It’s not the way of the world. But it’s the way of Germany.

OLAF IHLEFELDT: Recycling the old graves, it’s, in Germany, absolutely normal.

ESTRIN:  Olaf Ihlefeldt directs the main cemetery serving southwest Berlin. He says once they see the notices, most families pay for twenty or forty years. After that, most of them let the graves go. And then there are those families who never get the memo. They come to visit their loved one’s grave and find someone else buried there instead.

IHLEFELDT: It’s a big problem. They come there, and they see an empty grave. Without stone, without plants, this green field. This is hard sometimes for the family.

ESTRIN: Ihlefeldt sends just one letter. No phone calls. If he doesn’t hear from the family, he removes the tombstone. The old bones stay in the ground and the plot is ready for a new body. German cemeteries began reusing graves 200 years ago to save space. But most Germans today opt for cremation, which frees up cemetery space. So he says Germany doesn’t really need to rent plots and recycle graves. But it brings in good money.

IHLEFELDT: We could let it be. We could let the place there forever. We have enough space at the cemetery. But the other part is we haven’t the money. The cemetery is not rich.

ESTRIN: So what do Germans think about graveyard recycling? Ihlefeldt says the younger generation is more open to it. Ludmila Wolf, a 24-year-old student, says when her parents die, she won’t mind giving up their graves.

LUDMILA WOLF: I don’t need this place to go to think of them or to talk to them. I don’t need to go to their bones to be near them, which I’m not because they’re dead.

ESTRIN: But Stephan Marks, a social scientist, says his parents’ graves have been replaced with new tombstones and new bodies and he’s not very happy about it.

STEPHAN MARKS: I think it’s strange. It’s not respectful. It doesn’t show respect for our past, for our ancestors.

ESTRIN:  There are some exceptions to the rule. Muslim and Jewish cemeteries are exempted for religious reasons. And the graves of famous Germans are kept untouched for posterity. That’s one reason why Jessica Jacoby is so upset. Her grandmother, Hilde Korber, was famous too. She was a German actress in the 1930s who founded an acting school, and helped Jews escape Nazi Germany. For decades, the city paid to keep up her grave. But every year the city trims its list of VIP graves, and last year, Korber didn’t make the cut. A city council representative told me by email that’s because the public no longer remembers who she was. Her granddaughter doesn’t agree with that way of thinking.

JACOBY: The preservation of memory in this country is skin deep. It is not seen as something all-encompassing. But it’s a very limited and limiting concept of memory. Who’s important, who’s not important.

ESTRIN: Jacoby’s family is now paying the rent, so her grandmother can continue to rest in peace. But Jacoby herself isn’t at peace because she worries about her own grave.

JACOBY: I don’t have children. And when I am gone, who will take care? No one will.

ESTRIN: For the World, I’m Daniel Estrin, Berlin.

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