There are no burial sites for Muslims in Germany. It takes a long march through German regulations. A flagship project is set to start soon in Wuppertal.
On a burial ground in the north of Frankfurt
“The desire of the families, but also of those affected, to be buried here has increased.” Samir Bouaissa sums up the tendency that more and more immigrant Muslims want to be buried in Germany after their death. The trend has been there for a long time. But nothing happened for a long time.
Bouaissa is from Wuppertal. The 50-year-old came to the city in the Rhineland as a two-year-old child of a Moroccan family. In this, his hometown, he is chairman of the supporting association “Muslim Cemeteries Wuppertal”. It is about the first cemetery in Germany that is run exclusively by Muslim communities. “We started doing this in Wuppertal in 2008,” Bouaissa told DW. Even then it was clear that Germany needed Muslim cemeteries.
At home in Germany
So Bouaissa is a pioneer. Because more than six decades after the first so-called guest workers came to Germany and then in many cases settled in the country, also with their religious or cultural traditions, there are no opportunities for Muslims to bury their dead appropriately in their new home. < /p> 
Samir Bouaissa, Chairman of the Association “Muslim Cemeteries Wuppertal”
That had many aspects. The Federal Republic as the receiving country hardly dealt with this question. Then little happened at the legal level of the federal states and municipalities. It took many public debates before the first federal states waived the strict requirement for coffins; both the Jewish and the Muslim tradition rely on burial in a cloth, without a coffin. Appropriate amendments to the law are now only pending in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, but they are being discussed. But then the municipalities are still required to set up appropriate grave sites or cemeteries. That also takes time. And Muslim cemeteries, which exist in a number of municipal cemeteries, are becoming scarce.
Muslim graves in Berlin
In the past few weeks, warnings have come from Berlin that the few cemeteries in the city that have Muslim graves are reaching their capacity limits or have already reached them. And Bouaissa in the Rhineland also knows a number of towns in which grave areas are missing. For years, Muslims have had to switch to cemeteries in neighboring towns.
In the coffin to the old home
The Sehitlik Mosque on Columbiadamm in Berlin-Tempelhof is a mosque of the Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion (DITIB). Turkish Muslims or Muslims of Turkish origin say goodbye to their deceased relatives almost every day. Last prayers by Iman, grieving, sobbing loved ones. And vehicles from funeral homes are waiting in front of the site, from which the coffins are then taken to the airport and on the plane, usually in scheduled aircraft, to Turkey.
The Sehitlik Mosque in Berlin. Many coffins travel to Turkey from here.
Eternal peace in the old homeland. This corresponds to the desire of the early immigrant generations to be buried in their country of origin. This is also regulated in the long term. For several decades, DITIB has offered “funeral insurance” that covers all the costs associated with the transfer. Similar offers, explains Bouaissa, are also available for migrants from countries such as Morocco, Tunisia or Algeria.
The Federal Association of German Undertakers also sees an increase in Muslim burials in Germany, “if only because of the demographic development”. In the younger generations, the desire to be buried in Germany is growing. “That's a good thing, because the burial culture is a reflection of society,” Secretary General Stephan Neuser told DW. His association has also been advocating for years that the funeral specialist should become an apprenticeship; so far, anyone with a trade license can open a company. Neuser emphasizes that the cultural aspects, the question of religious farewells or the practice of coffinless burial should also be part of regulated training.
Prussia between Neukölln and Kreuzberg
The Sehitlik Mosque with its towering minarets also stands for burials of Muslims in Germany. Since Prussian times, since 1866, i.e. before the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the Turkish Cemetery Berlin, the oldest Muslim burial place in Germany, has been located here. Even in the courtyard in front of the mosque, whose predecessor was built on this site, there are a few old tombstones. But this cemetery has long been exhausted, and there are more areas on the neighboring garrison cemetery. Back then it was Prussia, today the area between Kreuzberg and Neukölln belongs to multicultural Berlin.
The courtyard of the Sehitlik Mosque contains some of the city's oldest Muslim tombs
The juxtaposition typical of the city is evident here in a concentrated manner. The monument with the inscription “1914-1918 – The Queen Augusta Guard Grenadier Regiment No. 4 and his sons” with the inscription “We died so that Germany lives, let us live in you!” is striking. Somewhere on the site is also an adjutant of the emperor, elsewhere French soldiers or German fighters from German Southwest Africa, the former colony in today's Namibia. But just a few steps away, if you look at the stones, which are inscribed in German rather than Turkish or Arabic, lie the deceased with first names such as Ismail and Ersin, Sarah and Chukri, Sultan, Sabie and Ibrahim. And places of birth are Istanbul or other places in Turkey, but also Beirut, Kabul or Jerusalem.
Some of the Muslim tombstones resemble minarets or the silhouette of a mosque. They are more recent graves, from years and decades past. And not infrequently the deceased were barely 20, 30 or 40 years old. At many graves there are one or two plastic chairs. They are places to linger, to mourn, maybe also to talk.
Prussian militaristic commemoration next to Muslim graves
But the same applies to this burial ground: Space is limited. In January, the responsible administration of the Berlin Senate said at the request of the news agency epd that new graves for Muslim burials should be opened in “at least three other cemeteries” in 2023. In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for burial facilities according to Islamic rites. It is therefore “absolutely necessary” to develop new areas in the near future.
