Papers presented by Jan Logemann since 2019

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"Business for the Common Good? Conflicts over Municipal and Non-Profit Funeral Businesses in Twentieth Century Germany"

Abstract:

The market for funeral businesses and burial insurance struggled for legitimacy across Western countries throughout much of the Twentieth Century. In many countries, municipal and non-profit organizations emerged to challenge commercial funeral homes. Private funeral homes, meanwhile, learned to make their own arguments about what it meant to do business “in the public interest.” Based on business records and on associational and municipal archives, this paper will analyze conflicts over funeral businesses and the possible “socialization” of private funeral homes in interwar and postwar Germany. Beginning in the early 20th Century, many Germany cities strove to make funerals a public service akin to health services or public utilities. At the same time, non-profit burial associations gained in membership and significance, offering especially working-class Germans an affordable alternative to a private market they described as marred by profiteering and immoral business practices. Faced with the credible threat of elimination from the market, funeral businesses and their associations attempted to re-fashion themselves as champions of the common good. This included the introduction and enforcement of professional and ethical standards in their business. It also entailed the invention of a new moral code of piety - a code, they claimed, best served by traditional family businesses rooted within the community. While public and non-profit enterprises continued to play a role in this funeral market into the postwar period, private funeral businesses succeeded in blunting the threat of municipal take-over and for many decades established a highly organized, largely non-competitive market for funeral services. The appeal to some form of social responsibility, the funeral markets show, has a long history. Especially in sectors and services - from health to housing – which catered to basic needs and were highly morally charged, businesses early on learned to embrace narratives of service to the common good.

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

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

Abstract:

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.

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2022 Mexico City

"Death as a Business? Commercial Funeral Businesses and Debates over the Morality of Markets in early 20th Germany"

Abstract:

Today German funeral companies offer an increasingly broad and individualized set of services, which are frequently met with public skepticism. This paper takes a long historical perspective on the commercialization of funeral markets since early twentieth century in Germany. It argues that the recent liberalization and diversification of German funeral markets has a longer, contested history reaching back to the turn of the century. Based on archival research on funeral companies, their associations and suppliers, I explore the emergence of a surprisingly vibrant and competitive market for funeral goods and services between 1900 and the post-WWII era. While new businesses and marketing forms emerged, however, professional organizations and political actors also sought to limit overly commercial developments for different reasons. Funeral director associations strove for ethical standards and coordinated markets whereas municipalities workers associations sought to offer alternatives to a market, which frequently saw its legitimacy questioned. In the paper, I analyze the advertising and marketing strategies of smaller funeral homes as well as the rise of a few prominent funeral chains such as Grieneisen in Berlin. At the same time, I trace critiques by municipal funeral services and the public debate over the death as a business, offering some comparative observations to other funeral markets in the Atlantic world. The paper thus offers new archival insights into the emergence of a very specific market and connects to debates about the morality of markets, their limitations, and taboos. It also contributes to research regarding the mid-twentieth century regulation and restriction of competitiveness by state, society and corporate actors in Germany.

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2022 Mexico City

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2022 Mexico City

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