St. Matthäus Cemetry
In Berlin there’s a cemetry called St.-Matthäus-Friedhof, where a lot of famous people are buried, and recently it has become more known for the amount of LGBT people who choose to get buried here. The reason for this may be because this is a famously gay neighborhood in Berlin- Schöneberg - and this cemetery has a very free regulation to who may get buried, and how the grave may look like. Also, LGBT people really care about location, and this cemetery is very beautiful.
We were very lucky to meet two guys on the cemetery who happened to know lots about the LGBT aspect of this cemetery, and they gave us a very spontaneous but extremely informative tour around. They are a part of the organisational effort of Efeu e.V., and one of their projects is called “Kreuze & Queer” that involves making a comprehensive folder over all the LGBT graves in the cemetery.
The LGBT culture has a tendency of being very expressive, and they want to be able to show that their lives were special, and that they were different from other people. For example, there was one grave that had a big poster instead of a gravestone on the grave, and the poster was a picture of a desk that contained many personal momentums like letters, diplomas and gay buttons.
There are also more traditional graves that aren’t that expressive, but yet differ from normal graves. We discovered a grave of a young man whose grave was very personal, and was kept by his friends. They had for example placed a small bench adjacent the grave, and a sort of postbox that people could use to put photos and letters into. They had also placed a small box under the bench where you could find tools and objects for people who wanted to take care of the grave.
There was a grave that had three names on it, and at first it may seem that there were three people buried here, but our guides told us that there was only one person actually buried here at the moment, and that the other two had reserved places on the very same grave for when they would die and have to get buried as well. Reserving a location for a grave before one dies is an increasingly more popular thing to do, but the trend is not mainstream at all.
The beautiful thing about this cemetery was that although there were many new and alternative things going on, the main goal was to also preserve the atmosphere of the cemetery. They encourage people to take over other peoples graves and to renovate the old monuments, so that the history and the ornamental beauty of the cemetery isn’t lost.
One last project to mention is a collaborative effort between the evangelical and catholic church, which is a service that provides a cheap space for people who cannot afford normal graves and cremations.
snake @ October 20, 2007