Hallowed Ground, Contagious Corpses, and the Moral Economy of the Graveyard in Early Nineteenth‐Century Prussia

‘That this too, too solid flesh would melt…’

“…Although criticised for attributing change to a collective unconscious and for attempting to do so with by a ‘grand narrative’, Ariès’s work drew attention to the significance of the private realm (Hutton 2004: 288–289). Despite questions over detail, his model remains an important part of the social historian’s interpretive armoury – for example, underpinning studies as specific as one of burial practice in 19th century Prussia (Alvis, 2004). Certainly, such changes in attitudes to death provide an important framework with which to interpret the physical aspects of the material culture that surround the commemoration of death and to analyse the changes that have occurred in such necrogeographies.…”

“…As we have seen above, this is especially important if we are concerned, for example, with matters of groundwater pollution from burials or toxic emissions from cremation. Unknown as a feature in what Ariès termed ‘pagan Antiquity’, urban cemeteries only developed from the Middle Ages as people sought to be physically close to the town church, a location made sacred through the burial there of those considered to be saints (Alvis, 2004: 240; Laqueur, 2015). Such ‘churchyards’, as they should be more formally known, are typified by irregular ground plans and their relatively small physical size (Rugg, 2000).…”