FRANKFURT (dpa) – As a dead German shepherd, Rex now has his own website. The same applies to the black cat Minu, run over by a car in 1998.
But for the bunny rabbit Luisa, a stone slab serves as a memorial in the animal cemetery of Frankfurt. The “dear friend” Luisa is buried there, and a picture shows how white her fur had been. Among freshly-grown flowers atop her grave, a toy windmill is twirling.
Mourning for a dead household pet is an increasing phenomenon in Germany. There are around 85 pet cemeteries in the country, according to the Federation of Animal Undertakers in Marburg.
The figure is about twice as high as just three years ago. In addition, about 30 animal crematoriums offer their services.
All the same, the large majority of the estimated 22 million household pets in Germany – not including aquarium fish – end up in peoples’ own backyards. If the area is not near a water protection zone, then burial as deep as 50 centimetres is permitted.
As a result, those pets which are buried in a cemetery or cremated have usually belong to city residents who don’t have a yard. The federation says this applies to five to 10 per cent of deceased cats and dogs.
In contrast to the United States, this means that nobody in Germany can earn a living as an animal undertaker, federation chief executive Hartmut Glaeser says.
“We must bring the three areas of animal, death and ethics closer together,” he says. An animal also has its own dignity which is not served by it simply being dumped in a hole in the ground. Glaeser also argues for permitting Christian symbols.
“Where is it written down that an animal cannot have a cross on its grave?” he asks, in noting the situation that religious symbols are unwanted at many pet cemeteries.
This is also true in Frankfurt. There are flowers, candles, garden gnomes and ceramic animals atop the 870 pet graves, which are also decorated with polished-granite slabs bearing the animals’ names and biographical dates.
“We actually had wanted to avoid the religious or the overdone decorating,” said the Frankfurt pet cemetery executive Horst Buchenauer.
But the trend which has spilled over from America of making small gardens out of pets’ graves became unavoidable, something which makes him feel uneasy.
“Of course, a pet is a member of the family. But all the same this is not a human cemetery, and so the graves should not look like one,” Buchenauer says.
The cyber-cemeteries, on the other hand, are meant more to assuage peoples’ feelings. With the click of the mouse button, a person can call up an image of dear departed dachshund Waldi. And it costs a lot less than a real grave.
For two years of a “luxury grave” site on the web, one provider charges 25 marks (11 dollars). This means that Waldi goes on line with a picture and a text about him, with background music.
By comparison, a genuine grave with all the trimmings in the Frankfurt pet cemetery costs 700 marks for three years.
Cremation of pets is still largely unknown in Germany. The federation says that the only animal crematorium is in Munich. As result, most animal undertakers collect the cadavers of dead pets over a period of weeks and then ship them abroad for cremation.
One such undertaker is Manfred Kura. Every two weeks he leaves his town of Dornburg, with a cargo of about ten refrigerated animal cadavers, and drives to the Netherlands.
“So far the smallest animal I had was a turtle. The most unusual were two rats,” Kura said. He has driven as far away as Nuremberg, several hundred kilometres away, to collect a dead pet.
He charges 355 marks for his service of transporting an animal for cremation. It costs extra for those people who want an urn with their pets’ ashes.
One person unhappy with what he calls animal cadaver tourism is Berlin veterinarian Hans Woehrl. He calls such practices like Kura’s a “very unfortunate solution”.
The Federation of Practicing Veterinarians, which Woehrl heads, is worried about hygiene and so would like to see more animal crematoriums in Germany.
“We advocate a wide range of possibilities,” he said. “What happens to an animal is something which should be left to the taste and ethical views of the individual.”
Woehrl also believes that while burials of pets are still rare, cremations in any event are the coming thing.