Bouaissa, who is also chairman of the CDU in the Wuppertal district of Vohwinkel, deputy chairman of the CDU district association in Wuppertal and state chairman of the Central Council of Muslims, has known this for a long time. For years, he reports in a DW interview, Muslims have not been able to be buried in Wuppertal due to lack of space and have had to resort to grave sites in the surrounding area, for example in Essen or Solingen. It is similar for Muslims in Hilden, in Mettmann or other parts of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Burial without a coffin
As he explains, the following essentially applies to Muslim graves: Muslims practice it coffinless burial (i.e. no cremation or burial in an urn), and it is about an eternal right: once someone has been buried, they may not be reburied.
Samir Bouaissa has been campaigning for a Muslim cemetery for 15 years.
Since 2008, Bouaissa and fellow campaigners have been trying to overcome the shortage of burial places. “The need is there,” he says. In many families there has long been a rethink; They wanted their deceased to be with them in Germany, in their new home. That's why the initiative in the Wuppertal city council met with cross-party approval. And the first cemetery in Germany under Muslim ownership should have a model character. Right next door is the city's oldest Protestant cemetery and a new Jewish cemetery. “One common forecourt, but three cemeteries with three funeral parlors.” This could also be a meeting place for school classes or interested groups.
That's the confident plan. For 15 years, Bouaissa has experienced German regulations and administration, what a local administration is responsible for, what a federal state is responsible for, when a law and when a regulation has to be changed. And what reports there are, landscape and species protection reports, also soil reports. After all: Today the planned area is “cemetery expectation land”. After the flood that also hit the Wupper valley in summer 2021, the stability of the entire slope is currently being checked.
Bouaissa mentions another aspect that makes new burial options necessary. He mentions the hundreds of thousands of refugees who came to Germany in 2015/16 and afterwards. “These are often people who have no opportunity at all to travel to their homeland.” That's why they also need graves here in Germany.
-
“We are from here”: Photographs by Ergun Çağatay
Self-portrait
In 1990, Ergun Çağatay (1937-2018) took over 3000 photos of people of Turkish origin in Hamburg, Cologne, Werl, Berlin and Duisburg. Around 1000 recordings can be seen in the show “We are from here. Turkish-German life 1990”. After being on view in Essen until October 31, 2021, the 60th anniversary of the so-called recruitment agreement, it is now moving to the Berlin Museum of European Cultures.
-
“We are from here”: Photographs by Ergun Çağatay
Glückauf!
Two miners in a passenger car in the Walsum mine. Due to the strong economic upturn, Germany lacks well-trained workers, especially in the areas of agriculture and mining. As a result of the recruitment agreement that Bonn signed with Ankara in 1961, more than a million so-called guest workers came to Germany from Turkey by the time recruitment was stopped in 1973.
-
“We are from here”: Photographs by Ergun Çağatay
The German Economic Miracle
Upholstery production at Ford, Cologne-Niehl. “Workers have been called, and people are coming.” This sentence by the Swiss writer Max Frisch still shapes the discussion about the “guest workers”. With 2.5 million people, the fourth-generation community forms the largest migration group in Germany.
-
“We are from here”: photographs by Ergun Çağatay
For more rights
During his three-month photo expedition through Germany, Çağatay experiences a country in transition. Between the fall of the Wall and reunification, Germany is developing into a multicultural society. A demonstrator at the rally in Hamburg in 1990 against the draft of the new Aliens Act.
-
“We are from here”: Photographs by Ergun Çağatay
Home
The photos give an insight into the diversity of the Turkish-German world of life. Here a visit to the family of Hasan Hüseyin Gül in Hamburg. The exhibition shows the most comprehensive report to date on the Turkish immigration of the first and second generation of so-called guest workers.
-
“We are from here”: photographs by Ergun Çağatay
The taste of home
Olives, feta cheese – today you can find them in every Turkish supermarket. But for a long time, the “guest workers” loaded their cars with food from their old homeland when they went on vacation. They are gradually building up their own culinary infrastructure in Germany – to the great delight of all gourmets. A portrait of the owners of the “Mevsim” fruit and vegetable shop, Weidengasse, Cologne-Eigelstein.
-
“We are from here”: photographs by Ergun Çağatay
Brotherly like a forest
Children with balloons on the Sudermanplatz in the Agnesviertel in Cologne. Next to the tree on the firewall mural is a poem by the Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet: “To live, separate and free like a tree and brotherly like a forest, that is our longing.” Hikmet himself lived in exile in Russia, where he died in 1963.
-
“We are from here”: photographs by Ergun Çağatay
Reading the Koran
In a Koran school at the Fatih Mosque in Werl, children learn the Arabic characters in order to be able to read the Koran. At that time, the first newly built mosque with a minaret in Germany was opened in Werl. Now people don't have to go to the backyard to pray.
-
“We are from here”: Photographs by Ergun Çağatay
On a pillow until old age
The photographer Ergun Çağatay mingles with the guests at a wedding on Oranienplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg. In the “Burcu” event hall, the newlyweds receive their guests' gifts. Money is pinned on the newlyweds, with great sympathy from all. “May God make you grow old on a pillow” is a common wedding wish.
-
“We are from here”: Photographs by Ergun Çağatay
Maşallah – wonderful
Traditions are also maintained in the new homeland. “Maşallah” is written on the boy's sash at his circumcision party in Berlin-Kreuzberg. That means as much as “wonderful”. The traveling exhibition is sponsored by the Federal Foreign Office, among others. In addition to Essen, Hamburg and Berlin, it can be seen in cooperation with the Goethe Institute in Izmir, Istanbul and Ankara.
< /ul>