The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner — Volume 2Warner, Charles Dudley
General
The Complete Writings of Charles Dudley Warner — Volume 2
Warner, Charles Dudley
Europe -- Description and travel
There is something peculiar in the obsequies of Munich, especially in
the Catholic portion of the population. Shortly after the death,
there is a short service in the courtyard of the house, which, with
the entrance, is hung in costly mourning, if the deceased was rich.
The body is then carried in the car to the dead-house, attended by
the priests, the male members of the family, and a procession of
torch-bearers, if that can be afforded. Three days after, the burial
takes place from the dead-house, only males attending. The women
never go to the funeral; but some days after, of which public notice
is given by advertisement, a public service is held in church, at
which all the family are present, and to which the friends are
publicly invited. Funeral obsequies are as costly here as in
America; but everything is here regulated and fixed by custom. There
are as many as five or six classes of funerals recognized. Those of
the first class, as to rank and expense, cost about a thousand
guldens. The second class is divided into six subclasses. The third
is divided into two. The cost of the first of the third class is
about four hundred guldens. The lowest class of those able to have a
funeral costs twenty-five guldens. A gulden is about two francs.
There are no carriages used at the funerals of Catholics, only at
those of Protestants and Jews.
I spoke of the custom of advertising the deaths. A considerable
portion of the daily newspapers is devoted to these announcements,
which are printed in display type, like the advertisements of
dry-goods sellers with you. I will roughly translate one which I
happen to see just now. It reads, "Death advertisement. It has
pleased God the Almighty, in his inscrutable providence, to take away
our innermost loved, best husband, father, grandfather, uncle,
brother-in-law, and cousin, Herr---, dyer of cloth and silk,
yesterday night, at eleven o'clock, after three weeks of severe
suffering, having partaken of the holy sacrament, in his sixty-sixth
year, out of this earthly abode of calamity into the better Beyond.
Those who knew his good heart, his great honesty, as well as his
patience in suffering, will know how justly to estimate our grief."
This is signed by the "deep-grieving survivors,"--the widow, son,
daughter, and daughter-in-law, in the name of the absent relatives.
After the name of the son is written, "Dyer in cloth and silk." The
notice closes with an announcement of the funeral at the cemetery,
and a service at the church the day after. The advertisement I have
given is not uncommon either for quaintness or simplicity. It is
common to engrave upon the monument the business as well as the title
of the departed.
THE OCTOBER FEST THE PEASANTS AND THE KING
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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