mythenfilm presents
When I leave home in the morning,
I say goodbye to my loved ones.
Because I know what can happen if you don’t say goodbye.
a film by Christof Schürpf
A bit higher!
A bit higher, back a little!
Here the cuts were made for an autopsy.
When I was a child, you laid out the body at home.
Then there was a procession from the home to the cemetery.
I was usually at the front as cross-bearer.
This meant I developed a relationship with death,
a real connection.
Shall we put the pillow in?
- Yes. - Let’s put it in.
I don't really know why I’m an exhumer.
I just somehow ended up doing it.
Perhaps it’s my calling.
Exhumation involves removing a body from the ground.
After six months, one month,
15, 20 years, or even longer.
Reasons for exhumation can include:
removal of a burial plot once a tenure period has expired,
or soil conditions,
if the soil is loamy and the body can't decompose properly.
Or legal cases that are still ongoing and
involve removing the body to perform an autopsy.
And individual exhumations:
when the family returns to another country,
the body is exhumed and placed in a new coffin,
before being
transported to another cemetery.
I have a great respect for the dead,
and want to treat them like the living.
I also often feel how they were when they were alive.
I want to treat their remains in the same way
as I would treat a living person.
Now it’ll stay.
Oh no, I'm sorry!
The bottom keeps slipping away.
It’ll work!
But it stayed before.
I often feel a strong energy emanating
from the coffin or from the body.
Energy that emanates, where you sense
that there’s still a lot of conflict that couldn’t be resolved
before the person’s death.
Or, when you leave home and perhaps
didn't say goodbye.
I’ve had people watching me work before.
That’s a bit weird.
You see things a bit differently when you do this work.
It can happen that
there’s no will, or it can’t be found and there’s no way to find out
what the person wanted.
Whether they wanted to be buried or cremated.
And in this case, nothing was found.
It was only later that the letter turned up stating
the person’s wish for cremation.
The body was buried as a precaution,
to avoid doing the wrong thing.
When I see how I can help the deceased
to make sure the decomposition continues,
it gives me a lot of satisfaction to know I’ve done something right.
In today’s society,
which is very hectic and fast-moving,
the subject of death is often avoided.
People don’t think about it,
and when someone dies, it’s like the end of the world.
Why didn’t we think of it earlier?
After each exhumation,
I light a candle in the cemetery church.
I think of the person I’ve exhumed,
and send them my sincerest wishes
for an eternal rest in peace.
I’m not afraid of death at all.
The way I see it, the body stays,
and the soul embarks on a journey.
But where it goes, that I don’t know.