Abstract

"“Funeral Trusts” and Pietät: Transatlantic Differences in Establishing Respectability in Funeral Markets since the late 19th Century"

Jan Logemann, University of Göttingen (jan.logemann@wiwi.uni-goettingen.de)

Funeral homes emerged as commercial businesses in Germany and the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. As undertakers became professional “funeral directors” their businesses aimed to represent a sense of respectability. Stately building, professional training and modern hearses, for example, were used as strategies to enhance the reputation of funeral business. Still, funeral homes remained small businesses that struggled to gain full recognition as reputable businesses in many communities. First, the culturally taboo character of death and of handling dead bodies remained associated with the emerging profession. Second, funeral businesses appeared intransparent or “murky” to contemporary observers. Funeral business in both countries were suspected of taking advantage of their grief-stricken customers by overcharging them for expensive caskets or by selling “unnecessary” services to embellish funerals.

The paper explores the different strategies by which German and American funeral businesses addressed such concerns, drawing on business records, municipal and associational archives as well as on a vast array of professional and media publications. American funeral homes heavily emphasized the psychological and therapeutic service they offered. Using confident and assertive marketing, they underscored their professional and scientific qualifications to legitimize the growing expenses associated with the “American way of death”. German funeral business, by contrast, chose a conscious strategy of “moralization”, especially as they faced a credible threat from state and municipal competitors in the first half of the century. They used appeals to “Pietät” or quiet dignity as a means to organize and control the German funeral market well into the 1980s. In both cases, however, concerns about the transparency of funeral business models and of the industry in general remain palpable to the present.