Laws regarding final disposal in Germany

Recently had a rather gloomy conversation with German in laws regarding burial costs etc. I said, well I won't be expensive. Don't want to be buried, just cremate me and throw me away, or, better still, plant a tree and put my ashes under it. I always thought that was a good idea. The habit of visiting graves for years, tending them, planting, weeding, decorating, and then thirty years later the local council digs up the body and puts it ?where, so that more can be buried, seems sort of rather revolting to me. And expensive!!! My mother, now in her early eighties, has told us quite categorically, that she will be cremated and "scattered". She says that if we bury her, that she will climb out again!! But apparently in Germany (probably also in the UK if the truth were known), it "costs" to be disposed of, whatever you do. And the scattering, using as tree fertiliser or thrown to the four winds over the waves (sounds so romantic) are apparently not legal or allowed. Miserable lot. Any comments?

PS Am sort of hoping it won't be for a long time - but somewhere along the line you have to make your wishes known!

There's one legal way of scattering in Germany - sea burial.

Bit pricier on the initial cost, but you may save a good chunk on the upkeep? </sarcasm>

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That's interesting. But mmm. It isn't the cost - it's rather the fact that the family are forced to pay so much for what I see as unnecessary pomp and waste. It seems to be the case that when the family are "suffering", they are then basically taken to the cleaners as far as the whole business of disposal goes. Nobody wants to be seen to be mean or disrespectful so they agree to all of the extras suggested to them.

When we were living in Africa, especially in the North of the country where it was wetter (mosquitos - maleria), the hospital there reached the stage where they had no more room in the mortuary, due to the high mortality rate from Aids and maleria - bodies were stacked on top of one another in the refridgerators, and they were calling for the families to collect their bodies for burial. But of course the normal funeral there takes several days - everyone has to be fed for those days, and the families just couldn't afford it (they had hardly enough money to feed themselves as it was), so they left them at the hospital. I know an expat who was organising and training some locals to build basic cheap coffins (as opposed to polished jobs with brass handles) to try to help the families.

Rather morbid thread I know, but I just find it totally unbelievable the way that you have to pay out a rather large lump of money for services that you do not want. Actually what made me think about it was first of all my sister in law saying that it was illegal to scatter ashes in different places, and then that evening there was a tv film where the grieving widow ceremoniously scattered hubby from a boat along what appeared to be a river. I thought but you can't do that, or..?

Isn't there a natural burial forest somewhere in Bavaria? Many environmentally-minded people are opposed to the amount of energy required for cremation, as well as to chemical embalming and other funeral services. I thought I read somewhere that there was a rather pioneering eco-cemetery in Bavaria.

There are about 35-40 burial forests throughout Germany, only 2 or 3 of them in Bavaria.
Most of those entail burial in a bio-degradable urn after cremation, in a marked burial place in the forest. No scattering.

If you want to scatter you can have the ashes sent to an address outside of Germany and scatter there. Or have the serial number removed from the urn so no one can tell that the ashes originated in Germany, re-import them and scatter sureptitiously. But there's no way around the costs, app. €2000 according to the info from the Städtischer Bestattungsdienst in Munich.

If it's really illegal to scatter ashes, nobody told the Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
My friend asked me to scatter his dad's ashes at the stadium.
He sent me the ashes in the post, I went to the stadium and asked a groundkeeper to do it.
No problems whatsoever.

You know I started this as a sort of "I wonder ..." idea. But now it seems that you actually have to get ahead of this game and work it all out for yourself before you kick the bucket. But 2000 euro for very little seems like daylight robbery! Burying people seems to be so archaic to me - surely if anything is un-ecological then that is.

How about the idea below?!!!

Become a diamond.
LifeGem of Chicago, Illinois, the book reveals, will take a few grains of your cremated remains, subject them to high pressure and temperature, and you will emerge from the process, 18 weeks later, as a sparkling one-carat diamond.

Scattering ashes is illegal -so is sea burial in coffins.
Was at Cuxhaven a week ago and noticed how ashes are disposed of at sea -
apparently the urn is water soluble (and presumably weighted). After two hours
in the briny the urn is no more and the ashes become a suspension
to be dispersed by the water currents.
With all my amalgam fillings, I don't want to be disposed of this way -
think of the mercury ending up in a lobster..
Reminds me of a Liverpool tugboat skipper's widow who once told me
that to dispose of her late husband's ashes she was picked up by a tug
at the Pier Head and taken out into Liverpool bay.
It was a windy day and she opened the urn on the wrong side of the boat...

This idea has been brought up somwhere else in TT recently and the cost is astronomical. For a 1 Karat diamond (which is apparently the biggest possible from the pure carbon remaining after cremation) you have to pay about 13,000€. A top quality natural 1 Karat diamond would only cost about 10,000€ and an artificial (chemically identical, but I've forgotten the commercial name) diamond of 1 Karat would only cost a few hundred Euros.

Sort of blows that diamonds are forever lark. They can bury me in the garden or maybe not

You can also have your ashes buried in a biodegradable container in a special
forest area. Called a Friedwald. try FriedWald Gmbh for details.
The contract is for around 100 years.
Bizarrely I came across this info. in the ADFC Radwelt magazine,
(ADFC = German national cycling club) - the ADFC organisess bike rides to
these Friedwalder. One advantage in German eyes is that there is no
further cost or bother of caring for the grave - useful when relatives
move away.