In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

CREMATION 63
phasize individuality. There are the fifty-four-year-old "artistic painter"
Max Fabian (Berliner Tageblatt, March 28), and the economist Dr. Ernst
Lichtenstein, a single parent whose death is mourned by his colleagues
from the "board of Hartwig Kantorowicz A.G.," and by his mother,
"Julie Lichtenstein, born Zadek": "After a long period of suffering, my
dearly beloved son, Dr. Ernst Lichtenstein, the devoted and selfless father
of two boys, passed away quietly" (Berliner Tageblatt, October 8). One
of the men who is cremated perished while actively seeking to confront
death: "On August 19, 1926, at 2 P.M., my dear husband, our devoted
father and grandfather, the engraver William Hartwig, age fifty, was
killed in a mountain-climbing accident ... The cremation will take place
on August 30, 1926, at 4:30 P.M., in the Gerichtstrage Crematorium"
(Berliner Tageblatt, August 29. [see Boxing, Bullfighting, Endurance,
Mountaineering, Immanence = Transcendence (Death)]
To have oneself cremated is an act of sobriety and worldliness. [see
Sobriety vs. Exuberance] The most frequently cited reasons for such a
decision are the considerably lower cost of this method in comparison
with traditional burial, a concern for public hygiene, and, in tandem with
the argument for hygiene, a demographically based fear that the expansion
of cemeteries will end up reducing the space for the living. With a
strong dose of sarcasm for those who wish to preserve their corpses,
George Bernard Shaw brings all of these motives together: "Dead bodies
can be cremated. All of them ought to be; for earth burial, a horrible
practice, will some day be prohibited by law, not only because it is
hideously unaesthetic, but because the dead would crowd the living off
the earth if it could be carried out to its end of preserving our bodies for
their resurrection on an imaginary day of judgment" (Mitford, 162-
163). Shaw's reaction suggests that, among those who choose cremation,
a motive even stronger than the wish to affirm one's rationality and
sobriety maybe the desire to implicitly negate certain concepts of transcendence
which have traditionally dominated in Western cultures. [see
Mummies, Immanence vs. Transcendence]
Despite the truly passionate battles fought-and sometimes won-by
pro-cremationists during the second half of the nineteenth century (Mitford,
162f£.), the Catholic Church and most Jewish communities continue
to resist this practice. If Dr. Ernst Lichtenstein and his mother, Julie
Lichtenstein, born Zadek, are Jews, as their names seem to indicate,
cremation, for them, could be the ultimate logical conclusion of "eman-